by The Rock
For the rest, the story of Gibraltar during these years is part of the story of Spain and particularly of Andalusia. Spain remained subject to the Damascus caliphs until the Omayyad family was overthrown by the Abbasids. In 756 a refugee of the Omayyads, Abd-er-Rahman, grandson of the Caliph Hisham, arrived in Spain and declared that he, not the usurper in Baghdad, was the true Commander of the Faithful. Thus began the independent Caliphate of Cordoba, which lasted, in great magnificence, until 1031. Cordoba became the intellectual capital of Europe and one of the most civilized cities in the world. There was considerable religious tolerance, and many Jews reached prominence as scholars and statesmen. For these three centuries Gibraltar was either totally uninhabited or nearly so.
When the Cordoba caliphate collapsed, it first broke up into a number of independent emirates until in 1080 these vanished under a new invasion from North Africa by the fanatic Almoravides. The Almoravides lasted until 1145, when they in turn succumbed to the weakness of power and went under to the Almohades, also from Africa. All this time the Visigothic-Celtiberian-Romans (that is, the Christians), starting in the unconquered Asturias, were slowly working their way southward, reconquering, uniting, consolidating, so that each successive wave of Muslims ruled over a smaller piece of Spain. The Almohades lasted until July 16, 1212, when they were defeated in the climactic battle of the whole 700-year reconquest at Navas de Tolosa in the Guadalquivir Valley. King Alfonso VIII's victory was largely due to a shepherd, Martin Alhaja Gontran, who led the Christians by unknown tracks and unguarded paths to the attack. After the defeat the Muslims broke up into small kingdoms, of which the only one to affect Gibraltar was the Kingdom of Granada.
Although Tarik's invaders had landed at Gibraltar, it was at Algeciras and Tarifa that they made their first ports and fortresses. The provincial capital under the Visigoths had been Asido, and it remained so under the Moors, but now called Medina Sidonia. In spite of the remarkable incorporation of "Asido" in this name, the title comes from the fact that new Muslim immigrants were allotted to that part of Spain most like their homeland; the ones who came here were from Sidon, and the whole area was known as Filistin (Palestine). Gibraltar was dependent on Algeciras during all the early years.
Meanwhile, in 844 the Norsemen pass by in their longships, after having sacked Cadiz.... In 1003 a great battle is fought on the River Miel, by Algeciras, between rival claimants for Almansor's power (he had died the year before).... After the fall of the caliphate the Wali of Algeciras (Gibraltar's overlord) sets himself up as independent ... but soon falls under the Emir of Malaga ... who soon falls under the Emir of Seville.
This last, hard pressed by the warlike King Alfonso VI, asked the Almoravid king of Morocco to come over and help him. Many, including his own son, warned him that one needed a long spoon to sup with the Almoravides, but the emir made a famous answer: "I would rather be the King of Morocco's camel herd then a vassal of the Christian dogs." He had his wish, for King Yusuf came, seized Tarifa, Algeciras, and Gibraltar as bases for his invading armies, and soon ruled all Muslim Spain. The foolish emir died in 1088, a beggar in exile in a Saharan oasis.
The Almoravides persecuted Christians, Jews, and other Muslims alike, and large numbers of all religions, especially Jews, fled into Christian Spain. For a time in the thirteenth century it looked as though Spain might forge the first free or open society of modem times, and a Castilian king was proud to call himself King of the Three Faiths; but Navas de Tolosa so crushed the Muslim power that Christian bigots were able to say, "We need no help," and turn Spain upon the opposite and fatal course of "unification," that is, exclusion of all but the official race, religion, and way of thought. Laws forcing Jews to wear distinguishing yellow patches were approved in 1370 and 1405. In 1412 savage edicts were promulgated excluding Jews from many trades, defining what they must wear, and forbidding them to employ Christians; and worse. Anti-Semitism was encouraged, and in 1391 over 4,000 Jews were murdered in Seville alone.
When the Almohades came from Morocco to overthrow the Almoravides, they landed at Gibraltar, seizing it in 1146. The Almohade emperor, Abd-al-Mumin, was the real founder of Gibraltar as a city and fortress. He decided that the Christians were now so strong that neither Tarifa nor Algeciras could be relied on to stay out of their hands much longer. A third and final strongpoint was needed. Gibraltar was the obvious place, and he called in a famous mathematician and engineer to fortify it. This man was Al-Hajj Yaish, who built the great mosque of Seville, now part of the cathedral.
