Boabdil tried not to look back as he was climbing the hill towards his exile in Alpujarras,  beyond the hills of Granada.  Neither did he utter a word.  But when he reached the top of that hill, which became known as "The Moorís Last Sigh ",  he could not resist scratching the itch, and  as he turned his face towards his lost paradise, tears fell from his burning eyes, and he broke into uncontrollable convulsions.

"Cry like a women for a kingdom you could not defend as a man".  Those were the words of his mother, uttered  in a tone of unmistakable disdain, as she dragged him from his cloak, away from the place.

Boabdil suddenly looked older and broken, and the weight over his conscience seemed to bend his back as he and his entourage were being swallowed in the darkness of the valley beyond the hills of Granada.

When Boabdil signed the treaty of surrender with King Fernando and Queen Isabella, it had never occurred to him that they were soon to break the promises they had vowed to keep, and abrogate the treaty they had signed and put the royal seal thereupon.  For soon after Boabdil resigned to his destiny in his exile, he was ordered to leave the Iberian soil, and  so he sailed to Morocco where he finally died in poverty.

Neither did he imagine that the king and queen would one day annul any of the sixty seven provisions contained in the treaty which included, among others:

'... that all Muslims, young and old shall enjoy the security of their lives, kin and property;  be allowed to remain in their places of residence and in their homes and properties where they may run their own affairs in accordance with their own laws; that the integrity of  mosques be preserved, and the Islamic institution of 'awqaf', (estates in mortmain), remain unchanged; that Christians be prohibited from trespassing into Muslim homes and from committing any acts of coercion against their inhabitants; that Muslims not be judged  except by a Muslim or a Jew; that all war prisoners be freed; that Muslims be allowed to leave the territory should they so wish; that Christian converts be not forced back into Christianity; that Muslims who had converted to Christianity be given time to meditate over their decision and that they be brought before two judges, one Muslim and another Christian, and that should such converts maintain their decision, they be allowed to worship as they wished; that no Muslim be punished for having killed a Christian during the war, and shall not be deprived of what he might have taken from the Christians during the hostilities prior to the surrender; that Muslims be not forced into offering hospitality to Christian soldiers, and may not be removed from their homes in order to accommodate them; that Muslims be not required to pay more than the customary taxes applicable to Christians; that Christians be prohibited from climbing over the walls of Muslim homes with view of looking into the Muslim households and prohibited from entering their mosques; that Muslims be allowed to travel to Christian cities and villages unmolested and with full freedom, and not be obliged to carry signs as those imposed upon the jews; that no mu'adhin be deprived from calling people to prayers from the minarets, nor shall a muslim be barred from praying or fasting during the Holy month of Ramadan, and that Christians who ridicule such worshippers be punished; and that the king accepts these conditions and puts his signature and seal on the surrender document '.

The heavy curtain of darkness began falling over the Iberian Peninsula as feelings of malice and fanaticism were taking root deep into the hearts of both the royalty and clergy, leading to the setting up of the inquisition courts.  It is not the intention of this study, however, to go through the details of the proceedings of those  courts . There is ample and comprehensive coverage of their proceedings and verdicts in history books.  However, the crimes which were committed by those courts in the name of religion  did by no means affect the Muslims only.  Other victims included the Jews and even the liberal and open-minded Christians as well.

The most immediate outcome of the Inquisition activities was, however, the deprivation of the country of nearly three million of it's population  who had so amply contributed towards the cultural, scientific, industrial, agricultural, and commercial life of the country, the suffocation of the Spanish intelligencia, and the obliteration of every facet of Arab scientific and intellectual achievement.  The down fall of Spain was frightening.  Spain suddenly turned phobic to light, to knowledge and to culture; as if enlightenment posed a threat to it's survival. The darkness which had engulfed the country left no alternative to decadence.

It was only normal then, that with the disappearance of the shoulders which carried the burdens of agriculture, industry and trade, and the brains which lead the intellectual, literary and scientific progress of the country, Spain was left with nothing save fists to carry  swords.  Consequently Spain became the strongest nation in Europe with its wings spreading beyond the continent and across the Atlantic to the new  world.

But in the meanwhile factories had to close down, orchards dried out and cities shrank into mere villages shrouded by the silence of grave yards.  Cordoba, which had harboured more than half a million inhabitants was reduced to a little village almost deserted with nothing left save signs of decay and deterioration. Likewise Madrid, Toledo, Seville, Valencia  and Granada.   The wheels of industry and handicraft came to a halt, and remained so till the eighth century, when Spain had to seek expatriate skilled labour in order to rehabilitate the much needed industry and agriculture.

