What was the conquest of granada

The First Part. The Second Part. The Alhambra. The Albayzin. The Alhambra, or a Gallery. ACT V. Finally, the political relationship between Achilles, Almanzor's literary model, and James, the living prince, is explicitly established. James' place in the scheme of the state is then made clear; both he and his brother, the king, hold in common this concernment for their country, and their relationship within the structure of the state is likened to what Dryden conceived as Homer's division of power within the Greek alliance; "in your two persons are eminent the characters which Homer has given us of heroic virtue; the 32 commanding part in Agamemnon, and the executive in Achilles, Both perfection and imperfection are implied; both compliment and warning seem intended.

In Agamemnon and Achilles Dryden found the perfect balance between commanding and executive power. It would be difficult indeed, however, for a reader to forget that this balance is destroyed in the initial action of the Greek epic. Later, Dryden was to translate the first book of the Iliad in which is recorded the disintegrating relationship between Agamemnon and Achilles, and Nestor's attempt to reconcile the two before the Greek party is disrupted.

Nestor addresses Achilles; The head of action he, and thou the hand, -- Matchless thy force; but mightier his commands:. Both from the Greek model and from the play itself James is subtly reminded just how precarious is the balance between commander and executor, Agamemnon's and Achilles' falling out results in momentary disaster for the Greek cause; Prince Abdalla, the brother 23 to King Boabdelin of Granada, plots to seize the throne, laying the city open to conquest. With all of his human imperfections and flights of passion, Almanzor is the one to show a prince of the realm that a hero can learn obedience.

The Conquest of Granada deals with disintegration,' warning England against domestic turmoils, but it also depicts the establishment of order, based, in part, upon the hero's changing self-concept, Almanzor accepts, in the last scene of the play, the "executive" position under Ferdinand and Isabella, the Christian monarchs of Spain. The play instructs both by negative example, and by asserting a Christian concept of heroic virtues. The order established in the closing scenes of The Conquest is peculiarly Christian, and perhaps one of the most important sources for the concept of emerging order depicted in the play are the Spanish histories of the conquest of Granada.

In these histories the Iliad's "fable" finds expression in an explicitly Christian context. Were one to wish to find sources for Dryden's Conquest of Granada it would seem more fruitful to look to the Spanish histories of the Moors in Spain, and their depiction of the final triumph of the Christian forces over.

Dryden's life-long fascination with histories and his professed admiration of certain historiographers is well-known. What emerges in extracting the changes which Dryden made in the historical material is his emphasis upon the themes of conquest and change.

By telescoping historical events, shifting relationships, increasing the sense of a city besieged from without and filled with political dissention and love-intrigue within, Dryden intensifies the sense of disorder and change which permeates the Spanish histories. In the play, war is the encompassing action, a besieged city the setting, and only Ferdinand and Isabella are exempt from the general disorder and conflicts: brother is pitted against brother, sons against fathers, daughter against father, lover against mistress, husband against wife, family against family.

What may have attracted Dryden to the Spanish histories was the presence of the very themes of conquest and order which he found acceptable for the epic nature of heroic drama.

From the evidences of discord, Lewis Turquet de Mayeme, whose Generali Historie of Spaine was translated into English in , concluded: "These seditious changes were ordinary, and have alwaies beene amongst the Arabians, who are inconstant, treacherous, ravishing 37 and ambitious, if there be any living," Generally, however, the Moorish seditions and disorders were not attributed simply to the "nature" of the Moor, but to his lacking Divine Grace. For the Catholic writers of the history of the conquest of Granada, disorder was not as Hobbes would have it a "natural" state of mankind; it was the result of the absence of Divine Order permeating and informing the temporal sphere.

The Spanish histories, as a whole, are concerned with representing the historical manifestations of Divine Will: the "fable" underlying the histories is not simply that discord reaps destruction, but that Providence brings order out of discord through the instrument of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.

Mariana describes Ferdinand and Isabella's entrance into Granada as the initiation of a kind of Divine dispensation: their restoring and ordering powers are most important in the historian's account: King Ferdinand and Queen Elizabeth [Isabella] being richly clothed, in the prime of their Age, and having conquered that Kingdom [Granada], seemed to appear more Majestick than before: They shined above all others, and were equal to themselves.

Every one looked upon them as more than Human, and sent from Heaven for the Glory of Spain, It was they that restored Justice, which before them was corrupted, enacting excellent Laws for the publick Benefit.