At Gibraltar the foundations were laid on May 19, 1160, and all essential work finished in six months, which is very fast work indeed. Abd-al-Mumin did not stay long but came back in November to see the completion of the building and then stayed two months listening to poets, holding council with the Muslim governors of Andalusia, and presumably dallying with houris in his harem, though it is hard to associate such gentle activities with the Rock.
It is also hard to disentangle Yaish's city from the one built after the Moors had lost and regained Gibraltar in 1333; but there was certainly a complex system of walls, keeps, and towers at the northwest corner of the Rock, dominated by a fortified qasabah and that by a Tower of Homage. Most of the town huddled under this, though there must have been a settlement far to the south at Europa, for there was a Muslim shrine near the Point, and close by there was—and still is—a remarkable underground reservoir, the roof supported by Moorish arches, later known as the Nuns' Well. Yaish also put in an aqueduct from the Red Sands to the town and probably designed the Moorish baths under the present Gibraltar Museum. The "Moorish Wall" which runs straight up the west face of the upper Rock is Yaish's, but the Moorish Castle is not. Yaish's Tower of Homage was destroyed in the siege of 1333 and the present one built by Abu '1 Hassan, "King of Gibraltar," in about 1340. The Spaniards called it "La Calahorra," and the British, the "Moorish Castle." The attribution of any works to the original Moorish invaders of 711 is an error due to misinterpretation of an inscription which was once over the gate of the qasabah.
Abd-al-Mumin's forethought in fortifying Gibraltar bore its first fruit when Navas de Tolosa ended the Almohade power fifty years later and they began to disengage from Spain. Tarifa did not fall until 1292, and the then King of Morocco took the opportunity to get out of Europe altogether by selling Algeciras (with Gibraltar) to the King of Granada.
There now steps into the story the founder of a remarkable family which became the most powerful grandees and the largest landowners in Spain. This man, Alonso Perez de Guzman, was a knight from Leon in the north, who so distinguished himself in the taking of Tarifa that the king made him senor, or squire, of Sanlucar de Barrameda. Guzman el Bueno, "the Good," as he was known, soon expanded his power and in 1309, partly from ambition and partly from genuine outrage that the Muslims still held parts of Spain, he attacked Gibraltar. He landed on the Red Sands, south of the wall that protected the town, and took up a position on the steep slope above the castle. There he erected catapults and war engines and started battering the defenses. Near the end of August the Moors surrendered. This was the first of Gibraltar's fifteen sieges and the first of its four major turnovers of population, for nearly all the Muslims left.
Now that Guzman el Bueno held the Rock for King Ferdinand IV of Castile, the problem was to repopulate it and hold it. Being in the forefront of a never-ending war, and subject to raids, sieges, and attacks, it was not a desirable place of residence, and King Ferdinand had to take extraordinary measures to attract a population. He gave Gibraltar a charter which in effect made it a sanctuary for thieves, murderers, and runaway wives: all would be pardoned if they would just come and live in Gibraltar for a few months. Prisoners were also sent there from the jails and released to be free citizens. Gibraltar became, and must have resembled, a frontier town of the badlands, complete with loose women, ne'er-do-wells, remittance men, and, in place of the U.S. Cavalry, such knights and men-at-arms as Guzman could find for its defense.
The Moors tried to regain the Rock in 1315 (Second Siege) but failed. In 1333 the King of Granada instituted the Third Siege. The governor of the fortress was then one Vasco Perez de Meiras, a nobleman from Galicia in the northwest. Meiras had ambitions of founding a mighty family and had spent the funds allotted for the defense of Gibraltar in buying himself estates around Jerez, already rich and long since famous for its sherry wines. On June 17, after four and a half months of siege, in which Meiras' heroism somewhat redeemed his venality, Gibraltar fell once more. The Christian convicts, strumpets, and knights marched out, and the Muslims marched in, making the second population turnover. The King of Granada did not retain overlordship for long, as the Moroccans, whom he had called in to help during the siege, decided to keep it for themselves—but few of the Muslim people would have left on that account.
