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[EN]In the highest part of the hill where the monumental complex of the Alhambra and the Generalife is located, in the Dehesa del Generalife (Granada, Spain) there is an extensive hydraulic complex, from the Nasrid period, which could have been fed by groundwater captured from the Aljibe de la Lluvia. This paper presents the results of a geophysical prospecting survey performed to determine if there hydrogeological conditions to explain the presence of a spring in the Alhambra Formation. The results explain why the water emerges in the vicinity of the cistern and contribute to reinforcing the theory that this spring could condition the establishment of the Alberca Rota hydraulic complex, which was the node that made it possible to supply water to the royal Nasrid countryhouses of Alixares (Qasr al-Dishār) and Dār al-'Arūsa (Casa de la Novia), built in the last third of the 14th century., [ES] En la parte más elevada del cerro donde se ubica el conjunto monumental de la Alhambra y el Generalife, en la Dehesa del Generalife (Granada, España) se sitúa un extenso complejo hidráulico, de época nazarí, que pudiera haber sido alimentado por el agua subterránea captada desde el Aljibe de la Lluvia. En este trabajo se presentan los resultados de una campaña de prospección geofísica con la que se ha pretendido determinar si se dan las condiciones hidrogeológicas que expliquen la presencia de un manantial colgado dentro de la Formación Alhambra. Los resultados conseguidos explican por qué surge el agua en las inmediaciones del aljibe y contribuyen a reforzar la teoría que apunta a que este manantial pudo condicionar el establecimiento del complejo hidráulico de la Alberca Rota, que fue el nodo que posibilitó el suministro de agua a las almunias reales nazaríes de los Alixares (Qaṣr al-Dishār) y Dār al-‘Arūsa (Casa de la Novia), construidas en el último tercio del siglo XIV.

[EN] During the Late Middle Ages, the Command of the Calatrava Military Order controlled the south eastern territory of the province of Jaén (Spain). This region is situated between the flat lands of Cordoba to the west, the valley of the Guadalquivir river to the north and the mountainous border of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada to the east. This region is defined by its topographic relief and is surrounded by mountains to the east. In front of them rises the limestone hill of La Peña of Martos, with its 1003 metres above sea level. A wide area can be visually controlled from this conical and symbolic promontory. The Calatrava Military Order built their main castle on top of this high hill, as a symbol of their power in this region. This fortification had a key role to protect the territory from attacks from the Nasrid kingdom of Granada during the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. As a result, several interesting defensive elements were added from the Late Middle Ages on that were also used in other military buildings of the Calatrava Military Order. This paper analyses these defensive mechanisms and the improvement of military features used in this territory, vital to this Order and to the kingdom of Castile. This research departs from the study of the Castle of La Peña, the headquarters of the Command of the Calatrava Military Order in the district of Martos.

Al igual que en otras muchas regiones en el mundo islámico medieval, el agua en al-Ándalus tuvo un papel muy destacado. Diversos territorios de la península ibérica se caracterizan por la existencia de una extensa red hidrográfica, fruto de la interacción del clima mediterráneo con elevaciones del terreno que retienen y favorecen los aportes pluviales. El resultado es la aparición de multitud de arroyos temporales que aportan sus aguas a los cauces por los que discurren los ríos de los que se pudo captar sus aguas. Existen además acuíferos en los montes que generan manantiales y fuentes de diversa entidad, mientras que los que están situados bajo las hoyas y planicies pudieron ser alumbrados por medio de pozos y galerías drenantes. De este modo, muchos de los asentamientos andalusíes pudieron desarrollarse gracias a las posibilidades que ofrecían los recursos hídricos de su entorno.

