On January 2, 1492,the great brass bell at the watchtower atop Granada’s Alhambra Palace pealed. Up until that day, the city’sMuslim inhabitants had associated the sound with warnings or danger or death. Now it signaled a momentous change for them and the inhabitants of the royal residence, the last members of the Nasrid Dynasty, which had governed Granada for two hundred and sixty years. A significant victory for their Catholic foes, Queen Isabella of Castile and her husband King Ferdinand of Aragón.
The end of an era; the rule of the Moors over southern Spain, begun seven centuries beforehand. The kingdom’s final Muslim monarch rode out and offered the symbolic surrender his enemies required, ending the age-old civil war between Spaniards of different faiths. For the women atop the harem’s hierarchy, they faced the permanent loss of their birthplace and the home in which they had raised the anticipated future rulers.
What trials could a mother endure for her brood? What would any personrisk for love of country?
The last two Sultanas of medieval Granada, Aisha andMoraima, would have likely answered these questions in different ways, given the actions each woman undertook to maintain her family’s survival. Through marriage and motherhood, both females gained access to power. The older and younger queens of Moorish Spain also witnessed many dramatic moments of history. Turbulent livesexplored in the last novels of the Sultana series, Sultana: The Pomegranate Tree and Sultana: The White Mountains.
For Aisha, the privileges and trappings of a royal life came to her at birth. Her parents, the children of two princely brothers, shared descent from the first Sultan of Granada through his granddaughter Fatima, deceased more than two centuries beforehand. Aisha also inherited a Christian lineage through her great-great-grandmother, Butayna, the slave turned Sultana almost one hundred years before Aisha’s time. But in her outlook, Aisha defended and embraced a Moorish way of life.
Her date of birth remains uncertain, but occurred before 1448, during the last of four of her father’s reigns. That’s when he made a gift of a nearby garden to her and one of her two sisters who lived in their father’s harem. Around the same period, he also chose as his son-in-law and successor the only child of an enemy with whom he had fought for the throne. Although married to Aisha’s eldest half-sister on whom he sired two sons, this future Sultan almost became betrothed or married Aisha in later years. But their relationship did not last long. Another Nasrid prince, fifty-five years at the time, seized power and ultimately wed Aisha to his son Abu’l-Hasan Ali. But not before the usurpers killed her betrothed husband alongside his sons, Aisha’s nephews, both less than eight years old.
In writing Sultana: The Pomegranate Tree, it proved difficult to imagine that Aisha might have welcomed the attentionof her new husband after he had caused such tumult in her life, but the truth of their marriage remains uncertain. The only hint of her hatred comes from later events. She and Abu’l-Hasan Ali became the parents of three children, a daughter named for Aisha and two sons. During their youth, their father overthrew their grandfather and sent him into exile. In the summer of 1482, Aisha made a crucial move against her husband. She allied with his enemies, whose chieftains had died within the palace during the reign of his father. With the help of her new supporters, Aisha forced her husband from the capital and their eldest son Muhammadtook his father’s place. Abu’l-Hasan Ali went into exile with his younger brother and his second wife, a former Christian slave named Isabel de Solis on whom Abu’l-Hasan Ali had bestowed the name Soraya, along with their two young sons. Scholars have theorized that the strife between Soraya and Aisha caused the coup, but the earlier events of Aisha’s life provided another motive.
It’s equally uncertain what the new young sovereign thought of the discord among his parents, but up until then, he had known great happiness. A year prior to the rebellion, Muhammad had married a fifteen-year-old girl named Moraima. She could not claim royal blood like Aisha, but had an illustrious heritage, too. Her father was Ali al-Attar, one of the fiercest defenders of Muslim Granada as a general and the governor of Loja. Historians describe Moraima as beauteous but modest, a bride who wed her princely husband in borrowed garments, which seems unlikely given her father’s noble status.
The couple appeared to enjoy a happier marriage than that of Muhammad’s parents. Moraima is the only woman indicated in history as Muhammad’s queen. Within a short duration, she bore her first son, the anticipated heir of the kingdom. However, the strife between Aisha and her spouse marred Moraima’s contentment. After Muhammad became a prisoner of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand for several months, and Abu’l-Hasan Ali took the throne again in 1483, his wife and daughter-in-law lived as his prisoners.
It’s impossible to know how Moraima may have viewed Aisha’s actions, which had caused them both much trouble. Had the pair even enjoyed a close companionship prior to their captivity, as the mother and marital partner respectively of a man who soon gained the sobriquet the Unlucky? Even worse for Moraima, her eldest child had been surrendered as a hostage, barely aged three years. She would not see him again until he had reached the age of nine, a boy who knew nothing of Islam and spoke no Arabic while he had lived in Queen Isabella’s court and played with her children.
Muhammad did not suffer incarceration for long, especially after he promised to surrender Granada to the Catholics. But his second attempt at the throne was not straightforward, even with the death of his father, blinded by diabetes complications. Still separated from Moraima, Muhammad fought his uncle for five years. His younger brother died, a victim of their uncle.
In the spring of 1487, at last Muhammad re-entered Alhambra Palace and remained ruler for five years. During which time Queen Isabella and her husband besieged the last remaining Moorish territories until 1491 when only the capital at Granada remained. There must have been some joy in the interim, for by such time, Moraima had borne a second son and possibly a daughter named for Aisha, all of them reunited with Muhammad and Moraima’s mother-in-law. Had the young queenalso lived in anxiety and wondered whether her eldest boy would inherit his father’s kingdom? Did she anticipate the end of Moorish Spain and any ambitions for her children?
For her part, Aisha refused to accept their deteriorating circumstances. She would have armed the women and even children of her land against their adversaries. A fierce loyalist until the end. But her son best understood the peril awaiting them. The Ottoman Turks had long refused any requests for aid from Granada and during Muhammad’s second reign, the Egyptian ruler turned down another plea. Faced with a siege and the likelihood of starvation, Moraima’s husband accepted terms of surrender. He relied on the false promises his enemies made to ensure religious liberty for the Moors of Spain.
When he withdrew into the mountainous region called Las Alpujarras with Aisha and Moraima, the latter may have already been pregnant with another child. Yet in exile, the Nasrids and their retainers could not find joy. Moraima perished in childbirth, possibly with her baby. Muhammad buried his Sultana at Mondújar where a statue of her remains. Her husband left funds for the upkeep of her hidden grave. Deep in mourning, according to the letter he exchanged with the Sultan of Morocco, by the following year he sailed from Spain forever.
And what of Aisha, the last of Sultana of Granada? For a time she purportedly lived at the Palacio de Dar al-Horra in Granada. Then she went into exile with her son and grandchildren, presumably never to see her birthplace again. Explore a fictionalized account of her life and that of her daughter-in-law Moraima, in Sultana: The Pomegranate Treeand Sultana: The White Mountains, available now.
Lisa Yarde, June 11, 2018
