A brief overview of the history of the Levante Almeriense (part 2)
[Read part one of the Brief history of the Levante Almeriense]

On the 2nd of January 1492 Caliph Boabdil of the Caliphate of Granada surrendered to the Catholic Kings, Isabel & Ferdinand. As he rode with his royal procession towards the coast to embark back to Africa, he reined in at the famous mountain pass above Granada called the suspiro del moro (sigh of the moor) for a final look at his vanquished city. His unsympathetic mother, according to legend, said that he did well to sigh like a woman for what he could not defend like a man.

The final expulsion of the Moors from Spain caused a golden age in Spanish politics and established the basis of the new Spanish Empire. The launch of Columbus on his voyage to America and the subsequent colonies, and in 1519, the establishment of King Carlos V as Holy Roman Emperor brought Spain to the forefront of the international stage. However, across the Mediterranean sea, ruling most of north Africa, Turkey and lands all the way to Belgrade, was the counterweight to the Spanish empire – the Ottoman Empire, ruled at that time by Suleiman “the magnificent”.

The two mighty empires never came into direct conflict, with the exception of a few strategic battles aimed towards obtaining certain objectives. Instead, they fought by proxy, via the island nations of the Mediterranean, and the small city states that surrounded it. Both influenced by religion, one Catholic from Rome and the other Islamic, they vied for power and and the main method chosen was naval.

The XVI century was a century of piracy and enslavement in the Med, a century of building up massive fleets based directly on Roman technologies that would then batter each other into withdrawal. These fleets, comprised mainly of galleys or tirimies, were powered mainly by manpower. In essence, slaves from the other side who would be used until dead, then thrown overboard. In 1566, in a single summer, 4000 Christians were seized from the coasts of Granada by the feared Muslim pirate Barbarossa. Some estimates put the total number of slaves captured over the XVI and XVII centuries, on both sides, as almost 2 million. The Christians were never to hold the upper hand in these naval battles – by early XVI Suleimans naval control of the Mediterranean was almost absolute, allowing his pirates to roam freely along the Med coasts.

It is from this era that the early watchtowers were established along the Almerian coast. Designed to always be visible to each other, upon sight of a marauding fleet signals would be passed along the line until they reached the fortified Christan towns of Vera or Mojacar, from whence, in theory, troops could be deployed to withdraw peasants into the towns and mount a defense against the pirates.

This task was hampered by the fact that most of the peasant population in the area were still of the Islamic faith and felt loyalty towards the Ottomans. It was not unknown for such hamlets to offer water and food to the pirates, safe in the knowledge that the few Christian troops in the area would be unable to interfere. And for a number of years the offshore island of El Alboran was a main base for Islamic pirates, to where they would resupply and bring in the booty they had garnished. The piracy would continue until the late 18th century, when the collapse of the central Ottoman empire, the establishment of modern states in western Europe and the consolidation of British naval bases in Gibraltar and Minorca finished the industry off.

After the collapse of Boabdil, local Moorish populations either knuckled under Christian rule, or tried last ditch attempts to throw them out. In this area, there were a number of local revolutions, among which are mentioned Vera and Bédar, to which reinforcements were summoned. While no records exist of the punishment meted out, if it was anything like that given to Abrucena or Finana it would have been harsh. After this, in an attempt to control the mountains, Bédar was given its own political control, under a series of commanders, taking it and surrounding villages away from Vera. Apart from this, the constant cession of rich farmland to various nobles eventually caused Vera to wither away and be fused for a while with Baza; command of the local area swung between Bédar and Vera depending on the location of the local commander. In around 1495 don Diego López de Burgos, from his court in Vera, ordered all Mudejares (Muslims who accepted Christian political control but continued to practice their faith – lit. from the Arab word “domesticated” ) to be enslaved and sold at market. This caused such a commotion that in 1499 the Crown was forced to overrule this order and free the Mudejares.

Despite this, in 1500 a series of local revolts by the Mudejares caused the King of Spain, Ferdinand, to travel to the area on the 27th of February to personally oversee the control of the mutiny. This continued for such a time, that in the end the King ordered the forced conversion of all Mudejares to Christianity. This had the effect of causing the Moors, who still felt that the Spanish were the invaders, to practice their faith in secret and furthered resentment in the area. This also lead to the construction in 1505 of the Parish of Bédar, which was situated in the old Mosque of Serena (the ruins are still visible, it was later turned into an olive press) until the construction of the fortified church in 1560 that still commands the village. The church was constructed on the orders of Bishop Antonio Carrionero of Antas, and his coat of arms still dominated the building.

