The Last Moor Falls: Granada Surrenders After 800 Years

Boabdil wept as he surrendered the keys to Granada. His mother supposedly told him: "You weep like a woman for what you could not defend as a man." The mountain pass where he turned for one last look at the city is still called El Ultimo Suspiro del Moro, the Moor''s Last Sigh. On January 2, 1492, the last Muslim kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula ceased to exist after 781 years of Islamic presence in Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella had spent a grinding decade conquering the Emirate of Granada, the final holdout of Moorish civilization in Western Europe. Their forces included Castilian nobles, soldiers of the Santa Hermandad, and Swiss mercenaries, all funded partly by the Catholic Church, which pressured other Christian nations to contribute money and men. The war was not a single dramatic campaign but a slow strangulation of fortress towns, cutting supply lines and starving garrisons into submission. Granada''s defenders were handicapped by civil war within the Nasrid ruling family. Boabdil (Muhammad XII) had fought against his own father and uncle for the throne, and Ferdinand exploited those divisions ruthlessly, alternately supporting and attacking Boabdil depending on which approach weakened Granada more. By 1491, the city itself was under siege. The Treaty of Granada, signed November 25, 1491, promised Muslims the right to practice their religion, keep their property, and maintain their customs. That promise lasted barely a decade. By 1502, Muslims in Castile faced conversion or exile. The same year Granada fell, Isabella funded a Genoese sailor named Christopher Columbus. The conquest of Granada freed the resources and the religious zeal that launched the Age of Exploration. One empire ended on the Iberian Peninsula; another began across the Atlantic.