Friday, September 25, 2015

Israel must be steadfast in protecting its people and their rights r10 - YJ Draiman


Israel must be steadfast in protecting its people and their rights r10
Many nations and people continue to question Israel’s control of its Ancestral, and internationally guaranteed liberated territory. (See: the Faisal Weitzman agreement of 1919}
It seems too convenient no one is mentioning the historical fact Arab countries had terrorized and expelled about a million Jewish families and their children from their countries.  Moreover, it seems forgotten the Arabs illegally confiscated all Jewish assets, businesses, homes and over 120,000 sq. km of Real estate property. (Hitler would have been proud). 
Like the American Indian “Trail Of Tears”, many of the Jews terrorized and forcefully ejected from Arab countries died due to hardship, famine and starvation during their effort to get to Israel. More importantly, it cannot be ignored many of the expelled Jewish families had lived in the Arab countries for over 2,500 years.  Longer in fact than the very Arabs who were expelling them.   Most of the expelled Jewish people, their children, and families were resettled in Greater Israel and today account for over half the population of Israel.
The Homes and Land the Arab countries confiscated from the Jewish people totaled approximately 120,440 sq. km., or 75,000 sq. miles; which is over 6 times the size of Israel. The value of the confiscated land and homes today would be worth trillions of dollars. 
During the 2,600 plus years the Jewish people and their children lived in Arab countries they suffered Pogroms, Libel claims, beatings, beheadings, false imprisonment and extreme hardship as second class citizens. Jews had their businesses, homes, and houses of worship pillaged and burned.  Their wives and daughters were raped, Arabs sold them as slaves, and Jews were forced to either convert to Islam or be murdered.
The Arabs received over 5 million square miles of territory after WWI, which contained a tremendous resource of oil reserves. History proves Israel territory extended all the way up to Iraq, which would make the land and all those oil reserves belonging to the Jewish people.  Yet, Arab nations are no longer satisfied with the gift of land and oil to which they never had legal claim. Now, Arab nation are demanding more land and more compensation.
Furthermore, the Arab countries are not satisfied with having once terrorized and chased away the million Jewish families and their children.  Now, the Arab countries want to chase Jews away from their own ancestral and historical land. (You have murdered them and now you expect to inherit their assets).
Israel must respond with extreme force to any and all violent demonstration and terror. Israel's population is entitled to, and must have peace and tranquility without intimidation by anyone, at any cost.
The Jewish people have suffered enough in the Diaspora for over the past 2,400 years. It is time for the Jewish people to live as free people in their own land without terror and violence.
It is long overdue and about time to consider and realize that the only realistic solution for a peaceful coexistence in Israel is a population transfer of the Arab-Palestinians.  It is time to transfer said “Palestinians” to the territories the Arab nations confiscated from the Jewish people.  Also considered to receive said “Palestinians” should be Jordan which originally was Jewish territory and illegally given 78% of the 120,000 sq. km. Jewish territory to the Arabs as a new state. 
It is time, nay, past time to settle this dispute once and for all. Instead of utilizing all the financial aid and resources for conflict and terror, the financial aid and resources must be used for relocation, housing and new industry.  In so doing, the “Palestinians” will realize a boost in their standard of living and be able to finally stabilize their lives, thus benefiting the host countries as well. Many Arab leaders have suggested these solutions for many years. 
YJ Draiman



No Jew has the right to yield the rights of the Jewish People in Israel - David Ben Gurion

No Jew has the right to yield the rights of
the Jewish People in Israel -
David Ben Gurion
(David Ben-Gurion was the first Prime Minister of Israel and widely hailed as
the State's main founder).
"No Jew has the right to yield the rights
of the Jewish People in 
Israel.
No Jew has the authority to do so.
No Jewish body has the authority to do so.
Not even the entire Jewish People alive today
has the right to yield any part of 
Israel.
It is the right of the Jewish People over the generations, a right that under
no conditions can be cancelled.
Even if Jews during a specific period proclaim
they are relinquishing this right, they have neither the power nor the
authority to deny it to future generations.
No concession of this type is binding or
obligates the Jewish People. Our right to the country - the entire country -
exists as an eternal right, and we shall not yield this historic right until
its full and complete redemption is realized."
(David Ben Gurion, Zionist Congress, Basel,
Switzerland, 1937.)
"No country in the world exists today by
virtue of its 'right'.
All countries exist today by virtue of their
ability to defend themselves against those who seek their destruction."
“Man can live about forty days without food,
about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for
one second without hope”


