Leo Africanus

by Amin Maalouf

‘We had to leave the city to avoid any incident, any incautious reaction. Ferdinand has asked that five hundred notables from the great families of Granada should be left with him as hostages so that he can bring his troops into the city without fearing a trap. We too have every interest in the surrender taking place without the slightest violence. Reassure the others, tell them that they will be well treated and that it will all pass very quickly.’

  The news was imparted to everyone without provoking more than a few inconsequential murmurs, since most felt proud to have been chosen as well as a certain sense of security in not being in the city when it would be invaded, which largely compensated for the irritation of temporary confinement. Others, like my father, would have preferred to be with their wives and their children at that crucial moment, but they knew that they could do nothing for them, and that the will of the Almighty must be fulfilled to the end.

  They did not stop for more than half an hour, and then began to move on towards the west, always keeping within a stone’s throw from the Genil. Soon a troop of Castilians appeared on the horizon, and when it drew level with the convoy, its leader took al-Mulih to one side and then, on an order from him, the soldiers of Granada turned their horses round and trotted back to the city, while Ferdinand’s cavalry took their place around the hostages. The crescent had now disappeared from the sky. The convoy went on, even more silent, even more overcome with emotion, to the walls of Santa Fe.

  ‘How strange, their new city built from our old stones,’ thought Muhammad as he passed into this encampment which he had so often seen in the distance with a mixture of fear and curiosity. On all sides there was the bustle and commotion heralding a major attack, Ferdinand’s soldiers preparing ostensibly to engage in the final combat, or rather to slaughter the city which they were now holding at bay, as a bull is destroyed in the arenas of Granada after being torn to pieces by a pack of dogs.

  The same evening, of the first of January 1492, the vizier, who had stayed with the hostages, went back to Granada, accompanied this time by several Christian officers whom he was to bring into the city in accordance with the agreements. They went in at night, by the road which my father and his companions in captivity had taken, which had the advantage of not arousing the suspicions of the people of the city too early. The following day they appeared at the tower of Comares, where Boabdil handed them the keys of the fortress. Using the same secret road, several hundred Castilian soldiers soon arrived, and secured the ramparts. A bishop hoisted up a cross on the watch tower, and the soldiers cheered him, crying ‘Castile’, ‘Castile’, ‘Castile’, three times, which was their custom when they occupied a place. Hearing these cries, the people of Granada understood that the unthinkable had already taken place, and, astounded that an event of such magnitude could have come to pass with so little disturbance, began to pray and chant, their eyes misted over and their knees weak.

  As the news spread, the inhabitants came out into the streets, men and women together, Muslims and Jews, rich and poor, wandering around in a daze, jumping with a start at the slightest sound. My mother took me through one alleyway to another as far as Sabiqa, where she took up her position for several hours, observing everything that was happening around the Alhambra. I think I can remember having seen the Castilian soldiers that day, singing, shouting and strutting about on the walls. Towards noon, already drunk, they began to spread themselves out over the city, and Salma resigned herself to having to wait for her husband at home.

  Three days later, one of our neighbours, a notary who was over seventy, who had been taken hostage with my father, was brought back to his house. He had feigned illness, and the Castilians had been afraid that he would die on them. From him my mother learned which way they had gone, and she decided to go at dawn the next morning and stand watch at the Najd Gate, right at the south of the city not far from the Genil. She judged it prudent to take Warda with her since she could talk to her co-religionists in case they challenged us.

  So we left at the first hour of daylight, my mother carrying me and my sister Mariam in her mother’s arms, both going slowly so as not to slip on the frozen snow. We passed through the old qasba, the Bridge of the Qadi, the Mauror quarter, Granada-of-the-Jews, the Potters’ Gate, without passing a soul; only the metallic sounds of kitchen utensils being moved about reminded us from time to time that we were not in an abandoned encampment, haunted by ghosts, but in fact in a city where human beings of flesh and blood still felt the need to bang cooking pots together.