They settled Religion, restored Peace, and enlarged their Territories, not only in Spain, but at the same time in the utmost Bounds of the World. The sense one gains from the Spanish histories is that of nations conquered, governments supplanting one another, flux and violent conflict on all sides, but the chord which is struck time and again is that of the controlling power of Providence. Cities are conquered, are built again and expand under the Christian monarchs. To miss this same sense of the cycle of destruction, change, restoration and expansion in Dryden's play and its significance in the portrait 28 of the hero, A Imanaor, is to miss the core of the drama NOTES 1 Anonymous, The Censure of the Rota.

IV, p. Dryden: The Dramatic Works, 9d. Done into English by J, Phillips. Joel Elias Spingarn Oxford, , Vol. I, p, I VI, p, XII, p, XVII, p. The characters are far from static; motivation, self-will, conflict, 32 33 and change form complex patterns for the most prominent inhabitants of the Moorish city of Granada.

The patterns are so complex as to be impossible to examine except by what at first may appear to be a sweeping division into the two groups mentioned above. The min concern of this chapter will be the group of major characters whose courses of action lead them to destruction. For the most part, it becomes impossible to discuss the motivations of such characters as Lyndaraxa, Abdalla, Abdelmelech, Boabdelin, Zulema and A Imana or without discussing also their relation with or attitudes toward fortune.

At one point, fortune vaguely appears to be auspicious happenings and fate becomes the ill that befalls, while, at another, fortune becomes the changing, fickle goddess, with fate connoting a more stable, unchanging, destiny. The attitudes toward fortune in particular vary widely, and it would seem that there is little or no consistency that would aid in pin-pointing a specific definition of fortune which works for the entire play.

The appeals to fortune appear at first to be merely "signs" indicating that this particular character or that is a pagan, but as individual characters are examined more closely, it is discovered that each character has his own particular concept of fortune and his relationship to the goddess.

Those who discover some kind of stabilizing power through love form a surviving remnant of Granada's population which becomes the foundation of the new Granada under Ferdinand and Isabella. In order to understand the various uses of fortune within The Conquest, some of the fluctuations and inconsistencies in the meaning of fortune in its long history must be reviewed. One thing becomes clears as a goddess, Fortuna has never had a completely clear-cut character; she has appeared in Roman literature in fragmented forms as a goddess of individuals, cities, states, and various aspects of.

As Howard RoHin Patch points out in his study of Fortuna, she assumes, quite early in her history, the character of chance and arbitrary inconsistency with which she became 2 traditionally associated. There is quite a list of adjectives derived by Mr, Patch from early Roman writers describing her as various, fleeting, fickle, blind rewarding and punishing without regard to moral order , inconstant, harlot, untrustworthy, capricious, mobile, transitory.

According to this view if man could only see into the mysteries of the universe, he would see that chance and arbitrary fortune do not, in reality, exist. Whether real or not, however, she becomes inexorably linked with the problem of the conflict between free will and fate or divine edict. From these studies of Fortuna, it is not difficult to discern that fortune was rarely accorded absolute rule; she is usually subordinated to a more powerful deity or deities, and has but limited sway, or, at the most, unlimited sway over a carefully limited realm.

As a result, man is constantly attempting to impose some kind of stability favorable to his own desires in a realm where unpredictable Fortuna reigns, The question which inevitably arose was: can man, by his will, overcome fortune? The answers, as Patch describes them, were various. Host philosophers and poets advised a way to weather the storms of fortune rather than urging the usurpation of her power. Basically the three solutions usually 3 6 offered are as follows s 1 The use of the virtues of patience and fortitude while they will not control, will help man to ride out fortune's violent changes; 2 Man should oppose the intellect to fortune's seeming disorder.

She is either relegated to the demon underworld, becomes a convenient expression for the "hidden causes" of the universe, as in Aristotle, or is rejected altogether. Fortune is recognized as a temporal and, therefore, limited force. She can only given those gifts which are not ultimately valuable; only God dispenses the ultimate good. Providence 37 is the encompassing order in the universe. Dryden's own attitude toward fortune is rather difficult to sift from among his writings.

References to fortune and fate most often appear as dramatic utterances revealing the state of mind of a character rather than Dryden's own views on the subject. He was, of course, familiar with the uses of fortune -and fate in the Roman writers whom he ultimately translated, and there are two strains in Roman literature that attracted Dryden: the first presents specific alternatives offered to the worship of fortune, the second deals with the temporal limitations of fortune's reign.

