Granada falls, ending Muslim rule in Iberia
On this day · 2 January 1492
On a January morning in 1492, the keys to the Alhambra changed hands and nearly eight centuries of al-Andalus came to a close.
On 2 January 1492, Boabdil — Muhammad XII, the last Nasrid emir of Granada — rode out of the Alhambra and surrendered the city to Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon. Handing the keys to the Catholic Monarchs, he ended the last Muslim-ruled state on the Iberian Peninsula.
Granada had been the final stronghold of al-Andalus, the Muslim Spain that began with the conquest of 711. A ten-year campaign by the Catholic Monarchs, capped by an eight-month siege, broke it. The surrender completed the Reconquista, the long Christian reconquest traditionally dated from the eighth century.
Boabdil handed over the keys to the Catholic Kings, Isabel I of Castile and Fernando II of Aragon.
The terms were initially generous, promising Granada’s Muslims their faith and property. Within a decade those guarantees collapsed into forced conversion and expulsion. The same year, Isabella and Ferdinand expelled Spain’s Jews and dispatched Christopher Columbus westward — making 1492 one of history’s great hinge points.
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