  ‘It is true that it is barely daylight, but does that explain why no sentry is on duty at the Najd Gate?’ asked my mother in a high voice.

  She put me down on the ground and pushed one of the doors, which yielded easily, as it was already half open. We left the city, without really knowing which road to take.

  We were still only a few steps from the walls when a strange sight presented itself to our astonished gaze. Two troops of horsemen seemed to be coming towards us, one from our right, coming up from the Genil at a brisk trot in spite of the slope, and the other from our left, coming from the direction of the Alhambra, moving awkwardly. Soon a rider detached himself from the latter group and went off at a faster pace. Returning quickly towards the city, we passed through the Najd Gate once more, without shutting the door behind us, in order to continue to watch without being seen. When the rider from the Alhambra was very close to us my mother stifled a cry:

  ‘It is Boabdil!’ she said, and fearing she had spoken too loudly put her hand to my mouth to keep me quiet, although I was completely silent and my sister too, both of us absorbed in the strange scene that was unfolding in front of us.

  I could only see the sultan’s turban which was wrapped round his head and covered his forehead down to his eyebrows. His horse looked somewhat colourless to me, in contrast to the two royal palfreys which now advanced from the other side at walking pace, covered with gold and silks. Boabdil made as if to dismount from his horse, but Ferdinand stopped him with a reassuring gesture. The sultan went towards his vanquisher and tried to seize his hand to kiss it, but the king withdrew it, and Boabdil, who was leaning towards him, could only embrace his shoulder, showing that he was still treated as a prince. Not as prince of Granada, however; the new masters of the city had granted him a small estate in the Alpujarra mountains where he was allowed to set himself up with his family.

  The scene at the Najd Gate lasted only a few seconds, after which Ferdinand and Isabella made their way towards the Alhambra while Boabdil, taken aback for a moment, turned round once in the opposite direction before resuming his journey. He rode so slowly that he was soon caught up by his train, which consisted of more than a hundred horses and mules carrying men, women and children and a large number of coffers and objects wrapped up in cloths. The next day it was said that he had disinterred the corpses of his ancestors and had taken them with him to prevent them falling into the hands of the enemy.

  It was also claimed that he had not been able to take all his goods with him, and that he had caused an immense fortune to be hidden in the caves of Mount Cholair. How many people vowed to find it! Will anyone believe me when I say that all my life I have met men whose sole dream was this vanished gold? I have even met people who are known everywhere as kannazin, who have no other occupation than seeking treasure, particularly that of Boabdil; at Fez they are so numerous that they hold regular meetings, and when I was living in that city they even elected a representative to concern himself with the legal cases constantly brought against them by the owners of the buildings whose foundations they weakened in the course of their excavations. These kannazin are convinced that the riches abandoned in the past by princes have been put under a spell to prevent them being discovered; this explains their constant recourse to sorcerers whom they employ to unravel the spell. It is impossible to have a conversation with a kannaz without him swearing that he has already seen heaps of gold and silver in an underground passage, but could not lay his hands on them because he d
id not know the correct incantations or because he did not have the proper perfumes on him. And he will show you, without letting you leaf through it, a book which describes the places where treasure is to be found!

  For my part I do not know whether the treasure which the Nasrid rulers had amassed over the centuries is still buried in the land of Andalus, but I do not think so, since Boabdil went into exile with no hope of ever returning, and the Rumis had allowed him to take away all that he desired. He departed into oblivion, rich but miserable, and as he passed over the last ridge from which he could still see Granada, he stood motionless for a long time, with troubled mien and his spirit frozen in torpor; the Castilians called this place ‘The Moor’s last sigh’, because, it was said, the fallen sultan had shed tears there, of shame and remorse. ‘You weep like a woman for the kingdom which you did not defend like man,’ his mother Fatima would have said.