In 1522, just to add to the general problems suffered by the Christians in the area, a huge earthquake levelled the villages of Mojacar and Vera. Both villages were at the time on the hills in front of their present locations. These fortified villages were considered so important by the King that, fearful that the large beaches and easy access to the interior would be used by an Ottoman invasion fleet, he personally ordered a division of troops and workers in the area to rebuild the villages. There is a wonderful story that the Captain of the royal troops stood atop Old Vera (where the statue of the Virgin is now, atop the hill), and, using an arrow blessed by the bishop, declared that wherever landed his arrow, so would the new church and centre of the new village of Vera be. He fired the arrow into the air, and it landed where the alter of Vera Cathedral is now. Vera became a fortified market town controlling the main roads and trade of the area — Mojacar, being costal, was moved to the larger hill in front of its old position, where there was a spring and more room.

On Christmas Day 1568 the Mudejares organised the great Moorish Revolution in the Alpujarras. This revolution was organised by self proclaimed King Aben Humeya, and supported in principal by Baghdad, although Selim had no real interest in full scale terrestrial war with Carlos on the Peninsula, using this as a decoy to take pressure off the war in the Balkans and islands in the Med. The Mudejares marched on Almeria and Adra, and after a bloody battle were repulsed from both cities. Apparently in an attempt to secure a beachhead for an invasion fleet that never came, Aben Humeya retreated towards Vera with some 12000 men. He was supported in the areas by the main villages of Sorbas, Serena and Bédar. He camped out in the ruins of Old Vera and besieged Vera. Don Medez Pardo, mayor of Vera, sent every panic signal he could to Mojacar, Lorca and Murcia, having as he had only 60 cavalry and 300 infantry. Amazingly, Aben forgot to bring any ladders or battering rams (it is believed that they were left behind after the siege in Adra), and was unable to storm the walls of Vera. He had two cannons, but one exploded and the other was captured in a daring nighttime raid by the Vera infantry. He was unable to storm the walls, and was shortly after caught between professional troops from Cuevas and later Lorca. The destruction of his army, comprised mainly of peasants and unable to fight efficiently against mounted soldiers, caused his downfall and eventual assassination. Bédar was recaptured by Don Juan of Austria in 1596 who came with a large army via Antas and destroyed the village, then Surena. In the subsequent census, only 22 families, all Christian, were recorded to live here in this previously important village, which shows the level of destruction by his troops. At the time of the revolution, Bédar had two olive presses and several mines and quarries with the associated workshops; it was recorded in the late 17th century that the inhabitants of Bédar had to travel to Antas to press their olives, and that mines were still deserted for “lack of manpower and market”. It was also recorded in the same document that the Moorish waterworks and fountains had been left intact and still worked; that said waterworks could and should be used as a template for new installations in the area.

After this revolution Carlos V decreed, in a act that still shames Spain, that all Islamics would be deported or killed. At least 50,000 Muslims were deported from the south of Spain, of which at least 20% died of starvation before reaching Africa. This also lead to the darkest hours of the Spanish Inquisition, which was charged with rooting out all “non Christians” from the Holy Roman Empire, a charge which was later taken to mean also Jews, Protestants and assorted heretics.

[to be continued]

Note: This article originally appeared in”The New Entertainer“, August 2008 edition. Part 1!

A brief overview of the early history of the Levante Almeriense.

The collapse of the Roman empire, never very well established in what would become the Levante Almeriense (basically, the area was used as a fish processing plant and shoe factory exploiting the Esparto grass that grows here; the only known Roman remains here locally are in Cadima, Los Gallardos, where the Romans had a small settlement next to the Rio Aguas), left what were small villages and fortified farms along the coastline vaguely united under the Count of Teodorimo. This continued for several centuries, as the villages basically got on with life leaving few historical records, although we know that this area boasted a small army of Goths paid for out of local taxes.

The “Moors”, knowing a good thing when they saw it, and having spent a couple of centuries ransacking the southern coasts in their boats, got together under a Berber lord called Tariq ben Ziyad, the governor of Ifriquiyya (North Africa) and started to conquer Spain from 711c.e. onwards, when old Tariq took his men across the strait of Gibraltar and conquered a peninsula that was racked by internal conflict. The two largest political blocks were the Goths, under King Witiza, and the Iberians, under Don Rodrigo – crucially, neither of the two sides would agree to a truce, allowing the Moors to divide and conquer with relative ease. Concentrating mainly on the centre of the peninsula, this area was bypassed by the Moors, as the Count Teodorimo of the time wisely refused battle and signed an advantageous peace treaty with the Arab commander Abd Al-Aziz. According to the chronicles of Arabian geographer Al-Urdi, the Cora Tudmir (County of Teodorimo) as a political entity encompassed an area from Los Velez in the north to Vera in the south, with Cantoría being its central axis. While the Moorish commander Ibn I-Jatter decided to break the peace treaty in 754 in order to secure his flank, this geopolitical entity survived until the middle ages.