Alfonso XI was now King of Castile, and the recapture of the Rock became his obsession. Indeed, with this second loss of it to the Moors the place became, in Spain, not just a port and fortress, but a holy cause. Alfonso at once began the Fourth Siege and came very near to success but in the end had to march his army away, defeated. Seven years later he inflicted a crushing defeat on the Muslims at Salado, just west of Tarifa. In the aftermath he could easily have retaken Gibraltar, but an unaccountable lethargy overcame him, and he did nothing until it was too late. When he did begin operations once more, it was against Algeciras, a famous siege which began in August, 1342, lasted eighteen months, and brought down, as volunteers, the flower of Europe's chivalry, including King Edward Ill's grandson from England. During the siege the King of Morocco gathered 12,000 troops in Gibraltar to help drive away the Christians. Nevertheless Algeciras did at last fall, was later razed to the ground, and ceased to exist as a town for four centuries. Gibraltar was now the only port on the north side of the strait left in Muslim hands, and in 1349 Alfonso XI returned to the attack, in the Fifth Siege. His army soon began to suffer from the Black Death (bubonic or pneumonic plague) then ravaging Europe, and on March 26, 1350, the king died of it. The principal Moors went out from Gibraltar in mourning to pay their respects to their dead adversary.
At this time Gibraltar was visited by the famous Moroccan traveler Ibn Battutah. He went, he said, because he wanted to take part in the Holy War against the Christians. Of Gibraltar, then under the Moroccan king Abu Inan, he wrote: "I walked round the mountain and saw the marvelous works executed on it by our master [the previous king] and the armament with which he equipped it, together with the additions made thereto by our master Abu Inan, may God strengthen him, and I should have liked to remain as one of its defenders to the end of my days." But he did not stay: he visited Malaga and Granada and then returned to his home in Tangier, probably convinced that nothing could save the Muslim cause in Spain.
The rotations of Gibraltar from the hands of the kings of Granada to the kings or emperors of Morocco and back again make a dizzy story; but it is not important. The grip of any central Muslim authority was fast slackening; indeed, the man whom the Emperor of Morocco appointed wali, or governor, of Gibraltar in 1350 at once declared himself its king—this is the "king" Ibu Battutah refers to—and no one seems to have cared very much.
Apart from the Sixth Siege, a confused civil war between Granada and Morocco factions, Gibraltar relapsed into comparative quiet, and for eighty years the only other mention of it in the records is the visit of a Castilian admiral, who dropped in on his way to sweep Castilian pirates out of the western Mediterranean and was received with much courtesy and feasting, including plenty of couscous.
But if the kings were no longer very interested in Gibraltar, some private citizens were. The heirs of Guzman el Bueno were now counts of Niebla and owned all the fishing rights from Gibraltar to the Portugal border, about 150 miles. Muslim raiders were poaching in the count's seas, attacking his pickling and salting plants and causing him loss of revenue. When pursued, the pirates took refuge in Gibraltar. For glory and profit, therefore, the count decided to retake the Rock. In August, 1436, he began the Seventh Siege by landing at the Red Sands, south of the town wall, with the intention of following time-honored precedents—advance up the hill, install engines of war above the castle, batter and starve the defenders into submission.
Alas, no one had noticed that in the years between, the dastardly Moors had extended the wall southward along the sea front. When the count's forces landed, they were still under it, with no way up, a murderous current strengthening, and the tide rising.... Many were killed and drowned in the debacle, including the count. The Moors recovered his corpse, put it in a box, and hung it over a gate of the castle. As a Spanish historian disdainfully remarked, the social level of the Moors in Gibraltar had sadly deteriorated since the days of their noble homage at the bier of Alfonso XI.
The Rock remained' in Muslim hands. The defenses cannot have been strong or the population numerous, for the Kingdom of Granada had neither the will nor the means to make them so. Muslim pirates still raided Christian fisheries. The count's son, who soon afterward added the Dukedom of Medina Sidonia to the family's tides, looked hungrily at Gibraltar from across the bay. So did others, both noble and simple. It could not be long now before some small event, some man's single-handed action, precipitated the next conflict....
A JEWEL FOR THE KING
The captain of the Gaditana lashed down the tiller and looked at his owner. "Start unloading at once, Judah?" he said. Judah nodded, glancing at the sun; it was past noon, and they would have to make haste to be finished when the gate closed for the night. Well, they could finish tomorrow—the Moors were not very strict about Christian boats staying overnight these days.
