Skip to content

Stephenson:Neal:The Confusion:84:Guadalquivir (Alan Sinder)

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

This is The Confusion page for Guadalquivir

Stephensonia

It's not the Guadalcanal in the Solomons. Ironically, it is near the straits named after Athena's protége that Enoch and Daniel chat about in Quicksilver near page 40. Saying more would require spoilers...

Authored entries

Guadalquivir

Guadalquivir is one of the major rivers of Spain. Wad al-kebir is acctually "the great river" in Arabic. It passes through Córdoba and Seville and ends in the Atlantic Ocean. Cádiz (population 160,000) is a coastal city in south-west Spain, in the region of Andalusia. It is the capital of the province also named Cádiz in southern Spain, in the southwestern part of the autonomous community of Andalusia.CordobaRomanBridge.jpg
Ancient Roman Bridge
Spans The Guadalquivir

Andalusia (Andalucía in Spanish) is one of the seventeen autonomous communities that constitute Spain. Located in the south of the country, Andalusia it is bounded on the north by Extremadura and Castile-La Mancha, on the east by Murcia, on the south by the Mediterranean Sea and Gibraltar, and on the west by Portugal. Its capital is Sevilla.

Seville

Seville (Spanish: Sevilla) is the artistic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain, crossed by the river Guadalquivir. It is the capital of Andalusia and of the province of Sevilla. The inhabitants of the city are known as Sevillanos. The population is about 700,000 people, making it the fourth largest city in Spain; the metropolitan area has a population close to 1,300,000.

Motto

The motto of Seville is "NO8DO". The "8" is shaped like a wool hank, in Spanish madeja. This makes the motto, as a rebus read "NO madeja DO" which is a pun on "no me ha dejado" = "she did not abandon me". This refers to the city's support for King Alphonse X in the war with his son Don Sancho in the 13th century. This motto is seen throughout Seville, inscribed on manhole covers

History of Seville

Legend has it that it was founded by the equally legendary Greek hero, Hercules. It was named Hispalis under the Romans. The influence of 800 years of Moorish occupation and their architecture predominates.

The city was long an important sea port, prior to the silting up of the Guadalquivir. It sits well inland, but a mere 6 meters above sea level. Much of the Spanish Empire 's treasures from the New World came to Europe via Seville, and Seville still holds the most important archive of the Spanish conquests in the Americas. It was the home of Expo 92. The showpiece bridge across the Guadalquivir was designed by renowned architect Santiago Calatrava was built for this occasion. Seville also hosted the European Summit in June 2002; this was met with a counter-summit by those opposing neoliberalism and the tightening of European regulations on immigration. Seville is well known for its hot summer weather.

The Sights of Seville

The city's great Cathedral was built from 1401 - 1519 after the Reconquista on the former site of the city's mosque. The interior is lavishly decorated, with a large quantity of gold evident. The Cathedral reused some columns and elements from the old mosque, and most famously the Giralda, originally a minaret, was converted into a bell tower. It is topped with a statue representing Faith. The Giralda is the city's most famous symbol.

The Alcazar — (Arabic القصر) means 'fortress — is the city's old Moorish Palace; construction was begun in 1181. Additional construction continued for over 500 years. The Alcazar of Seville was finished in the 1360s by Moorish craftsmen for Pedro the Cruel who, with his mistress, Maria de Padilla, lived in and ruled from the Alcazar, and often remodeled. Now it is an UNESCO World Heritage site. The Parque Maria Louisa was built for the 1929 Exposición Ibero-Americana World's Fair, and now is landscaped with attractive monuments and museums.SevillaGiralda.jpg
Sevilla

Pedro the Cruel AKA Peter I of Castile

Peter "the Cruel" (in Spanish, Peter I of Castile; August 30, 1334 -March 23, 1369 ) was a king of Castile (1350 -1369 ). He was the son of Alfonso XI and Maria, daughter of Alphonso IV of Portugal. He earned for himself the reputation of monstrous cruelty which is indicated by the accepted title. In later ages, when the royal authority was thoroughly established, there was a reaction in Peter's favour, and an alternative name was found for him. It became a fashion to speak of him as El Justiciero, the executor of justice. Apologists were found to say that he had only killed men who themselves would not submit to the law or respect the rights of others. There is this amount of foundation for the plea, that the chronicler Lopez de Ayala, who fought against him, has confessed that the king's fall was regretted by the merchants and traders, who enjoyed security under his rule. Peter began to reign at the age of sixteen, and found himself subjected to the control of his mother and her favourites.

