“This city has everything which can make people distinguished. It has an Archbishop, Chancery, Inquisition and Income Courts whose head is the Kingdom governor and many other particular courts which usually make justice administration difficult”, relates the manuscript “A brief and truthful description of the city of Granada, the capital of the Kingdom of Granada. One of the five which make up the Andalusias”, which has been ha sido revealed by Cristina Viñes Millet, lecturer of the University of Granada, and has just been published by the journal of Modern History of the University of Granada, “Chronica Nova”.

However, when the manuscript refers to the people of Granada, goes as follows: “The inhabitants are skilful and amusing liars, but they are liars in bad faith when dealing and generally inclined to every kind of vice. Women are not the home-loving sort and they are not decent at all, surpassing in this matter all the others in the Kingdom”. The manuscript, composed of eight quarto usable sheets, without author or date, is kept in the National Library; it is written in XVIII-century writing.

According to the author of the study and transcription of this text of the middle of the XVIII century, “the aim of this manuscript was not to send it for printing, fundamentally because it is too brief to justify an edition.” The lecturer and researcher of the University of Granada is inclined to think that it is a first draft or a scribbled-down writing which only intended to make some remarks and put some personal opinions on record. Cristina Viñes says that “she has tried to be absolutely faithful to the original” in the transcription of the manuscript

The anonymous author, a possible traveller, refers to streets and avenues too: “The avenues are beautiful and leafy, but narrow and wild; the poverty of the country is apparent in them, even in the principals, because the entiled estataes are short, not exceding eight thousand ducats, except for the marquis of Algarinejo, who does not live in the city; most or all of them are in debt.”

It also refers to the cars:
“There are eighty-six continuous cars in this city, and some alternate days there are some more, although they can not turn in most of the city and when they do it is uncomfortable because of the narrowness of the streets.”

About the Corpus and the carocas:
“The function of the Corpus is very particular as it is the only one in the Kingdom, but it is not magnificent and it does not deserve such a Blessed Sacrament. They just decorate the main square with cardboard frameworks or carocas, forming an idea which nobody understands, allusive to the Sacrament, to some stone or glass spiders and other pieces. It lights up at night, and for this reason there is a big attendance of strangers and natives, who cause many scandals and offences to the God they are celebrating. The rest of the procession has not ornaments or awning, so the sun and the rain bother those who go with the monstrance. They spend a mere three thousand ducats, which could serve to organize the most solemn celebration all over the world.”

Reference: Lecturer Cristina Viñes Millet
Dpt: Contemporary History.
Phone number: 958 244126 / 243637.
E-mail: cvines@ugr.es

From dusk to dawn, Aynadamar filled the aljibes of Granada; from dawn to sunrise, it irrigated fields; from sunrise to noon, the vegetable gardens and houses of the Alcazaba (Arab castle), the vegetable gardens within the city and, on Friday, it even filled the city aljibes and, if they were full, the houses; from noon to afternoon it water used in the fields and adarves of the city, except on Friday, when it was used in aljibes and houses; from afternoon to dusk the ditch irrigated the fields everyday.

All this can be read in the book titled: Water, land and men in al-Andalus. Agricultural dimension of the nazari world which has just been published in the collection Ajbar, edited by the research group Toponymy, History and Archeology in the Kingdom of Granada.

According to the lecturer of the University of Granada, Antonio Malpica, author of the prologue and director of the research group Toponymy, History and Archeology in the Kingdom of Granada, Carmen Trillo´s book “is a magnificent example of the possibilities available to study al-Andalus from written sources and a watchful observation of the landscape. Carmen Trillo reveals how the kingdom of Granada can be analysed in an Andalusi historical context.”

At dusk, channel water entered the city and reached the aljibes through different branches distributed all over the urban mains of the Albayzín and the Alcazaba (castle). According to Carmen Trillo, lecturer and researcher of the University of Granada, the connection between aljibes and mosques is so high that mosques could be water reception centres, not only for the ablutions, but also to satisfy the daily needs of the inhabitants. Some of the largests cisterns of the hill date from the eleventh century and belong to the first network of the water infrastructure.”

The book is a study of the rural environment at the end of the peninsular Islam from a new perspective; Carmen Trillo San José has avoided carrying on a local history study and has tried to transcend it to take it out of its isolation.

Water plays a very important role in this work, since irrigated agriculture was extensively used. Thus, the author tackles the subject from an imaginary perspective (water in the Koran) and its daily use. “We can conclude –says Carmen Trillo–, that water is organized as the society which manages it. Irrigation times were marked by feast days in al-Andalus. Some of them, like San Juan (Ansara) were astronomical, from the pagan and Christian tradition, and was used to mark the beggining of summer turns. It is possible that this irrigation period also closed with another feast day at the beggining of autumn, maybe San Miguel, a very venerated saint in the Albáis in”.

Reference: : Professor Carmen Trillo San José
Department of Medieval History and Historiographic Sciences and Techniques.
University of Granada
Phone numbers: 958 243653
E-mail: ctrillo@platon.ugr.es