The history of Gibraltar portrays how The Rock gained an importance and a reputation far exceeding its size, influencing and shaping the people who came to reside here over the centuries.
Marquis of Gibraltar was a short-lived Castilian noble title (1478–1501). It belonged to the House of Medina Sidonia.
Nun's Well is an ancient underground water reservoir in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. It is located at Europa Point, and is thought to be of the Moorish period. It represents some of the earliest evidence of an artificial water supply in Gibraltar. The name of the cistern is thought to be derived from the nuns associated with the Shrine of Our Lady of Europe. In the eighteenth century, Nun's Well supplied the military with water. In the early nineteenth century, it provided water for the brewery that was built next door. In 1988, the Royal Engineers constructed what is now the main building, which has a castle-like appearance. Nun's Well became the focus of controversy during the 2010-2011 restoration of the site.
The Charles V Wall is a 16th-century defensive curtain wall that forms part of the fortifications of the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. It was built in 1540 and strengthened in 1552 by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. The wall remains largely intact and extends from South Bastion, which was once at the water's edge in the harbour, to the top ridge of the Rock of Gibraltar.
Grand Casemates Gates, formerly Waterport Gate, provide an entrance from the northwest to the old, fortified portion of the city of the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, at Grand Casemates Square.
The history of Moorish Gibraltar began with the landing of the Muslims in Hispania and the fall of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo in 711 and ended with the fall of Gibraltar to Christian hands 751 years later, in 1462, with an interregnum during the early 14th century.
The North Bastion, formerly the Baluarte San Pablo was part of the fortifications of Gibraltar, in the north of the peninsula, protecting the town against attack from the mainland of Spain. The bastion was based on the older Giralda tower, built in 1309. The bastion, with a mole that extended into the Bay of Gibraltar to the west and a curtain wall stretching to the Rock of Gibraltar on its east, was a key element in the defenses of the peninsula. After the British took Gibraltar in 1704 they further strengthened these fortifications, flooding the land in front and turning the curtain wall into the Grand Battery.
The Ninth Siege of Gibraltar was a fifteen-month-long siege of the town of Gibraltar that lasted from 1466 until 1467. The siege was conducted by Juan Alonso de Guzmán, the 1st Duke of Medina Sidonia, and resulted in a takeover of the town, then belonging to the Crown of Castile. Unlike other sieges of Gibraltar, which were the result of clashes between different powers, this was a purely internal struggle between rival Castilian factions.
The Third Siege of Gibraltar was mounted between February–June 1333 by a Moorish army under the prince Abd al-Malik Abd al-Wahid of Morocco. The fortified town of Gibraltar had been held by Castile since 1309, when it had been seized from the Moorish Emirate of Granada. The attack on Gibraltar was ordered by the recently crowned Marinid ruler Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Othman in response to an appeal by the Nasrid ruler Muhammed IV of Granada. The onset of the siege took the Castilians by surprise. The stocks of food in Gibraltar were heavily depleted at the time due to the thievery of the town's governor, Vasco Perez de Meira, who had looted the money that was meant to have been spent on food for the garrison and to pay for the upkeep of the castle and fortifications. After over four months of siege and bombardment by Moorish catapults, the garrison and townspeople were reduced to near-starvation and surrendered to Abd al-Malik.
The Fourth Siege of Gibraltar, fought from June until August 1333, pitted a Christian army under King Alfonso XI of Castile against a large Moorish army led by Muhammed IV of Granada and Abd al-Malik Abd al-Wahid of Fes. It followed on immediately from the Third Siege of Gibraltar, fought earlier in 1333. The siege began inauspiciously with a disastrous landing by Castilian forces on the west side of Gibraltar, before developing into a stalemate in which neither side had the strength to capture Gibraltar, nor to break out or lift the siege. Both sides faced acute shortages of food – the Gibraltar garrison was cut off from resupply, while the Castilians, deep within enemy territory, could only be resupplied via an unreliable sea route. After two months of inconclusive siege warfare, the Castilians and Moors reached a truce agreement that allowed both sides to make an honourable exit from the siege. Although the Moors managed to keep Gibraltar, the truce cost Muhammed IV his life when he was assassinated by disgruntled nobles the day after signing it.
