The Islamic Lurqa

The presence of the Islamic civilization in the lands of Lorca characterizes a period of almost thousand years.
In the year 713 A.C., the emir Abd -Aziz signed a treaty with Teodomiro, a Visigoth overseer that governed in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula. With this treaty, all the Christians of this area known as Mozarabs, kept their situation by means of the payment of certain goods and money. Moreover, seven cities were given to the Moslem governor, among which we found Lorca. And so, it is created the Tumid kura as a territorial unit that took in a wide area from Alicante to Lorca.

Mozarabs: Christians in Moslem territory.

From then, Lorca became a Moslem focus although it is probable that some mozarabs and Jewish still remained. The arrival of the Muslims took place in two big waves; in the first place, a militant group in order to occupy the city and control the area. In the second one, a continuous influx of Muslims in order to occupy the majority of the lands took place. For their establishment, they selected towns on high and with a difficult access, from where they controlled extensive territories and the most important tracks of communication, such as Ugéjar, Peña María, in the highway towards Granada, the Castillico, the Castellón, where mastered the valley of the Vélez river, or the ‘Cerro de las Viñas’ in Coy.

From the beginning of the Islamic settling in Tudmir, Lorca was its capital due to its strategic situation in the area of the crossing towards the south from the Levant. At the beginning of the IX century, due to the problems of internal fights to the turbulent inhabitants of the region, the emir of Cordoba created as a new military enclave Murcia. It became the new capital of the province or Kura. But during the last half of the IX century some risings were produced in many places of to Al Andalus. In the year 924 , the Kura of Tudmir was included in the caliphate of Cordoba.

From the X to the XI centuries Lorca adopts a complete profile of Islamic city, thanks to the social and economic dynamism. There was a wide citadel in the plateau that crowned the city and a ward of the more rich social groups; the Madina, that is whole of the major mosque and the public squares or markets, was in the environs of the current wards of Santa María and San Juan, the sides that go down to the river. At the foot of this, the suburbs, the handicraft wards and cemeteries were located. Towards the fertile lowland there were a series of farms or dispersed orchards. The majority of the inhabitants of the Madina were agriculturists, artisans and traders.

They cultivated cereal, olives, grapevine and different fruits. The cattle was complementary, highlighting the horses and donkeys, although they also had goats and sheep. The mining was reduced to the exploitations of iron, and beautiful minerals, as the silver, or of semiprecious stones.

The Muslims grouped the commerce with similar activity in the streets or in small wards. In the Madina of Lorca there was a public souk of spices. There also were one related to perfumes and other to tissues.

At the beginning of the XI century, the caliphate of Cordoba was sunk in a series of internal fights that developed into its disintegration and the formation of diverse independent Muslims kingdoms or taifas. Besides these fightings, there existed also the pressure of the Christian kingdoms of the north and the invasions of Al- Andalus of the Almoravides and the Almohads from the north of Africa from the XI to the XIII centuries.

From this moment, Lorca was related to the taifas of Almería and Valencia, being established afterwards as an independent taifa, that it was extended for Lorca, Jaén and Baza. But it finished below the king to the Al-Mutamid of Seville.

In Lorca, there were neither important resistances nor fightings to the different military occupations, since the power kept in the social group dominant. But in spite of it, the urban complex was fortified. The expansion of the system of irrigation in the lorquian orchard and in its zone of influence took to a regulation of the activity with a period of duty steered by an institution that watched over the functioning.

In 1091 Al-Andalus went in hands of the Almoravides and the collapse of Aledo is produced in Muslims hands. From then, the model of a rural nucleus that needed a defensive area was imposed in the surrounding field to the city. An so, there was a castle or hisn, raising a nucleus inhabited environment next to a source of water, habitually with a circuit surrounded with a wall or albacara, that served to shut in the cattle in case of threat. Aguaderas, Ugíjar, Felí or Calentín are some of those permanent enclaves.

At the beginning of the XII century some risings and civil fights took place in Al- Andalus, just when in 1145 the King of the Zaragoza taifa conquered the area of Tudmir. Afterwards, Ibn Mardanix founded the independent kingdom of Murcia that was converted in the cultural nucleus of Al- Andalus. He faced to the Almohades with the collaboration of diverse Christian kings, until his fall in 1171.

The tasks of fortification were multiplied. The madina and its suburbs were walled. Two types of towers of different size staked out the sketch. Nowadays, we can see some of those inserted in the urban sketch. The suburb, extended for the area between La Cava, the Spain square or La Corredera were also walled. The exploitations in the lorquian fertile orchard were favoured thanks to hydraulic works, so much of shunt captures as of dam and channelling.

Most medieval castles in Lorca are of Islamic origin and could function as territorial units from the XI century A.C. They served as protection to the adjacent nucleuses and shaped a defensive net of the city. Each of these husuns or castles had in the adjacent lands one or several farmhouses, situated in the environment of a source or of a hydric course, where the peasants and shepherds lived. And so, we find Puentes, in the confluence of the Vélez and of the Luchena; Chuecos, Tébar, Ugéjar or Calentín in the saw or Felí, Nogalte and Aguaderas in the valley that communicates Almería and Murcia. In special, Felí, Tébar and Chuecos constituted the communication route between Lorca and its port in Águilas. The truss is completed with small isolated towers, whose basic function was that of the vigilance of routes, such as La Torrecilla and Mena.