[EN] Due to the proximity of the Nasrid western sector of the kingdom of Granada to the border with Castile, some rural settlements had to equip themselves with defensive structures between the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, especially when the insecurity conditions were particularly pressing. Consequently, in some of the farmsteads a tower has been preserved. It was the most visible and predominant element of defensive enclosures that often had walled spaces to protect people, animals, and movable property. From an architectural and functional point of view, this type of towers with an enclosure for protection present great typological diversity in terms of the dimensions of plan and elevation, interior rooms, interior levels, layout of stairways or presence of cisterns or warehouses. Constructively, the walls of rammed earth with lime and gravel content, which allowed for the modulation of prism-shaped towers, were gradually replaced by masonry from the fourteenth century onwards due to Castilian influence. The change towards masonry construction was also born from a need to reinforce the earlier defences built with earth and facilitate the construction of structures with fewer edges, as those were less vulnerable for the increasingly widespread use of artillery system as a whole was completed and reinforced during the Nasrid period. This paper is devoted to the environmental and constructional analysis of a number of selected watchtowers from the western border of Granada, some of them built with crusted rammed earth and others in masonry with gravel filling. The structural stability of these towers has also been studied. They have been documented and analysed in depth due to the preservation of enough material structures for their physiognomy and materiality to be recognized. This allowed developing a set of in situ tests that has made its characterization possible from an integral perspective.

[EN] This research is focused in the study of the northern wall of the Alhambra (Granada), with a deeper view to study its architecture, history and transformations till our days. The first palaces of the nasrid dynasty were stablished in the central and most elevated area of the Sabīka hill. With the time, they were shifted to the north, until they were placed on the defence line of the military compound from a visually and structural point of view. This northern wall has projected the image of power over the city of Granada and its territory in every time in history. There are different milestones in its configuration, like the changes made by Yūsuf I (r. 1333-1354), the building of the Palaces of Comares and Leones or the modifications carried out by the Catholic Monarchs after the conquest of Granada. All these uses were superimposed, but with the prevalence of the palatial one above the fortified walkway that surrounded the Alhambra. Some mullioned windows were built above the wall. At the same time, the wall was changing in some parts, like in the Patio de la Reja area. There, the old walkway that existed until the fourteenth century was parallel to the south gallery of the Patio de Lindaraja. Ultimately, the building of the huge Tower of Comares by king Yūsuf I was the enlargement of a previous tower that existed in the northern wall of the Alhambra. It is a paradigm of the transformation of a defensive front to an element of royal power display.

[EN] The analysis and identification of historical mortars is essential for decision-making in restoration processes. In addition, its mineralogical-petrographic analysis, as well as its chemical characteristics, can provide relevant information that allows determining the chronological sequence of later interventions, which makes it possible to delimit and define different construction phases. Based on the defensive towers of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, the study has been approached from an archaeometric point of view for the characterization of the historical mortars of their factories, obtained from both their coatings and the constituent materials of the walls. In this paper the preliminary results obtained in the Torre de Pimentel or de los Molinos and the Torre del Salto de la Mora or de la Sal, both located on the coast of the province of Malaga, are shown. A comparison is established between the two types of towers, verifying their material constitution with the historical and constructive analysis, through the analysis and interpretation of the information extracted from the X-ray diffraction tests (XRD).

El antiguo reino de Granada es un territorio con una alta densidad de fortificaciones de diversa entidad, algunas de las cuales se remontan a épocas muy remotas. Muchas de ellas fueron reutilizadas o construidas ex profeso en la Edad Media, siendo completado y reforzado este sistema defensivo durante el periodo nazarí, aunque también se restructuró, abandonándose otras fortalezas pobladas previamente. Esta investigación persigue contribuir a la difusión de buena parte de este legado patrimonial, tratando los valores de estos bienes de interés cultural a nivel tipológico, constructivo, material, paisajístico, territorial, estratégico...