Abu Malik Abd al-Wahid was a son of the Marinid sultan of Morocco, Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Othman. Although he had lost an eye, Malik was a capable military commander and served as governor of Algeciras and the Marinids' principal general in Al Andalus. He captured Gibraltar from Castile in June 1333 and participated in his father's campaign against rebels in the Kingdom of Tlemcen the following year. He was killed by Castilian forces in 1339 after being ambushed on the way back from a raid against the Castilian-held town of Jerez de la Frontera.
The Sixth Siege of Gibraltar in 1411 was the only occasion on which control of Gibraltar was contested between two Islamic powers. After the failed Fifth Siege of Gibraltar in 1349–50, which ended with the death of King Alfonso XI of Castile from bubonic plague, the Kingdom of Castile was preoccupied with the Castilian Civil War and its aftermath. In 1369, Sultan Muhammed V of Granada took advantage of the Castilians' distractions and in the Siege of Algeciras (1369) he seized the city of Algeciras, on the west side of the Bay of Gibraltar, which Alfonso XI had captured in 1344. After razing it to the ground he made peace with Henry II, the winner of the civil war. The truce was renewed by Henry's successors John I and Henry III. At some point during the truces, control of Gibraltar was transferred from the Marinid dynasty of Morocco, which had held it since 1333, to the Granadans. It is not clear why this happened; it may have been as a condition of the Granadans assisting the Marinids against rebels in Morocco.
The Tenth Siege of Gibraltar in 1506 was a minor military action in which the Duke of Medina Sidonia, Juan Alfonso Pérez de Guzmán tried but failed to recover the fortress of Gibraltar from the troops who were holding it in the name of the newly united crowns of Castile and Aragon.
The Seventh Siege of Gibraltar (1436) was an unsuccessful attempt by the Castillian nobleman Enrique Pérez de Guzmán, 2nd Count de Niebla to capture the stronghold of Gibraltar from the Moors. He drowned during the attempt.
The Siege of Algeciras (1369) was undertaken during the period of the Reconquest of Spain by Muhammed V, Sultan of Granada to reclaim the city of Al-Hadra Al-Yazirat, called Algeciras by the Christians, in the Kingdom of Castile. The siege lasted just three days, and the sultan was victorious. The Muslims thus regained a major city which had been in Castilian hands since Alfonso XI of Castile took it from the Moroccans after the long 1342-1344 siege. Ten years after the capture of the city, in 1379 the sultan of Granada decided to completely destroy the city to prevent it falling into Christian hands. It was impossible to defend the place at a time when the Muslim kings of the Iberian Peninsula had lost much of military power they enjoyed in earlier centuries.
The Siege of Málaga (1487) was an action during the Reconquest of Spain in which the Catholic Monarchs of Spain conquered the city of Mālaqa from the Emirate of Granada. The siege lasted about four months. It was the first conflict in which ambulances, or dedicated vehicles for the purpose of carrying injured persons, were used. Geopolitically, the loss of the emirate's second largest city—after Granada itself—and its most important port was a major loss for Granada. Most of the surviving population of the city were enslaved or put to death by the conquerors.
Abu Said Uthman III, was Marinid ruler of Morocco from 19 March 1398 to 1420, the last effective ruler of that dynasty. He ascended to the throne at the age of sixteen. He succeeded his brother, Abu Amir Abdallah ibn Ahmad. His forces were involved in an unsuccessful attempt to acquire Gibraltar from the Emirate of Granada in 1410. In 1415 the Portuguese seized the port of Ceuta. Abu Said Uthman III failed in an attempt to recover Ceuta, and was shortly after assassinated. His vizier gained control of the kingdom, establishing the Wattasid dynasty of rulers of Morocco.
Alonso de Arcos was the alcaide of Tarifa. In 1462, he along with Rodrigo Ponce de León, son and heir of the Count of Arcos, and Juan Alonso de Guzmán, Duke of Medina Sidonia, attacked and gained control of the town of Gibraltar in the Eighth Siege of Gibraltar. Gibraltar belonged then to the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada and with this takeover, Gibraltar was no longer in Muslim hands. Upon arriving at Gibraltar, Alonso's forces attempted to storm the town, but the Nasrid soldiers stationed at the garrison were able to hold back his troops. In the midst of deciding what next to attempt, Alonso was delivered a message from the garrison requesting that the soldiers be allowed to peacefully evacuate the garrison with their belongings, surrendering it.
The Siege of Jerez by King Alfonso X of Castile took place in 1261, probably in the late spring or early summer. It resulted in the incorporation of Jerez de la Frontera into the Crown of Castile.
