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Granada, Spain

On 2 January 1492, the last Muslim ruler in Iberia, Emir Muhammad XII, known as "Boabdil" to the Spanish, surrendered complete control of the Emirate of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs (Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile), after the last episode of the Granada War.

The 1492 capitulation of the Kingdom of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs is one of the most significant events in Granada's history. It brought the demise of the last Muslim-controlled polity in the Iberian Peninsula.

The terms of the surrender, expressed in the Alhambra Decree treaty, explicitly allowed the Muslim inhabitants, known as mudéjares, to continue unmolested in the practice of their faith and customs. By 1499, however, Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros grew frustrated with the slow pace of the efforts of the first archbishop of Granada, Hernando de Talavera, to convert non-Christians and undertook a program of forced baptisms, creating the converso (convert) class for Muslims and Jews. Cisneros's new strategy, which was a direct violation of the terms of the treaty, provoked the Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1499–1501) centered in the rural Alpujarras region southeast of the city.

16th-century view of the city, as depicted in the Civitates orbis terrarum.

The rebellion lasted Until 1500, 9 years after the conquest, the city did not formally establish its own town council, instead, merging the "Old Christians", and the converted morisco elites, a decision that resulted in strong factionalism from 1508 onwards.

The new period also saw the creation of a number of other new institutions such as the Cathedral Cabildo, the Captaincy–General [es], the Royal Chapel and the Royal Chancellery.

For the rest of the 16th century the Granadan ruling oligarchy featured roughly a 40% of (Jewish) conversos and about a 31% of hidalgos.

Responding to the rebellion of 1501, the Crown of Castile rescinded the Alhambra Decree treaty, and mandated that Granada's Muslims convert or emigrate. Under the 1492 Alhambra Decree, Spain's Jewish population, unlike the Muslims, had already been forced to convert (the so-called conversos) under threat of expulsion or even execution. Many of the elite Muslim class subsequently emigrated to North Africa.

The majority of the Granada's mudéjares converted (becoming the so-called moriscos or Moorish) so that they could stay. Both populations of converts were subject to persecution, execution, or exile, and each had cells that practiced their original religion in secrecy (the so-called marranos in the case of the conversos accused of the charge of crypto-Judaism).

Over the course of the 16th century, Granada took on an ever more Catholic and Castilian character,[citation needed] as immigrants came to the city from other parts of the Iberian Peninsula.

The city's mosques were converted to Christian churches or completely destroyed.[citation needed] After the 1492 Alhambra decree, which resulted in the majority of Granada's Jewish population being expelled, the Jewish quarter (ghetto) was demolished to make way for new Catholic and Castilian institutions and uses.

During the 17th century, despite the importance of immigration, the population of the city stagnated at about 55,000, contrary to the trend of population increase experienced in the rural areas of the Kingdom of Granada, where the hammer of depopulation caused by the expulsion of the moriscos had taken a far greater toll in the previous century. The 17th-century demographic stagnation in the city and overall steady population increase in the wider kingdom contrasted with the demographic disaster experienced throughout the century in the rest of the Crown of Castile. wikipedia

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Uploaded on February 22, 2021
Taken on March 2, 2006