The Moorish invaders were not a single political unit, rather they were from disperse political groups united under one religious leader. As they took control of the Iberian peninsula they did not attempt to impose their religion on the indigenous population. Instead, by offering the peasants who suffered under Christian feudal regimes freedom, local Christian lords often found themselves beset by mass mutiny and desertion. The only real difference between Islamic and others in those times was that non believers had a somewhat higher tax rate – this alone often sufficed to convert much of the population of their own free will. Landowners were allowed to keep their possesions upon the payment of a once off wealth tax to the new lords.

Since Moorish Spain was beset by internal conflict between regional political leaders, there were quite a few internal conflicts that racked Moorish Spain, and indeed facilitated the “reconquista” of Spain by the Christian Kings in the 14th and 15th century. Indeed, times Almeria was separate from Granada and were at war! Constant internal strife left the moors, who had vastly superior numbers, technology and organization, at the mercy of the kingdoms of Castile, Asturias and Aragon – what would later unify to become Castile, and then Spain, under Fernando and Isabel (the Catholic Kings).

Initially, the whole of Moorish Spain was administered by a series of local governors, called Wa    lis, appointed by the Governor of Ifriquiyya who retained overall control of the Iberian Peninsula. However, later on the province of Al-Andalus gained independence from Ifriquiyya and became its own self governing province within the Caliphate of Damascus; walis were appointed by the Shah or elected locally. While always paying lip service to the Caliphate, there were always strong internal divisions between the Walis.

In 1243, under constant attack from the Christian realms, a number of these divided Islamic realms united under the Tarifa of Granada; this included Almeria and it’s regions. This lead to a period of peace and prosperity for the region of Vera, as Granada sent miners and technicians to exploit the mineral and agricultural riches of the area. It is at this point that villages such as Bédar and Serena were first recorded, although not as mining villages but agricultural – there was a strong silkworm industry in the area!

The Moors never managed to conquer the whole of the Peninsula – crucially, they were defeated in a number of small battles in the north of the country. They proceeded to ignore these areas, and in the process permitted the formation of the first Christian kingdoms of Spain. The first of these, the Kingdom of Asturias, established itself in the northwest of the Peninsula; after the Moors were defeated in France, the Kingdom of Navarre established itself, followed by Aragon. For the next several centuries they based themselves in the fortified northern mountain regions and attacked the Moors, attempting to expel them from the Peninsula. This was a long and arduous process, and the Christian Kings did not succeed in reaching the southern Med coast until the late 13th century, when the Moorish lines collapsed and they reformed their border in Murcia.

This region was dangerously close to the frontier between the Tarifa of Granada and the Christians in Lorca, and suffered several times by incursions by enemy troops. In 1304 Vera was sacked and burnt by Christians; this lead to a peace treaty that lasted until 1319. After war recommenced, an eastern frontier was drawn up that named fortified key villages in the defensive line as Alicún de Ortega, Benzalema, Benamaurel, Cúllar, Castilléjar, Galera, Orce, Huéscar, Los Vélez, Xiquena, Overa, Arboleas, Zurgena, Albox, Partaola, Cantoria, Albanchez, Bédar, Cuevas & Vera.

In 1407 a series of concerted attacks against the Moors were organised from Lorca. This eventually lead to the entire collapse of the eastern front, the capture of Vera, Mojacar, Serena, Bédar, Los Velez, and the push towards Granada through the valley passes. The Moors developed a scorched earth retreat policy which destroyed many artifacts from the area. Between 1410 and 1447 several peace treaties were made and broken, and these villages were on the frontline, being taken and retaken many times.

By 1488 the Catholic Kings had occupied all coastal terrains up till Malaga, leaving the Moors isolated in the mountains and surrounded by Cristian troops. With the Moorish supply lines cut, the Marquess of Cadiz negotiated a surrender treaty in which Mojacar and Vera surrendered to the Catholics – this lead to the surrender of all other small villages in the area, and the final collapse of the Moorish lines up to Granada. All non catholics in Mojacar were expelled and formed a new village in Turre – those of Vera, also expelled, formed a village in Antas. The intention of the Catholic commanders was to fortify both Mojacar and Vera with Catholics and use them to as fortified bases to control the surrounding areas – this did not go quite according to plan, as we shall see next month!