After a siege of over a year, Ferdinand III of Castile took Seville — the greatest city of al-Andalus — on 23 November 1248, all but completing the reconquest of the Guadalquivir.
The Conquest of Seville was the capture of the greatest city of al-Andalus by Ferdinand III of Castile in 1248, after a siege lasting more than a year. It was the climax of Ferdinand's reconquest of the Guadalquivir valley.
With Seville taken, Christian rule reached almost the whole of southern Iberia, and only the Nasrid emirate of Granada remained as an independent Muslim state. Ferdinand made Seville a capital and was buried in its cathedral.
Ferdinand III surrounded Seville in 1247 and settled in to starve it out, but the city could still be supplied along the Guadalquivir from its suburb of Triana across the river. The decisive stroke was naval: a Castilian fleet under the admiral Ramón Bonifaz sailed up the river and, in a celebrated action, broke the pontoon bridge of boats that joined Seville to Triana.
Cut off from the river and from relief, and with famine setting in, Seville negotiated its surrender. On 23 November 1248 the city capitulated, and Ferdinand III made his formal entry.
The Muslim population of Seville was required to leave, and the city was repopulated with settlers from the north; the great Almohad mosque became its cathedral, its minaret the Giralda. Seville became one of the chief cities of the Crown of Castile.
The conquest effectively completed the reconquest of western al-Andalus. What remained was the emirate of Granada, now a tributary of Castile, which would survive as the last Muslim state in Iberia until 1492.