Empire: World History - 143. Isabella of Castile: The Spanish Inquisition, the Conquest of Granada, and Columbus

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

For centuries Spain had been an outlier in Europe due to its religious diversity; Christians, Jews, and Muslims all existed reasonably peacefully across the Iberian peninsula. Under Isabelle of Castile that all changed. She began the Spanish Inquisition and brought to the fore a religious fundamentalism that would eventually force out of the country the muslims and the jews. In the epoch defining year of 1492, she also conquered Granada with her husband Ferdinand, ending the era of Islamic Spain, and gave patronage to Columbus as he took his first voyage to the new world. Listen as William and Anita are once again joined by Brian Catlos. **Empire Live** Empire live show tickets are ON SALE NOW!! Join Anita and William at the London Barbican 8 July 2024! Buy your tickets here or here. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpower.com. Hello, and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremple. And today, once again, we are delighted to be joined by Brian Catloss, author of Kingdoms of Faith, a new history of Islamic Spain. a man recently in reception of the Guggenheim Fellowship for Research,

who is here again to continue the discussion about Isabella, Isabel of Castile, a woman who was a pivotal point in European history. And just in the last episode, you left us, Brian, with this really rather unappetizing picture of a young woman who is very happy to use terror as an instrument. You sort of left us with the Portuguese hanging naked and tortu. Richard. Roasting in the Iberian sun. Yes.

This is something that we're going to talk about a lot because we're going to talk about the Spanish Inquisition. Does the fear and the terror start right off the bat when she comes to power? Look, I think we have to disabuse ourselves of romantic notions that we have about the way monarchy works. Monarchy is inherently brutal. It's an oppressive system which is predicated on violence and the systematic marginalization of people.

and monarchies maintain their power through brutal acts of exemplary violence. So there's nothing in a way extraordinary about these vicious and nasty acts of warfare or even violence against what we would today call civilian populations. But, Brian, we're heading into territory now where something unusual is happening because as you've shown magnificently in your book, Kingdoms of Faith, Spain is unusual in Europe in that it is an entire peninsula where three different faiths have, not always with happy, clappy enthusiasm and sort of mutual love, but certainly a measure of long-lasting coexistence have successfully lived together. And you also show remarkably in your book how

things that we see as, you know, very moorish, the architecture of Seville, for example, actually is something which is common to all these cultures, and they share a lot more than we see with our eyes today. But Isabel brings this to a close, this multiculturalism, which has been the unique feature of the Iberian Peninsula for, what, seven, eight hundred years, ends with her reign, and a brutal, monocultural Catholic whitewash and purification process is imposed. and we see the beginning and the invention of one of the most terrifying moments in European history, the Spanish Inquisition. Absolutely, absolutely.

And I think you're going to have to indulge me and let me go a little bit back in history in order to sort of fill this in. So, as we know, what's now Spain, Hispania was ruled over by Muslim powers through much of the Middle Ages. What they did was they established, because of the way that Islam approaches, the issue of religious diversity. Under Islam, Christians and Jews are not considered idolaters or infidels who are beyond the pale. Jews and Christians are considered to be effectively worshippers of the right God, but in the wrong way. So there's a space in Islamic societies for Jewish and Christian communities and other communities to live as sort of self-regulating communities under Islam. And this is what set the political, economic, social, and cultural

template for Spain for several hundred years. It was the Christian kings and the Christian kingdoms that moved into this space. And as they conquered, incorporated, and dominated this formerly Muslim territory, they were forced in order to keep the economy working and in order to keep things functioning to adopt basically the same sort of system. So since the beginning of the great age of Christian conquest, that used to be called the Reconquista or the Reconquest, but we don't say that anymore, Christian kings had granted Jewish and Muslim communities broad rights and autonomy to live under Christian rule as legitimate subjects. in exchange for certain obligations and receiving certain benefits.

And you get this from the beginning, from the moment that Alfonso of Castile takes Toledo, most of the Muslims stay, many of the Jews stay, and they are granted concessions that are actually upheld to a certain extent. Absolutely, absolutely. And these Muslims and Jews that are living in the Christian kingdoms are not living as sort of marginalized, oppressed minorities. they're integrated into the economic and power structures of the kingdoms. Jews in particular are very prominent in the royal administrations. The kingdom of Aragon, which is what Fernando Ferdinand eventually inherits, was administered by Jewish administrators right through the 13th century. And beyond, in both Castile and Aragon, Jews were instrumental in the functioning of royal power. And even in Isabel's childhood, you have the sisters of archbishops who are Jewish while the brother is a Christian convert.

