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Illustration of the rebellion of the Alpujarras 1499: Albaicín rooftops at dusk with barricaded lanes and the snowy Sierra Nevada behind

Rebellion of the Alpujarras 1499: Why Granada Rose Up

The first Morisco revolt began in the Albaicín on 18 December 1499 and spread to the Alpujarras. Why it happened, how it ended, and what the 1500 treaty was.

Portrait of James Walker
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Seven years resident in Granada. Specialist in Nasrid architecture, Al-Andalus history, and Andalusian walking routes.

Published
Castilian conquest & the Moriscos1492–1610
No treaty signed in 1500 settled the fate of Granada's Muslims. The rising that ran from 1499 to 1501 began in the Albaicín on 18 December 1499, spread to the Alpujarras and the Sierra Bermeja, and ended in a choice between baptism or exile. The Treaty of Granada dated 1500 is a different document, a deal over Naples, and the only treaty the Muslims ever held was the one the Crown broke.
Castilian conquest & the Moriscos1492–1610
Troops mobilised, Feb 1500
80,000
Ferdinand arrived in March to direct the campaign himself[1]
Price of passage to Africa
10 doblas
Those who could not pay stayed and were baptised[2]
Naples treaty signed
11 Nov 1500
A secret pact between Ferdinand and Louis XII to partition Naples[3]

In this article

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Why Granada's Muslims rose in 1499

Granada's Muslims rose because the Crown stopped honouring the capitulations of 1491, which had offered safe passage to North Africa or, for those who stayed, their property, their faith and Islamic law.[4] Eight years later that promise of tolerance was worn thin, and two things finished it off.
Tapia's 2016 study names two triggers: new fiscal measures that hurt the Mudéjars of Granada and the arrival of Cardinal Cisneros in October 1499, sent to impose rapid Christianisation. Both were breaches of the surrender terms.[5] Against the advice of Hernando de Talavera, the city's gentler first archbishop, Cisneros pushed forced mass conversions, and his intervention is judged the direct cause of the revolt.[6]
His own boasting shows the method. In December 1499 he told Pope Alexander VI that three thousand Muslims had converted in a single day,[7] a figure to read as his claim rather than a count. The same campaign is remembered for the burning of Arabic books at Bib-Rambla.

The Albaicín revolt of 18 December 1499

The revolt began on 18 December 1499, when officials led by the constable Velasco de Barrionuevo went to take a woman from the Albaicín for questioning. She was an elche, a former Christian who had turned Muslim. A hostile crowd surrounded the officials and killed the constable, while his assistant escaped, sheltered by a Muslim woman.[8]
Residents barricaded the streets and chose their own leaders. Talavera and the captain-general, the Count of Tendilla, negotiated, and after ten days the Muslims handed in their weapons and the men who had killed the constable, who were executed.[9]
Whitewashed lanes of the Albaicín with a view of the Alhambra through a narrow archway

Explore · Neighbourhood

Albaicín

Granada's oldest neighbourhood: the Albaicín holds a UNESCO-listed maze of whitewashed lanes, Moorish cármenes, and the finest Alhambra views in the city.

Cisneros was then summoned to court at Seville to answer to a furious Ferdinand. His defence was neat: the Muslims had broken the treaty by rebelling. He won a collective pardon on condition that they convert.[10]
Baptisms followed fast. The forced baptisms of the Albaicín began at the end of December 1499 and ran into early 1500,[11] and surviving lists for the parishes of El Salvador and Santa Isabel, covering 10 to 15 January 1500, name 1,629 people.[12] Santa Isabel's own list opens with a note that its former mosque was blessed on 11 January by the bishop of Guadix.[13]
The popular image of crowds sprinkled in bulk is wrong. Those registers show that baptism was individual and demanded a Christian name, and the notion of collective sprinkling is a historiographical error that keeps being repeated.[14] A name written in a register, one person at a time, is how a Muslim neighbour became a nuevo cristiano on paper.

From the city to the mountains, 1500 and 1501

The city rising died down quickly, but more serious revolts followed in the nearby Alpujarras.[15] Albaicín leaders fled to the mountains, and by February 1500 Castile had mobilised 80,000 troops; Ferdinand arrived in March to direct operations in person.[1]
The terrain suited the rebels, who fought as guerrillas, but they had no central command. Royal forces beat them one district at a time.[16]
The bloodiest episode is placed at Laujar de Andarax, where, by one account, Louis de Beaumont's troops took some 3,000 Muslims prisoner and slaughtered them.[17] Treat the 3,000 as that account's claim, not a census.
Ferdinand stood the army down on 14 January 1501, but unrest flared again in the Sierra Bermeja. In March 1501 undisciplined troops under Alonso de Aguilar charged, Aguilar was killed, and the army was nearly annihilated.[18]
Timeline
  1. 18 Dec 1499

    The Albaicín rises

    A crowd kills the constable and barricades the quarter.

  2. Jan 1500

    Forced baptisms

    Registers for the Albaicín parishes are compiled.

