Author(s): Elizabeth Drayson

History

Boabil handed the keys of his city to Ferdinand saying in Arabic: "God loves you greatly. Sir, these are the keys of this paradise. I and those inside it are yours." The king then handed the keys to Isabella, and she handed them to her son the prince Juan, who gave them to the Count of Tendilla. The seventeenth-century writer and poet Rodríguez de Ardila writes that when Boabdil was told that the Count of Tehndilla had been named governor of the Alhambra, he asked him to be summoned, and taking a gold ring set with a turquoise from his finger he handed it to the Count, saying that Granada had been governed with this ring since the time that the Moors first won it, and he wished that he should wear it to govern as well. Boabdil wished him better luck than he had encountered in doing so.