The antiquarian Martín de Ximena Jurado was a pioneer in the historical cartography of the old Kingdom of Jaén (Andalusia, Spain), where he tried to represent emblematic areas with their military defences with his particular graphic language. Not surprisingly, this territory has a high concentration of medieval fortifications. The data and drawings that he made of castles, towers, and defensive enclosures show a special interest in the militarisation of sites and places. He went beyond a simple toponymic study aimed only at finding a correspondence between the ancient name and the location of a settlement based on the evidence provided by coins and inscriptions. The medieval fortifications that he mapped were not drawn in ruins as one would expect they would be in the mid-17th century, but with their most characteristic construction elements. This fact gives it great relevance, as it represents the idealised hypothesis of the state of these constructions at the time of the Castilian conquest in the decades following the Almohad debacle in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212).

La Alhambra fue establecida en el siglo XIII en el extremo más occidental de un largo promontorio que desde la conquista cristiana de Granada se le denomina Cerro del Sol. Este trabajo hace un repaso sucinto a las los décadas de investigación que su autor viene realizando sobre la relación de la ciudad palatina nazarí con su entorno.

Among all the Spanish regions, the province of Granada stands out for the large number of isolated towers of which there are still remains. More than 150 are of medieval origin and preserved to a greater or lesser degree. This is due to the fact that Granada was the core of the Nasrid kingdom, the last surviving Andalusian territory in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula. It had more than 400 km of land border with the kingdom of Castile through the Penibaetic System and another 400 km of Mediterranean coastline. This kingdom, whose centre of power was the Alhambra in Granada, came to occupy approximately 2,949,373 ha after the Pact of Jaén, the agreement signed in 1246 between Ferdinand III of Castile and the first Nasrid king, Muḥammad I ibn Nasr, which established the border between the two kingdoms. The kingdom of Granada was maintained with few modifications over the next two and a half centuries, until the War of Granada, which caused it to collapse between 1482 and 1491. Many of these towers were reused, remade or built in the Nasrid period, but, after the Christian process of conquest, many of the towers in the interior were rendered unusable or totally or partially destroyed. This work develops the methodology of the workflow that has been followed to detect the location of many other nodes of this dense network based on the analysis of topony-my. The historical accounts show that there were many more watchtowers to survey and protect this kingdom than the ones previously known.

[EN] Following the opening of the Acequia Real (Royal Canal) in 1238, the landscape surrounding the Alhambra was shaped into a complex mosaic of irrigated gardens, extensive rain-fed crops, meadows, and forests, among which various constructions were found. This hydraulic system evolved during the Nasrid period and was altered with the regulations that followed the Christian conquest of 1492. The Dehesa del Generalife (Generalife Meadows) suffered the negative impact of the Morisco uprising in the late 1560s. Prior to this, the environment had already been neglected due to overexploitation of its resources by the inhabitants of Granada, resulting in damages and deterioration. Despite its recovery through the regulation of its livestock use, this process of depletion continued until the mid-20th century, when a landslide affected the course of the Royal Canal, prompting the construction of a new canal and leading to the abandonment of the historic channelling. Therefore, in the 21st century, the Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife is driving the recovery and management of some parts of the original two branches in the Royal Canal channelling layout, as well as their heritage and environmental values. This paper presents the numerous works, projects, and reports elaborated in recent years in this regard, indicating the objectives pursued, the methodology employed, and the achievements accomplished., [ES] Tras la apertura de la acequia Real en 1238, el paisaje que circundó la Alhambra se configuró en un complejo mosaico de huertos irrigados, zonas de secano, pastos y bosques entre los que se encontraban diversas construcciones. Este sistema hidráulico fue evolucionando en época nazarí y se vio alterado con la regulación de dicha canalización tras la conquista cristiana de 1492. La dehesa del Generalife sufrió el impacto negativo del levantamiento de los moriscos a finales de la década de 1560. Antes ya, este entorno había sido descuidado con la sobreexplotación de sus recursos por los habitantes de Granada, lo que causó daños y deterioros. Pese a su recuperación por el hecho de regular el uso ganadero, este proceso de agotamiento continuó hasta la mitad del siglo XX, cuando un deslizamiento de tierras afectó al trazado de la acequia Real, lo que motivó la construcción de un nuevo canal, favoreciendo el abandono de la canalización histórica. Por ello, el Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife está impulsando en el siglo XXI la recuperación y gestión de parte de los trazados de las dos canalizaciones principales de la acequia Real, así como sus valores patrimoniales y ambientales. En este trabajo se exponen los numerosos trabajos, proyectos e informes elaborados en los últimos años a este respecto, indicando los objetivos perseguidos, la metodología empleada y los logros alcanzados.

