Alcazaba de Málaga and Jabal Faro

Al-Idrisi said: “The city of Málaga is a fine, fortified city, with a hill called Jabal Faro rising above it. It has an impregnable alcazaba and two suburbs without walls, with inns and baths, and with fig trees the like of which are found in no other land.” (Nuzhat al-Mushtaq 2/ 570).

Al-Himyari elaborated: “Its alcazaba lies to the east of the city, with a rock wall, and is in the highest degree secure and strong. In this alcazaba is a mosque built by the jurist and hadith scholar Mu'awiya ibn Salih al-Himsi,” who was one of those who fled to al-Andalus from the Abbasids. Al-Himyari describes the city's main mosque as having five aisles, and mentions its gates, including Bab al-Wadi and Bab al-Khawkha. He relates the legend that the city was “safe from hunger, captivity and bloodshed”, then notes that all of this befell it in the year 459 AH, “by the siege of Abbad ibn Abbad, and the Berbers of its alcazaba extending their power over its people” (Sifat Jazirat al-Andalus, pp. 177–178). In this report, then, the alcazaba is a power independent of the city, and even presses upon it.

Al-Maqqari, citing some history books in his entry on Badis al-Sanhaji, lord of Granada, says: “He is the one who completed the arrangement of the alcazaba of Málaga” (Nafh al-Tib 1/ 196). The word “completed” points to an earlier building. The archaeological literature holds that the oldest parts of the standing alcazaba date from the 5th century AH, and that the Nasrids rebuilt its palace and renewed the castle of Jabal Faro in the 8th century. The castle is usually attributed to Yusuf I Abu al-Hajjaj. This is general information, for which we have found no text in the downloaded books.

Among the sources of the city's wealth was the fig. Al-Himyari says: “All around it, on every side, are fig trees attributed to it; they are carried to Egypt, Syria and Iraq, and sometimes reach India.” He notes that its people drank from wells, and that it had a valley that flows only in winter (p. 178). Al-Idrisi says that Málaga is “the seat of Rayya” (2/ 570), meaning the capital of the district from which the veined marble was brought to Madinat al-Zahra. The guide can link the two sites through this report.

In Ibn al-Khatib's Mi'yar al-Ikhtiyar there is a maqama answering a questioner about Málaga. It opens with praise: “What is there to say of the middle pearl, and the paradise of this earth?” Then it describes the alcazaba: “Its alcazaba has doubled walls, keeps company with the years, varies through their phases, and stands forth in the most perfect postures and the finest forms. The seat of an ancient king … and the iwan of the Persian kings, and the eyrie of a fierce eagle.” It mentions the naval arsenal on the sea, and that the city “leaned its back against the Mountain of Mercy” (Mi'yar al-Ikhtiyar, pp. 87–89).

It praises its industries and its pomegranates: “Its pomegranates suffice, as boxes of rubies”. It praises its people for ransoming captives, describes its cemetery, “where the eye roams”, and mentions “its well-built ghullas” (that is, the towers of its fields and vineyards) (p. 89). Then he turns to censure, mentioning the narrowness of its alleys and their harm, and concludes: “Praise and blame, yet the essence of the thing is one” (p. 91). This two-sided style runs through the whole book, so it should not be taken as his final verdict on the city. This is our own inference. The guide would do well to read the visitors the sentence “its alcazaba has doubled walls” while they stand before the double wall.

Jabal Faro was not just a fortress. The Ihata mentions the “cemetery of Jabal Faro” (3/ 183), burial “at the foot of Jabal Faro” (1/ 289), and a “small house” for study and reading that belonged to one of Málaga's shaykhs “in Jabal Faro” (3/ 310). So the foot of the hill was the city's cemetery and the place where its scholars withdrew for seclusion.

Al-Maqqari, citing a historian contemporary with the events, relates that the king of Castile paid no heed to the letters of the people of Málaga, “because Jabal Faro, the fortress of Málaga, had risen at the call of the lord of Guadix” (Nafh al-Tib 4/ 520). He describes the siege: “He attacked it by land and sea, and its people fought him with great fighting, with their artillery, their gear, their horsemen and their infantry”, until “what food they had ran out, so they ate the livestock, the horses and the donkeys.”

Enan explains that the defenders were the Ghumara troops under the command of Hamid al-Thaghri, and that the siege lasted three months. The city fell in late Sha'ban of the year 892 AH. Ferdinand broke his pledge, made its people slaves who had to ransom themselves, and exempted the sons of al-Thaghri from the ransom (Enan 5/ 216–217). Enan quotes Akhbar al-Asr on the calamity: “Their misfortune was a great one, one that hearts grieve over and minds are dazed by, and eyes weep for their loss” (5/ 217).

1) The Roman theatre at the foot of the hill.

2) The alcazaba's gates, winding uphill.

3) The gardens and the double walls.

4) The Nasrid palace with its courtyards.

5) The houses quarter.

6) The view over the port, the site of the shipyard.

7) The fortified passage, or the bus, up to Jabal Faro.

8) The walkway over the castle walls and the interpretive centre.

In summer, and on hot days in general, it is easier to go up to Jabal Faro first, then come down to the alcazaba.