1492

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political events

Granada's Muhammad XI surrenders the keys to his city January 2 to Castile's Isabella and Aragon's Ferdinand II, who take the last Muslim kingdom in Spain and end the Nasrid dynasty founded in 1238, completing the Christian Reconquista. Now 33 and known to the Spaniards as Boabdil, Muhammad invaded Castile in 1482, was taken prisoner, gained release the following year on condition that his emirate pay tribute to Ferdinand and Isabella, but was allowed to resume rule only in 1486. He has withstood a long siege, Ferdinand and Isabella promise to protect the emirate's Muslim and Jewish population, but they will soon break that promise. Boabdil leaves the Alhambra Palace and pauses for a last look at his domain from a hilltop that will become known as The Moor's Last Sigh (El Ultimo Suspiro del Moro).

Anne of Brittany is crowned queen of France at St. Denis in February (see 1491). The German king Maximilian tries to form a coalition against Anne's husband, Charles VIII; to avenge his injured honor, he asks help from England's Henry VII, and Henry sends a letter to Ludovico Sforza, urging him to lead his Milanese forces in an invasion of France from the South. Il Moro's former mistress Cecilia Gallerani is married in July to Count Ludovico Bergamene of Cremona.

Poland's Casimir IV dies at the court of Grodno June 7 at age 65 after a 45-year reign and is succeeded by his 33-year-old son, who will reign until his death in 1501 as Jan Olbracht (John Albert), reducing the power of the Polish burghers and peasants while extending the powers of the gentry (see 1493).

Lithuania is invaded following the death of Casimir, who was grand duke of Lithuania before becoming king of Poland in 1447.

Sonni Ali dies under mysterious circumstances after a 28-year reign in which he has built Gao from a small one-city kingdom into the vast Songhai Empire that has eclipsed Mali (see 1468). He captured the city of Jenne in 1473, appointed trusted people to govern his conquered territories, and has had the mullahs of Timbuktu murdered for defying his authority (see 1493).

exploration, colonization

Christopher Columbus weighs anchor Friday, August 3, with 52 men aboard his 125-foot flagship, the 100-ton Portuguese-built carrack Santa Maria, 18 aboard the 50-ton Pinta commanded by Martín Alonso Pinzón, 52, and another 18 aboard the 40-ton Niña commanded by Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, 32 (whose elder brother is a part owner of the two smaller ships) (see Columbus, 1486). The Pinta loses her rudder August 6, the fleet puts in at Tenerife for refitting, the three caravels put out to sea again September 6, Martín Pinzón suggests October 7 that they change course, and a sailor on the Pinta sights land October 12. Financed by Castile's Isabella, Aragon's Ferdinand II, and supporters at Palos on the Tinto River, where the ships were built, Columbus has crossed the Atlantic to make the first known European landing in the Western Hemisphere since early in the 11th century. He disembarks in the Bahamas on a small island known to the natives as Guanahani (he names it San Salvador under the impression that he has reached the East Indies). Columbus lands on the 42,827-square-mile (110,000-square-kilometer) island of Cuba October 28, believes it to be the mainland of Cathay, is welcomed by the island's Taíno natives, is deserted November 21 by Martín Alonso Pinzón (who sails off in the Pinta without permission in quest of gold), sails further eastward, and lands December 6 on the 29,418-square-mile (76,192-square-kilometer) island of Ayti (or Quisqueya), to which he has been borne by adverse winds and which he renames La Isla Española (Hispaniola). He finds the natives wearing gold ornaments and builds a stockade on the northern coast and names it La Navidad, but his Santa Maria runs onto a reef on Christmas Eve and sinks the next day (see 1493).

The Taíno culture encountered by Columbus in Cuba will be wiped out within 30 years by disease, forced labor, and Spanish musketry, leaving almost no trace of its existence beyond a few words that will survive in the English words barbecue, canoe, hammock, hurricane, and tobacco.

commerce

Lorenzo de' Medici dies at his native Florence April 18 at age 43. He has helped to make the Tuscan dialect the language of Italy in place of the classic Latin and helped make his city a center of European culture. Lorenzo the Magnificent is succeeded by his son Piero, 20.

religion

A decree issued March 31 by Ferdinand and Isabella extends the Spanish Inquisition begun by Isabella in Castile in 1478. It orders Granada's Jews to sell their assets and leave the country by July 31 "for the honor and glory of God." Thousands of the 80,000 to 150,000 Jews pretend to accept the cross (they will be called Marranos); others pay for the right to settle in Portugal (see 1496); still others are welcomed by the Ottoman sultan Bayazid II. Ferdinand decrees November 23 that all property and assets left by the Jews belong to the crown, even those now in Christian hands.

Pope Innocent VIII dies at Rome July 25 at age 60 after an 8-year reign in which he has condemned witchcraft but encouraged the Inquisition, ordered the execution of two clergymen who forged and sold papal documents, raised money by creating new offices that were sold to the highest bidders, and lived at the Vatican with his illegitimate son and daughter. A tool of the Della Rovere family, Innocent has pleaded on his deathbed for the cardinals to elect someone better than he as pope, but he is succeeded by Rodrigo de Borgia, a libertine nephew of the late Pope Callistus (or Calixtus) III, who will reign until his death in 1503 as Alexander VI.

art

Painting: Portrait of the emperor Go-En-yu by Japanese painter Mitsunobu Tosa, 58, who has founded a new school of painting and will head the court painting bureau from 1493 to 1496. Painter Piero della Francesca dies at his native Borgo San Sepoicro near Arezzo October 12 at age 72.

tobacco

Luis de Torres and Rodrigo de Jerez make the first known reference to smoking tobacco. Sent ashore by Columbus in Cuba, they report seeing natives who "drank smoke," and Rodrigo will later be imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition for his "devilish habit" of smoking (see 1518).

agriculture

Two members of the Columbus party return from the interior of Cuba November 5 without gold but with "a sort of grain they call maiz [Zea Mays], which was well tasted, bak'd, dry'd, and made into flour." Unknown to Columbus, at least 700 varieties of maize grow in the Western Hemisphere. He will bring maize seeds back to Spain, where they will be called "Indian corn" and grown in gardens as curiosities (see 1511; 1516).

"These fields are planted mostly with ajes [cassava]," Columbus writes in his log December 16. "The King [of Hispaniola] dined with me on the Niña and afterwards went ashore with me, where he paid me great honor," he writes December 26. "Later we had a meal with two or three kinds of ajes, served with shrimp, game, and other foods they have, including their [cassava] bread; which they call cazabe." The navigator and his men will discover foods unknown in the Old World: turtle meat, sweet potatoes, capsicums (peppers), plantain (Musa paradisica), and allspice (see 1494). The capsicums (peppers) found by Columbus are members of the Solanaceae family (see 1529). Chili peppers are mostly the fruit of capsicum annuum. Sweet potatoes that came originally from the Western Hemisphere have long been grown in the mid-Pacific and for a century or two have been cultivated as far west as the islands that will be called New Zealand, where Maori tribespeople have introduced the tuberous roots.

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