History of Málaga and Timeline of Málaga

History

Main articles: History of Málaga and Timeline of Málaga

La malagueña (1919) by Julio Romero de Torres

The Phoenicians from Tyre founded the city as Malaka about 770 BC. The name Malaḥa or mlḥ is probably derived from the Phoenicianword for "salt" because fish was salted near the harbour. (Cf. "salt" in other Semitic languages, e.g. Hebrew מלח mélaḥ or Arabic malaḥ).

After a period of Carthaginian rule, Malaka became part of the Roman Empire. In its Roman stage, the city (Latin name, Malaca) showed a remarkable degree of development. Transformed into a confederated city, it was under a special law, the Lex Flavia Malacitana. A Roman theatre was built at this time.^[5] After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it was ruled first by the Visigoths and then by the Byzantine Empire (550–621)

In the 8th century, during the Muslim Arabic rule over Spain, the city became an important trade center. Málaga was first a possession of the Caliphate of Córdoba. After the fall of the Umayyad dynasty, it became the capital of a distinct kingdom ruled by the Zirids. During this time, the city was called Mālaqah (Arabic مالقة). From 1025 it was the capital of the autonomous Taifa of Málaga, until its conquest by theEmirate of Granada in 1239.

The traveller Ibn Battuta, who passed through around 1325, characterised it as "one of the largest and most beautiful towns of Andalusia [uniting] the conveniences of both sea and land, and is abundantly supplied with foodstuffs and fruits". He praised its grapes, figs, and almonds; "its ruby-coloured Murcian pomegranates have no equal in the world." Another exported product was its "excellent gilded pottery". The town's mosque was large and beautiful, with "exceptionally tall orange trees" in its courtyard.^[6]

Málaga in 1572

Málaga was one of the Iberian cities where Muslim rule persisted the longest, having been part of the Emirate of Granada. While most other parts of the peninsula had already been conquered by the reconquista, the medieval Christian Spanish struggled to drive the Muslims out. Málaga was conquered by Christian forces on 18 August 1487,^[7] The Muslim inhabitants resisted assaults and artillery bombardments before hunger forced them to surrender, virtually the entire population was sold into slavery or given as "gifts" to other Christian rulers,^[8] five years before the fall of Granada.

On 24 August 1704 the indecisive Battle of Malaga, the largest naval battle in the War of the Spanish Succession, took place in the sea south of Málaga.

After the coup of July 1936 the government of the Second Spanish Republic retained control of Málaga. Its harbour was a base of the Spanish Republican Navy at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. It suffered heavy bombing by Italian warships which took part in breaking the Republican navy's blockade of Nationalist-heldSpanish Morocco and took part in naval bombardment of Republican-held Malaga.^[9] After the Battle of Málaga and the Francoist takeover in February 1937, over seven thousand people were killed.^[10] The city also suffered shelling later by Spanish Republican naval units. The well-known British journalist and writer Arthur Koestler was captured by the Nationalist forces on their entry into Málaga, which formed the material for his book Spanish Testament. The first chapters of Spanish Testament include an eye-witness account of the 1937 fall of Málaga to Francisco Franco's armies during the Spanish Civil War.

After the war, Málaga and Koestler's old haunts of Torremolinos and the rest of the Costa del Sol enjoyed the highest growth of the tourism sector in Spain