And that's not considered in any way a strange or a unsavory thing in her childhood. But by the peak of her reign, this is changing and changing in a horrific way. You've kind of hit the nail on the head because there is a change. And what happens is that until about 1350 or so, we have. have the Muslims, Christians, and Jews of the different Spanish kingdoms living together in a sort of equilibrium. They don't really compete with each other. They don't really step on each other's toes. The Christians are formally on top, but there are Jews and Muslims who are doing quite well, and, you know, it's kind of a quote-unquote happy picture. What happens? We have this major crisis in the 14th century. The 1300s begin with famine and food shortages. 1350, we have the Black Death. After 1350, we have the outbreak of what's really the First World War, the European

First World War, the Hundred Years' War, the War of the Two Peters in Spain, and so on and so forth. And what this produces is an absolute reorientation of the economy, of the society, and of the religious culture of Spain and Europe. And suddenly, Jews in particular, which prior to 1300, were seen as as a sort of beneficial element in Christian society. Jews were doing all these things that Christians could do. They could lend money. They could be useful as tax collectors and so on and so forth. They had all sorts of skills. A lot of them were bicultural. They could speak Arabic as well as Latin and Castilian and Aragonese, so they were good diplomats. They had international connections, so they were good at diplomacy and so on and so forth. They're often sent as ambassadors,

aren't they? Absolutely. After 1,300 that changes. Christians now want those jobs essentially, right? The Christian nobility is now interested in working in the administration and taking those jobs that Jews had done. Christians now can lend money. Christians now can work as tax collectors, which wasn't the case before. So what happens is that Jews cease to become seen as something beneficial to Christian society and start to become seen as competition. Now, if you marry that with, all of the other things that are happening, the changes in religiosity, the conviction that the world is ending, increased literacy, which sees ordinary people reading the Bible and getting this Mel Gibson picture of Christ's passion in which the Jews are like these horrible torturers, all of that

comes together to turn various elements of public opinion against the Jews. We should also say this is a period where sort of horror enters art. This is a period when you get those horrible double-decker tombs being built in churches across Europe with a picture of a dead man in, for example, his bishop's outfit on the top, and then below another layer where it's a skeleton in a deliberately horrific way. It seems to be a period of sort of extreme tension, horror, and in political life, terror. Death and violence are everywhere. You know, the black death was not only accompanied by this mortality and by this hundred years war, which is this war between these various kingdoms in Europe, these royal families, it was also a time.

of social upheaval. It precipitated the Jacaree, the peasants revolt. Everything was at stake. Death was everywhere. It really seemed like the end. Another reason why people, including rulers, had to get right with God. They had to look around and see, it does my kingdom reflect God's vision? And people are looking at this as God's vengeance on those who are not performing the pure Christian thing. So, I mean, what you're doing is you're giving us a fabulous sort of background of how anti-Semitism becomes baked in to Spanish thinking and that you have this sort of tolerance of terror or an expectation, at least, of death. So leap forward now to 1478 in Isabella's newly minted reign, and you have the start of the Spanish Inquisition. Now, what starts it? How much is she a fully signed on member

of this or an instigator of this? Just give us the whole origin of what has now become such an epoch-changing event in Europe. Okay, well, you're going to have to indulge the historian in me because I'm going to have to rewind again a little bit and take us to the aftermath of that upheaval in the 14th century. And I'll take you to 1391. 1391 is a crucial date in Spanish history because it's when all of these various tensions, popular tensions against Jews, economic tensions, social tensions, political tensions boil over. And what we see is across the peninsula emanating out of Seville, the agitations of a popular preacher is a peninsular-wide massacre of Jewish communities and forced conversions. So up until that time, Spain had been really extraordinary in continental Europe.

European kingdoms had important Jewish communities, but they were tiny minorities. In Spain, you know, if we look around 1391, it was probably 5% of the population was Jewish, which is incredible. This is huge, right? And so this wave of violence, popular violence, all of the angst that people have been feeling for the last 80 years, all of the violence and trauma they've been absorbing is turned on to the Jews who live amongst them. And there are wholesale massacres, forced conversions across the major towns of Spain. The only towns that are saved are the towns where the king is present. And the king can say, no, you cannot do this because a task. The attacking the Jews is also a way of attacking the king.

Because if the king protects the Jews, you can't attack the king directly, that is treason, but as a good Christian, you can attack Jews. So this is also an anti-royal revolution. What happens as a consequence of this? Well, lots of Jews are killed. Lots convert to Christianity. Some, possibly genuinely, most undoubtedly out of fear. And so we have a big dissent in the number of Jews officially that are within the Iberian Peninsula. Now, what are these converts going to do? Are they really converts to Christianity? No, a lot of them

converted out of fear. So what they're going to do is they're going to continue to practice Judaism secretly in order to preserve their faith. There's also, I think, a thing whereby even those who do genuinely convert obviously carry on, for example, cooking the way they'd done before or using oil rather than lard from pigs. And this stirs up a sense of difference. Well, I mean, people are suspicious. You don't cook like us. You know, your cooking smells odd.

You haven't really become one of us. All of that kind of, almost mundane stuff, othering of people. It just continues. If you don't change exactly your culture as well as your religion, what has changed? But what's so striking about what happens with Isabella Ferdin and now, with the setting up of the Inquisition, is that this is something centralised, royally authorized and has a structure. Yeah, I want to know where it starts.

I mean, whose big idea was this? Who bloody thought of this? Well, patience. There are two things happening. So we have this mass conversion, much of which is not genuine. So after 1391, we still have Jews in Spain. There's still lots of Jews, not as many as before. And there are lots of people who've converted to Christianity, at least nominally.