[EN] The last Islamic kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula was ruled by the Nasrid dynasty during the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries around Granada. It was divided into about twenty administrative districts, and Loja, located in the northern center area, was one of the most important and strategic ones. It had a high density of fortifications of different nature, some of which date back to very ancient times. This contribution is the result of the intense digital documentation that has been carried out on the graphic representation of these assets. They have been completed with the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to obtain the necessary graphic information to represent these architectures by means of precise planimetrical surveys, documenting and diagnosing their current state.

[ES] La diversa tipología y morfología del patrimonio defensivo que nos rodea constituyen un testimonio de las distintas formas de vertebración territorial que se han sucedido a lo largo de la historia.

[EN] The centre of the High Alpujarra is defined by a stratified landscape from the high peaks of the Sierra Nevada to the Guadalfeo river valley. The meltwater has made possible the development of hydraulic systems that have given structure to the agricultural lands linked to the settlements of this region throughout history. One of the most outstanding cases can be found in the surroundings of Barranco de los Molinos, linked to the fertile plains of Juviles, Timar and Lobras. Captured at 2511 metres above sea level, next to the Borreguiles del Puerto de Trev€!iez and Jeres del Marquesado, an acequia de careo forms the backbone of this system. Barranco de los Molinos is one of the ravines into which it pours its waters, after transferring the water from the Trev€!iez river basin to the catchment area of the river Berchules. A series of concatenated water channels that, even today, irrigate the agricultural districts located to the east of the village of Juviles also originate in it, continuing downstream where they supply different irrigated lands in Timar and Lobras on their way, concluding at around 900 metres above sea level.

[EN] From the 13th century onwards water has been an intrinsic part of the Cultural Landscape of the palatial city of the Alhambra, which was connected to the valley of the Darro River as a source of lasting supply. This was made possible through the construction of the Royal Canal, the Acequia Real, which today consists of two main canals, known as Acequia de los Dos Tercios and Acequia del Tercio. In the last section there is also a third lower water channel, that could obtain excess water from the ones above it, directing them to the farming terraces located on the northern slope of the Palace of the Generalife. Furthermorem, exist other channel, the Acequia de los Arquillos ran above all of them, without reaching the Alhambra. The environment through which they flow has a huge environmental and cultural value, thus, the Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife (PAG) is committed to the recovery and management of big parts of the two main branches of the Alhambra's royal water channels, as well as their heritage and environmental values. During this process, archaeological interventions are being carried out that provide valuable information for understanding the complex hydraulic system that was articulated around the Alhambra in Nasrid times. The maintenance of the original riverbed of the Acequia Real through an ecological flow, is done in parallel to the recovery of a series of paths that are part of the network of existing pedestrian itineraries in the surrounding area the "Dehesa del Generalife", very popular among visitors.

Esta visita se centra en parte del patrimonio defensivo de la ciudad. Un dispositivo bélico formado por la suma de inmuebles de distintas épocas que constituyen un patrimonio arquitectónico de primer orden y cuyas siluetas han dado identidad a nuestros paisajes durante siglos. Torre Ladrones es una singular torre medieval caracterizada por ser la más alta de todo el litoral malagueño. El Lance de las Cañas es resultado de la modernización del sistema defensivo costero en el siglo XVIII y tiene la peculiaridad de ser la única torre a la que se puede acceder. La Torre de las Bóvedas, enclavada en una zona ajardinada, es un magnífico ejemplo de las denominadas "de tonel", el tipo que más se repite en la costa mediterránea.

