16th Century Alcossebre

On the 8th of June 1583 Alcossebre was formally incorporated into Alcalá de Xivert. At that time the affairs of Alcalá were handled by the Order of Montesa, a Spanish military order who had replaced Templar control of Alcalá after the suppression of the Order of Knights Templar by the papacy in 1312.

Alcossebre (Alcocever in the Act of Incorporation) at this time appears to have been little more than a market garden for Alcalá, although its position 'a la vora de la mar' also required the civil authorities of Alcalá to maintain and pay for the upkeep of a Tower at 'Capicorp'.

By this act Alcossebre was brought under the civil and criminal jurisdiction of Alcalá de Xivert. The locality of Alcossebre was probably empty of inhabitants at the time of incorporation because of the ever-present fears of Barbary pirates along the coastline.

Two pieces of evidence support the notion of an Alcossebre without inhabitants: the first is the unequivocal statement in the Act of Incorporation that 'Alcosever lo qual de temps inmemorial está despoblat'; the second piece of evidence supporting an empty Alcossebre is the statement that the incorporation was to be regarded as without prejudice to the [pre-existing] rights of Alcalá - without any mention of a parallel body of rights for any inhabitants of Alcossebre.

Twenty-five years later the lives of every inhabitant of Alcalá de Xivert who could trace their lineage back to a muslim ancestor would change dramatically, when they were herded together to become part of a 300,000 strong diaspora, expelled from their homeland to the uncertainties of exile in North Africa.

A Compact History of Spanish Islam

Less than eighty years after the death of Mohammed in 632, Islam had become the dominant force in the Near East and North Africa and was poised to invade Spain.

In the years immediately following the Prophet's death, when Islam was governed by the first caliphate (the Rashidun) the muslims established an empire, bursting out of the Arabian peninsula and expanding east to the Iranian highlands and west along the north-African littoral.

The second caliphate, the Ummayad, arose from the bloody strife which culminated in the assassination of the fourth Rashidun caliph, Ali in 661.

Despite the ensuing civil war, the boundaries continued to move forward. By 710 the Ummayads had extended the frontiers of Islam as far as the Punjab, and the following year, 711, saw the start of the Ummayads' lightning conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.

Although in the Near East the Ummayads were comprehensively defeated by the Abbasids in 750, a prince of the Ummayads, 'Abd al-Rahman, survived the ensuing slaughter and established a revived Ummayad caliphate at Córdoba in 756.

The Ummayad Caliphate of al-Andalus persisted until the capture of Granada on January 2nd 1492, which ended seven and a half centuries of muslim occupation of Spain.

Muslim communities continued to subsist here and elsewhere in Spain for over a century after the capture of Granada. They remained the objects of suspicion even if they converted to Christianity. In Alcalá de Xivert the Moriscos, catholic converts from Islam, were banned from approaching the coast at Alcossebre, ostensibly to prevent them signaling to Barbary pirates who raided these waters during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Finally, in 1609 the Moriscos were expelled from the Kingdom of Valencia by Philip III. The illustration above depicts what appears to be an orderly dispersal from the port of Vinaròs of the Moriscos of Alcalá de Xivert and others. In truth their expulsion from this and other ports along the coast including Valencia, was the start of a disquieting journey into the unknown which ended with life-long exile in North Africa.

Vicente Carducho's drawing, La Expulsión de los Moriscos captures better the sense of desolation that hundreds of thousands of Moriscos must have felt on leaving Spain.

Almost exactly nine hundred years after Tariq ibn Ziyad landed on Gibraltar (Jabal al Tariq) the last remnants of Islam were bundled up and thrown out of Spain. In the near future I want to write something about the Moriscos of Alcalá.

From Battles to Conquest

Living in Alcossebre today, surrounded by the hills of Sierra de Irta, it's difficult to imagine the turbulent history of this part of Spain: from the medieval Reconquista, fought against the muslims, through to the Carlist wars of the 19th century, culminating in the fratricidal hatred of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).

But this relatively insignificant section of Spain's Mediterranean coast has borne witness to war, siege, and mass movements of population from the medieval period right up to the twentieth century.

In the 1230s the muslim inhabitants of Alcalá de Xivert would have heard from their brothers in Peñiscola of the victorious advance of James I's armies along the eastern coast of the peninsula, south of the Ebro. Indeed James relied on word of his victories weakening the muslim will to fight. Often he could avoid a costly siege simply by pointing to his earlier successes. His Chronicle records a master-stroke of propaganda, in which he "insisted with the Saracens of Chivert and Cervera that since I had taken Peñiscola, they should surrender their castles. For as ... Peñiscola was the most renowned place in that district, and yet had surrendered, there would be no shame or disgrace in their surrendering also. Thereupon the Saracens did surrender the said castles"

But James I's success was underwritten by a hundred years of hard fighting which allowed the Aragonese crown to push forward the frontier against the muslim kingdoms south of the Ebro river.

Alfonso I of Aragon (1073 - 1134) was a remarkable precursor to James I: he was 'el Batallador' (the Battler) who prepared the ground for James I 'el Conquistador' (the Conqueror), Alfonso succeeded to the throne of Aragon in 1104, but at the time of his accession, Aragon was little more than the mountainous fringe of the Pyrenees. Five years later a judicious marriage brought Castile and Leon under Alfonso's control, allowing him to adopt the title 'Emperor of Spain', and assume the responsibility of prosecuting war against the muslims.

Alfonso relied upon fear rather than propaganda to aid in his campaigns against the muslim kingdoms: the Chronicle of Alfonso the Emperor notes that his campaign in the south against Seville was accompanied by the destruction of all the mosques they came upon, "and they killed all [the muslim] priests and doctors of the Law. The sacred books which they found in the mosques were burned"

One by one the various muslim kingdoms in Aragon fell under his control. By 1120 Zaragoza was taken, establishing the city as the capital of christian Aragon. Alfonso el Batallador died in September 1134, worn out by a combination of old age and fatigue, weakened by the wounds received in battle. The work of chipping away at the muslim kingdoms, begun by Alfonso would reach its successful culmination in the thirteenth century when James I established the christian Kingdom of Valencia and Alcalá de Xivert passed into the hands of the Templars.