Fall of the Nasrid Dynasty

After Muslims invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711 A.D., by the late 12th century, Christian kingdoms in the north of present day Spain forced defeated Muslim powers to flea for North Africa or what they called southern Al-Andalus in 1228, where the ambitious Muhammad I had established the Nasrid dynasty in the modern Spanish provinces of Granada, Almeria, Jaen and Malaga, which by 1250 was the last Muslim polity in the Iberian Peninsula. Despite frequent warring with the Catholic northern states of Castile and Aragon, the Nasrid dynasty survived by paying tributes to the northern crowns, yet despite its precarious position, Granada enjoyed cultural and economic prosperity for the next 200 years to come, making the Nasrid dynasty the longest-lived Muslim empire in Andalusia.

Beginning of the End

The Nasrid empire’s prosperity began to unravel in 1469, when King Ferdinand II of Aragon married Queen Isabella I of Castile, which united the two kingdoms under the banner of Reconquista, which was a shared desire to force Muslims out of Spain. As Catholic armies bore down on southern Muslims, the Nasrids found themselves embattled in a civil war over control of Granada, when Abu l-Hasan Ali, the Sultan of Granada, was ousted by his son Muhammad XII. Christian forces took full advantage of the fracture in Nasrid governance, overtaking the Muslim stronghold of Lucena, Cordoba in 1483, at the same time capturing Muhammed XII as they breached the city walls.

A Family Affair

Set free after his swore his allegiance to Ferdinand and Isabella, Abu I-Hasan Ali finally abdicated his thrown to his brother Muhammad XIII, known as Al-Zaghal the valiant, who continued his war against Muhammad XII. In 1491, after a decade of conflicts known as the Granada War, Al-Zaghal at last prevailed over his struggle against Muhammed XII, only to fall to the Catholic kingdoms in 1492. Given a lordship in the Alpujarras mountains, Al-Zaghal instead took a financial compensation from the now unified Spanish crown to abandon the Iberian Peninsula, leaving behind a remaining Muslim population known as the mudéjar, although the majority of Muslims—some 200,000 strong—emigrated to North Africa after the surrender of Granada, making the fall of the Nasrid dynasty, a finite end to Muslim rule in Iberia.