#boabdil

The farewell of Boabdil to Granada- Alfred Dehodencq

Abu al-Hasan and Zoraya

King and Queen of Granada

Isabel de Solís was the daughter of Sancho Jimenez de Solís, leader of Martos, a nobleman of Castile. Martos is a Castilian town on the border with Moorish Spain. There's no mention of whether Isabel had brothers or sisters in any of her biographical sketches. However, her father is noted as having a second wife, named “Arlaja” the Moorish woman. During Isabel's youth, a Muslim prince Muhammad al-Zaghal, the brother of Sultan Abu al-Hasan, raided the town of Martos and captured Isabel in a church where she was sent by her father for reason of assumed bad behavior or safety. She was betrothed to boy named Pedro de Venegas of Luque. Her father refused to pay any ransom to Al-Zaghal and he took her away to Granada’s palace of Alhambra. The legend of this Isabel says that she joined harem as a teenage girl with blonde hair and blue eyes and she was a virgin. Abu al-Hasan fell under her beauty and married her. She adopted Islam and took name of Zoraya. She bore two sons to Sultan named Nasr and Saad, whom he favored over the heir apparent and first son through Aisha.  

Zoraya’s presence and influence on the ruler was creating internal discords. The first wife Aisha was upset along with her followers in the ranks of Muslims nobles and military commander. Sultan’s own younger brother advised him to get rid of her. Abu al-Hasan, the fierce and threatening sultan of Granada dictated the timing of war with Castilians through raids and provocations, now found his personal romance and marriage with Zoraya interfering with his own effectiveness as a paramount ruler of Emirates of Cordoba. The palace intrigue to dislodge him or kill his second wife and her children continued but he stood firm and protected her. An internal power struggles between two factions broke into a physical fighting. The people of Granada took sides against each other. Some supported Abu al-Hasan, who was backed by his Military commander and brother al-Zaghal. Abu al-Hasan’s son Boabdil and his mother Aisha led the opposing faction. Abu al-Hasan left Granada and went into retirement, taking with him his young wife Zoraya and their children, and he died soon thereafter. Zoraya fled under mysterious circumstances to Castile, took back her childhood name, Isabel, converted back to Christianity, and changed her sons’ names to Ferdinand of Granada, to honor King Ferdinand, and Juan of Granada, to honor the prince. Within a few years, the three of them were living in the comfort at Queen Isabel I’s court, participating in Christian religious services. 

-“Llora como mujer lo que no supiste defender como hombre” .

(-Cry like a woman, for what you did not know to defend like a man.)

Abu al-Hasan and Aisha

King and Queen of Granada

Abu al-Hasan Ali, known as Muley Hacén in Spanish, was more belligerent than his recent predecessors. He built up the Muslim army and its capacity for offensive action, with the help and support of his equally strong-willed primary wife Aisha. One Arab chronicler called Abu al-Hasan as “magnanimous and valiant, a lover of wars, and the dangers and horrors of them.” It was a time of glorious Islamic expansion, and no doubt he wanted to emulate the successes being achieved by the Ottoman Turks in the east, confident that God was on his side as well as theirs. Abu al-Hasan grew steadily bolder and more determined. He did not seize land but instead concentrated on raids that brought “rich spoils of booty and captives.” In 1478, he staged a huge military parade to put his troops and armaments on display. This new aggressiveness, coming as it did at a time when the Ottoman Empire was expanding in the Balkans, was worrisome to the Castilians, who feared that the Nasrid would ally themselves with the Turks and allow them to use their Mediterranean ports for a future invasion of Spain.

His primary wife Aisha had been his cousin, lover, friend, supporter, and adviser. She is generally known under her Spanish name Aixa, and was also known by the Muslims as Fatima due to the fact that she was one of the living descendents of the Prophet Muhammed. She played a key role in maintaining loyalty among ranks and file of Muslim army and his household. The trouble began when he began showing preference for a pretty young Christian woman Isabel de Solís in his harem. The Arab sources claim that “two very beautiful women in his harem that he loved more than the others.” Isabel was converted to Islam after marriage with the sultan, and took the name Soraya (Zoraya). Abu Hasan had become badly smitten with Soraya, and together they had two children, whom he favored over the heir apparent and first son through Aisha. The eldest son was Prince Boabdil. Aisha resented this “She hated the infidel and converted Isabel de Solís (Soraya) and her two children favored by the sultan. She spared no attempts to try to kill them all including children.” This family spat soon engulfed many influential nobles and military commanders of Abu Hasan, and Aisha urged her son Boabdil to try to unseat his own father. Abu al-Hasan’s reputation suffered. Where he had formerly been viewed as a mighty warrior in defense of Islam, he now came to be seen as “hard and cruel,” and his son Boabdil came to be perceived as the courtly one, “affable and graciously mannered.” Arab sources describe this family schism as the beginning of the fall of Muslim empire in Spain.