Granada

Granada is the Abencerrajes’ former home and the seat of the royal power that first condemns and later helps restore their family fortunes in the embedded tale told by Felismena. Though the romance’s decisive encounters occur on the frontier and in neighboring strongholds, Granada supplies their political and emotional background: Abindarráez is born there, inherits the consequences of the purge, and remains subject to the king’s authority even while living elsewhere.

Granada in the Embedded Tale

Granada enters the narrative during a story Felismena relates at Wise Felicia’s house. At dinner, Felicia asks her to recount an incident from Vandalia, and Felismena begins with the career of Rodrigo de Narváez, whose military reputation was established during the Infante Fernando’s capture of Antequera. The account then follows Narváez to Álora, where he commands a frontier stronghold and encounters Abindarráez. Granada is not the setting of their meeting, but it is the city that explains the young Moor’s name, family history, and precarious position.

The tale connects Granada to a wider network of places: Abindarráez was born in the city, raised in Cártama, and later rides from there toward Coín to meet Jarifa. The king’s orders also move Jarifa’s father from Cártama to Coín, separating the lovers before Abindarráez is captured near Álora. Granada’s influence thus travels beyond its walls through royal commands, inherited disgrace, and the obligations imposed on families living in its orbit.

The Abencerrajes and the Royal Purge

Abindarráez describes the Abencerrajes as a lineage once celebrated for courage in war, prudence in peace, and service in government. Its older members sat on the king’s council; its younger knights distinguished themselves in arms and in the service of ladies. The family was admired by ordinary people and honored by the king, while its generosity, courtesy, and distinction had become proverbial. Granada’s account of its past is therefore not simply a record of an obscure family’s fall: it recalls a lineage that had helped embody the city’s prestige.

That standing collapses after the king commits an unspecified wrong against two Abencerrajes. The family is then accused of conspiring with ten other kinsmen to kill the king and divide the realm in revenge. The tale leaves open whether the conspiracy was real or fabricated; it emphasizes that the accusation was discovered before it could be carried out and that the accused were executed before the populace learned of it. Abindarráez recounts the public’s grief: townspeople, knights, and ladies mourned the condemned, while people offered the king large sums of gold and silver to obtain mercy. The king refused their appeals.

The punishment reaches beyond those executed. The family’s houses are demolished, its property confiscated, and its members denounced as traitors. All the men of the lineage are put to death except Abindarráez’s father and uncle, who are found uninvolved. The edict permits those two to remain in Granada, but requires that any sons be sent away to be raised outside the city and that any daughters be married beyond the kingdom. Abindarráez’s birth in Granada is thus coupled with a childhood shaped by exclusion: the city is his ancestral home, but the decree ensures he cannot be brought up there.

Royal Power Beyond the City

The king’s authority continues to organize the lovers’ lives after the purge. Abindarráez explains that his father sent him away in obedience to the edict, and that he grew up at a fortress that had once belonged to Christians. Later, the king orders Jarifa’s father to leave his post at Cártama and take up residence at Coín. The move leaves Jarifa behind and creates the separation that makes Abindarráez’s nighttime journey—and his capture by Narváez—so consequential.

Narváez’s intervention makes the connection to Granada explicit. After hearing Abindarráez’s story, he grants him temporary freedom to reach Coín and see Jarifa, on the promise that he will return to captivity within three days. Abindarráez keeps that promise; Jarifa chooses to accompany him back to Álora. Once Abindarráez has recovered from his wounds, he asks Narváez to seek the king’s pardon for their marriage, contracted without Jarifa’s father’s permission. Narváez’s letter stresses that Abindarráez and his father were innocent of the alleged conspiracy and asks the king to arrange forgiveness between the lovers and Jarifa’s father.

The king responds by ordering Jarifa’s father to forgive the couple and receive Abindarráez as a son. The resolution does not erase the earlier purge or restore the Abencerrajes’ former place in Granada; instead, it shows the king’s continuing capacity to determine the couple’s legal and familial future. The same royal center that enforced exile can, through a request from Narváez, authorize reconciliation beyond the city.

Narrative Significance

Granada’s role rests on a contrast between public reputation and political vulnerability. The Abencerrajes are remembered as exemplary in both war and peace, yet their reputation cannot protect them from a royal accusation or prevent the destruction of their houses and standing. Their fall also explains why Abindarráez can be a noble-born knight while growing up away from his birthplace, and why a private love story remains entangled with the legacy of collective punishment.

The tale ultimately sets royal command beside personal and chivalric conduct. The king’s earlier refusal of the city’s pleas for clemency is answered, in the lovers’ case, by Narváez’s mercy toward a captive, Abindarráez’s fidelity to his promise to return, and the king’s later order of pardon. Granada is therefore more than a point of origin: it is the political force behind the story’s inherited wound, and the authority whose intervention permits the lovers’ marriage to be acknowledged.