There's another group that converts to Christianity. and these are members of the Jewish elite who see that the writing is on the wall and the jig is up. And they have a choice. And what the choice they're offered is very tempting because basically if you are a high status Jew and you convert to Christianity, you become a high status Christian. This is the carrot that's offered. So you can imagine we have someone, you know, the chief rabbi of Castile, converts to Christianity. two days later, he's consecrated as Archbishop of Burgos.

Gosh, it's nuts, isn't it? That's just crazy. Yesterday you're a rabbi and today you're Archbishop of Burgos. So what does this say? This says a couple things. One, it's an incentive for conversion. The idea is if you get the powerful people within community to convert, then the community will lose its leadership and everyone else will convert. But there's a backlash. And the backlash is the Christians, the reason they don't like Jews is because

Jews are competing with them for jobs. The guy who wanted to be Archbishop Burgos is pissed off, yeah. Exactly, right? So this is where you get the idea, well, even the converts are not real converts. And this is where we start getting the idea of new Christians and old Christians. And the idea that even if you convert, you don't really become Christian. So there's something biological. So this is one of the beginnings of the articulation of what eventually becomes

anti-Semitism and racism. Okay, now look, there is the old Hackneyed saying no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, but Brian, for God's sake, I'm expecting the Spanish Inquisition. Stop taking us back in time. I think we've got to, you know, it's a marvelous backdrop to what's been going on. But as William said, something different happens in 1478. Yes, when she's a young woman, Isabel actually has a converso as her chaplain, doesn't she? She has a guy who's converted from Judaism to be advising her.

Absolutely. The church is shot through with conversos. In fact, you know, if you look at the 16th century, which is, you know, this incredible age of religious creativity in Spain, it's almost all conversos. Go figure, right? Or the children of conversos. So, okay, the problem with the Inquisition, Anita, I'll get to the Inquisition. No one expects the Spanish. Everybody expects it. Everybody expects it. Everybody expects it. Okay. So this is the situation that brings about the Inquisition is that you have a population of Jews who are still Jews. You have a population of Christians that used to be Jews or their parents used to be Jews. Some of those people are still practicing Judaism secretly. Some of the Jews, who are still Jews, are trying to tempt those converts back to Judaism. This is the issue. The lines are no longer clear. Before the lines were clear, you were a Jew, you were a Muslim, you were a Christian, everyone knew what page they were on.

They weren't competing. Now it's all a mess, right? So from Isabel's perspective, Isabella's perspective, what you see is the weakening, the undermining of the fabric of Christian society because there are secret Jews. This is a fact. There was Jewish proselytizing. I mean, it's only natural and normal, right? And so the Inquisition is a reaction against that. The Inquisition is instituted to inquire, inquire of converts as to whether they have true.

truly converted. Okay, but is it the church that goes to her and says, look, some out there, archbishops and bishops, they say, you know what, the devil is within, we've got to root this out, or is it her going out to the church saying, I'm unstable, my kingdom is unstable, I need you to go and find these people who will undermine my kingdom. Whose idea was this? Yeah, these things are impossible to entangle. I mean, it works because there was an interest in both parties. And so there were voices in the church that were very concerned about this. I mean, the The inquisition was made up of people who were prepared to be absolutely cruel, who were often evil people. But at the same time, and this is one of the conundrums of history, people who saw themselves as working for the greater good.

But they took a perverse pleasure in hurting people. I mean, you know, the sort of methods of torture, everything that sort of signifies the cruelty of the medieval period, you know, the means with which they could cause pain. This was par for the course. This was medieval justice. Torture was normal. There was nothing unusual about torture. What was interesting about the Inquisition was the way that it was established as an institution. And this is really interesting.

And here we can see the kind of foreshadowing of the autocratic oppressive state. Because the Inquisition was not some sort of haphazard emotional reaction to the presence of this crypto-Jewish community within Christian society, it came about at a time that the church and the monarchy were becoming highly organized administratively. And so the Inquisition was able to harness a sort of institutional framework in which to systematically root out these Judas and Christians. And I should note, the Inquisition had no power over Muslims and had no power over Jews. Okay, but this guy, Tokumada, we are very familiar with his. name, Tomasta Tokamada. His favorite thing was to make somebody scream until they told him what they

wanted to, and then he would burn them anyway, these public burnings at the stake. You know, the whole of the sky over Spain was dotted with pillars of smoke of misery and anguish. Well, yes and no. Okay. In the sense that, you know, particularly seen from the English perspective, the whole inquisition thing becomes a little bit fuzzy because it gets fed into this whole black legend thing that emerged in the 16th century. Anti-Catholic, painting Spain as this sort of half-African land of irrational yet rational Catholics, inbred royalty as if that wasn't the case everywhere, gratuitous violence as if that wasn't the case everywhere. So in many ways, in Anglo-American historiography, the impact of the Inquisition has been exaggerated.

But it is a real thing. Absolutely. And torture is taking place on a massive scale. And just so that we're clear what we're talking about, the rack and a form of early waterboarding, which is pouring water into the mouth. Sure. Crushing thumbs, you know, burning people sometimes alive. It's nasty business. But, you know, welcome to the pre-modern world.

