Chapter 11 - The Granadan War, Act II
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The Ottoman Response -
Sultan Bayezid II of the Ottoman Empire
In late August of 1501, after hearing the news of the fall of Málaga, Sultan Muhammad XII and a representative of the Wattasids travelled to the Sublime Porte in Constantinople. Muhammad and the envoy then discussed plans for a potential great
jihad with their Ottoman counterpart,
Bayezid II on the Ottoman intervention in not only just Granada, but also along the entire Southern Mediterranean. The plan was to bring 20,000 troops under the privateer and admiral
Kemal Reis, who had just defeated a large Venetian fleet at
Cape Zonchio in the Peloponnese two years ago to land at Valencia and incite unrest among its large
Mudéjar population, as well as assist the Granadans in defending the Emirate by landing in
Almería, which was not captured by the Castilians. Kemal had been involved in interfering with both the Castilians and the Aragonese, raiding towns along the Balearic coast from 1487 to 1495, when he was made an admiral of the Ottoman Navy. A smaller army of 10,000 led by
Hersekzade Ahmed Pasha would reinforce the Wattasids in Morocco by initiating a surprise attack against the Portuguese in Tânger and Ceuta, occupy the said cities and reinforce their rule over there. In addition, the corsair brothers
Oruç and
Hızır Reis were summoned by Bayezid to provide 40 galleys to support Kemal’s fleet to aggressively combat Portuguese, Castilian and Aragonese ships in the Mediterranean at all costs.
The two armies, totaling 30,000 men, were to be the most daunting invasion force the Ottomans have assembled since the failed
Siege of Otranto in 1480-1481. Bayezid, no longer preoccupied with the Mamluks across the border in which he
engaged in a decade ago and with victory against the Venetian forces becoming inevitable approved the invasion plans, determined to defend his Muslim brethren in Granada and keep the Castilians and Portuguese in check to the last man.
The Hafsid and Zayyanid Sultanates, circa 1400 AD
Along the way back to Granada, Muhammad XII then travelled to Tunis and Tlemcen, the respective capital cities of the
Hafsid and
Zayyanid sultanates. In his overtures to Sultans
Abu Abdallah Muhammad IV of the Hafsids and
Abu Abdallah IV of the Zayyanids, in which they would assist the Granadans and the Ottomans and rally against the Christian Iberian kingdoms. Both Sultans, alarmed by the encroachment and fearing that they would be next to be conquered after Granada falls, surprisingly accepted the Sultan’s plea.
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The Intervention -
The remains of Gozo's Citadella, which held off the Ottoman invaders during the war
Shortly before the invasion, a joint Ottoman-Granadan-Wattasid-Hafsid-Zayyanid
jihad against Portugal, Castile and Aragon to defend the last of al-Andalus and Maghreb was declared and read out loud by Sultan Bayezid II, much to the excitement of the crowd in Constantinople. The Ottomans finally intervened in October of 1501, with Kemal Reis’s army successfully occupying the island of Malta [1], which was part of the Kingdom of Sicily, whose domains are ruled by the King of Aragon Enrique I (except for the smaller island for Gozo, which stubbornly held off due to the fierce resistance from the island’s
Citadella fortress) thanks to the sheer firepower of Ottoman artillery, which held off its last Muslim invasion in 1429 when the Hafsid forces attempted to capture the island, only to pillage the countryside. The small island was to be used as a waypoint between the Ottomans and the Maghrebi coast in order to get to Granada. The following month later, the smaller island of
Pantelleria was seized without any resistance, which was later used by the corsair brothers as their base to harass Castilian and Aragonese ships. Subsequently, cities and towns along the southern coast of Sicily, such as Syracuse, Ragusa, Gela, Agrigento and Marsala were raided and occupied by an Ottoman garrison mostly comprised of levies and non-Muslim Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian auxiliaries with a small janissary detachment, as well as as Zayyanid and Hafsid forces, much to the resistance of the local inhabitants.
A small scale model of Valencia in the 16th century (
Image Source)
By mid-December, Kemal Reis’s forces landed at Valencia, and with the help of the region’s large
Mudéjar community ransacked the entire area. Around half of the city was ravaged and burnt to the ground, including most of the city center. The city’s notable buildings like the famous
Llotja de la Seda, the symbol of the city’s commercial prosperity were either vandalized or destroyed, and the remains of the city’s cathedral was converted to a makeshift mosque for the
Mudéjars. Kemal’s army then made similar raids on Cartagena and Alicante on his way before landing in Almería. Around the same time, Hersekzade’s smaller army landed at the Tânger Peninsula much to the help of the Wattasids and seized both Tânger and Ceuta, where the small Portuguese garrison was decimated while the Portuguese forces in Granada led by Pacheco Pereira were away assisting Fernández de Córdoba’s forces in Málaga.
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The Invasion of Morocco -
The São Jorge Castle as depicted in a 16th century illuminated manuscript of Lisbon
Rodrigo de Borgia, Pope Alexander VI
As the news of the Ottoman intervention reached the king’s court in the Palace of Alcáçova in Lisbon’s
São Jorge Castle, João II reacted angrily as he heard that a large army had raided Valencia, as well as the raids along the Balearic coast and the seizure of both Tânger and Ceuta. The following year in March of 1502, he and Queen Juana of Castile travelled to Rome to meet with Pope
Alexander VI to discuss the situation in Granada and North Africa. One of the pope’s last actions before his death one year later in 1503 was to proclaim a crusade, led by Portugal, Castile and Aragon to drive the Moors out of Iberia and bring back North Africa to Christendom as it once was back when Rome ruled them in the past.