Monday, August 31, 2015

Why Was a Nazi Flag Flying from a Jerusalem Hotel FAST in the 1930's? - Jerusalem Pearl Hotel - Draiman



Why Was a Nazi Flag Flying from a Jerusalem Hotel FAST in the 1930's? - Jerusalem Pearl Hotel - Draiman


Why Was a Nazi Flag Flying from a Jerusalem Hotel FAST in the 1930's? - Jerusalem Pearl Hotel - Draiman



It was replaced by The Jerusalem Pearl Hotel in 1995 by the Draiman family. See picture at the bottom.
Posted: 30 Aug 2015 11:11 AM PDT
We recently published pictures from the British Library's Endangered Archives Programincluding this incredible picture of Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem's Old City which we have dated to the mid-1890's. Only in 1898 was the wall near Jaffa Gate breached so that carriages could drive into the city.

Jaffa Gate and A(braham) Fast's restaurant.  (Debbas Collection, British Library)
































We wanted to know more about the store on the left with the sign "A Fast. Restauranteur."  Was this a tourist establishment of Abraham Fast, who in 1907 took over a large hotel several hundred meters to the west of the building pictured above and renamed it "Hotel Fast?"

German troops marching in Jerusalem on Good Friday, 



April 6, 1917. The building on the left is
the Fast Hotel. (Imperial War Museum, UK)

It was a leading hotel with 100 rooms, built around a court yard with Ionic, Corinthian and Doric columns.

Hotel Fast and its kosher restaurant was a well-known establishment in Jerusalem for decades, and was probably considered by many to be a Jewish-owned establishment because of its Jewish clientele.
Nothing could be further from the truth.  The Fasts were German Templers.


The German consulate in the Fast Hotel, 1933.
(Wikimedia, Tamar Hayardeni)







They lived in Jerusalem's German Colony and were exiled by the British after World War I and during World War II because of their support for Germany.

We recently uncovered pictures of German troops marching in Jerusalem streets on Good Friday 1917. Readers were able to identify the building on the left as the Fast Hotel.

Our biggest surprise was finding this picture of the German consulate in the Hotel Fast with the German Swastika flag flying from the building. 


During World War II, the hotel was taken over by the British army command and turned into the Australian army club. 




The Hotel Fast housed
 Australian soldiers in World War II. 
 Here they are greeting the Australian 
Prime Minister Robert Menzies and the commander of the Australian troops in Australia, 
Lt. Gen. Thomas Blamey in February 1941. The Matson Photo Service, shown on the ground floor, was run by Eric Matson, originally from the American Colony Photographic Department. 
 Matson left Palestine in 1946 for the United States.  His collection of photos were bequeathed to the Library of Congress where many of the pictures in this 
website were found.  (Library of Congress



The Hotel Fast building was abandoned in 1967 and torn down in 1976 to make way for the Dan Pearl Hotel - Built by the Draiman family in 1995.

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Arabs expelled the Jews from all their Countries – Confiscated their assets including land - YJ Draiman


Arabs expelled the Jews from all their Countries – Confiscated their assets including land

DECEMBER 23, 2014, 12:53 PM


davids-kingdom

The Jewish exodus from Arab lands refers to the 20th century persecution and expulsion or mass forced departure of Jews, primarily of Sephardi and Mizrahi background, from Arab and Islamic countries. The forced migration started in the late 19th century, but accelerated after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. According to official Arab statistics, over 995,000 Jews and their families were forced out of their homes in Arab countries from 1946 until the mid 1970’s. Some 670,000 resettled in Israel, forced to leave behind the Arab confiscated the Jewish personal property, businesses, homes and 120,400 sq. km. of Real estate property 6 times the size of Israel valued today in the trillions of dollars.

