Abu al-Hajjaj Yusuf ibn Ismail (29 June 131819 October 1354), known by the regnal name al-Muayyad billah (), was the seventh Nasrid ruler of the Emirate of Granada on the Iberian Peninsula. The third son of Ismail I (), he was Sultan between 1333 and 1354, after his brother Muhammad IV () was assassinated.
Coming to the throne at age fifteen, he was initially treated as a minor and given only limited power by his ministers and his grandmother Fatima. In February 1334, his representatives secured a four-year peace treaty with Granada's neighbours Castile and the Marinid Sultanate. Aragon joined in the treaty in May. After gaining more control of the government, in 1338 or 1340 he expelled the Banu Abi al-Ula family, who had masterminded the murder of his brother and had been the leaders of the Volunteers of the Faith—North African soldiers who fought for Granada. After the treaty expired, he allied himself with Abu al-Hasan Ali () of the Marinids against Alfonso XI of Castile (). After winning a major naval victory in April 1340, the Marinid–Granadan alliance was decisively defeated on 30 October in the disastrous Battle of Río Salado. In its aftermath, Yusuf was unable to prevent Castile from taking several Granadan castles and towns, including Alcalá de Benzaide, Locubín, Priego and Benamejí. In 1342–1344, Alfonso XI besieged the strategic port of Algeciras. Yusuf led his troops in diversionary raids into Castilian territory, and later engaged the besieging army, but the city fell in March 1344. A ten-year peace treaty with Castile followed.
In 1349, Alfonso XI broke the treaty and invaded again, laying siege to Gibraltar. Yusuf was responsible for supplying the besieged port, and led counter-attacks into Castile. The siege was lifted when Alfonso XI died of the Black Death in March 1350. Out of respect, Yusuf ordered his commanders to not attack the Castilian army as they retreated from Granadan territories carrying their king's body. Yusuf signed a treaty with Alfonso's son and successor Peter I (), even sending his troops to suppress a domestic rebellion against the Castilian king, as required by the treaty. His relation with the Marinids deteriorated when he provided refuge for the rebellious brothers of Sultan Abu Inan Faris (). He was assassinated by a madman while praying in the Great Mosque of Granada, on the day of Eid al-Fitr, 19 October 1354.
In contrast to the military and territorial losses suffered during his reign, the emirate flourished in the fields of literature, architecture, medicine and the law. Among other new buildings, he constructed the Madrasa Yusufiyya inside the city of Granada, as well as the Tower of Justice and various additions to the Comares Palace of the Alhambra. Major cultural figures served in his court, including the Abu Nu'aym Ridwan, as well as the poet Ibn al-Jayyab and the polymath Ibn al-Khatib, who consecutively served as his viziers. Modern historians consider his reign, and that of his son Muhammad V (), as the golden era of the Emirate.
Early life
Abu al-Hajjaj Yusuf ibn Ismail was born on 29 June 1318 (28 Rabi al-Thani 718 AH) in the Alhambra, the fortified royal palace complex of the Nasrid dynasty of the Emirate of Granada. He was the third son of the reigning sultan, Ismail I, and a younger brother of the future Muhammad IV. Ismail had four sons and two daughters, but Yusuf was the only child of his mother, Bahar. She was an (freed concubine) originally from the Christian lands, described as "noble in good deeds, chastity and equanimity" by Yusuf's vizier, the historian Ibn al-Khatib. When Ismail was assassinated in 1325, he was succeeded by the ten-year old Muhammad, who ruled until he too was assassinated in 25 August 1333, when he was en route back to Granada after repulsing a Castilian siege of Gibraltar, jointly with the Marinids of Morocco.
Ibn al-Khatib described the young Yusuf as "dark skinned, naturally strong, had a fine figure and an even finer character", with large eyes, dark straight hair and a thick beard. He further wrote that Yusuf liked to "dress with elegance", was interested in art and architecture, was a "collector of arms", and "had some mechanical ability". Before his accession, Yusuf lived in his mother's house.
Background
Founded by Muhammad I in the 1230s, the Emirate of Granada was the last Muslim state on the Iberian Peninsula. Through a combination of diplomatic and military manoeuvres, the emirate succeeded in maintaining its independence, despite being located between two larger neighbours: the Christian Crown of Castile to the north and the Muslim Marinid Sultanate across the sea in Morocco. Granada intermittently entered into alliance or went to war with both of these powers, or encouraged them to fight one another, in order to avoid being dominated by either. From time to time, the sultans of Granada swore fealty and paid tribute to the kings of Castile, an important source of income for Castile. From Castile's point of view, Granada was a royal vassal, while Muslim sources never described the relationship as such. Muhammad I, for instance, on occasion declared his fealty to other Muslim sovereigns.
Yusuf's predecessor, Muhammad IV, sought help from the Marinid Sultanate to counter a threat by an alliance of Castile and the powerful Granadan commander Uthman ibn Abi al-Ula, who supported a pretender to the throne in a civil war. In exchange for the Marinid alliance, he had to yield Ronda, Marbella and Algeciras. Subsequently, the Marinid–Granadan forces captured Gibraltar and fended off a Castilian attempt to retake it, before signing a peace treaty with Alfonso XI of Castile and Abu al-Hasan Ali of the Marinids the day before Muhammad IV's assassination. While the actual killing of Muhammad IV was carried out by a slave named Zayyan, the instigators were Muhammad's own commanders, Abu Thabit ibn Uthman and Ibrahim ibn Uthman. They were the sons of Uthman ibn Abi al-Ula, who died in 1330, and his successors as the leaders of the Volunteers of the Faith, the corps of North Africans fighting on the Iberian Peninsula for Granada. According to Ibn Khaldun, the two brothers decided to kill Yusuf due to his closeness to the Marinid Sultan Abu al-Hasan—their political enemy—while according to Castilian chronicles it was because of the friendly way he treated Alfonso XI at the conclusion of the siege.