If you look at English history, it's not like the Catholics and Protestants were treating each other any better in the 16th century. Sure. But, I mean, would you say, would you agree? Or is this also, I'm really fascinated that this might be sort of later propaganda that wants to paint the Catholics and savages. But to me, when I've read stuff about this, it feels like it's suddenly the industrialization of pain. You know, that you are got people coming up and thinking of things like the thumbscrew or things that can pull you apart and, you know, pull your ligaments apart. Ah, this is it. What's more effective?

Pain or the suggestion of pain? The magic of the Inquisition is, ask Galileo, they don't have to torture you. All they have to do is show you the instruments of torture and you know. So it's not necessary to commit many acts of violence. In fact, you might say from a pragmatic perspective, that's counterproductive because you desensitize people. But Brian, the figures are massive, estimates of the number of people killed by the Inquisition in Seville alone, in its early days alone, is 16,000?

You have to be very careful with the way that the Inquisition has been studied, we now understand that the mortality rate was much lower than as previously thought. I'm not saying the Inquisition was a good thing, that it wasn't horrible, etc. But we have to bring it into this perspective. For example, if we compare it to its northern European counterpart, which is the European witch craze, the mortality rate was significantly lower. Really? Really? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's really interesting, too. The horrible and amazing thing about the Inquisition was, it was this machine that like any institutional machine takes on a life of its own. As soon as it's founded, any organization becomes immediately

interested first and foremost in its own survival and extension. And this is what happens with the Inquisition. And there is the added incentive, as far as the Inquisition is concerned, that you can seize the property of the people you are burning alive and enrich yourself massively with their goods. Oh, no, it's even worse than that. So, three-way split, right? If you denounce someone to the inquisition to be, say, a juda-is or a secret proselytizing Jew, what the deal is, first of all, according to the sort of the standard template, they would be taken in for questioning. Secretly, they're not allowed to say they've been arrested, ever. They're not allowed to say what they've been charged with, ever. They're taken in for questioning. Questioning means torture

in the pre-modern world. Anywhere you go. That's what it means, right? They're tortured. They have opportunity. The opportunity is to confess. Confess and you'll be forgiven. Also, to be forgiven, you have to give up the other judicers. So there's an incentive to turn in other people. It's like McCarthyism, whether or not they're guilty or not because you've got to save your skin. Because if you refuse to admit your guilt and you're found to be guilty, which, you know, is usually the case, but not always, not always. What happens is you lose all of your property and your children lose all of their property and you are killed in a nasty way. Who gets your property? one third to the Inquisition, one third to the king, one third to the person who denounced you.

So remember, I talked about the competition, right? How when Jews converted to Christianity, suddenly the Christians didn't know how to marginalize them. So they had to invent this category of new Christians and old Christians. And new Christians are not full Christians. So you can see how the Inquisition, on a very petty local level, can become a vehicle for disposing of economic competitors. You've got a shoe store. I've got a shoe store. You're a proselytizing Jew. You're gone. I've got the only shoe store. You've absolutely blown our minds with this sort of reframing and, you know, nuanced reading of the Inquisition. We have so far, and it's a good point to take a break. We've talked only about the treatment under Isabella and Ferdinand's rule of the Jews.

We haven't yet looked at what happens to the Muslims. And anyone who, like me, has enjoyed reading Salman Rushdie or has read the Moors' Last Eye, you will know that too was a seismic convulsion in that part of the world, which expelled a huge number of people. Join us after the break when we talk about what happens to Granada and the Muslims of Spain. Welcome back. Well, two days after Christmas, 1481, a group of moors rode out of the kingdom of Granada and in a stealthy nighttime attack scales the walls of the fortress of Sahara de Rassiera, a small town perched on a high, steep, rocky outcrop. Now, that act by the moors of seizing that town precipitated an extraordinary counterattack. Brian, tell us what happened.

So I think what we see is really the final breakdown of the Kingdom of Granada. How big is it at the beginning of this story during Isabelle's childhood and youth? The Kingdom of Granada is really that little bit of Southern. Spain, which is ringed by mountains. So if you if you look at Cordoba and Sevilla, Cordoba and Sevilla are in the plains of the Guadalcavier River, very hard to defend. South of that, you start getting more mountainous territory. So the kingdom of Granada is really, or the Sultanate of Granada, is really this kind of mountainous redoubt at the foot of the peninsula. And it's small, but it packs a punch in a sense that it's very highly

populated and it's extremely wealthy. It has, for example, a very robust silk industry, which brings in a lot of money. The Kingdom of Granada, as we find out after the Christian conquest, generates more money than the entire sum of Isabella's other holdings. Really? So this is a major prize. Yeah, this is not like, you know, the kind of footnote. This is the prize. This is the jewel in the crown. And I read somewhere that it's almost the same size as modern Belgium, so it's not a small territory either. Well, if you think Belgium, speak, I suppose, but there you go. You come from Colorado.