Both strains are to be found in Juvenal. The satirist concludes with the following advice: 'Nil ergo optabunt homines? He includes many of the epithets traditionally associated with her: Fortuna saevo laeta negotio et lundum isolentem ludere pertinax transmutat incertos honores, nunc mihi, nunc alii benigna, laudo manentem; si celeris quatit pinnas, resigno quae didit et mea virtute me involvo probamque q pauperiem sine dote quaero.

Fortune and fate are not simply superficial trappings for the play, but are an important part of an over-all theme of change, of loss and gain. Inextricably 39 bound up in the confrontation with the forces of fortune and fate are the themes of self-interest, and self-sacrifice.

Only Almanzor learns the lesson of self-sacrifice and survives, the rest are destroyed. Hobbes had fixed the motivation of self-interest as the very basis of civil order. The will is next brought into play, and one acts on the basis of either desire attraction or hatred repulsion. In his famous argument with Bishop Bramhall concerning predestination and free will, Hobbes insists that man's will is not of his own disposing: ",.

Speaking of the Gentiles' many gods, Hobbes mentions among them the goddess of Fortunes "They invoked their own ignorance, by the name of Fortune. Dryden, however, remained skeptical of man's ability to produce an order based upon self-interest. The villainous group of characters in The Conquest of Granada reflect this basic skepticism, and Dryden was willing, in some instances, to exaggerate and distort Hobbes-like theories of self- interest in order to make his point, Dryden probably realized that Hobbes would have been appalled at a theory of self-interest which carries its practitioners into rebellion and regicide, but, as any skillful debator would know, to carry the opponent's theories to their logical conclusions is the quickest, not necessarily the fairest, way to prove their indefensability.

That Dryden's treatment of the characters surrounding Lyndaraxa in many ways reflects a concern with the problems of motivations of self-interest, order and divine will is not to say, however, that he necessarily wrote the play to specifically refute Hobbes, Both Hobbes and Dryden were concerned with the problems of order, but Dryden's concerns appear dramatically in the form of clashes of self-interest, violent change, and conquest.

Possibly the most consistent and, therefore, most obvious characterization of self-interest in The Conquest is that to be found in Lyndaraxa. Most of the characters who are ultimately destroyed find their destinies radically affected by hers Zulema, her brother, dies defending a lie concocted by Lyndaraxa; Abdalla dies in single combat with Abdelmelech, his rival for Lyndaraxa's favor; Boabdelin is slain in battle "by a Zegry hand" after Lyndaraxa has shifted Zegry support to the Christians; Abdelmelech stabs himself after bringing about Lyndaraxa's death.

The ambitious woman who effects such destruction, while a terribly consistent character, is not a simple one. Soon after her first entrance, 43 Lyndaraxa reveals the basic desire which motivates her every moment throughout the play. And that's another happiness to me, To be so happy as but one can be. Part I, Act II, sc, i In order to be free from all control she must be queen, and this "happiness" can be possessed by only one.

Even Abdalla, who becomes her most abject slave, acknowledges the basis of all her actions: 'Tis plain that she, who, for a kingdom, now Would sacrifice her love, and break her vow, Not out of love, but interest, acts alone, And would, even in my arms, lie thinking of a throne. Part I, Act II, sc, i Self-interest is also the motivating force behind Lyndaraxa's brother, Zulema, who acts the seducer to Abdalla's already weakened virtue.

Zulema disposes of peace of mind, justice, and honor by emphasizing the compensating pleasures and power which will be gained try possessing the crown. Had fate so willed, Abdalla "without a crime, the crown had worn. Zulema plots like a good Machiavellian stage villain; while Zulema and Abdalla use "wisdom" and cunning to plot their course, they must have Almanzor to lend the lion's strength to their cunnings Zulemas The bold are but the instruments o' the wise; They undertake the dangers we advises And, while our fabric with their pains we raise, We take the profit, and pay them with praise.

Each member of the conspiracy has his own interest at stake, each has his own desires to fulfill. Soon after victory the alliance begins to fall apart when Almanzor's desire to revenge his injured honor is superseded by his new found love for Almahide, In loving Almahide Almanzor discovers he comes in conflict with Zulema's own desire to have her.

Zulema reminds Abdalla, who is now in a position to dispense favors, that "You swore our fortunes should together go. Boabdelin wishes tc recover his throne and Almahide; Almanzor, once again, has an injury to revenge and, now, Almahide to fight for.

