On our recent holiday in Nerja on the Andalusian coast we took a day trip to Granada. By far the most famous monument in the city is the Alhambra palace; it is a fabulous place, a little empty but occasionally breath-taking. Historically it is of great interest, but I believe that the most evocative place in the city, the one in which the history of Granada, indeed the history of Spain, can be followed most closely and more intimately is the Plaza Bibarrambla.
The Plaza Bibarrambla in Granada is a square in the centre of a vibrant and exciting Spanish city. It is oblong in shape surrounded by attractive 3 and 4 storey buildings, above which the truncated single tower of the cathedral of Granada can be seen. Flower stalls provide a colourful and fragrant buffer between the smart restaurants and tourist shops and the centre of the plaza in which a sweet fountain made up of large and small bowls topped by Neptune all held aloft by rather ugly giants sits within a low fence. The place is relatively peaceful and calm, cool and fairly sophisticated, in other words it is modern Spain.
Although Granada has an ancient history, Celtic, Roman, and Vizigothic, its establishment as a city of major importance began with the creation of Moorish Al-Andalus following the occupation of the Iberian peninsula by the Umayyads in 711. In the almost 800 years that Muslim caliphs, emirs and princes lived in and ruled over the city it developed a culture that was sophisticated , exploratory, welcoming to those from other cultural and religious traditions. Plaza Bibarrambla was an open space at the time of the Moors, it stood on a sandy bank of the now enclosed River Darro, hence the name which comes from Arabic and means ‘beach gate’, and it provided space for trading (the Arab bazarre or Alcaiceria is right next to the Plaza) as well as festivals and displays of all kinds, including jousting.
In 1492, despite having good relations with the Catholic Spanish kings and queens of Castille, despite becoming a tributary state of Christian Spain and providing a lucrative and mutually beneficial direct link to the Muslim world, the Emir of Granada was forced into signing a treaty in which he gave control of the city to the Catholic monarchs. The treaty stated clearly that Muslims and Jews would be able to continue in their faith unmolested and that their customs would not be interfered with. This was based on a long established tenet of the Catholic Church that an enforced conversion is invalid in the eyes of God. The Catholic Bishops tried to convert the Muslims by preaching and persuasion, but progress was slow and after only seven years the treaty was forgotten. The rights of Muslims to follow their faith were ignored and the autos de fé – or trials of faith – were held in the Bibarrambla.
These trials would examine those who were Muslim or Jewish, usually intimidate them into conversion and provide a kind of quasi-legal framework by which their goods, businesses and property could be confiscated. As an off-shoot of the Inquisition it also examined those Christians who were accused of heresy. The trials were public affairs and followed a set ritual in which two processions would converge in the Bibarramblas: one bringing the accused from wherever they were being held prisoner, and the other bringing the judges (bishops, archbishops and abbots usually) from a nearby church. It was a long affair, going on from dawn to dusk, and stopping for lunch - a huge banquet for the judges - watched by those standing trial. Sentences would then announced in the afternoon, and those who refused to either abandon their faith and convert, or recant their ‘heretical’ views and rejoin the ‘true’ faith, would be taken away to be burnt or burnt in Bibarrambla itself, while those who converted or recanted would be pardoned. It is estimated that up to 70,000 Muslims were forced into conversion, with 3,000 being baptised on one day in 1499.
At the same time as the Catholic Church forced conversion on Muslims and Jews and burnt those who refused, they were burning something else as well. The sophisticated and well-educated culture of the Spanish Moors meant that Granada was an important centre of learning and book production. They now boast a fine University established in the Sixteenth Century, but they had many Muslim and Jewish centres of learning long before that. Indeed close to Plaza Bibarrambla the University’s Faculty of Arts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts are housed in what was the home of a Muslim madrasah or mosque school. One Muslim scholar who attended this school was the historian and poet Ibn-al-Khatib whose poems can be found decorating the walls of the Alhambra. In 1499 Cardinal Ximenes de Cisnero ordered searches of the homes of Jews and Muslims, as well as suspect Christians, declaring that all books in Arabic or Hebrew found should be brought from all parts of Granada to the Bibarrambla. There they were burnt. It is thought that around 1 million books were destroyed in this way in Granada.
Mosques were destroyed or converted into churches, the Jewish quarter was demolished and those who had not converted were forced out of the city, those Muslims who could afford to make the journey left for North Africa. Those who remained converted and became Moriscos Catholics of Moorish descent or Marranos Catholics of Jewish descent. Spanish traditions and customs replaced the Muslim festivals and competitions in the Bibarrambla. It became the place in which bullfights were held. In August 1609, 20 bulls were killed, but not before they had killed 36 and injured around 60 people, nice one bulls. And today the river is enclosed, the Arab bazzare provides a great opportunity for tourists and it is a pleasant, peaceful square of restaurants and florists, popular with tourists and locals alike.
Instinctively I would prefer Moorish Spain over Catholic Spain any time, and will be writing a further blog on my trip to Cordoba making this preference even clearer very soon. But highlighting differences between different cultures and different times is something that historians do at their peril; it is for example something that Enlightenment historians did with a judgemental relish that still echoes today. By unleashing your own modern values to judge different cultures, you always end up supporting the premise that one is good and one is evil, one civilized and one barbarian, usually that yours is good and the other evil. But great care should be taken when making historical comparisons, even in what appears to be a clear cut case such as the comparison between Muslim and Catholic Spain. It is worth noting for example that in 1066 over 4,000 Jews were killed and their leader crucified by a Muslim mob in the city of Granada, so the enlightened and civilized Muslim Granada could also succumb to religious hatred and turn to violence as its expression.
The Enlightenment or ‘The Age of Reason’ began in the Seventeenth Century and has become a fine example of how history, economics, culture and political philosophy can be used to make unfair and judgemental statements about different cultures and different times. They argued that by applying reason and scientific analysis to all things, the world could be understood, knowledge could be advanced and the ills of society could be cured. Philosophers, mathematicians, economists and authors, such as Adam Smith, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, Isaac Newton and Voltaire, believed they could explain things, that they could understand things, that they could predict things, that they could provide certainties based on truths derived from scientific analysis and the application of reason. They were deluded by the notion that facts exist, that science always leads to progress and that human behaviour and motivations can be understood through glib and superficial generalizations.
The Enlightenment looked back on the Middle Ages as a period of barbarism, religious superstition and division, disorganization and rule by military might. They looked beyond the middle ages to the ancient Roman and Greek worlds and perceived a ‘Golden Age’ of democracy, science and reason. This approach to history provides the origin of the gross generalization that is the phrase ‘the dark ages’ among many other historical mistakes. The Catholic conquest of Moorish Spain and the subsequent mistreatment of those who had lived, created and thrived in that region for many hundreds of years is one of those historical moments when it is very difficult not to be judgemental. You just have to stand in the Plaza Bibarrambla, smell the flowers and hear the water flowing in the fountain and think; ‘Well all those people are dead now, all those things happened a long time ago and no-one here was responsible. My job as a historian is to make sure that we do not forget that they happened, my duty as an individual is to try and make sure they never happen again.’