Census figures collected towards the end of the nineteenth century showed that around three quarters of the Spanish population i.e. 12,000,000 out of 16,620,000 were illiterate and that 45 percent of the land had turned  non-arable.

The church, through its inquisition activities seemed to have accomplished it's goals.  For the inhabitants of the country stopped reading anything save scripture books, and practised no other occupation outside the military or church.  The population became, as was rightly said , '... inhabitants and not people', and the country which once boasted over the world of it's scientific accomplishments during the Arab era, became void of even one school where science subjects were taught. Until 1776 there was not one chemist in the country who could prepare the simplest medicament, not one who could build a boat. The Spanish physicians had not heard of the blood circulation system until one and a half centuries after it had been discovered. It was  said that the inhabitants of Madrid pleaded in 1760 to the authorities to remove the piles of garbage from the streets of the city when the stench became too fowl to bear. The plea was rejected by the health authorities on the grounds that 'Your wise ancestors had never done a similar thing, they knew  what they were doing, and you must learn to live the way they did.  Besides, such an undertaking might lead to unforeseen consequences'.

In their  treatment of the Mudejars,who stayed on under the Spanish rule, the authorities must have  reversed the provisions of the surrender treaty  to the letter.   For in the year 1502, ten years after the surrender of Boabdil, Queen Isabella issued an order requiring all Muslims to convert to Christianity.  Consequently Muslims were forced to succumb to the practices of baptism and confession, and follow the Christian birth and burial rituals, including the burial of Muslims in Christian cemeteries.  Slaughtering of animals in accordance with Muslim tradition was prohibited, and the supply and sale of sheep and lamb was punishable by law.  The idea was to  compel the Mudejars to eat pork.

                                                                  The eyes of the inquisition were blinded to this public bath,,

Furthermore, all public baths in Granada were ordered shut by the church, on the grounds that bathing was an unnatural act, and therefore contrary to Christian beliefs.  Any convert seen bathing was considered to be violating such teachings. Arabic books and manuscripts dealing with religious subjects were prohibited, and those found guilty of keeping such books were publicly  whipped and sentenced to forced labour, and their books and properties confiscated.  Muslim converts were prohibited from carrying arms or wearing the Arab dress or speaking Arabic or even dancing the 'sambra', the traditional dance of the Arabs then.

However, the more pressure was exerted on the Muslims, the stronger their resistance became, and the religious gap, which during eight centuries of Arab rule had, to a large extent, been bridged, began  widening again beyond repair.

When the authorities realised that it was not realistic to up-root faith from the hearts of people in as short a time as they had hoped, a new long term policy was drawn upon directives from king Charles V, and  embodied in a set of rules drawn by Alfonso Manrike, the fifth president of the Inquisition court of Seville,  specifying the rights and obligations of the Mudejars. But the severity of punishment for non-compliance was of a magnitude that lead to a serious revolt by the Mudejars in 1569.
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When all efforts to dissolve the Mudejars into the Spanish Christian society failed, a document under the title Doctrina Christianawas published in Valencia, in the year 1566, in both Castelian and Arabic, with view of helping the Mudejars understand the teachings of Christianity.   Inter-marriage, among other things,  between the Mudejars and Christians was encouraged.  But the Christians did not respond on the grounds that the blood of the Mudejars was not pure.

In the meanwhile, the shores of the Peninsula were being subjected to continuous raids by Turkish and Moroccan pirates, who the authorities claimed, were receiving help from  the Mudejars.  According to those authorities, the Mudejars were escaping with them on their boats, then returning after being trained, on raiding missions.  Consequently, orders were issued in the year 1579 prohibiting the Mudejars from residing in the coastal areas of Al-Andalus, and a campaign was launched aiming at rounding up all the Mudejars wherever they were, and throwing them into prisons after confiscating their properties, and selling such properties to the Christians with view of raising funds for financing the high cost of repelling the pirates, as well as the cost  of the courts of the Inquisition.  This state of affairs continued unabated until king Philip III came to power and issued his orders to expel all the Mudejars from Spanish territories in the year 1610 as already mentioned.

However, the expulsion of the mudejars did not resolve the problems facing the country, if anything, conditions in Spain deteriorated even more with the expulsion of the able bodied and able minded segment of the population, and in spite of the fact that Spain was able to create a vast empire, it remained engulfed in the darkness of the dark ages until the end  of the nineteenth century, when the torches of knowledge were by then throwing their light on the ever shrinking world, and the omnipotent arm of the Catholic Church began bending to the gushing scientific and social change in Europe. It was only then that Spain suddenly woke up to the realities of modern times and was finally able to catch up with the caravan of progress.