The campaign to sheds light on a little-discussed aspect of the Israeli-Arab conflict: In the wake of the War of Independence and the establishment of Israel, two major population movements took place in the Middle East. The one that is frequently mentioned is the Palestinian exodus, but at the same time almost one million Jews were forced to leave Arab countries where they had lived for over 2,500 years. According to official Arab statistics, due to persecution and violence, some 995,000 Jews and their families were forced to leave those Arab countries from 1948 to the mid of the 1970’s, and about 670,000 of them were absorbed in Israel. For the sake of comparison, the United Nations data estimate the original population of Arab-Palestinian refugees at 585,000.
Because we had no home for nearly two thousand years, Israel made itself independent of its Arab-British oppressors in 1948. In that year, another great Jewish Exodus occurred, leading to a large increase in the population of Israel and the decimation by the Arabs of some of the oldest Jewish communities on earth.
Jews have lived in the countries now occupied by Arabs since the destruction of the first Temple in 586 B.C.E. Yet, the descendants of these original inhabitants of so many Middle Eastern lands were driven out of their ancestral homes by the religious bigotry and racial animosity of the Arab invaders.
In 1945 there were more than 995,000 Jews and their families living in Arabic speaking countries. Today, there are less than 6,000. Some Arab states like Libya are completely judenrein, i.e., cleansed of Jews, as the Arabs’ best friend, Hitler, liked to say.
About 670,000 of these Jews were absorbed by Israel. Another 360,000 went to Europe, America or Australia. Evidently, then, the refugee problem in the Middle East consists of the failure of the Arab states to compensate these 995,000 Jewish refugees for the property and assets they were forced to leave behind.
Examples are Iraq, which once had a Jewish population of 197,000 and now only has less than one hundred Jews left. A good number of Jews left Egypt in 1948. Egypt is the country where Yasser Arafat was born (Arafat is an Egyptian. His real name is Husseinei). There were 91,000 Jews in Egypt in 1948. Yet, in connection with the Egyptian aggression of 1957, more than 27,300 Jews were forced to leave Egypt. Today, the Jewish community in Egypt amounts to only 180. These Jews were forced to leave assets of $200 billion, for which they should now be compensated.
There are no Jews in Algeria today. That country is also Judenrein. In 1948 there were 190,000 Jews in Algeria. In Morocco, which was the home of 298,000 Jews before 1948, there are today only 5,700 Jews. Similar decimation occurred in Syria, Tunisia, Yemen and other Arab states. The governments of the these countries forcibly expelled all Jews, who then increased the Israeli population. These Jews from Arab countries consist today over half the population of Israel. From the Arab point of view that was indeed as stupid a policy as the Arab incitement of the Russian population against the Jews in that country. That anti-Jewish campaign by the Arab agitators led to the arrival in Israel of over a million Russian Jews. Many of the Jews were engineers and scientists of the first order. This helped Israel a great deal. Now the Arabs are making life miserable for the Jews of France and Belgium. There are over 790,000 Jews in France. If the Arabs keep up their attacks on these European Jews then Israel will again absorb a large contingent of Jews forced to flee from France (and Belgium).
The Jewish exodus from the Arab lands was dramatic. Many Jews fled on foot and died on the way while others were rescued by “Operation Magic Carpet.” This consisted of bringing 58,000 Yemeni Jews to Israel by plane.
It is evident, therefore, that the “refugee problem” in Israel consists of the failure of the Arabs to pay compensation to the one million Jews and their families who were forcefuly and violently driven out of their homelands by the Arab hate mongers.
And There were riots prior to Israel existing. Simply wounding or killing Jews because there was a chance that Israel would exist.
Go on . Tell me that 6 Times the land of Israel taken from Jews in Arab countries plus personal assets, businesses and homes and Jewish-owned real-estate forced to leave behind in Arab lands has been estimated at 120,000 square kilometers or 75,000 sq. miles (six times the size of the State of Israel). Valued today in the trillions of dollars isn’t “Abusing ” them . Its just your regular old nationalizing right? No racial hatred at all I am sure. Not to mention they were productive citizens who had no interest in moving to Palestine-Israel or they would have already done so (and wouldn’t have been so wealthy)
“If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance.” – George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Text of Law drafted by Political Committee of Arab League
  1. Beginning with November 28, 1947, all Jewish citizens of (Name of Arab Country) will be considered as members of the Jewish minority State of Palestine and will have to register with the authorities of the region wherein they reside, giving their names, the exact number of members in their families, their addresses, the names of their banks and the amounts of their deposits in these banks. This formality is to be accomplished within seven days.
  1. Beginning with (November 28, 1947), bank accounts of Jews will be frozen. These funds will be utilized in part or in full to finance the movement of resistance to Zionist ambitions in Palestine.
  1. Beginning with (November 28, 1947), only Jews who are subjects of foreign countries will be considered as “neutrals”. These will be compelled either to return to their countries, with a minimum of delay, or be considered as Arabs and obliged to accept active service with the Arab army.
  1. Jews who accept active service in Arab armies or place themselves at the disposal of those armies, will be considered as “Arabs”.
  1. Every Jew whose activities reveal that he is an active Zionist will be considered as a political prisoner and will be interned in places specifically designated for that purpose by police authorities or by the Government. His financial resources, instead of being frozen, will be confiscated.
  1. Any Jew who will be able to prove that his activities are anti-Zionist will be free to act as he likes, provided that he declares his readiness to join the Arab armies.
  1. The foregoing (para.6) does not mean that those Jews will not be submitted to paragraphs 1 and 2 of this law.
  2. It is time to balance and remedy the tragedies of the Jews and the Arab-Palestinians and stop the hostilities.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Chronology, Photos and Maps of Islamic Spain (Al-Andalus) - Muslim Spain 711 - c1232 - 1492