  3. Feb to Mar 1500

    Royal army mobilised

    Ferdinand arrives to direct the campaign in the Alpujarras.

  4. 14 Jan 1501

    Army stood down

    Unrest soon flares again in the Sierra Bermeja.

  5. Mar 1501

    Sierra Bermeja disaster

    Alonso de Aguilar dies and his troops are nearly wiped out.

The last phase, from January to May 1501, was hard to control and Christian forces took heavy losses; fearing reprisals, the Granadans converted en masse.[19]

Baptism or exile: how the rising ended

After Sierra Bermeja, Ferdinand told the rebels to choose between exile and baptism, but exile carried a price. Only those who could pay ten gold doblas were given passage, escorted to Estepona for North Africa, and the majority who could not had to stay and be baptised.[2]
Most families could not afford to buy passage abroad and converted;[20] Ferdinand then treated the revolts as grounds for repudiating the 1491 terms.[21]
How freely any of it was chosen shows in a qasida a Granadan sent to the Ottoman sultan in 1501. The converts, it said, had acted from fear of death and of being burned.[22]
In February 1502 the same logic went Castile-wide. A decree ordered the kingdom's Muslims to leave on pain of death, with so many obstacles to departure that baptism was close to the only option,[23] and every mudéjar of Castile faced a choice between exile on impossible terms and apostasy.[24]
These new Christians, the Moriscos, and their descendants are the people behind the 1568 Morisco rebellion. The 1499 to 1501 rising is where that story begins, not where it ends.

What the 1500 Treaty of Granada was, and was not

Ferdinand's signature on 11 November 1500 sealed a covert bargain with Louis XII over Naples, a kingdom in southern Italy that the two monarchs agreed to divide.[3][25]
Louis signed at Chambord on 10 October and Ferdinand at Granada on 11 November,[26] so the king put his name to it in the city in the same winter the Alpujarras campaign was running. The coincidence of place and season is just that; the agreement has nothing to say about Granada's Muslims.
The two treaties are easy to confuse, so keep them apart:
1066 Granada massacre scene in Jewish history: a mob attacking the Jewish quarter of Nasrid-era Granada at dusk, the Alhambra hill silhouetted in the background, smoke rising over whitewashed rooftops, sombre red and amber tones

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  • The capitulations of 1491 guaranteed Granada's Muslims their property, faith and Islamic law, and are the document the Crown later repudiated.[4]
  • The 1500 treaty is about Italian territory: it concerns the partition of Naples.

Reading the rising in the Albaicín today

The visible trace of December 1499 is the quarter itself. The Albaicín is where the crowd gathered, and its parishes of El Salvador and Santa Isabel are the ones whose January 1500 registers name 1,629 baptised people.[12]
The climb is steep and cobbled, and a morning start keeps the heat and the tour groups down. These stops fit a loose route of about two hours.

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  • Climb into the Albaicín from Plaza Nueva on foot and wear flat shoes; the lanes do not forgive heels.
  • Look for the church of Santa Isabel, whose register opens with the blessing of a former mosque on 11 January 1500.[13]
  • Lanjarón and Laujar de Andarax, named in the campaign above, are Alpujarran villages you can still visit; the longer history of that landscape is in Morisco villages of the Alpujarras.
What the rising left is a parish map and a population that, within about three years, went from protected Muslims to baptised new Christians.

Frequently asked questions

What was the rebellion of the Alpujarras 1499 to 1501?
It was the first Morisco-era revolt: it started in the Albaicín on 18 December 1499 after Cisneros's forced-conversion campaign, spread to the Alpujarras in 1500 and the Sierra Bermeja in 1501, and ended with Granada's Muslims forced to choose between baptism and exile.

Why did the Albaicín revolt start on 18 December 1499?
A crowd killed a constable who was taking a woman, a former Christian turned Muslim, from the quarter for questioning. Behind it lay new taxes and Cisneros's push for rapid conversion, both read as breaches of the 1491 capitulations.

What was the Treaty of Granada of 1500?
A diplomatic deal over Italy, not Spain. Ferdinand and the French king split Naples between their crowns in November 1500, and the text has no terms about Muslims or Moriscos; Granada's Muslims relied on the 1491 capitulations.

Did the Muslims of Granada break the 1491 treaty?
The scholarly reading is that the Crown broke it first, through new fiscal burdens and forced Christianisation. Ferdinand and Cisneros argued the reverse, that rebelling voided the terms, and used the revolts to repudiate them.

What did exile cost in 1501?
Passage to North Africa went only to those who could pay ten gold doblas. Most could not, so most stayed and were baptised.

How is the 1499 to 1501 rising different from the 1568 revolt?
The first was a revolt of Granada's Mudéjars against forced conversion, put down by royal armies in about two years. The second was fought by the Moriscos, the baptised descendants of that generation, and has its own article on this site.

When did Islam stop being allowed in Castile?
A decree of February 1502 ordered Castile's Muslims to leave on pain of death. Obstacles to leaving were so heavy that baptism was nearly the only option.

