Aisha, The Honest Sultana
By Cinthia Mascarell
The last queen of the Muslim Granada was called Aïsha bin Muhammad ibn al-Ahmar. Her subjects gave her the nickname “Al-Horra” (“Honest” or “Honored”) and her Christian enemies knew her as Aixa. She was a politically active queen, exerting a great influence on state affairs during the last years of the Emirate of Granada. No woman in Arab history fought as Aisha to save Granada from its final disappearance, which resulted in the famous moment when her son Boabdil handed the key of Granada to the fifteenth-century Catholic power of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon. Aisha’s true place in history books, in what was the most critical turning point for Islam in Europe, has not yet been recognized.
The Queen And The Slave
Daughter of kings, she was born in the Nasrid dynasty that built the sumptuous Alhambra Palace in 1238, which it is translated from Arabic as “the red one.” She was the daughter of Mohammed IX, El Zurdo and granddaughter of Yusuf IV, the eleventh ruler of Granada. Her first marriage was with her cousin Muhammed XI, who reigned briefly as the 19th Sultan of Granada, but he was killed in 1454. The successor of her late husband, Said Ciriza, married Aisha with her son Abu l-Hasan Ali, commonly known as Muley Hacén. The clever move to marry her to the future Emir of Granada was an attempt to appease the rival factions of the Nasrid dynasty.
Aisha reigned with her husband for twenty years and they had two sons and one daughter. Ciriza said that an annual tribute was paid to the Catholic Monarchs in exchange for peace between the two kingdoms. But his son, Muley Hacén, refused to pay the tribute, which resulted in a deterioration of the relationship with Castile. As a sign of his power, Muley invaded the Christian fortress city of Zahara de La Sierra. Many people in the town were killed and the peace that had been negotiated for centuries through an annual tribute to Castile was finally over. The event marked the pretext of the war for which Isabella I of Castile promised to conquer Granada and unite it to Castile under the banner of Catholicism.
Muley Hacén fell in love and married the Christian slave, Isabel de Solís. Isabel converted to Islam and became known as Soraya. She not only displaced Aisha from the king’s heart but she managed to relegate her from her position as a sultana and threaten the future of her children. Soraya gave birth to the Sultan two sons, which he recognized as the rightful heirs of Granada. Aisha and Boabdil were imprisoned in the Comares Tower, near the Alhambra Palace.
Civil War In The Kingdom
The jealousy and rivalry between Aisha and Soraya, the fear for the succession of her children, along with the distrust of the Sultan’s intentions, urged Aisha to align with the Abencerrages, eternal enemies of King Muley Hacén, in a conspiracy to dethrone him and put his son Boabdil in his place.
Aisha and her son escaped from the Comares tower and took refuge in Guadix, where she prepared Boabdil to be the Sultan of Granada.
The last Muslim kingdom on the peninsula, the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, got involved in a bloody civil war and on July 5, 1482, Boabdil was proclaimed king. By then, the relationship with Castile had deteriorated, and Queen Isabella was determined to conquer Granada. Boabdil’s only option was to fight against Castile and protect the 700-year-old Islamic legacy of the kingdom.
The Fall Of Granada
Despite his mother’s efforts to make Boabdil a king worthy of taking that title, the truth is that he went down in history as the last king of Granada, who was not able to curb Christian advances.
For a long time, the inhabitants of both sides of the border lived with more or less respect. However, the internal conflicts in the Nasrid kingdom were weakening their defensive positions, something that the Catholic Monarchs knew how to take advantage of with boldness.
The first blow came in 1483, at the Battle of Lucena, where Boabdil failed and fell prisoner of the Christians. King Ferdinand, connoisseur of the palace intrigues and internal problems of the shaky Nasrid kingdom, far from holding him prisoner, agreed with Boabdil a freedom with conditions: serving the Christian cause and paying a tribute.
From the sad defeat of Lucena to the definitive fall of Granada, King Boabdil experienced sad episodes. Even in exile, Muley Hacén refused to recognize Boabdil as the legitimate heir of Granada. Before his death, he placed his brother Al Zagal as the transitional Sultan until his son with Soraya reached the age to rule. Al Zagal tricked Boabdil into a false alliance against Castile and therefore forced Boabdil to break the truce with the Catholic Monarchs. The Monarchs now demanded the key of Granada and took his youngest son, Ahmed, hostage.
Meanwhile, Aisha continued with the strong Muslim resistance. Until nothing could be done. The Catholic Monarchs built the fortress city of Santa Fé and established a camp just 13 kilometers from Granada. After finally recovering Malaga and defeating Al Zagal, the Monarchs turned their final strategy into the conquest of Granada by slowly starving the city denying them the entry of food and resources. On January 2, 1492, Granada fell, after a long siege, in the hands of the Catholic Monarchs.
A Warrior Mother
Aisha went into exile with her son, first to Andarax, in the Alpujarra, and then, in October 1493, to the Moroccan city of Fez, where death would surely come to her.
An vigorous woman with a strong character and personality, the portrait that Castilian sources make of her is that of a person with passionate outbursts and red-blood genius. Her agitated life has resulted in being used as a recurring theme in the literature to this day. In fact, she was a woman capable of making important decisions that influenced the political evolution of the kingdom, to ensure the succession of her firstborn son to the throne of the Nasrid Granada. In short, Aisha fought for her rights and those of her children with an unusual firmness in a woman of the fifteenth century, a struggle that romantic literature turned into a drama of passions, jealousy and revenge.
A popular romance put in Aisha’s mouth these famous words: “You cry as a woman what you did not know how to defend as a man”. Although there is no historical evidence that this phrase was pronounced to his son Boabdil while he looked sadly at his beloved Granada, it undoubtedly symbolizes the defeat that Aisha suffered as a mother. After facing her own husband to the point of causing his fall in favor of a beloved son, Boabdil did not live up to the greatness of his own mother.
Featured Image: The work represents the moment when Boadbil (1459-1533), the last Muslim king of Granada, left the Alhambra palace together with his family after the Catholic Monarchs took Granada in 1492. Source: Wikipedia.