Exactly. Come from America. So what we have is, you know, we think of Granada and Castile as being these enemies pitted against each other in the reconquest. But in fact, what they were for the past couple hundred years was really mirror images of each other. Castile has got this dynamic, which we've talked about with the accession of Isabella, of endemic interfighting between the nobility.

within the royal family plays for power and so on and so forth. And what we see is the exact same thing happening within Granada. Granada is also in the grips of a kind of a similar sort of factionalism. And neither party, because both kingdoms are sort of so consumed by their internal disorder, it's very rare that either one can get the upper hand on each other. So they're fighting each other, but at the same time they're linked. They're linked often as allies, as tributtive, as tributt. And as I said, the soldiers are fighting in each other's armies. If you're on the outs with the King of Castile, where do you go? You go to Granada and you fight for the King of Granada. If you're in Granada, you're on the outs with the Sultan of Granada, you go to Castile or Aragon.

And are they speaking a common language? Or is everyone bilingual? What's going on? Good question. Good question. There's a lot of bilingualism. Multilingualism is basically the natural human condition, unlike how we in the Anglo-American world usually think of things. So what we know is that probably anybody of any sort of education or sort of social class or economic class probably had some Arabic, had some Spanish, some romance, right, maybe some Latin. So there was a lot of multilingualism. These people could communicate with each other, except if they were just off the boat from Northern Europe or just off the boat from Africa, then maybe not. So, Brian, we had this conquest by the Moors of Zahara in 1481. There is a reaction. There is a reaction

to that by Ferdinand and Isabella, who in 1483, retakes Sahara and in 1984, take Ronda. And this is the beginning of the erosion of Granada. This redoubt that you described, this mountainous territory, which had remained unconquered and rich, begins to crumble. Why? Well, there's a couple of reasons. One is, quite frankly, a change in military technology. Fernando was able to harness advances in artillery.

And that was absolutely crucial in breaking this sort of centuries-long stalemate between Granada and Castile in terms of domination. You can imagine before there were cannon, the best defense is a high straight wall. If you're talking about fighting guys with sticks. As soon as there are these massive cannon, a high straight wall is the worst thing that you can have. So one of the things that really turns the whole field of battle is the Castilian use of artillery. But isn't artillery available widely in the Muslim world? I mean, there's artillery in India at this point in Central Asia. Absolutely. No, artillery originated. It came west from the Muslim world. But you have to think of the type of war that's being fought. The

Muslims in Granada are fighting a defensive war, and artillery is not a defensive weapon so much as an offensive weapon. And the fact that it can bring down walls is an absolute game changer. Now, the thing is, artillery is super expensive. So where are you going to get the money? And this is irony of ironies, again, where we see Isabella and the Jews, because she depends largely on Jewish financiers and on tax raised from her Jewish and Muslim subjects to pay for that war, a type of war that would not have been possible earlier in the Middle Ages when war was essentially a privatized initiative among individual nobles. Now warfare was changing. So give us a picture, Brown, of this final campaign. The figure that we all know is Boabdil,

the final more, the more of the last high. Tell us about his last days. Exactly. Well, what happens and why the sort of time around Zahara is significant is it's when, and again, a lot of the most important successes on the battlefield don't take place so much as the result of a victory on the field, but of sort of diplomatic outmaneuvering. And what Fernando and Isabella managed to do is fatally split the dynasty that's ruling Granada. Even as Castile is attacking, there's sort of a civil war brewing between Boabdil, Abu Abdullah, who becomes the last Sultan of Granada and his uncle, Abel Hassan. And what happens is that in order to get leverage, the Catholic kings,

Fernando and Isabella, make an alliance with Boabdil. okay, he's defeated, captured, he becomes their vassal, nothing extraordinary about that. And they treat him well? Well, of course they do. He's their vassal. They have to, right? So he's their man now, and they send him back. But that puts him kind of in an impossible situation, because in a way, that's something that his constituents won't countenance, because they are besieged in their view by a sea of Christians who are going to conquer them. And so he becomes in their view a traitor. And so the dynasty is split.

So what happens, Bawabdil eventually has to renege on his alliance with the Catholic kings. He has to drop it. This is a breach of faith. This is a breach of a political treaty he has made. And this is what gives, on the global stage, for however much they're posturing as crusading kings, this gives Fernando and Isabella the rationalization to conquer Grenada. because Abu Abdallah, Buabdil is a rebellious vassal. And that is a rationalization that they can take to their Muslim counterparts

across the Mediterranean world. And their Muslim counterparts will understand. So how do they crush the last vestiges of any kind of resistance here? Well, it's kind of a boa constrictor effect. Fernando was a brilliant tactician, absolutely brutal, but he knew how to use the carrot and stick. So he combined acts of gratuitous brutality, the massacre of garrisons, and so on and so forth, with offers to the magnates, the Muslim magnates of the Salt Native Granada, that they come over to his side.

And that if they convert to Christianity, they will be allowed to keep their position in power. So you can imagine, what's the choice? Be strung up by my heels outside the walls of my town or, you know, become the local governor for Fernando and Isabella. all I have to do is convert to Christianity. It's like Henry the Fort said. Paris is worth a mass, right? If that's what you have to do, that's, for many people, it's not a hard choice to make.