La actividad analiza los dispositivos bioclimáticos con que contaban algunas de las arquitecturas en época andalusí y en periodos posteriores siempre que estuviesen basadas en los principios de adaptabilidad, sostenibilidad y economía de medios para aprovechar lo que proporciona el clima y el entorno sin agotarlo. Charla divulgativa enfocada al público general en la que se explica de una manera didáctica cómo la arquitectura no solo ha aportado refugio al ser humano, sino que en algunos casos se han desarrollado ingeniosos mecanismos respetuosos con el medio para obtener el mejor confort posible, incluso en condiciones climáticas desfavorables.

¿Cómo eran las casas en el siglo XVI? ¿Qué estancias había en su interior y cómo se disponían?¿Cómo se vestían los interiores? ¿Qué objetos eran frecuentes en el día a día de un hogar? Estas son algunas de las preguntas a las que este libro intenta dar respuesta. Se hace desde los datos que la documentación de archivo aporta, brindando un panorama hasta ahora poco explorado. En general, no se trata de grandes casas de familias nobles, algunas de las cuales han llegado hasta nuestros días, sino que preferentemente damos luz a la gente común y a un patrimonio desaparecido, pues muchas de sus viviendas han ido sucumbiendo ante el inexorable paso del tiempo. Nos sumergimos en analizar cómo vivían panaderos, confiteros o tejedores. Desde esclavos a mercaderes, sin olvidarnos de algunas clases de mayor rango y linaje que aparecen en los documentos. Recuperamos de este modo una parte esencial de la configuración de las sociedades y del parcelario de unas ciudades muy diversas a las actuales y que, a veces, cuesta imaginar.

[EN] Water has been and it is an intrinsic part of the Cultural Landscape of the palatial city of the Alhambra, which was connected to the valley of the Darro River as a source of lasting supply. This was made possible through the construction of the Royal Canal, the Acequia Real, which today consists of two main canals, known as Acequia de los Dos Tercios and Acequia del Tercio. In the last section there is a third lower ditch that could obtain excess water from the ones above it, directing them to the farming terraces located on the northern slope of the Palace of the Generalife. The Acequia de los Arquillos ran above all of them, without reaching the Alhambra. The environment through which they flow has a huge environmental and cultural value. It shows both the influence of natural processes and the organization imposed by human beings. After the creation of the Acequia Real of the Alhambra in the 13th century, this area was transformed into an agricultural ecosystem consisting of a complex mosaic of irrigated orchards, extensive rain-fed crops, meadows and forests, sprinkled with constructions for different purposes. The hydraulic system was altered in the 15th century with the loss of the Acequia de los Arquillos, as well as the subsequent Christian regulation of the Acequia Real from 1492. The Dehesa del Generalife was badly affected in the late 1560s during the uprising of the Moriscos. Even before, this area was neglected, with uncontrolled communal use by the residents of the city of Granada, which caused multiple damage and deterioration. Despite its recovery and the fact that orders were issued to ensure that livestock did not graze in the area, this process was to go on until the first half of the twentieth century. Soon after that, the historical channels that still carried water were abandoned. However, the Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife (PAG) is committed to the recovery and management of big parts of the two main branches of Alhambra´s royal w

En este capítulo se analiza la configuración espacial de las propiedades urbanas que tenía en Granada el Hospital Real, mandado a edificar por los Reyes Católicos a partir del albalá y privilegio fundacional de 1504, poco antes de la muerte de la reina Isabel I de Castilla.

Visita guiada a la Casa del Chapiz realizada por el investigador Luis García Pulido con motivo del Día de la Solidaridad de las Ciudades Patrimonio Mundial 2022.