He went forward to his two passengers and put an arm round each, for they were also his friends, all three of an age—between twenty-five and thirty—and had grown up together in Tarifa. "There," he said, "el Penon, the Rock." At the end of the jetty the town wall began, pierced by the Water Gate. Behind, roofs and minarets, thickly jammed together, rose to the towers of the castle, aflutter with the green and black flags of the Kingdom of Granada.
Above the castle the slope steepened, gray rock gleamed in great tilted slabs, and far above, a gray cloud hid the crest.
Manuel Barrachina said, "I wish we could take that box down from the tower. I think the Duke would reward any servant of his well who brought him the remains of his father for proper burial." Manuel was slight and stooped and fair-skinned; he was clerk to the Duke of Medina Sidonia's agent in Tarifa.
Pedro Santangel said, "I wish we could put the flag of Castile up there instead of the Moorish banner. I think the king would knight a man who did that...." He was tall and fair, with dark eyes, willowy, swooning handsome to the girls. His father was trying to make him follow the practice of the law, but all his desire was to be a knight and fight for Castile, King Enrique, and the Holy Catholic Chinch.
Judah said, "I wish it were settled one way or the other, so that we know where we are. Sometimes you can bring a cargo in here peacefully, sometimes they fire a cannon at you. Sometimes you can wander all over the town, sometimes guards prevent you stepping off your ship. For trade we need peace and security." He was short and square, with a wide mouth, a broken beak nose, and two fingers gone from his left hand; big ears and hands, thick curly black hair, and startling blue eyes. He had run his own ship out of Tarifa since he was twenty, and now owned three, which plied in trade along the coast, up the Guadalquivir, and, when conditions allowed, over to Africa. He was a Jew. In 1399 his grandfather's sister, Beulah Conquy, had married a young man called Jacob Azayal in Cordoba; the following year Jacob Azayal was converted to Christianity and became Luis Santangel—grandfather of the eager young would-be knight of the Church now at Judah's side; Pedro Santangel was therefore a marrano, a New Christian, and Judah's second cousin—a fact which both knew but never mentioned.
"Can we go ashore now?" Manuel Barrachina asked. "I must get to the Governor's audience as soon as possible."
J
udah let down the gangplank. The sweating sailors were already passing sacks of wheat up from the hold to the deck, and Moorish laborers were waiting to take them ashore. At the Water Gate the Berber guard was talking to a fat, turbaned merchant and did not look up. The young men passed into the city of Gibraltar and, at once, into Africa. Donkeys loaded with brass jars trotted down the narrow alley toward the harbor, to load there with oil and wine from the ships. In the gutter lusty-voiced women sold fruit by the single stem, spices by the pinch, sherbet by the thimbleful. In all the shop fronts the merchants sat, with carpets and baskets and bolts of cloth and mounds of flour. Cobblers banged on their lasts, blacksmiths on their anvils, tinkers on pots, beggars on drums. The knife grinder made tunes on a bamboo pipe, and from the minaret of the mosque the muezzin chanted the call to prayer.
Manuel Barrachina left them to go to the castle, for his business was to deliver a note from the duke's agent informing the governor that a fishing boat from Gibraltar had been taken poaching off Tarif a and would be released on payment of the fine.
The levanter made the day close, and Judah and Pedro walked slowly, left hands resting on the hilts of their daggers. Judah had no business—his captain was in charge of the unloading—but had come because he wanted a change of air. Pedro only wanted to see Gibraltar while it was possible. So they strolled together toward the square block of the castle and then southward along shelflike streets. They paused where a flight of steps crossed, going down toward the harbor, and looked out over the bay and pointed out to each other the new aspects of hills and valleys which they knew well from the landward side. As they turned to walk on, Judah bumped into someone, hard. It was a Moorish woman, and he knocked her over. As she fell, the black veil dropped from her face, and Judah looked into startled dark green eyes under strong, straight black brows. On her forehead hung a silver ornament in the shape of the Star of David. Her lips were thin, but perfectly curved in an oval face. Judah's jaw dropped. He had never seen anything so beautiful. He stared into the green eyes, stunned. The girl lowered her lids, and he recovered his wits. He knelt quickly beside her, muttering, "Are you a Jewess?" She was fumbling for her veil. "Yes," she whispered.