And this brand is the fatal and important year 1492, when everything changes, one of these great pivot points of history. Well, this is where it all comes down. By the time we get to 1492, the writing is on the wall. Granada is effectively besieged. Massive Christian army is in camp outside Granada, in the Vega, in the sort of the Werta, the fields of Granada. Santa Fe has been established by the Catholic Kings. Now they're living there. They're on site. They almost get assassinated, actually, by a Muslim spy who pretends to be a convert to Christianity and sneaks into their tent and tries to stab them. One of the great what-ifs of history, yeah.

Exactly, you know, putting the pressure on. And they're carrying out a dual game. They're negotiating with Abu Abdallah, but they're also negotiating with the authorities of the city for a surrender. Everyone knows what's going to happen. And for many of the Muslims in Granada, surrender isn't necessarily the worst thing. If you look at how historically Christian kings have treated their Muslim subjects, it's not a bad deal, I'll consider. So yeah, I mean, you could surrender, but you could stay. That's a terrible miscalculation in this instance, isn't it? You stay, you keep your property, you get to practice your religion, local leaders remain local leaders.

So, you know, it's kind of a seamless transition, and you have to do that. Because if you come in and you burn the place down, there goes your economy. Remember, Granada's got this silk industry. It's generating all this money. That's why this is happening. This is why it's being conquered. So you have to preserve the economy. That means you have to preserve the society. And what happens is that Bowabdil anticipates this and he cuts his own deal undercutting the populace of Granada and arranges for the formal submission of the city to the Catholic kings, which is why with great ceremony, you know, the first day of 1492, he hands over the keys to the city and submits.

That genuinely happens. I mean, you know, happy new year here are the keys to the entire city and all of the people in it. Yeah, it's all yours, guys, yep, exactly. And we have that famous quote, which didn't happen, as I understand. You do well to weep as a woman over what you could not defend as a man, this whole story. This is what Bo Abdel's mother says to Bo Abdel when he looks back on Granada and sighs with sadness. He's taunted for it. Yeah, but not quite because, you know, the Catholic kings didn't send him back to Morocco or where he was from, which was actually from Granada,

but they didn't send him anywhere except just a few miles south. They gave him a new little kingdom. Right. They said, you can still be king, and they gave him a little area of the southern mountains of the Sierra Nevada called the El Paras, and they said you can be king here. Which is a very nice place to go walking today. Exactly, but it ain't Granada. No, it's a playground in exchange for a kingdom, right? Exactly. So, you know, after a few years there, he decided that was enough playing king, and then he decamped to Morocco, took his gold with him and, you know, lives, I guess, happily ever after.

So in 492, January there's the surrender. July 1492, the Muslims are told to convert or leave the country, but in March, in between those two events, we have the expulsion of the Spanish Jews. Tell us about that. This is the Alhambra decree, as it is known. The Alhambra decree. Yeah, so we have a couple of things happening here. Let me talk a little bit about the Alhambra decree.

So there was this frustration that was brewing within Isabella, particularly and within the church, with this issue of the persistence of Judaism in Spain and the danger of these proselytizing Jews who might be tempting people away from the true faith. And with the torture and with the incentives which are being offered, it begins to look as if it's a kind of plague, that everyone is actually a secret Jew, when in actual fact, it's just people wanting to avoid torture and not wanting to lose all their goods. And at the same time, by now, there's not many Jews left. Estimates vary. Might have been as few as 50,000, right? This is a huge decline through conversion, right?

Which means there's lots of potential crypto Jews. Now, the key thing is that after the fall of Granada, Isabella can do this because Jews are no longer necessary. What was funding the campaign against Granada. A lot of it was done through Jewish financiers. In particular, one individual, Isaac Abravenal, who had been the financier of the Portuguese king until he was thrown out for allegedly fomenting a coup against the king and moved to Castile. He was essentially the money man for the campaign against Granada, and he was indispensable. Once Granada was conquered, he was no longer necessary. So for all of the horrible things that she was, for Isabella, this thing with the Jews was nothing personal in a sense.

Some of her best friends were Jews, you might say. Oh, no, no, you didn't just say that. Abraham Signor, chief rabbi of Castile. I mean, you know, they got on well. And so I think what happened was that they took a gamble. Isabella took a gamble because this was really Isabella. Fernando is too Machiavellian to care about what religion you are, right? He just wants to know if you can kill you, eat you or do something else to you.

So I think Isabella took a chance and she thought that, you know, if I put it to Abraham Signor and I put it to Isaac Abravenel that they have to convert or leave that they're going to convert. And once they convert, then everybody will convert. And then once we don't have any Jews per se in Spain anymore, then the conversal problem is going to be the crypto Jew thing is going to be easier to deal with. And so she promulgates the edict of expulsion, which, Because of the marriage agreement that Fernando and Isabella made is going to be automatically promulgated in Fernando's lands,

even though he had no interest in it because there were many more Jews in Aragon, and they were much more important economically than in Castile. In Castile, they were no longer economically important. What happens? It's very illustrative. Of those two friends of Isabella's, Abraham Signore and Isaac Abravenel, Abraham Signor, the chief rabbi converts to Christianity. Isaac Abramel, his skills are portable. He goes off to Naples, which is still also ruled by Fernando and his ilk.