Catálogo de la exposición celebrada del 9 de febrero al 26 de abril de 2023 en el Salón de Actos de la Escuela de Estudios Árabes (EEA), CSIC. El catálogo recoge los contenidos de los paneles, además de algunas imágenes del acto de inauguración del 90 aniversario de la EEA celebrado el 21 de noviembre de 2022. La Escuela de Estudios Árabes (EEA) es un instituto de investigación fundado en 1932 y perteneciente al Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) desde 1939. Desde 1932 hasta 1948, la EEA desarrolló al mismo tiempo docencia e investigación. Hoy en día, la labor investigadora de la EEA se centra en el estudio de la historia y de la cultura de las sociedades árabes e islámicas -con especial atención a al-Andalus- a partir del análisis de fuentes textuales, materiales y orales. Entre las diversas líneas de investigación que se desarrollan en la EEA cabe destacar las siguientes: arqueología medieval islámica y cristiana, arqueología de la arquitectura, arquitectura y urbanismo islámicos, dialectología árabe, epigrafía árabe, edición y traducción de textos árabes, Granada en época islámica y morisca, e historia del islam. Su actividad abarca, además, la docencia en cursos de máster, dirección de tesis doctorales y trabajos de fin de máster, publicaciones, organización de cursos especializados y ciclos de conferencias, etc.

El Centro de Interpretación del Trogloditismo y la Cultura Funeraria de Benamaurel (Cementerio antiguo), acogió desde el día 9 de abril de 2022 la exposición "Las torres y atalayas conservadas en el entorno de Benamaurel y en la provincia de Granada", con la producción científica de la Escuela de Estudios Árabes del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) junto al Departamento de Arte y Arquitectura de la Universidad de Málaga. La exposición muestra las últimas investigaciones sobre la arquitectura defensiva medieval conservada en el antiguo Reino de Granada. La idea es mostrar y contribuir a difundir este rico legado patrimonial a la sociedad que habita en los entornos donde se encuentran muestras de arquitectura defensiva medieval en la provincia de Granada, haciendo especial hincapié en las zonas del altiplano de Baza y Huéscar, que cuentan con torres de alquería y atalayas andalusíes que fueron construidas en estos territorios bajo el dominio islámico. La exposición presenta una selección de paneles que incluyen representaciones gráficas de las construcciones conservadas estudiadas, siguiendo una metodología de trabajo basada en la documentación fotogramétrica de todos los ejemplares que han sido objeto de diferentes análisis.

Análisis del edificio bastetano que viene siendo conocido como Palacio de los Enríquez, así como de los restos materiales visibles de distintas épocas. Para ello han estudiado los expedientes textuales y gráficos conservados en múltiples archivos y la bibliografía existente, la investigación se ha enmarcado en el medio urbano del que fue el espacio extramuros más importante de la Baza islámica, hoy situado al este de la Alameda de Cervantes y la Carrera de Palacio y el Monasterio de San Jerónimo al sur.

El Museo Histórico Municipal de la Alcazaba (MHA), en Loja (Granada), acogió desde el día 22 de marzo a 22 de mayo de 2022 la exposición "Las fortificaciones medievales conservadas en el distrito de Loja", con la producción científica de la Escuela de Estudios Árabes del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) junto al Departamento de Arte y Arquitectura de la Universidad de Málaga. La exposición muestra las últimas investigaciones sobre la arquitectura defensiva medieval conservada en el antiguo Reino de Granada. «La idea es mostrar y contribuir a difundir este rico legado patrimonial a la sociedad que habita en los entornos donde se encuentran muestras de arquitectura defensiva medieval tales como la alcazaba lojeña junto a otras fortificaciones, así como las torres de alquería y atalayas que fueron construidas en este territorio», explica el investigador Luis José García Pulido, de la Escuela de Estudios Árabes, coordinador del proyecto en el que se enmarca la exposición. «La exposición se presenta mediante paneles que incluyen representaciones gráficas de las construcciones estudiadas, siguiendo una metodología de trabajo basada en la documentación fotogramétrica de todos los elementos de la arquitectura defensiva medieval que han sido objeto de diferentes análisis» añade García Pulido. Para apoyar la exposición, se ha elaborado un catálogo de 89 páginas gráficas con cada uno de los ejemplares estudiados, que pudo descargarse a través de un código QR.

