The Abencerrajes were the most powerful family in the last Muslim kingdom in Europe. In fifteenth-century Granada — while the rest of Spain had already fallen to Christian armies — this clan of North African nobles pulled the strings behind every throne. They decided who became sultan and who got removed. They were kingmakers in the truest sense. And someone wanted them dead.
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Crowns & Conquests·2/2·1′
The place
Alhambra
The Massacre of the Abencerrajes
Thirty-six knights invited to a feast beneath the most beautiful ceiling in the world -- where the marble fountain still bears their blood
c. 1462-1482 (historical conflicts); legend set during the final decades of the Nasrid dynastyAlhambra
Moral of the Story
“The most exquisite beauty and the most savage cruelty can inhabit the same room. The blood fades from marble, but it never fades from memory -- and the civilizations that destroy their own noblest families from within have already written the date of their own extinction.”
Characters
T
The Abencerrajes (Banu Sarraj) -- the doomed noble familyT
The Sultan (Abu'l-Hasan Ali or an earlier Nasrid ruler)T
The Zenetes/Zegries -- the rival family who orchestrated the conspiracyT
The unnamed Abencerraje knight -- accused of an affair with the sultanaG
Gines Perez de Hita -- the chronicler who immortalized the legendSource
Perez de Hita, Gines. Guerras civiles de Granada (Historia de los bandos de los Zegries y Abencerrajes), 1595-1619; Irving, Washington. Tales of the Alhambra, 1832; Anonymous. El Abencerraje y la hermosa Jarifa, c. 1561-1565 (ed. Antonio de Villegas, Inventario, 1565); Hernando de Baeza. Historia de los Reyes Moros de Granada, early 16th c.; Chateaubriand, Francois-Rene de. Les Aventures du dernier Abencerage, 1826; Ibn Zamrak, epigraphic poems of the Alhambra; Fortuny, Mariano. La matanza de los Abencerrajes, c. 1870 (Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya)