The sources and questions relate to case study 1: The final stages of Muslim rule in Spain — Key events and actors: the Granada War and the conquest of Granada (1482–1492).

Source E

Joseph O’Callaghan, a professor of medieval history, writing in the academic book The Last Crusade in the West: Castile and the Conquest of Granada (2014).

The Castilian struggle to defeat the emirate of Granada was essentially a war of religions. In making that statement I do not mean to exclude other more material motives … Kings and emirs fought over boundaries, the possession of castles and lands, and economic resources. The contrast between fertile areas in Nasrid Granada and unproductive lands in certain Castilian regions surely drew the attention of the Castilian monarchs. Access to the Mediterranean and control of the straits of Gibraltar were also attractions. Greed and the desire for riches led to border raids by both sides. Plunder [items seized] in the form of livestock, jewels, and other goods, as well as people who were to be enslaved, enriched both Christians and Muslims. All those political and economic reasons are valid and were always in play. Nevertheless, I suggest that the struggle was ultimately a conflict between two societies, one Christian, the other Muslim. Each society was shaped by the spirit of a distinctive religion.

[Source: Joseph O’Callaghan, The Last Crusade in the West: Castile and the Conquest of Granada (2014), p. 226.
Reprinted with permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press.]

Source H

Andrew Hess, a professor specializing in Islamic civilization, writing in the academic book The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-African Frontier (2010).

Expansion attracted to the edge of Muslim territories an aggressive and upwardly mobile [socially ambitious] element from Christian society. Everywhere there were those who wished to take the possessions of the defeated [Muslims] and acquire the prestige that would legitimize their newfound wealth and power in the presence [minds] of the older Spanish nobility. In fifteenth-century Castile the distinguishing traits [characteristics] of these frontiersmen were a warriorlike attitude towards non-Christians and a pride in the purity of their own Christian ancestry. When, like the Jews, men from the Muslim upper classes converted and somehow managed to retain their social standing and wealth, they limited the opportunities of Old Christians who wished to acquire new status and wealth … Conversely, the desertion of former Muslim leaders in an hour of need angered the members of the community they had left.

[Source: Andrew Hess, The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-African Frontier (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010)]