Chronology, Photos and Maps of Islamic Spain
(Al-Andalus)

CORDOBA - THE GREAT MOSQUE
(and a cathedral)




The logistics of a visit to now little town of Cordoba from our Andalusian  base at Carmona could not have been easier.  As soon as you cross the river there is a convenient car park by the walls of the old Porta Sevilla, looked after by the usual helpful villainous looking Romany car space finder and (in our experience reliable) custodio.  Then it's just a quiet stroll through the attractive streets to the Mosque.  There are not even many people around until you close in on the coach dumping ground close to the Mosque.  Inside the great building the early crowds thin dramatically as American lunch time and tight tour schedules call (Cordoba is not a tour company overnighter), and by 2 the mosque is almost empty - time for serious photography. 

Then after 3 it's time to enjoy another great Spanish luxury - the late lunch (without tourists).  For the second time in Spain the Dom risked a restaurant next to the main event (José Garcia Marín's "El Caballo Rojo" -The Red Horse), and for the second time it worked brilliantly - an aperitif of cold dry sherry, cold white garlic soup (a superior cousin of gazpacho - made with ground almonds, bread and ?? as well as lots of garlic - and one of the gastronomic discoveries of the trip), a local dry white wine, and melt in your mouth poached fish.  The sort of day  that would make anyone want to be a Paradox.

If we were to revisit Andalucia we would spend 2 or three nights in Cordoba - there is more to experience and enjoy than can be done in a day trip.


784 AD, and Abd al-Ramin I gets going with the first phase of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, using columns, capitals and bases recycled from the previous site occupant, the Visigoth Church of  San Vincente, and the ruins of other Visigothic and Roman buildings.  As most of these components were different sizes, their incorporation into what comes across as a coherent whole, was in itself a major major architectural achievement.  For example, look at the way the bases on the columns above have been adjusted for height, or how the capital further below is clearly not sitting on the column it started its life with.

The need for height and lightness is achieved through the equally brilliant idea of double arches.  Just how critical the height is to the space's aesthetic is apparent when you go through to the "new" (= late 900s) al-Mansur part which superficially looks the same but feels more cramped because it is a foot or two less high.  Some of the double arches like those in the middle ground below are semi circle above over circle (horse-shoe), whereas others are semicircle above semicircle (see top photo), again designed around the requirements dictated by the recycled columns et al.

Today this is one of the oldest places of worship still intact, and it was so big that even the decision by the medieval church to build a large cathedral in the middle of it has not destroyed it's essential feel.


A closer look at how each footing / column / capital / arch structure had to be individually designed with appropriate spacers / joins to accommodate whatever recycled material was being used.  


From the orange treed courtyard, the cathedral structure - parachuted into the middle of the mosque - becomes more apparent, but inside it can be ignored, so large is the unaffected section of the columned mosque.

On the north side of the courtyard, a few modifications and height extensions converted a minaret into a bell tower.  After his sack of Santiago de Compostela in 997, Al-Mansur had had Christian slaves carry the cathedral bells from Compostela to the Great Mosque of Cordoba.  240 years later, in 1236, Fernando III ("The Saint"), King of León and Castile (1198 -  1217 (King of Castile) - 1230 (King of León) - 1252 (54)) had Muslim slaves carry the bells back to Santiago after he captured Cordoba.


The western facade gives one some idea of the size of the space inside.  There are also some attractive features on the East wall - which we will get to, along with the ghetto,  when we stay overnight in Cordoba one day. 



