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The Third Siege of Gibraltar was mounted between February–June 1333 by a Moorish army under the prince Abd al-Malik Abd al-Wahid of Morocco. The fortified town of Gibraltar had been held by Castile since 1309, when it had been seized from the Moorish Emirate of Granada. The attack on Gibraltar was ordered by the recently crowned Marinid ruler Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Othman in response to an appeal by the Nasrid ruler Muhammed IV of Granada. The onset of the siege took the Castillians by surprise. The stocks of food in Gibraltar were heavily depleted at the time due to the thievery of the town's governor, Vasco Perez de Meira, who had looted the money that was meant to have been spent on food for the garrison and to pay for the upkeep of the castle and fortifications. After over four months of siege and bombardment by Moorish catapults, the garrison and townspeople were reduced to near-starvation and surrendered to Abd al-Malik. ==Start of the siege== In 1309, Castillian troops under Ferdinand IV of Castile captured Gibraltar, then known as the ''Medinat al-Fath'' (City of Victory), from the Muslim-ruled Emirate of Granada. Its fortifications were repaired and improved by the Castillians. In 1315 the Granadans attempted to retake Gibraltar in the brief and unsuccessful Second Siege of Gibraltar. The alliance between the Nasrids of Granada and the Marinids of Morocco had fallen into abeyance following the loss of Gibraltar, but the accession of the Marinid sultan Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Othman led to a renewal of the pact between the two Muslim states. A force of 7,000 men under the command of Abu al-Hasan's son, Abd al-Malik, was secretly transported across the Strait of Gibraltar to rendezvous with the forces of Muhammad IV of Granada at Algeciras in February 1333. The Castillians were distracted by the coronation of King Alfonso XI and were slow to respond to the invasion force, which was able to lay siege to Gibraltar before much of a response could be organised. Gibraltar was ill-prepared for this eventuality. Its governor, Don Vasco Perez de Meira, had looted the funds allocated by the crown to pay for food and maintenance of the town's defences, using it to buy land for himself near Jerez. He also misappropriated the food itself, selling it to the Moors, and kept the garrison under strength. The shipwreck of a grain ship off the Gibraltarian coast, only eight days before the siege began, gave the garrison a little extra food supply, but as events were to prove, it was not nearly enough. The town consisted of a series of individually fortified districts that reached from the dockyard on the sea front to a castle several hundred feet up the slope of the Rock of Gibraltar. By the end of February, Abd al-Malik's forces had captured the dockyard and the area on the Rock above the castle, where he set up siege engines. Castillian attempts to organise a relief force were hampered by Granadan raids on their borders that were intended to divert Castillian attention. In addition, political disputes between Alfonso and his vassals delayed the raising of a land force to lift the siege. Although Alfonso had a naval force at his disposal under Admiral Alfonso Jofre de Tenorio, the Moorish ships supporting the siege were positioned close inshore where it was too dangerous to attempt an attack. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Third Siege of Gibraltar」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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