The precarious peace will soon be destroyed, however, and "empire's weary toil" Part I, Act V, sc. Not one of the alliances of interests results in stability. Part I has been a record of shifting loyalties, betrayals, fermenting rebellion, and the frustration of all human desires.

To borrow a phrase from the criticism of baroque art, a "precarious balance" that momentarily threatens to dissolve into civil chaos is all that can be achieved. In such a world, of course, the only appropriate deity to worship is Fortune.

For the most part, Fortune has traditionally been associated with human affairs as they are concerned with the gain of property, money, power, and fame. Fortune, in The Conquest, is inextricably linked in the minds of its characters with what is termed their "interests". In order to possess Almahide, Zulema must bend fortune and fate to his own will, with cunning as his means. In order to win Lyndaraxa, Abdalla must "prove fortunate" and is convinced by Zuleraa that he can "make" his own fortune.

Lyndaraxa, however, is most closely linked with fortune and fate in the play? In order to keep up with shifting fortune, she herself must be constantly moving. She seem? She Justifies her refusal to offer Abdalla sanctuary from his pursuing foes by claiming to have acted as the protectress of his future: When your malicious fortune doomed your fall, My care restrained you then from losing all; Against your destiny I shut the gate, And gathered up the shipwrecks of your fate; I, like a friend, did even yourself withstand, From towing all upon a losing hand, Part II, Act II, sc, ii Strangely enough, Lyndaraxa possesses the soaring ambitions of an Almansor, but seems, for the most part, unable to facilitate her own desires; she must place her hopes in the revolving fortunes of her two lovers, Abdalla and Abdelmelech.

Unlike Almanzor, she is never certain that she can control fortune. She desperately seeks, however, for some kind of certainty or predictability in a universe ruled by fortune.

Before she makes a commitment, she desires to be sure that the ground will not shift again. That I might once know whom to love, or hate For I myself scarce my own thoughts can guess, So much I find them varied by success. Part II, Act III, sc, ii Following Lyndaraxa thus far through all her machinations and turnings, one finally comes to this terrible sense of frustrated desire for power and stability, Lyndaraxa is entrapped by her own desire for absolute freedom fron control; she cannot escape the fortune upon which she depends to achieve her goal.

The one confrontation she has with Almanzor points out the vast difference between Lyndaraxa's definition of freedom, and that which Almanzor is learning. Seeing that Almanzor is apparently "wedded" to fortune, Lyndaraxa. Although his love for Almahide seems hopeless, Almanzor cannot be won by an argument to the effect that his is a "sad, sullen, froward Love"2 Almanzor. I, in the shape of Love, Despair did see; You, in his shape, would show Inconstancy.

Part II, Act. Like many of Dryden's villainesses, Lyndaraxa is complex in her evil. So he ignited the flame of war again.

He was perhaps inspiringly driven by patriotism and idealism. But in reality, he was flogging a dead horse: by then Granada had been reduced to a city and a mountain. Everything else was Spanish.

Boabdil desperately sought aid from every Muslim country at hand -- Egypt, Fez now Morocco It didn't make any difference. Egypt was waging a war of their own against the Ottoman Turks , which made them friends with Spain; and Fez pretended they never got the message. Boabdil was in the battle This is symbolically true. But it was also true on a physical level. Since Granada no longer had a coastline, it could receive neither aid nor ammunition. He was temporarily reconciled with his uncle, al-Zagal, and was captured again by the Christians in He returned in to oust his uncle and take the city of Granada with the probable help of Ferdinand.

By the end of only the city of Granada was left in Muslim hands. Nominally ruled by Boabdil, it was a city riven by internal feuds. Still, the inhabitants refused to surrender, but the establishment of a permanent camp site Santa Fe — Holy Faith within view of Granada left no doubt of Christian intentions… a protracted siege.

Facing the inevitable, the Muslims negotiated surrender, and the long campaign finally came to an end on January 2, , when Ferdinand and Isabel entered the city.

There was a lot of dazzling pageantry in all this, because in fact the keys had already been delivered to a representative of the Monarchs a day earlier in the same room. Al-Andalus i. Muslim Spain as a political entity had come to an end, although there were still Muslims who chose to live under their new masters.

Certainly the terms of capitulation were generous, much in the tradition of the medieval convivencia i. The Muslims were allowed to retain their religion, their laws, customs and property. Those who wished to emigrate to Africa were free to do so, an option elected by about