The Roman city of Hispalis, situated on the banks of the river Guadalquivir, was the chief centre of political and economic life in the province of Baetica during the later Roman Empire. After that empire’s end, the city was occupied by the Vandals in 428, before coming under Visigothic rule in 461. Under the *Visigoths, Seville was both a metropolitan bishopric and a major intellectual centre, notably under its bishops *Leander and his brother *Isidore. After the Muslim conquest in 712, Ishbiliya, as the city became known, was initially established as the seat of government in the peninsula, but the capital was subsequently moved upstream to *Córdoba. The collapse of the *Umayyad caliphate after 1009 allowed Seville to achieve new political prominence. Under the leadership of the Abbadid dynasty, Seville was to become the most predatory of the numerous *taifa successor-states that emerged during the political turmoil of the 11th century. During the 1040s and 1050s, the ‘Abbadids brought a dozen smaller taifas in western *Andalusia and the Algarve under their authority, and in 1070 Córdoba was annexed. Seville under Abbadid rule was an important centre of artistic patronage, and two of its rulers, al-Mutadid (1042–69) and al-Mutamid (1069–91), were celebrated poets and scholars in their own right. However, Abbadid pretensions to rule over the whole of Muslim Iberia were resisted by the other taifas, and Seville lacked the clout to resist the military pressure that was exerted by the Christian kingdom of *Castile-León, with the result that it had to resort to the regular payment of tribute (mostly in cash and other valuables, but also, in 1063, in the form of the mortal remains of Isidore of Seville) in order to maintain its independence. The arrival in the peninsula of the *Berber *Almoravid emir Yusuf ben Tashufin (1061–1106), in response to the appeals of the beleaguered taifa rulers, marked the beginning of the end of the Abbadid kingdom. Between 1090 and 1094, Yusuf brought all of the taifas of southern and western Iberia under his direct rule; al-Mutamid of Seville was toppled in 1091 and exiled to Morocco. Under Almoravid rule, and subsequently under the *Almohad dynasty which overthrew it in 1147, Seville was to become the chief seat of Berber government in the peninsula. The Almohad authorities sponsored an ambitious programme of public building, which included the great *mosque, whose *minaret, erected between 1184 and 1198, survives to this day, as does the Torre de Oro (‘Tower of Gold’), built in 1220, which formed part of an elaborate defensive system designed to halt enemy naval incursions up the Guadalquivir. The collapse of the Almohad empire allowed *Ferdinand III of Castile to conquer the city in 1248. According to the Estoria de Espanna, commissioned by his son *Alfonso X, Seville at the time of the conquest was a city great and rich in appearance. Under Castilian rule, Seville was to remain a major royal city. Alfonso X had a palace erected on the site of the Muslim citadel in 1258, and the building was substantially extended and altered during the reign of *Pedro I. During the later MA, Seville was to become an important staging-post on the international trade routes that led from the Mediterranean to northern Europe, and sizeable communities of Jewish, Genoese, and Catalan merchants took up residence there. The city was also an important centre of shipbuilding, as it had been under the Muslims, and acted as a base of maritime exploration in the eastern Atlantic. During the 14th century, in part as a consequence of the economic dislocation caused by the *Black Death, there was a marked rise in hostility towards the local Jewish community, which was to culminate in the outbreak of a pogrom in 1391 in which some four thousand Jews were reportedly massacred. After the Spanish discovery of America in 1492, Seville became the centre of navigation and commerce with the Indies and experienced a period of dramatic demographic and economic growth as a result. See also jews, medieval.

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Seville cathedral. The Bridgeman Art Library

J. Bosch Vilá, Historia de Sevilla: La Sevilla islámica (712–1248) (1984).Find this resource:

A. Colantes de Terán Sánchez, Sevilla en la Baja Edad Media: La ciudad y sus hombres (1984).Find this resource:

M. A. Ladero Quesada, Historia de Sevilla: La ciudad medieval, 3rd ed. (1989).Find this resource: