Boabdil

Boabdil, King of Granada, is the ruler whose surrender transfers Granada and the Alhambra Palace to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in January 1492. His capitulation ends the city’s resistance after it is encircled, starved, and left without the promised help from abroad. The novel also makes his surrender a lasting point of reference for Catalina of Aragon: the loss of his homeland and the brevity of his peace echo in her own experience of exile and homesickness.

King of a besieged city

The account initially presents Granada as a power that should be difficult to defeat. The Moors expect kin and allies from Africa, with support imagined as reaching from Morocco to Senegal, as well as assistance from Baghdad and Constantinople. Granada may appear small beside the conquests of Ferdinand and Isabella, but its defenders see it as backed by a far wider Muslim world.

That expectation collapses during the siege. The promised African support does not come, and the Turks’ pledged friendship brings no janissaries. The account also names the death of Granada’s champion, the city’s encirclement, and the starvation of its people among the circumstances draining Moorish resistance. Boabdil’s position is therefore defined by the widening gap between the support his city expects and the isolation it faces.

Surrender and transfer of Granada

Within days of the meeting of the champions, Boabdil agrees to terms of peace. A few days later, he comes on foot to the city’s iron gates and hands the keys of the Alhambra Palace to Ferdinand and Isabella on a silken pillow. The transfer is described as a complete surrender: Granada, its red fortress, and the palace within its walls pass to the Spanish monarchs.

The ceremony marks a decisive change in sovereignty. The surrender is not presented as a negotiated preservation of Granada’s former political order; the city and palace are given to the victorious rulers. Catalina, then a child, enters the Alhambra with her parents and experiences its beauty as a place of luxury. Her early attachment to the palace gives Boabdil’s loss a personal resonance in the narrative, beyond its place in the military outcome.

The broken promise to his people

The terms of surrender include a solemn promise that Muslims under Christian rule will be as safe as Christians had been under Boabdil. The promise of convivencia—the prospect of Moor, Christian, and Jew living with security and self-respect—gives the surrender a political and religious dimension beyond the transfer of territory. The later account says that this commitment is betrayed within three months: Jews are expelled, Muslims are threatened, and conversion to the Christian faith is demanded, with the Inquisition used to test suspected dissent.

Boabdil does not appear in these later episodes as an actor; instead, the fate of his people exposes the distance between the promises made at surrender and the policies that follow. Catalina’s recollection frames the broken agreement as a failure of trust, and associates the construction of a single Christian nation with the suppression of Granada’s religious diversity.

Memory, exile, and narrative significance

Years later, when Catalina must leave the Alhambra and Spain, she imagines herself as homesick as Boabdil. The comparison connects her departure from the place she regards as her private paradise with his loss of Granada. It does not make their circumstances identical; rather, his name becomes the measure through which the novel expresses the pain of being separated from a beloved home and the short duration of peace.

Boabdil’s narrative significance thus extends beyond the moment of capitulation. His surrender establishes the victorious Christian power that will later break its promise to Granada’s Muslims, while the memory attached to his loss enables Catalina to understand exile as more than a political condition. Granada’s fall is both a transfer of rule and the beginning of a remembered wound.