He was immoral, and unfaithful to his wife, as his father had been. But Alphonso XI did not imprison his wife, or cause her to be murdered. Peter certainly did the first, and there can be little doubt that he did the second. He had not even the excuse that he was passionately in love with his mistress, Maria de Padilla; for, at a time when he asserted that he was married to her, and when he was undoubtedly married to Blanche of Bourbon, he went through the form of marriage with a lady of the family of Castro, who bore him a son, and then deserted her. Maria de Padilla was only the one lady of his harem of whom he never became quite tired. At first he was controlled by his mother, but emancipated himself with the encouragement of the minister Albuquerque and became attached to Maria de Padilla. Maria turned him against Albuquerque. In 1354 the king was practically coerced by his mother and the nobles into marrying Blanche of Bourbon, but deserted her at once. A period of turmoil followed in which the king was for a time overpowered and in effect imprisoned. The dissensions of the party which was striving to coerce him enabled him to escape from Toro, where he was under observation, to Segovia.

From 1356 to 1366 he was master, and was engaged in continual wars with Aragon, in which he showed neither ability nor daring. It was during this period that he perpetrated the series of murders which made him odious. He confided in nobody save the Jews, who were his tax-gatherers, or the Muslim guards he had about him. The profound hatred of the Christians for the Jews and Mudejares, or Muslims settled among them, dates from the years in which they were the agents of his unbridled tyranny. In 1366 he was assailed by his bastard brother Henry of Trastamara at the head of a host of soldiers of fortune, including Bertrand du Guesclin and Hugh Calveley, and abandon the kingdom without daring to give battle, after retreating several times (first from Burgos, then from Toledo, and lastly from Seville) in the face of the oncoming armies. He fled, with his treasury, to Portugal where he was coldly received by his uncle, Pedro I, and thence to Galacia, in northern Spain, where he ordered the murder of Suero, the archbishop of Santiago, and the dean, Peralvarez.

In the summer of 1366 Peter took refuge with the Black Prince, by whom he was restored in the following year. But he disgusted his ally by his faithlessness and ferocity, as well as his failure to repay the costs of the campaign, as he had promised to do. The health of the Black Prince broke down, and he left Spain. When left to his own resources, Peter was soon overthrown by his brother Henry, with the aid of Bertrand du Guesclin and a body of French and English free companions. He was murdered by Henry in du Guesclin's tent on March 23, 1369. His daughters by Maria de Padilla, Constance and Isabella, were respectively married to John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley, sons of Edward III, king of England.

Seville in fiction

  • Seville is the primary setting of Bizet's opera Carmen.
  • Seville is the setting of the novel and film Nadie conoce a nadie, which incorporates the elaborate Sevillian processions during Holy Week.
  • Don Quixote visits Seville.

Castilian

The Spanish spoken in the Americas is largely descended from the Andalusian dialect of Castilian Spanish due to the role played by Sevilla as the gateway to Spain's American colonies in the 16th and 17th centuries. A lot of Moorish architecture is found in Andalusia, because it was the last stronghold of the Moors before they were expelled from Europe in 1492. The most famous are The Alhambra in Granada, the Mosque in Córdoba and the Torre del Oro and Giralda towers in Sevilla. Archaeological remains include Medina Azahara, also near Sevilla. GuadalquivirMapMW.jpg
Map of the Bay of Cadiz
Detailing Rio Guadalquivir and Sevilla
It's pretty easy Spanish, the prepare must mean Preserve

The Province of Cádiz

It is bordered by the provinces of Huelva, Sevilla, and Málaga, as well as the British possession of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Sea. Its area is 7,442 km². Its capital is Cádiz. Its population is 1,140,793 (2002), of whom about one-ninth live in the capital, and its population density is 153.29/km² It contains 44 municipalities.

The City of Cádiz

The city was originally founded as Gadir (meaning walled city) by the Phoenicians, who used it in their trade with Tartessos. Traditionally, its date of establishment is circa 1100 BCE, although upto now no finds have been found yet that date back further than the 9th century BCE. It is regarded as the most ancient still existing city in the western Europe. A temple was dedicated to the Phoenician god Melqart. Some authors think that the columns of this temple gave origin to the myth of the Columns of Hercules. (Melqart was identified by the Greek with Heracles (Hercules for the Romans).Provmap-cadiz.png
Cádiz

Via the Carthaginians it fell in hands of the Romans, who called it Gades. Gadir became an important commercial city during the Carthaginian domination and disappeared in the last days of the Roman Empire when commerce decayed. According to Greek legend, Gadir was founded by Heracles after killing Geryon. It substituted Seville as the port monopolizing the commerce with Spanish America Cádiz was the seat of the liberal Cortes fighting Joseph I of Spain in the Peninsula war. The Spanish Constitution of 1812 was proclaimed there. Cádiz is famous by its carnival. Murgas (amateur satirical choruses) compete for a prize.

Trocadero

Trocadero (Trocadéro in French) was a fortified position on the bay of Cadiz in the south of Spain. Captured by France on August 31, 1823 by forces led by the duke d'Angoulême. The goal was to intervene against the liberal Spanish who were rebelling against the autocracy of Ferdinand VII.

