Antequera (Málaga): The al-Andalus Madīna Turned Castilian Town (SP)

Abstract

This study introduces the reader to a city with a Roman past that regained its urban condition during the Middle Ages. Its origin as madīna is found in a fortress existing before the Taifa period –as elsewhere in al-Andalus– dating at least from the time of Abd al-Rahman III in the tenth century. Subsequent construction periods gave it the urban outlook that the Castilian conquerors came to know, and that the written and archaeological sources confirm. The most significant structures of the town (walls, doors, mosques, houses, etc.) suffered under war (1410), although the biggest changes began in the late fifteenth century, when a real transformation towards a new and ever-expanding town begins to take shape.