As a result of Muhammad's cessions to the Marinids and the taking of Gibraltar, the Marinids had sizeable garrisons and territories on traditionally Granadan lands in Al-Andalus (the Muslim-controlled part of the Iberian Peninsula). Their control of Algeciras and Gibraltar—two ports of the Strait of Gibraltar—gave them ability to move troops easily between North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. The control of these ports and the waters surrounding them was also an important objective for Alfonso XI, who wanted to halt the North African intervention in the peninsula.
Accession The Nasrid dynasty of Granada had no specific rule of succession, and the sources are silent as to why Yusuf was chosen over Ismail's second son Faraj, who was a year older. There are differing reports of where Yusuf was proclaimed and who selected him. According to the historians L. P. Harvey and Brian Catlos, who follow the report of the Castilian chronicles, the (chamberlain) Abu Nu'aym Ridwan, who was present at Muhammad IV's assassination, rode quickly to the capital Granada, arriving on the same day and, after consultation with Fatima bint al-Ahmar (Ismail's mother, and grandmother of Muhammad and Yusuf), arranged for the declaration of Yusuf as the new sultan. The proclamation took place the next day, 26 August (14 Dhu al-Hijja 733 AH). Another modern historian, Francisco Vidal Castro, writes that the declaration and the oath of allegiance took place in the Muslim camp near Gibraltar instead of in the capital, and that the instigators of the assassination, the Banu Abi al-Ula brothers, were the ones who proclaimed him.
Coming to the throne at the age of fifteen, Yusuf was initially treated as a minor and, according to Ibn al-Khatib, his authority was limited to only "choosing the food to eat from his table". His grandmother, Fatima, and the Ridwan became his tutors and exercised some powers of government, together with other ministers. Upon his accession he took the (honorific or regnal name) al-Mu'ayyad billah ("He who is aided by God"). The founder of the dynasty, Muhammad I, had taken a (al-Ghalib billah, "Victor by the grace of God") but the subsequent sultans up to Yusuf did not adopt this practice. After Yusuf this was done by almost all of the Nasrid sultans. According to the Castilian chronicles, Yusuf immediately requested the protection of Abu al-Hasan, his late brother's ally.
Political and military events Early peace
The peace that Muhammad IV secured after the siege of Gibraltar was, by the principles of the time, rendered void by his death, and representatives of Yusuf met with those of Alfonso XI and Abu al-Hasan Ali. They signed a new treaty with a four-year duration at Fez, the capital of the Marinid Sultanate, on 26 February 1334. Like previous treaties, it authorised free trade between the three kingdoms, but, unusually, it did not include payments of tribute from Granada to Castile. Marinid ships were to be given access to Castilian ports, and the Marinid Sultan Abu al-Hasan promised not to increase his garrisons on the Iberian Peninsula—but he could still rotate them. The latter condition was favourable not only to Castile but also to Granada, which was wary of possible expansionism by the larger Marinid Sultanate into the peninsula. Alfonso IV of Aragon () agreed to join the treaty in May 1334 and signed his own agreement with Yusuf on 3 June 1335. After Alfonso IV's death in January 1336, his son Peter IV () renewed the bilateral Granadan–Aragonese treaty for five years, ushering in a period of peace between Granada and all its neighbours.
With the treaty in place, the monarchs redirected their attentions elsewhere: Alfonso XI cracked down on his rebellious nobles, while Abu al-Hasan waged war against the Zayyanid Kingdom of Tlemcen in North Africa. During these years, Yusuf acted against the Banu Abi al-Ula family, the masterminds of Muhammad IV's assassination. In September 1340 (or 1338), Abu Thabit ibn Uthman was removed from his post as the overall Chief of the Volunteers and replaced by Yahya ibn Umar of the Banu Rahhu family. Abu Thabit was expelled along with his three brothers and the entire family to the Hafsid Kingdom of Tunis. Harvey comments that "[b]y the standards of acts of revenge in those days[...] this was quite restrained", probably because Yusuf did not want to unnecessarily create tensions with the North African volunteers.
Marinid–Granadan war against Castile In the spring of 1339, after the expiration of the treaty, hostilities recommenced with Marinid raids into the Castilian countryside. Confrontations ensued between Castile on one side and the two Muslim kingdoms on the other. Granada was invaded by Castilian troops led by Gonzalo Martínez, Master of the Order of Alcántara, who raided Locubín, Alcalá de Benzaide and Priego. In turn, Yusuf led an army of 8,000 in besieging Siles, but was forced to lift the siege by the forces of the Master of the Order of Santiago, Alfonso Méndez de Guzmán.
The personal rivalry between Martínez and de Guzmán appears to have caused the former to defect to Yusuf, but he was soon captured by Castilian forces, hanged as a traitor and his body burned. The Marinid commander on the peninsula, Abu Malik Abd al-Wahid, son of Abu al-Hasan, died during a battle with Castile on 20 October 1339, but Marinid forces continued to ravage the Castilian frontiers until they were defeated at Jerez. At the same time, Nasrid forces achieved military successes, including the conquest of Carcabuey.