Tartessos

Tartessos (also Tartessus) was a harbor city on the south coast of Spain, at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. It probably existed already before 1000 BCE, and its inhabitants were traders, who seem to have been the ones to discover the route to the Tin Islands (Britain or more precisely the Scilly Islands). Tin was a much-wanted product in those days, as it was necessary for the production of bronze, and the people from Tartessos became important trading partners of the Phoenicians, who nearby built a harbor of their own, Gades (current-day Cadiz). In the 6th century BCE, Tartessos disappears rather suddenly from history. The Romans called the wide bay the Tartessius Sinus though the city was no more.

One theory is that the city had been destroyed by the Carthaginians who wanted to take over the Tartessans' trading routes. Another is that it had been refounded, under obscure conditions, as Carpia. When the traveller Pausanias visited Greece in the 2nd century CE (Paus. Desc. 6.XIX.3) he saw two bronze chambers in one of the sanctuaries at Olympia, which the people of Elis claimed was Tartessian bronze: "They say that Tartessus is a river in the land of the Iberians, running down into the sea by two mouths, and that between these two mouths lies a city of the same name. The river, which is the largest in Iberia, and tidal, those of a later day called Baetis, and there are some who think that Tartessus was the ancient name of Carpia, a city of the Iberians."

The site of Tartessos is lost and buried in the shifting wetlands that have replaced former estuaries behind dunes at the modern single mouth of the Guadalquivir, where the river delta has gradually been blocked off by a huge sandbar that stretches from the mouth of the Rio Tinto, near Palos, to the riverbank opposite Sanlúcar. The area is now protected as the Parque Nacional de Doñana.

Rio Tinto's runoff is considered so toxic as to be unearthly, scientists hunt extreme lifeforms along its banks. Tinto means tanned in Spanish.

Doñana National Park

Doñana National Park (Parque Nacional de Doñana), also called Coto Doñana, is a national park and wildlife refuge in southwestern Spain. It is located in Andalusia, in the provinces of Huelva and Sevilla, and covers 50,720 hectares, of which 13,540 are a protected area. It is Spain's largest national park. The park, whose biodiversity is unique in Europe, contains a great variety of ecosystems and shelters wildlife including thousands of European and African migratory birds, and endangered species such as the Imperial Eagle and Iberian Lynx. The park and its highly sensitive ecology were threatened in 1998 by a massive spill of metallic waste from a mine reservoir into the Guadiamar River, which flows through the park; however, the spill was diverted into the Guadalquivir River, reprieving the park.

Tartessian enthusiasts imagine it trading with Atlantis and link obscure finds with the highly problematic Lady of Elche. The name El Carpio survives, transferred to a site in a bend of the Guadalquivir, but the origin of its name has been associated with its imposing oldest feature, a Moorish tower erected in 1325 by the engineer responsible for the alcazar of Seville. In the Bible, Tartessos is known under the name of Tarshish, where Phoenicians traded ores during the rule of Solomon. Although several finds have been made in southern Spain that are ascribed to the Tartessan culture, the city itself has not been recovered by professional archeologists.

Pillars of Hercules

Pillars of Hercules is the ancient name given to the promontories that flank the entrance to the Straits of Gibraltar. They are Gibraltar in Europe and Mt. Acha in Ceuta in Africa. The Jebel Musa, west of Ceuta, is sometimes considered one of the Pillars.

Mythological Significance

The Creation of the Pillars

After killing Medusa, Perseus took the head of the Gorgon with him to distant lands and reached the western end of the Earth where the sun sets - the land where Atlas the Titan resided and raised magical golden apples. Perseus wished to rest in Atlas' garden and asked him for food but Atlas - fearing that the hero would steal his magical fruit - refused and sent Perseus away. Perseus then showed Atlas the head of Medusa and the Titan turned into a giant mountain - his hair turning into a great forest, his shoulders into cliffs and his bones into solid rock.

The Naming of the Pillars

When Hercules had to perform twelve labours, one of them was to fetch the Cattle of Geryon and bring it to Eurystheus. On his way to the island of Erytheia he had to cross the mountain that was once Atlas. Instead of climbing the great mountain, Hercules split it in half using his indestructible mace. By doing so, he connected the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and formed the Strait of Gibraltar. One part of the split mountain is currently called Gibraltar and the other is the Acho Mountain. These two mountains taken together were since then known as the Pillars of Hercules.

The Pillars as Portals

The pillars are also mentioned at some places as portals, or gates to different locations on Earth. When the Carthaginian admiral Himilco was sent to explore the area of the Muddy Sea (a shallow plateau that lies to the southwest of the Pillars) his report included the words "Many seaweeds grow in the troughs between the waves, which slow the ship like bushes {...} Here the beasts of the sea move slowly hither and thither, and great monsters swim languidly among the sluggishly creeping ships" (Rufus Festus Avienus) This description accurately resembles the Sargasso Sea rather than the Muddy Sea.

In Dante's Inferno

When describing his circles of hell, Dante mentions Ulysses and his voyage past the Pillars of Hercules (once considered the western end of the world). Ulysses justifies endangering his sailors by the fact that his goal is to gain knowledge of the unknown. After five months of navigation in the ocean, Ulysses detects the Purgatorial but encounters a whirlwind that sinks his ship.