Two months later, the Council of War was summoned in Lisbon to prepare to invasion of the Moroccan coast, and a grand army of 60,000 led by the King was assembled to take on the Wattasids, comprising of 20,000 Portuguese soldiers (14,000 footmen, mostly a mix of pikemen and handgunners with some crossbows, 4,000 cavalry and 2,000 knights), summoned from Portugal, Galiza and Leão, as well as 40,000 mercenaries (12,000 Italians, 6,000 English, 14,500 Germans, 7,500 Flemish) and 60 cannons, with the mercenaries being paid from Portugal’s vast wealth, from gold and ivory in Guinea to the spices being sold from India thanks to Vasco da Gama’s recent journey.
The army would then depart from Lisbon in late May and landed near the abandoned town of
Laraxe, where Portuguese spies reported to the King that the Wattasid Sultan, Abu Abd Allah al-Sheikh Muhammad ibn Yahya has mustered a large army of 30,000 (mostly made up of infantry and some cavalry, including 5,000 tribal shock cavalry) near
Alcácer Quibir alongside with Hersekzade’s smaller Ottoman army of 10,000 and 20 cannons. João II’s army, accompanied by Infante Afonso, decided to head southeast towards the direction of the said town, where the opposing armies met in the right bank of the
Loukkos River on June 4th of 1502.
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The Battle of Alcácer Quibir -
A romanticized depiction of Infante Afonso leading his knights during the Battle of Alcácer Quibir from a 19th century painting
The battle began when the Portuguese handgunners and cannons begin to exchange volleys of gunfire against the Moroccan-Ottoman army, with the Portuguese gaining the upper hand as they have more firepower than the Moroccans, inflicting heavy casualties on them despite the presence of Ottoman janissaries trying to fire back. The Wattasid Sultan then unleashed his tribal horsemen, numbering around 5,000 surging forward to flank the Portuguese forces, with the Moroccan infantry and the Ottoman army following to counter the Portuguese forces straight ahead towards the main column. The Portuguese knights then tried to counter the flank, resulting in a melee between the Portuguese and Moroccan cavalry.
During the melee, Infante Afonso’s contingent of knights and the Infante himself approached the Sultan. A duel between the two ensued and despite suffering minor wounds from the battle, Infante Afonso managed to slay Abu Abd Allah al-Sheikh Muhammad ibn Yahya as he drew his sword upon his neck, blowing a wound and leading to the Sultan falling down from his horse. This created momentum as the Moroccan infantry and cavalry began to panic as they saw their poor Sultan, stiff and lying on the ground in his pool of blood. Minutes later into the battle, João II’s knights encircled the Ottoman contingent after Hersekzade Ahmed Pasha was fatally shot by one of the Portuguese cannon balls. The entire janissary contingent was decimated and seeing all hope lost, the remaining Moroccan and Ottoman troops lost heart as the entire army was encircled by the Portuguese in the last half hour of the battle.
The Battle of Alcácer Quibir ended after 3 hours of heavy fighting, resulting in total defeat of the Moroccan-Ottoman army with 30,000 killed during the battle, with 8,000 captured and less than 2,000 escaping north to Tânger. By contrast, the Portuguese suffered way less casualties with around 5,000 killed during the battle, most of them during the phase when the Moroccan cavalry tried to flank the Portuguese forces. Over the next three weeks, the Portuguese army began to move up north to recapture Tânger and Ceuta with minimal losses. The battle is viewed with great pride by many Portuguese today in the same vein as Aljubarrota in 1385, Ceuta in 1415 and Toro in 1476 as it helped consolidate the Portuguese to pave the way for making Marrocos an integral part of Metropolitan Portugal. As the main Moroccan army and the smaller Ottoman army was decimated and the Portuguese free to dominate most of the Moroccan coast for the duration of the war, the tide slowly began to turn towards the Portuguese and the Castilians.
[1] The Hospitaller fortifications that held off the Ottomans in the OTL Great Siege of Malta in 1565 weren't built just yet, leading to the Ottoman forces having an easier time to break the early fortifications 64 years earlier.
Note - I've finally updated my timeline after nearly eight months as I have completely recovered from my issues, although I am still concentrated in going through my classes (assembly language is kinda hard, Japanese II is easy and data analytics is awesome BTW). The intervention of not only the Ottoman Empire, but also the Hafsid and Zayyanid sultanates in a unified jihad against Portugal, Castile and Aragon has expanded the Granadan War into a regional war spanning much of the Southern Mediterranean, from Morocco to Sicily. The Portuguese army has singlehandedly defeated the Moroccan-Ottoman army at Alcácer Quibir and is willing to march east along the coast. I will be uploading a map soon and in the next two chapters, I will be dealing with the war from the Castilian and Aragonese perspective along with the closing stages and the final peace treaty. Any suggestions and/or feedback for this chapter?
