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closest fortified town in the mountains. After a bitter fight, the trained Christian soldiers overwhelmed the townspeople. The surviving male population was slaughtered in batches, while the women and children were enslaved, after which the town was ransacked by Tendilla’s men. Early in February, Ferdinand arrived from Seville with fresh troops, and in March put Lanjaron to the sword. Another column entered the Alpujarras under the count of Lerin, who stormed many villages, and in one confined the women and children to the village mosque before blowing it up with gunpowder.27 The seventeenth-century historian of Aragon, Pedro de Abarca, described the villagers as “these wild beasts of the Alpujarras,” a widely held view at the time. The western part of the mountains surrendered, and the survivors were granted peace, on surrender of all their arms and fortresses, and payment of a punitive fine of 50,000 ducats.

In July 1500, Isabella and the court came to Granada and the work of conversion continued under the watchful eye of the queen. The cities of Baeza, Gaudix, and Almeria were converted. Teams of preachers were sent into the conquered zones, and a further inducement offered. No new convert would have to pay his or her share of the huge fine levied on the rest of the population. But in December this active proselytizing pushed the eastern Alpujarras into a revolt, which was systematically suppressed by storming each town or village, and enslaving the survivors. The men were killed, but sometimes they were baptized en masse before they died. In February 1501, there was a more dangerous outbreak in the mountains at the far end of the Kingdom of Granada, beyond Ronda and much closer to Malaga and the urban centers of the south. A large body of leading Castilians, with 300 horsemen and 2,000 foot soldiers, immediately set out from Seville to put down the new rebellion. Lured into the mountains, many were killed, including their leader, a famous soldier called Alonso Hernandez de Córdoba, usually known as Alonso de Aguilar, whose heroic end became the subject of innumerable ballads.28 It was the worst disaster for Castilian arms since the losses in the war for Granada. Ferdinand gathered a huge force, complete with artillery, at Ronda and prepared to cleanse the land in the same way that the Alpujarras had been purged, with fire and sword. The leaders of the rebellion in the west quickly sought terms for peace. Ferdinand offered them a simple choice: baptism, or departure from the lands of Castile. Until they agreed he kept up the advance, storming fortified villages, killing the men, and enslaving the women and children.

His decision was unequivocal: Islam would be ended in Castile: “My opinion and that of the Queen,” Ferdinand declared, “is that those ‘Moors’ be baptised, and if they should not be Christian, their children or grandchildren will be.”29 Terms of peace were agreed on April 1, 1501, and many Muslims immediately crossed the straits to North Africa. For Isabella too all Muslims in Castile must “either convert or leave our kingdoms, for we cannot harbour infidels.”30 In July, the Catholic Kings issued an order from the Alhambra forbidding Muslims to reside within the boundaries of the Kingdom of Granada, for they impeded the spiritual progress of the converts. On February 12, 1502, a decree was promulgated for Castile, that all Muslims had to choose baptism or leave Spain by April 20, rather less time than had been given to the Jews a decade earlier. In part this indicated a conviction that not many would wish to leave, and this proved the case. Most who had wanted to go had already departed. Few Christians regretted what had happened. Indeed, once all those enslaved in Granada were sold, the war had made a considerable profit for the crown.

The edict requiring conversion did not amount, in the queen’s eyes, to forced conversion, because Muslims had been offered the alternative of leaving Castile or undergoing baptism. A number of Castilian Mudéjares fled to Aragon, and to Navarre, where they could still practice