A History of Granada

Ancient, Roman, and Vandal Granada

Stone Age people were living in the Granada province as long as 400 000 years ago. The big game hunting and the abundance of caves to shelter in attracted these early people. Later peoples took advantage of the well-irrigated plains to cultivate food and the natural mineral resources were used to produce weapons, cooking utensils and eventually, jewelry. Between the tenth and the fourth centuries BC, a series of Mediterranean trading states, including Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Greeks, settled on the province's coastal fringe. They came to exploit the vast mineral deposits and the good fishing. The first written documents available to historians are from the fifth century BC and record a Jewish community living in what's now Granada.

By the end of the fourth century AD, the Romans had completely colonized southern Spain. After the Romans, the next wave of invaders were the Visigoths, from Northern Europe, who occupied the city in the fifth century AD but made few changes to the civil, military and religious status quo.

Islamic Granada

Little is known about the Jewish community that settled here, but it must have been significant because it's mentioned often in fourth century AD legal documents. Jewish leaders are believed to have collaborated with the Arab invaders in 711 to overthrow the Visigoth monarchy. The mainly Muslim Middle Eastern and North African invaders - called Moors - conquered almost the whole of Spain within a decade.

At first Granada became an important outpost of a new Western Islamic Empire ruled by Abd ar-Rahman III based in Cordoba. However, fighting between different ethnic and cultural Muslim factions and an on-going Christian crusade to expel the Moors created a chaotic political situation in Andalusia. Ibn al-Ahmar, of the Arab Nasrid tribe, used the situation to his advantage in 1238 to establish an independent Moorish state of Granada. Independence was maintained by paying tribute to the encroaching Christian king of Castile, Fernando III. So, as the rest of Spain started to fall into Christian hands, Granada received the Muslim and Jewish refugees fleeing from other cities and continued to expand and prosper. The 13th and 14th centuries were the city's glory days when commerce, art and culture flourished; the Alhambra and the Arab University were built.