Carmona Alcazar

History

The Puerta de Sevilla (Seville Gate) and its bastion were built originally by the Carthaginians around 230–220 BC. The Romans later made several modifications, focusing on reconstruction of the main access gate to the walled town, and modified the bastion itself, which, like the gate, still exists.

The Romans conquered Carmona, as well as the other cities of the region under the rule of Carthage, in the Punic Wars; its “mighty wall” was mentioned by Julius Caesar in his De Bello Civile. The city was made a tributary to Rome, and received the dispensation to mint its own coinage bearing the name “Carmo”. Carmo was part of the Legal Convent of Asitigitana (Écija), and was granted the status of civium Romanorum, its inhabitants being assigned to the rural tribe Galeria.

In the second half of the 1st century, with the social stability brought by the Pax Romana, Carmo became a crossroads on the Via Augusta and an important outpost of the Roman empire (the highway, by then called El Arrecife, was still used in the Middle Ages; a few remnants of some sections and a bridge have survived). This period was perhaps the most culturally brilliant in the history of Carmona, and traces of it are still perceptible. The current city is laid out roughly on the Roman urban plan; the Cardo Maximus ran from the Seville Gate to the Cordoba gate, and the site of the ancient forum, now coinciding approximately with the Plaza de Arriba, is still a centre of urban activity.

At the end of the 3rd century, Carmona entered a gradual decline, which led eventually to: the dismantling of public and religious buildings, a general contraction of the urban area, the depopulation of nearby villages, and the abandonment of large landed properties. However, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the dissolution of Roman authority in Hispania Baetica and its replacement by a Visigothic monarchy was a long, slow process. There was no sudden Visigothic invasion or conquest. The Visigoths were superior to the Hispano-Roman population only in the exercise of arms; economically, socially, and culturally the Hispanic population of the southern Iberian peninsula was more advanced.

Carmona may have been very briefly a part of Spania, a province of the Byzantine Empire that existed for a few decades (552–624) along the south of the Iberian peninsula. The Byzantines occupied many of the coastal cities in Baetica and the region remained a Byzantine province until its reconquest by the Visigoths barely seventy years later.

From the beginning of the 8th century until the middle of the 13th century, the city was part of Muslim al-Andalus, and functioned as an Islamic society, leaving a deep imprint on its culture and physical appearance. Its most notable attestation comes from a decisive 763 battle between Abd-ar-Rahman I’s troops and a pro-Abbasid force that confirmed the Umayyad commander’s status as independent emir of Cordova. Carmona retained its political importance during the Muslim era, and became the capital of one of the first Taifa kingdoms. In 1057, Abbad II al-Mu’tadid, Emir of the Taifa of Išbīliya (Seville) drove the Almoravids from Qarmūnâ. In 1247, Qarmūnâ capitulated without resistance to Rodrigo González Girón, steward of the Christian king Ferdinand III of Castile. The terms of surrender guaranteed its Muslim population the opportunity to stay in their homes and keep their property, their religion and their customs, or to leave.

In 1252, Alfonso X began the Repartimiento, the distribution of large grants of land and homes to nobles, knights and smallholding citizens. Beyond rewarding his allies, the king’s general policy was to repopulate the countryside by encouraging Christian settlers who could become landowners themselves. The disadvantaged and common laborers received plots which included a home and about 60 hectares of arable land in the vega of the Corbones.

During the reign (1350–1369) of Pedro the Cruel, Carmona benefited from his predilection for the city. He enlarged the citadel of the Puerta de Marchena and made it one of his favored residences. This Alcázar del rey Don Pedro was the theatre of the siege by Henry of Trastámara against Pedro’s chief steward, Martín López de Córdoba, who was confined there with the king’s sons and treasure after his violent death in Montiel. Later, during the reigns of John II and Henry IV, Carmona was the scene where the rivalry between the noble houses of Ponce de León and Guzman played out.