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LAURENCE CRUMBIE
Friday, 7 May 2021, 12:26
With Cordoba already under their command, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castille turned their attention in 1487 to Malaga, the second largest city in the Emirate of Granada. Mlaqa, as it was known then, was a prosperous Moorish city thanks primarily ... to its port, making it a key target during the Reconquista.
Ferdinand set out from Cordoba with 20,000 cavalry, 50,000 labourers and 8,000 auxiliary troops and, on 17 April 1487, arrived in Vélez-Málaga, which capitulated ten days later. Other settlements en route to Malaga also flew the white flag, but Hamet el Zegrí, the city commander, rejected all of Ferdinand's attempts to negotiate a peaceful surrender, confident that Malaga's imposing fortifications, which included the grand Alcazaba and the impregnable Gibralfaro fortress, would keep the enemy at bay.
The siege commenced on 7 May 1487. Ferdinand had initially planned to starve out the city, but patience, it seems, was not one of the king's virtues. Fed up with the various delays, he began building siege towers and digging mines beneath the walls, hoping to breach the city from above and below.
It was a tactic doomed to backfire. Bolstered by their corps of African mercenaries, the Moors launched an effective counterattack, driving out the Catholic forces and deploying armed vessels against their fleet. Eventually, though, the attackers took an outlying tower attached to the city by a bridge, enabling them to penetrate its defences. They entered to find shocking scenes - people eating the flesh of horses, cats, dogs and even boiled animal hide, their food supplies having long dried up. Within a week, all of Malaga had surrendered.
Ferdinand and Isabella rode in victorious on 18 August 1487, but after four draining months and numerous refusals to negotiate, the conquerors were not feeling merciful. Except for a group of 25 families that were permitted to stay as Mudéjars, the entire population of Malaga - some 11,000 to 15,000 inhabitants - was either enslaved or executed. In five years, Granada would fall as well, ending over seven centuries of Muslim rule in the region.
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