So, you know, this was a gamble, and it kind of split 50-50 among people who wanted to stay and people who wanted to go. And it wasn't made easy for the people who wanted to go. They were deprived of most of their wealth and subject to abusive taxes. But we get enormous figures, according to some figures I've seen, 160,000. Jews are expelled from Spain. You don't believe that number? No, you're shaking your head. You don't fancy that number. No, they've been, you know, these numbers have been really heavily revised in the last 20 to 30 years and we don't have good statistics for it, quite frankly. But you get those very large communities in places like Salonica, where they settle when they're expelled from Spain

and their substantial communities. Yeah, but you know, what are we talking as a substantial community? 5,000, maybe, a few thousand, two thousand. It's hard to say. You know, so, So the estimates now, you know, at the upper end you have 100,000. At the lower end, you have 15, 20,000 who left. That's all. That's really interesting. What we do have figures for is the eventual expulsion of the Mariscoes. Mariscoes are the Muslims of Spain who are eventually forced to convert to Catholicism and who nevertheless, even though they had been converted for 75 years, are thrown out between 1609 and 1614. Because again, they're not believed to be real Catholics. They're sort of plastic Catholics. Exactly. We know there.

was about 330,000 of those. That we know, because we got their names, right? But the whole, the quantitative aspect of the expulsion of the Jews is really uncertain. And it's been manipulated unconsciously, historically by historians for a long time. So we've had two momentous, three momentous things happening in one year. Granada has fallen. The Jews have been expelled. The Moors have been expelled. But we have yet another extraordinary moment, another pivotal thing that happens in this year, which of course we all know, August 1492, Columbus sales the ocean blue. In 1492, Columbus sails the ocean blue is what every child is taught. I mean, what a year. It's all happening, yeah. So very briefly, just tell us that.

Yeah, because we are going to cover this in a much greater depth later on in the Empire podcast. But Columbus and Isabella, you know, Columbus with his knock, knock, knock at many people's doors and only Isabella opens. I mean, just quickly take us through that. Well, you know, Columbus had this idea that he was going to sail westward. And, you know, the whole game was getting access to the raw materials of the East while being able to bypass the Islamic Mediterranean. This was the game. So the idea that you could sail westwards and find the East directly was a very tempting idea. So Columbus had this idea and he went around shopping it around to the various royal things.

families because he needed the money in order to finance this. And no one really believed him. Why did he have the conviction? Why did he think he could do it that way around? Well, I guess, you know, common sense. He appreciated that the world was spherical. You know, therefore, you'd sail that way. You're going to end up there eventually, right? He didn't think there was anything in the middle. The problem was that the people didn't believe his calculations. The distance that he had predicted to landfall in East Asia, they felt was far too short. And so they thought he was just basically a scam artist. So he went to Portugal and the Portuguese were kind of interested because this was their thing.

But unfortunately for them, just prior to his arrival, a Portuguese navigator had rounded the Cape of Good Hope. So the Portuguese already had their backdoor into Asia. Thank you very much. So next he's talking to Isabel the Catholic and Isabel the Catholic and Fernando. And, you know, they don't really believe in either. They're not very hot on the idea. he's quite an eccentric guy, isn't he? He's not, he's not like he's sort of wild-looking, sort of crazy sailor. Well, they all were, you know, go figure who's going to sail,

who's going to try to sail around the world in, you know, in the 1400s? We have to be a maniac, right, basically. So Fernando doesn't want to take the chance that he might be right, essentially. He doesn't want him going to the King of France and Columbus being proven right. So Isabella and Fernando are now flush with cash because they've just conquered Granada. The Treasury is full. And so for Fernando, this is like an insurance policy, banking that Columbus is wrong, perhaps, but this kind of gets him off the stage. Do they know the Portuguese across the Cape? They would know that at that time, I presume. And as we say, I mean, you know, we're going to do this in greater detail, but, you know, the pineapples and monkeys start coming back

and it is a gamble for Fernando that pays off. Yeah, it doesn't really, you know, it pays off for the Hapsburgs. It doesn't really pay off for the Catholic kings. It's kind of small potatoes. Okay. So look, I mean, you'll bring us because our time, unfortunately, is running out. So we've kind of flirted with Columbus. And he's always linked to Isabella and Fernando. But just tell us about the end of their own, because you've just given us a clue that actually all of this may have been for naught in the end. Tell us about sort of the grinding end of this dynasty. Well, 1494, that's not naught. The Treaty of Tosadillas is a major moment, isn't it?

Yes, it is. The new world carved up between Portugal and Castile? The payback doesn't come yet. The silver and gold doesn't start coming in yet. Okay. And I, you know, I think that at that point, it's all rather abstract. I mean, who knows what's out there, right? Honestly, they don't know that there's necessarily buckets of silver and gold out there. But, you know, if you want to see the, the tragedy of Isabella and, you know, this may bring one satisfaction, I suppose, because she was such a nasty person in many ways, but is that her project ultimately failed. The end of her reign was. And, you know, this may bring one satisfaction, I suppose, because she was such a nasty person in many ways, but is that her project ultimately failed. The end of her reign was. The end of her reign was. The end of her reign, tragic on human terms. Well, tell us how, I mean, where is she? What year are we talking and what happens to her? Well, you know, starting soon after the, basically after the conquest of Granada, things start falling apart. Her son and heir dies, right?