For other Paradoxplace links visit the home page


After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Vandals (briefly) then the Visigoths fill the vacuum left on the Iberian peninsular.  Visigoth King Leovigildo establishes his court in Toledo in 569, and in 589 Toledo becomes the political and religious capital of Hispania, after the abandonment of Arianism and conversion to Catholicism by the Visigoth king Recaredo.

The Visigoth administrations are generally shambolic and riven with intrigue (and indeed there are only a couple of hundred thousand Visigoths around anyway compared to a few million Hispano-Romans), and they only survive for just over a hundred years before a competitor higher up the organizational food chain arrives in 711.  The Visigoths do, however, leave the world the architectural legacy of the horseshoe arch and the intellectual legacies of the encyclopaedias of San Isidoro.



Muslim Spain    711 - c1232 - 1492 (only Nasrid Grenada from c1232)

711

Berber Tarik-ibn-Zeyad crosses the straits of Gibraltar (jabal Tariq - the mountain of Tariq) into Iberia and, meeting no effective resistance, heads north and ends up taking over the Visigoth capital of Toledo.

732

A larger force of Arabs joins in and within a few years (around 719) Arabs and Berbers are rampaging overland through the West of France.  They suffer a big defeat at the hands of Duke Odo of Aquitaine near Toulouse in 721, but even this does not stop their advance into central France.  Some even get as far as Burgundy (Autun to be exact, which fell to Umayyad forces on 22 August 725).  But they eventually have the misfortune to encounter Charles Martel, the most competent and ruthless of the Frankish / French commanders (and grandfather of the Emperor Charlemagne the Great), who establishes his authority in a series of skirmishes in the area between Tours and Poitiers in 732 (called the Battle of Poitiers if you came from Aquitaine, or the Battle of Tours if you were a Frank, but either way it was not the big set piece battle it is often portrayed as) and then further south, after which the Muslim threat fades away back across the Pyrenees into Al-Andalus.

c718 - 737

Pelayo - first King of the Asturias is elected by the tribes-people of the Asturias and Visigoths who had escaped Tariq.  His victory over the Moors at Covadonga sometime between 718 and 725 marks the beginnings of Christian resistance to the Moorish conquerors.  Alfonso I (King of the Asturias 739 - 757 and the first of numerous Alfonsos to King the Spanish Kingdoms) was Pelayo's son-in-law.  Rebellious frictions between Berbers and Moors in 740 enable Alfonso to expand the frontiers of his fledgling Kingdom into Galicia and León.

755

Back in Damascus, the Umayyads fall victims to a palace coup by the Abbasids, who take over the Muslim world and set up capital in Baghdad, which they soon make into the happening world glittering court.

756

Just one member of the otherwise exterminated Umayyad "royal family" escapes to Spain, where he settles in Cordoba, proclaims himself Emir Abd al-Ramin I ( ? - 756 - 788), and welds together (until he dies anyway) the disparate Arab (Moor) and Berber forces into the Kingdom of al-Andalus, aka the Emirate of Cordoba.

777

The Baghdad based Abbasid Caliph pays the Emperor Charlemagne to invade Spain.  The Emperor's nephew Roland unsuccessfully lays siege to Zaragoza, then sacks the Basque town of Pamplona before retreating messily through the Roncesvalles Pass on 15 Aug 778, where he gets taken apart by angry Basques (not Moors as  several accounts tell you) - a battle which gives rise to the famous epic "Song of Roland" some 300 years later.

784

Abd al-Ramin I gets going with the first phase of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, using columns, capitals and bases recycled from the previous site occupant, the Visigoth Church of  San Vincente, and the ruins of other Visigoth and Roman buildings.  Today this beautiful space is one of the oldest European places of worship still intact.

844

Vikings start attacking ports down the Atlantic coast, and eventually round the bottom of Spain and reach Seville where they are beaten up big time by the local Muslim forces and retire, never to return.

929

Abd al-Ramin III (912 - 929 - 961 (49)) takes over what is by now the glittering court of Europe and declares Cordoba a Caliphate, naturally with his good self as Caliph.  There are now 3 Caliphs in the Moslem world.