  ‘In the eyes of this woman,’ my father would tell me later, ‘what had just taken place was not only the victory of Castile; it was also, and perhaps primarily, her rival’s revenge. Sultan’s daughter, sultan’s wife, sultan’s mother, Fatima was steeped in politicking and intrigue, far more than Boabdil, who would have been perfectly content with a life of pleasure without ambition or risk. It was she who had propelled her son to power, in order that he should dethrone her own husband Abu’l-Hasan, who was guilty of having deserted her for the beautiful Christian captive Soraya. It was Fatima who made Boabdil escape from the tower of Comares and organized in minute detail his rebellion against the old monarch. It was she who had ousted the concubine and excluded her young children from power for ever.

  ‘But destiny is more changeable than the skin of a chameleon, as one of the poets of Denia used to say. Thus while Fatima was escaping from the abandoned city, Soraya promptly resumed her former name, Isabella de Solis, and had her two children Sa‘d and Nasr baptized, becoming Don Fernando and Don Juan, infantes of Granada. They were not the only members of the royal family to abandon the faith of their fathers to become grandees of Spain; Yahya al-Najjar, briefly the hero of the “war party”, had done so before them, and was given the title of Duke of Granada-Venegas. After the fall of the city Yahya was made “alguazil mayor”, chief of police, which amply demonstrated that he had gained the full confidence of the victors. Other people followed his example, among whom was a secretary of the sultan, named Ahmad, whom people had long suspected of being a spy in Ferdinand’s service.

  ‘The days which follow defeat often lay bare the corruption of souls. Here I am thinking less of Yahya than of the vizier al-Mulih. Because, while negotiating, as he had explained to us at such length, the welfare of the widows and orphans of Granada, this man had not forgotten himself; he had obtained from Ferdinand, as the price of the surrender which he had hastened so cleverly, twenty thousand gold castilians, or nearly ten thousand thousands of maravedis, as well as vast estates. Other dignitaries of the regime also accommodated themselves without difficulty to the domination of the Rumis.’

  In fact life immediately began again in occupied Granada, as if Ferdinand had wanted to prevent the Muslims departing for exile en masse. The hostages returned to their families the very day after the entry of the king and queen into the city, and my father told us that he had been treated with more consideration than if he had been the guest of a prince. At Santa Fé he and his companions were not confined to prison; they could go to the market and walked around the streets in small groups, although accompanied by guards whose task was both to keep them under surveillance and to protect them against outbursts on the part of any drunken or overexcited soldiers. It was during one of these strolls that someone pointed out to my father at the door of a tavern a Genoese sailor whom all Santa Fé was talking about and making fun of. People called him ‘Cristobal Colon’. He wanted, he said, to fit out caravels to sail westwards to the Indies, since the earth was round, and he made no secret of his hope to obtain part of the treasure of the Alhambra for this expedition. He had been in Santa Fé for weeks, insisting on meeting the king or the queen, who avoided him, although he had been recommended to them by eminent personages. While waiting to be received, he sent them a stream of messages and supplications, which, in these warlike times, did not fail to irritate them. Muhammad never saw this Genoese again, but I myself often had occasion to hear men speak of him.

  A few days after my father’s return, Duke Yahya summoned him to resume his functions as weigh-master, because, he told him, foodstuffs would soon be returning to the markets in abundance, and it was essential to take care that any fraud should be repressed. Initially disgusted by the mere sight of the renegade, my father ended up by working with him just as he had done with all other police chiefs, not without murmuring curses from time to time when he remembered the hope that this man had once symbolized for the Muslims. The presence of Yahya also had the effect of reassuring the city’s notables; while some already knew him well, all began to court him more assiduously than they had done when he was the unfortunate rival of Boabdil.

