THE ALCAZABA (FORTRESS) AND THE CRIMSON TOWERS

Three paths branch out from the Gate of the Pomegranates. The third path; to the right, leads to the area called "Crimson Towers", and by a side path to the same Crimson or Red Towers so-called because of the reddish colour of their mortar. These towers constituted the advance bastion of the Fortress and one of the first military defenses of the ancien Garnata; it connected with the wall now interrupted by the Gate of the Pomegrantes and linked up with the one coming down to the centre of the city. Nothing definite is known about the early construction of these Towers, but their oldest remains seem to date from the last years of the eighth century or the first of the ninth. They were later rebuilt by al-Ahmar and his son Mohammed II, then again in the sixteenth century and once more restored inside and out between 1854 and 1859. The bastion is today composed of three towers with an entrance through one gateway (with horseshoe arches of the sixteenth century) which opens between that of the centre and that of the left; there is a curved rampart overlooking the city an below it a water deposit with two section covered by vaults supported on round arches. The central tower, wich is very large, has three storeys, that of the left has two and that of the right only one, being very small. Near these sturdy towers was the "Bib Mouror", known to the Christians as the "Gate of the Sun" and destroyed in 1867, which closed off the district of the Mauror. The latter was also known as "Garnatat al-Yahud" because before the conquest it was, inhabited mainly by Jews who afterwards continued to live there.