Un ejemplo conservado de los recintos defensivos medievales representados en la primera mitad del siglo XVII en el manuscrito “Antigüedades del reino de Jaén”

Abstract

The author of the manuscript ‘Antiquities of the Kingdom of Jaén’, Martín de Ximena Jurado (1615-1664), is considered to be one of the first researchers of medieval military structures in this region of southern Spain. Some of his drawings represent defenses in specific places in a territory that constitutes the area of the Iberian Peninsula with the highest density of fortifications built or rebuilt in the Middle Ages (Cerezo Moreno & Eslava Galán, 1989: p. 8; Eslava Galán, 1999: p. 17). The Islamic and Christian fortresses that he mapped were drawn with their most characteristic elements of construction, representing the idealized 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). Some of his drawings were dedicated to the walls and towers of eight fortified enclosures, called castles in his writings. The fortress of Aragonesa or Bretaña (in the municipality of Marmolejo) is one of the best preserved, as the farmhouse that was attached to it left a part of the medieval fortification intact. Furthermore, both the main tower and its circuit of walls with three other corner towers can still be seen. The other cases had similar dimensions and were located on strategic communication routes. They were depicted with common formal characteristics, such as a quadrangular or triangular walled and crenellated enclosure, in which there were cylindrical turrets at the corners. The interior keeps, when they existed, are also depicted cylindrical in most cases, whereas the one that has been preserved in Aragonesa is prismatic. These drawings are usually marked with the cardinal points and measurements in paces, and their overall dimensions are indicated in the accompanying text. This paper studies the best preserved example of this kind of fortresses, the so-called Castle of Aragonesa, which allows us to understand some theoretical concepts about the Islamic and Christian fortifications in the Iberian Peninsula during the Late Middle Ages.