976 - 1002

Abd al-Ramin's son, Caliph Al-Hakam II, dies in 976, and the awful Arab Al-Mansur (c938 - 1002 (64))  takes over as regent for the child Caliph Hisham II.  All hell breaks loose across the Christian north and east of the Iberian Peninsula as Al-Mansur locks up young Hisham in the new Palace of Al-Medina and takes to the road.  During the course of some 57 military campaigns  (that's about 2 a year) he destroys (like burns to the ground), among other things, Barcelona (985), Santiago de Compostela (997), Leon,  and numerous churches, abbeys and monasteries.   This counterproductively (for him) leads the disparate Christian Kingdoms to unite, and eventually his army is crushed in 1002 by a coalition of Christian forces at the Battle of Calatañazor.  Mansur, unable to resist the temptation of destroying the monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla whilst retreating home, is wounded and dies. 

And that's basically it for the Umayyads of Al-Andalus - the dynasty finally dies out in 1031.

Postscript story:  After the sack of Santiago de Compostela in 997, Al-Mansur had had relays of Christian slaves carry the cathedral bells to the Great Mosque of Cordoba.  Fernando III, King of León and Castile ("The Saint" 1198 -  1217 (King of Castile) - 1230 (King of León) - 1252 (54)) had Muslim slaves carry the bells back to Santiago in 1236 after he recaptured Cordoba.  Fernando was a great-grandson of Eleanor of Aquitaine through his mother Berenguela and her mother Queen Leonora, one of the Plantagenet Kids.

1040

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (c. 1040 – 1099 (59)), aka el Cid Campeador or just el Cid, starts off in the Royal Court of Castile but is later exiled and goes mercenary - generalling for both Christian and Moors until finally capturing and ruling Valencia until his death in 1099.  On the way he generates material for the first great Spanish epic poem (El Cantar del Mio Cid (1140)), and numerous writers, poets, composers and film producers over the next thousand years.  You will hear that officially el Cid's tomb is in Burgos Cathedral (and indeed his and Mrs Cid's bones were moved there in the 1920s), but make sure to see the much earlier and more interesting (and now boneless) sarcophagus in the Benedictine (now Cistercian) Abbey of San Pedro de Gardina, just outside Burgos.



1085

Moorish Toledo falls to the forces of the Reconquista led by King Alfonso VI of León and Castile.

1099

As the first Crusaders take over Jerusalem, the whole of Muslim Spain has fragmented into warlordships - known as Taifa Kingdoms.  One of the most important of these is based on Seville (Isbilya), and it is said that the embroidered lining of the St Isidore reliquary casket which Seville gave to King Ferdinand I's new monastery in León in the mid 1000s, is made from the mantle of Isbalyan ruler al-Mutadid (ruler 1042 - 1068). 

Christian Kingdoms of the north and east have taken advantage of this disunity to speed up the roll-back of the borders of Al-Andalus. The arrival of a new (austere Muslim) player - the Almoravids - gets Muslim Spain back into a sort of order for 100 years, then yet another group - the (more austere) Almohads, takes over until the early 1200s, by which time the borders of Al-Andalus have shrunk even further.

1147

Alfonso Henriques breaks from Leon and Castile, proclaims the establishment of an independent Portugal with himself as King, and sweeps south capturing Santarem and then laying siege to and capturing Lisbon with the help of a crusader fleet.  As a token of thanks for the victory at Santarem, the new King gives a large amount of land and money for the establishment of a daughter house of Saint Bernard's Cistercian Abbey of Clairvaux - to become the magnificent Cistercian Abbey of Santa Maria de Alcobaça.

1232

The last Muslim group to gain power is the Nasrid family.  By this time the Arab presence is on its way to being pushed back by "La Reconquista" - the forces of the Christian Monarchs - to the Kingdom of Granada.  Seville falls in 1248, but the Nasrids manage to wheel and deal another 260 years of co-existence, and though they are an irrelevant civilization by comparison with the Cordoba Caliphate, they do bequeath to the world the glory of the Nasrid Palaces on the Alhambra in Granada

1492

Eventually in January 1492 the Nasrids are forced  to surrender to the recently united forces of Ferdinand and Isabella, "Los Reyes Cathólicos" (the "Catholic Monarchs" - blessed as such by the Spanish Borgia Pope Alessandro VI (1431 - 1492 - 1503 (72)).  The 781 year Muslim presence in Spain is over.  Later in the year Columbus sets sail from Huelva and Lorenzo de' Medici dies in Florence - it is "the end of the Middle Ages".