This research is focused in the study of the northern wall of the Alhambra (Granada), with a deeper view to study its architecture, history and transformations till our days. The first palaces of the nasrid dynasty were stablished in the central and most elevated area of the Sabīka hill. With the time, they were shifted to the north, until they were placed on the defence line of the military compound from a visually and structural point of view. This northern wall has projected the image of power over the city of Granada and its territory in every time in history. There are different milestones in its configuration, like the changes made by Yūsuf I (r. 1333-1354), the building of the Palaces of Comares and Leones or the modifications carried out by the Catholic Monarchs after the conquest of Granada. All these uses were superimposed, but with the prevalence of the palatial one above the fortified walkway that surrounded the Alhambra. Some mullioned windows were built above the wall. At the same time, the wall was changing in some parts, like in the Patio de la Reja area. There, the old walkway that existed until the fourteenth century was parallel to the south gallery of the Patio de Lindaraja. Ultimately, the building of the huge Tower of Comares by king Yūsuf I was the enlargement of a previous tower that existed in the northern wall of the Alhambra. It is a paradigm of the transformation of a defensive front to an element of royal power display.

[EN] The district of Baza took up more than a fourth of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, the last Islamic region in the Iberian Peninsula (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries). This area encompassed the northern highlands of this region, the Almanzora river valley and other areas that would later be incorporated into the province of Almeria. The province of Granada came to include the municipalities that nowadays constitute the Baza and Huéscar highlands. There are more than thirty preserved watchtowers in these areas. They are in strategic points with wide visibility, enabling communication through smoke signals during daylight or beacons at night. In the Nasrid period this system was reinforced, and new towers were built in locations of special relevance. They are usually made in masonry with gravel filling, with circular base and cylindrical or tapered shape, with the solid base and a single chamber with elevated access for the tower watch, from which the plume of smoke could rise through a hole in the terrace. The upper part was intended for the canopy and, if necessary, to make a beacon. This network not only allowed the information about what was happening in the district to reach the main fortresses, and ultimately, to arrive to the Alhambra citadel, the seat of the Nasrid dynasty. This paper is focused in the digital survey that has been carried out on the towers preserved in these areas, in the northern border of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, allowing a scientific and comparative analysis of this group of defensive elements from a morphological, architectural and constructive point of view.

Due to the proximity of the Nasrid western sector of the kingdom of Granada to the border with Castile, some rural settlements had to equip themselves with defensive structures between the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, especially when the insecurity conditions were particularly pressing. Consequently, in some of the farmsteads a tower has been preserved. It was the most visible and predominant element of defensive enclosures that often had walled spaces to protect people, animals, and movable property. From an architectural and functional point of view, this type of towers with an enclosure for protection present great typological diversity in terms of the dimensions of plan and elevation, interior rooms, interior levels, layout of stairways or presence of cisterns or warehouses. Constructively, the walls of rammed earth with lime and gravel content, which allowed for the modulation of prism-shaped towers, were gradually replaced by masonry from the fourteenth century onwards due to Castilian influence. The change towards masonry construction was also born from a need to reinforce the earlier defences built with earth and facilitate the construction of structures with fewer edges, as those were less vulnerable for the increasingly widespread use of artillery system as a whole was completed and reinforced during the Nasrid period. This paper is devoted to the environmental and constructional analysis of a number of selected watchtowers from the western border of Granada, some of them built with crusted rammed earth and others in masonry with gravel filling. The structural stability of these towers has also been studied. They have been documented and analysed in depth due to the preservation of enough material structures for their physiognomy and materiality to be recognized. This allowed developing a set of in situ tests that has made its characterization possible from an integral perspective.