  ‘In his anxiety to calm the fears of the vanquished for their fate,’ my father recalled, ‘Ferdinand used to make regular visits to Granada to make sure that his men were faithfully carrying out the agreements. Although concerned for his own safety in the first few days, the king soon began to move freely round the city, visiting the market, under close escort of course, and inspecting the old walls. It is true that he avoided staying the night in our city for months, preferring to return to Santa Fé before sunset, but his unease, though perfectly understandable, was not accompanied by any iniquitous or discriminatory measure or any violation of the treaty of surrender. Ferdinand’s solicitude, whether sincere or feigned, was such that the Christians who visited Granada used to say to the Muslims: “You are now more dear to the heart of our sovereign than we ourselves have ever been.” Some were even as malevolent as to say that the Moors had bewitched the king to make him stop the Christians taking their property from them.

  ‘Our sufferings,’ sighed Muhammad, ‘were soon going to absolve us and make us recall that even when free we would henceforth be chained fast to our humiliation. However, in the months immediately after the fall of Granada – may God deliver her! – we were spared the worst, because before it was let loose upon us, the law of the conquerors rained down upon the Jews. To her great misfortune, Sarah had been correct.’

  In Jumada al-Thania of that year, three months after the fall of Granada, the royal heralds came to the centre of the city, proclaiming, to a roll of drums and in both Arabic and Castilian, an edict of Ferdinand and Isabella decreeing the ‘formal termination of all relations between Christians and Jews, which can only be accomplished by the expulsion of all the Jews from our kingdom’. Henceforth they would have to choose between baptism and exile. If they chose the latter, they had four months to sell their properties and belongings, but they could take with them neither gold nor silver.

  When Sarah came to see us on the day after this proclamation, her face was swollen after a long night of weeping, but from her eyes, now dry, shone that serenity which often accompanies the coming to pass of a long-anticipated drama. She was even able to make fun of the royal edict, reciting the sentences she remembered in a hoarse man’s voice:

  ‘We have been told by the inquisitors and others that commerce between Jews and Christians leads to the most shocking evils. The Jews seek to win back the newly-converted Christians and their children by handing them books of Jewish prayers, by obtaining unleavened bread for them at Easter, by instructing them in the forbidden foods and by persuading them to conform to the Law of Moses. Our Holy Catholic Faith is becoming diminished and debased.’

  Twice my mother asked her to keep her voice down, because we were seated in the courtyard that spring morning and she did not want this sarcasm to reach the ears of a spiteful neighbour. Very fortunately, Warda had gone to the market with my father and sister, because I do not know how she would have reacted to hearing the words ‘Holy
Catholic Faith’ pronounced with such disdain.

  As soon as Sarah had finished her imitation my mother asked her the only important question:

  ‘What have you decided to do? Are you going to choose conversion or exile?’

  A feigned smile greeted this question, then a feignedly casual ‘I still have time!’ My mother waited several weeks before broaching the subject again, but the reply was the same.

  But at the beginning of the summer, when three-quarters of the time allowed to the Jews had expired, Gaudy Sarah herself came to say:

  ‘I have heard that the Grand Rabbi of all Spain, Abraham Senior, has just had himself baptized with his sons and all his relatives. At first I was appalled, and then I said to myself, “Sarah, widow of Jacob Perdoniel, perfume seller of Granada, are you a better Jew than Rabbi Abraham?” So I have decided to have myself baptized, together with my five children, leaving it to the God of Moses to judge what is in my heart.’

  Sarah’s anguish was voluble that day, and my mother looked at her tenderly:

  ‘I am glad that you are not leaving. I shall also stay in the city, because my cousin has not mentioned exile again.’

  However, less than a week later, Sarah had changed her mind. One evening she arrived at our house with three of her children, the youngest hardly bigger than myself.

  ‘I have come to bid you farewell. I have finally decided to go. There is a caravan leaving for Portugal tomorrow morning; I am going to join it. Yesterday I married my two oldest girls, aged fourteen and thirteen, so that their husbands can look after them, and I sold my house to one of the king’s soldiers for the price of four mules.’

  Then she added, in an attempt at an excuse:

  ‘Salma, if I stay, I shall be afraid every day until I die, and every day I shall think of leaving and shall not be able to.’

  ‘Even if you have been baptized?’ my mother was astounded.