The one male child that she's had, okay? She has an oldest daughter, Isabella, who is married off first to the Crown Prince of Portugal. He dies. She's forced to marry his cousin, who's the new king of Portugal. She dies. They have another daughter, Maria, who they marry to. the same king of Portugal. They have a kid. The grandson dies. The daughter eventually dies young as well.

Catherine of Aragon is sent off to marry Arthur, right? The Prince of Wales in England. He dies. Yep. Right? Then mercifully, Isabella was already dead by this time. Then we have the whole thing with Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. So the heir of the throne is her daughter, Hwana. right? Hwana is married to Philip the Hansom, who is the Hapsburg prince of the Netherlands. And this is really the beginning of the end, because Hwana, for numerous reasons, is not willing to be queen. She's not willing to serve as queen. And this provides an opportunity, essentially, for a sort of dynastic takeover on the part of the Habsburgs of Castile. Juana and Philip have a son and that son is going to inherit the crown.

Nonetheless, Brown, although that is obviously a tragedy as far as she is concerned, her reign does do two extraordinary things. We get the foundations of modern Spain and we get the foundations of the Spanish Empire. Absolutely. Although it wasn't meant to be the foundation of Spain. One of the principles of Isabella and Fernando's union was that their king's would stay separate. So this was not a vision of a United Spain. This was two separate things. So as soon as Isabella was in the ground, Fernando was looking for a new wife. By this time, he was old. Well, hang on a

minute. Don't just jump forward to beyond. How does she go in the ground? I mean, what actually, how does she die? Well, you know, she's old and broken. And, you know, essentially it gives out. She's lived the last years of her life have been mourning and death. You know, there's a bright spot of the conquest of Granada and the expulsion of the Jews. if you can call that a bright spot. But, you know, the last years, after that, it's all downhill. It's watching everything that she had done come undone and watching the closest people to her, her children and her grandchildren dying or meeting misfortune. Yeah, it's an unnatural thing. You're not meant to outlive your children. What happens to Fernando?

Because, I mean, you did read a very affecting love letter between these two. You say, I mean, you just told us. He just went off and married again. But, I mean, is he's a happy? And how do we know how he is after Isabella's gone? Because they've been such a double act for all this time. What happens? Yeah, but you know, Fernando's a king. He's got a seat of business. So as soon as he figures out that the Habsburgs are going to inherit Castile, he's got to get to work getting a new heir somehow. So he marries a Catalan noble woman named Germana de Foie. How old is he by this point? He's getting on, right? He's past his prime, definitely. So, you know, he's trying and he can't produce a living air. And he comes to the end of the

line and he realizes that the jig is up for him too. He's going to lose it to the Habsburgs. This German family is going to get everything for all of the work that he's done. He's going to lose it all to these, you know, Germanic upstarts. And so I think the most telling thing is what happened after, you know, when Fernando was drafting his will, because he knows he's dying, he's old, the jig is up. He's married to Germana de Foie, and she's his new wife. But when he thinks about where he wants to be, he still wants to be. He still wants to be. be with Isabella. So this is from his will. He says, item, considering that among the many other great mercies, benefits, and boons that from our Lord out of its infinite beneficence and not out of our own merits,

that we have received one very much outstanding, one has been given as wife and companion, the most serene Lady Isabel, our very dear and very much beloved wife, may she be in glory, whose passing our Lord knows greatly wounded our heart and the deep feelings we had for her, as is so right for such a person who was so close to us, and was deserved for herself to be inculcated with so many and so unique qualities that she has been in her life an example of every act and virtue of fear of God and loved and guarded so much our life, health, honor, that it obliged us to love and treasure her over everything else in this world. He didn't have to say that. No, okay. I mean, it's, it's, yeah, lovely. I mean, it's a love story.

It's a weird love story. So, Brian, how should we look on this woman? I mean, in many ways, she's horrific, but she is one of the pivotal hinges of history. Yeah, well, you know, I'm a historian. So, you know, I have to look at these things dispassionately. So obviously, nasty, horrible stuff happened to a lot of people. That's history. So how can we remember?

I wouldn't focus on her personal qualities. I would look at her as what role she took in history. And, you know, one thing that she did was for good or for bad, she showed how one could be a female ruler, because she carried that off. She walked that line between power, piety, patronage, without exciting the revulsion or the rejection of the masculine society of Spain and without letting herself be dominated by it. The most powerful woman since the time of the Romans, one biography of her called her. Do you think that stands?

Yeah, she would not be dominated, you know, except by fate, which ultimately crushed her. Well, what a line to end on. I mean, we don't script this thing, but if we would, I would have written that, Brian. That was good, Brian. That's what I would have written. It's been an absolute pleasure, a real, I mean, just such a story. What a story. Brian Catloss, author of Kingdoms of Faith, a New History of Islamic Spain. So utterly fascinating, so great for you.

Thank you very much for being our guide through this. My pleasure. That is all from us. Goodbye. From me, Anita Arnand. And from me, William Dalrymple.