This is a concise read, which doesn’t get lost in the complicated family dynamics of the Nasrid dynasty. It’s a sympathetic view of a leader faced with impossible decisions, not a hero or a villain, and considered in his own right rather than in the shadow of the huge personalities of Ferdinand and Isabella. The author is clear about the limitations of her sources. I also enjoyed the survey of Boabdil and his exile as a theme in later art and literature that close out the book. ( )

In Granada on the 2nd of January, 1492, Abu Abdallah Muhammad b. Ali, Muhammad XI, known as Boabdil to the Christian Spanish, surrendered the keys of the Alhambra to Ferdinand and Isabella, bringing Islamic rule in the Iberian peninsula to an end. An iconic moment in Spanish history, exploited to the maximum for publicity purposes both by Ferdinand and by the Pope, and one that has continued to pop up in novels, plays, paintings, statues, TV series and all sorts of other places to this day.

But Boabdil himself comes across as a rather elusive character, a hero to some, a pathetic fool or a traitor to others. Drayson sets out to take us through what we actually know about him and the last years of Islamic Granada from the historical sources, which turns out to be surprisingly little, especially given the usual fondness of both Spanish and Islamic administrations for writing everything down and archiving it. (The greatest flowering of Spanish bureaucracy was a bit later, of course, in the days of Philip II)

The picture that does emerge is a complicated and sometimes contradictory one. Boabdil seems to have been a cultivated man and a competent administrator, as well as showing no hesitation to get into the thick of the fighting when he found himself in battle, but he was either reckless or very unlucky in allowing himself to be taken prisoner at Lucena in 1483. That capture — and the damaging deal he had to make with the Catholic Monarchs to get his freedom back — put him at a serious disadvantage for the rest of his time in power, and gave his uncle, "El Zagal", the excuse to stage a coup, further undermining the ability of the Granadans to resist the considerable power Ferdinand and Isabella could draw up against them.

With hindsight, it's astonishing that they managed to hold out for another nine years, with the Christians cutting them off from the sea and nibbling away at frontier towns. By the autumn of 1491, though, the writing was clearly on the wall: the siege of Granada was so well established that the invaders had built a complete new town, Santa Fé, to act as a support base for them. Drayson praises Boabdil for the negotiating skill he deployed to get the best possible deal for himself and his people, and it's obvious that he was right to negotiate rather than attempt to fight to the death, but you do have to wonder whether he really believed that the guarantees of freedom of worship for Muslims (and Jews!) he obtained would be enforceable. Of course, we know with hindsight that they weren't...

There's a curious fascination in the fact that we don't know for sure what happened to Boabdil after the surrender. We know he left Spain for North Africa, and some sources say he died shortly afterwards, others that he lived on into the 1530s. There's a likely grave site in Fez, and an equally likely memorial stone in Tlemcen. But neither is proven to be his.

I was looking forward to Drayson's examination of the various representations of Boabdil in art and literature, but I found it a little disappointing when I got that far — there's plenty of material there for building a reading list, but not much real analysis, and the discussion was rather dry.

This meticulously researched and very well written book is a compelling biography of Abu Abdallah Muhammad XI, better known in the western world as Boabdil, the last ruler of the Emirate of Granada, whose surrender to King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile on January 2, 1492 marked the end of the Reconquista and the final chapter in the over 700 year rule of most of the Iberian Peninsula by Muslims from North Africa, dating back to the first invasion of what is now southern Spain by Berbers of the Umayyad caliphate in 711. Boabdil has been widely portrayed over the centuries as a weak and ineffectual leader at best, a pawn of the Christian king, and a traitor to his people at worst, who was thought to have conspired with the relentlessly advancing army of Ferdinand and Isabelle for his own gain, while condemning the Muslim Granadans to Christian rule and the ultimate expulsion of true believers from Spain. However, Drayson uses original sources to demonstrate that the young Boabdil, though not a flawless sultan, grieved for his people and the loss of the last Muslim stronghold on the peninsula to the King and Queen, surrendered to them to avoid an all but certain slaughter that would have cost thousands of lives, and was severely hampered by his treacherous father and uncle, along with the cunning and calculating King.

The Emirate of Granada was created in 1230, and was centered in the Alhambra, the palace and fortress that was built on the ruins of a former 9th century compound on a hilltop overlooking the city and the nearby elevated Albaicín, the Moorish Quarter of the city of Granada. The 250+ years of the emirate were mostly ones of prosperity, although the rulership was marked by increasing instability due to frequent changes in leadership, as the sultans were frequently overthrown and murdered by their closest relatives, including their own sons and fathers. Boabdil's father, Abu l-Hassan Ali, preceded him as sultan, and proved a constant threat to him when he became the leader of the Granadans in 1482, along with his uncle El-Zagal, who both sought to depose and kill the young ruler. Boabdil's mother, Aixa, who was discarded by her husband for a young Spanish woman who he captured, was his only reliable source of support within the family. After he embarked on an unwise expedition to the Christian town of Lucena in 1483 to demonstrate his strength to his people and was captured in an ambush, Boabdil's power was greatly diminished, as he had to agree to harsh conditions to gain his release, which included a substitution of his son for himself as a prisoner of Ferdinand and an agreement of loyalty to the King. Ferdinand used Boabdil cunningly and expertly toward his own goal of reclaiming Spain for the papacy, and manipulated the younger man against his father and uncle, which ultimately weakened the emirate and led to its progressive demise at the end of 1491, leaving Boabdil with only two choices: surrender to the Christians, or fight with weakened and demoralized troops against overwhelming forces who were adept at the latest fighting technologies, with the certainty that he and his people would be slaughtered en masse by the ruthless invaders.

Boabdil left the city shortly after the conquering forces entered, lived briefly in exile in Andalucía, the former al-Andalus, and left the following year to spend the remainder of his days in Morocco.

Drayson examines and evaluates the numerous accounts and depictions of Boabdil and the fall of Granada, in history, literature, poetry, and the arts, and through her research she portrays him more fairly and favorably, and provides the reader with a far more complete picture of this intelligent, complicated and troubled man.

The Moor's Last Stand is an outstanding work of scholarship, which provided me with a much fuller understanding of the last sultan of Granada, and the end of Muslim rule in Spain. My only regret is that this book was published after my visit to Granada, Sevilla, Ronda and Arcos de la Frontera three years ago, but reading it has made me much more eager to return to Andalucía in the very near future, with a new sense of awareness and inspiration to learn more about the Moors in Spain. ( )