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Updated: June 6, 2025
Since King Fernando brought his host fair Baza to blockade, My lot has been a wretched lot of anguish unalloyed. Yet was Fernando kind to me with all his kingly art, He won my body to his arms, he could not win my heart." While thus he spoke the mantle that he wore he cast away; 'Twas green, 'twas striped with red and white, 'twas lined with dismal gray.
His territories extended from the frontier of Jaen along the borders of Murcia to the Mediterranean, and reached into the centre of the kingdom. On the northeast he held the cities of Baza and Guadix, situated in the midst of fertile regions. He had the important seaport of Almeria also, which at one time rivalled Granada itself in wealth and population.
The Christian monarch reminded him of a treaty which he had made when captured in the city of Loxa. By this he had engaged that in case the Catholic sovereigns should capture the cities of Guadix, Baza, and Almeria he would surrender Granada into their hands within a limited time, and accept in exchange certain Moorish towns to be held by him as their vassal.
The delays caused to the invading army by these various circumstances had been diligently improved by El Zagal, who felt that he was now making his last stand for empire, and that this campaign would decide whether he should continue a king or sink into a vassal. He was but a few leagues from Baza, at the city of Guadix.
The Moors, however, kept up constant assaults and alarms throughout the night, and the weary Christians, exhausted by the toils and sufferings of the day, were not allowed a moment of repose.* * Pulgar, part 3, cap. 106, 107; Cura de los Palacios, cap. 92; Zurita, lib. 20, cap 31. The morning sun rose upon a piteous scene before the walls of Baza.
He retired, therefore, from before Baza, as he had on a former occasion from before Loxa, all the wiser for a wholesome lesson in warfare, but by no means grateful to those who had given it, and with a solemn determination to have his revenge upon his teachers.
Thus; after a siege of six months and twenty days, the city of Baza surrendered on the 4th of December, 1489, the festival of the glorious Santa Barbara, who is said in the Catholic calendar to preside over thunder and lightning, fire and gunpowder, and all kinds of combustious explosions.
El Zagal had succeeded his brother, Muley Abdul Hassan, who, at the time of his death ruled over Baza, Guadiz, Almeria, and other strongholds in the south-east, while his son Boabdil was proclaimed in Granada, thus dividing the kingdom against itself, at a moment when union was most essential to its preservation.
Ferdinand had full information of all the movements and measures for the relief of Baza, and took precautions to prevent them. Bodies of horsemen held watch in the mountain-passes to prevent supplies and intercept any generous volunteers from Granada, and watch-towers were erected or scouts placed on every commanding height to give the alarm at the least sign of a hostile turban.
In 1489, King Ferdinand, who had assembled a powerful force at Jaen, marched to the assault of Baza, a strong place, ably defended at that time by Abdullah, known under the proud title of El Zagal the Victorious because of his many victories over the Christian armies he had encountered.
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