Sources

26 references Show
  1. Wikipedia — Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1499–1501) (opens in a new tab)

    “By February 1500, 80,000 Christian troops were mobilized to put down the rebellion.[1] By March, King Ferdinand arrived to personally direct the operations.[12]”

  2. Wikipedia — Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1499–1501) (opens in a new tab)

    “Only those who could pay ten gold doblas were given passage, and the majority who could not pay had to stay and be baptized.”

  3. Wikipedia — Treaty of Granada (1500) (opens in a new tab)

    “The Treaty of Granada (1500), signed on 11 November 1500, was a secret treaty between Ferdinand II of Aragon and Louis XII of France, in which they agreed to partition the Kingdom of Naples.”

  4. foreignexchanges.news (opens in a new tab)

    “They were to be given safe passage to North Africa or, if they chose to stay, would be entitled to keep their property and their faith, to be governed according to Islamic law, and other concessions to religious tolerance.”

  5. revistas.uva.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Los dos factores que provocaron la sublevación de los mudéjares de Granada en diciembre de 1499 fueron ciertas novedades en materia fiscal que les perjudicaban y la llegada en octubre del cardenal Cisneros”

  6. Britannica (opens in a new tab)

    “Jiménez’s intervention was the direct cause of a Moorish revolt in 1499–1500”

  7. Wikipedia — Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1499–1501) (opens in a new tab)

    “in December 1499 he told Pope Alexander VI that three thousand Muslims converted in a single day.”

  8. Wikipedia — Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1499–1501) (opens in a new tab)

    “The officials were then surrounded by a hostile crowd, the constable was killed and the assistant managed to escape after being sheltered by a local Muslim woman.”

  9. Wikipedia — Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1499–1501) (opens in a new tab)

    “After ten days, the uprising ended as the Muslims handed in their weapons and handed over the constable's killers, who were promptly executed.”

  10. Wikipedia — Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1499–1501) (opens in a new tab)

    “He convinced Ferdinand and Isabella to declare a collective pardon to the rebels, on condition that they convert to Christianity.”

  11. revistas.ucm.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Los bautismos forzosos comenzaron a finales de diciembre de 1499 y continuaron durante los primeros meses del 1500”

  12. revistas.ucm.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Nuestro propósito es enfocar el análisis de otra amplia muestra de mulsumanes bautizados —1629 individuos—.”

  13. revistas.ucm.es (opens in a new tab)

    ““En la mezquita que se bendixo este dia [11 de enero] por el obispo de Guadix e se llamo Santa Ysabel””

  14. revistas.ucm.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Este error historiográfico, que ya señaló Ladero Quesada 27 , se sigue repitiendo hasta en las publicaciones eruditas más recientes 28 .”

  15. Wikipedia — Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1499–1501) (opens in a new tab)

    “The uprising in the city quickly died down, but it was followed by more serious revolts in the nearby mountainous area of the Alpujarras.”

  16. Wikipedia — Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1499–1501) (opens in a new tab)

    “The rebels' lack of strategic command allowed the Christian forces to proceed by defeating the rebels in one area separately, then moving on to the next.”

  17. Wikipedia — Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1499–1501) (opens in a new tab)

    “One of the most violent episodes occurred in Laujar de Andarax, where the Catholic forces under Louis de Beaumont took 3,000 Muslims prisoner and then slaughtered them.”

  18. Wikipedia — Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1499–1501) (opens in a new tab)

    “The result was a catastrophe for the Catholic army; Aguilar himself was killed in battle and the army was nearly annihilated.”

  19. revistas.uva.es (opens in a new tab)

    “El levanta-miento de los granadinos no fue fácil de controlar, especialmente en la última fase (enero-mayo de 1501) durante la que los cristianos sufrieron numerosas pérdidas.”

  20. foreignexchanges.news (opens in a new tab)

    “Many left but most, unable to afford the cost of obtaining passage abroad, converted.”

  21. Wikipedia — Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1499–1501) (opens in a new tab)

    “The Catholic rulers used these revolts as a justification to repudiate the Treaty of Granada and abrogate the rights of the Muslims guaranteed by the treaty.”

  22. revistas.uva.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Fue el miedo a la muerte y a ser quemados lo que nos hizo convertirnos.”

  23. revistas.uva.es (opens in a new tab)

    “En este contexto fue como se decidió el maquiavélico decreto de expulsión de febrero de 1502 en el que se les conminaba, so pena de muerte, a marcharse del reino”

  24. revistas.ucm.es (opens in a new tab)

    “al poco tiempo, en febrero de 1502, todos los mudéjares de Castilla se verían forzados a elegir entre un exilio de condiciones imposibles, y la apostasía.”

  25. historyofwar.org (opens in a new tab)

    “The Treaty of Granada (11 November 1500) was an agreement between Louis XII of France and Ferdinand II of Aragon to split the Kingdom of Naples between them.”

  26. Wikipedia — Treaty of Granada (1500) (opens in a new tab)

    “The agreement was signed by Louis at Chambord on 10 October, then by Ferdinand at Granada on 11 November.”