ANDALUSIA (Span. Andalucia), one of the old provinces of Spain, broken up in 1833 into the eight modern provinces of Almeria, Cadiz, Cordova, Granada, Huelva, Jaen, Malaga and Seville (q.v.).
The Arab name al-Andalus designated the entire peninsula, but was used also specifically for the Muslim area and especially for the four kingdoms of Seville, Cordova, Jaen and Granada. It has been referred to a hypothetical form Vandalicia, the name either of Baetica when occupied by the Vandals or of the port by which the Vandals passed to Africa. The alternative "Land of the West" seems not to be considered seriously by modern Arabic scholars. In popular speech, however, Andalusia begins, not with the northern boundaries of the provinces of Cordova and Seville, but with the descent from the Sierra Morena to the Guadalquivir lowlands. Here is one of the abrupt changes char acteristic of Spain ; everything changes—climate, vegetation and people—in the drop of 1,5oo to 2,000ft. from the plateau to the lowlands. These wide and undulating lowlands are the essen tial Andalusia; the foothills of the Cordillera which separates them from the Mediterranean, and the Cordillera itself are known in distinction as Upper Andalusia. (Nevertheless, the terms Upper and Lower Andalusia are used also to distinguish between the low lands lying respectively along the upper and lower courses of the Guadalquivir.) Lower Andalusia opens out gradually in a funnel as it descends towards the Atlantic, at the same time it slopes gently towards the Guadalquivir, which on the north clings to the Morena foot. It is the upheaved bottom of the sea-straits which formerly separated the Spanish plateau from the Cordillera to the south, at that time still connected across the present Straits of Gibraltar with the African continent. The movement of upheaval, which led to the steady westward growth of the land, had many oscillations, so that deposits of widely differing kinds were laid down on the ocean margin as defined from time to time. More over, the older levels which appear at the surface where these lat ter deposits have been worn away often contain gypsum and salt. Thus the soils of Lower Andalusia vary widely from the fertile marls, which are best known in the famous olive-groves of the Ajaraque, west of Seville, and in the vineyards of Jerez, de la Frontera to the waterless, infertile soils of the wide pasture tracts (dehesas). To the west Lower Andalusia rises into the highly min eralized plateau leading to Portugal; to the east the lowlands, and with them the name, disappear in the narrows of the old straits, now limestone highlands leading to Murcia ; in this direction the esparto and saline steppes increasingly dominate the landscape.
The excessive heat and almost absolute drought of the summer months and the mildness of winter differentiate the climate of Lower Andalusia from that of the other arid districts of Spain. The amazingly fertile "black earths," which cover large tracts south of the Guadalquivir below Cordova and the La Janda de pression east of Cape Trafalgar, have no reference to present climatic conditions ; they are residual soils from an earlier, plu viose phase. The present climate is reflected in the wide exten sion of the olive, in the restricted extension of the orange from the coast to Palma del Rio, but more especially in the frequent hedges of prickly-pear, and the varieties of cactus. The towns of Lower Andalusia lie on the rivers, usually at points where these may be suitably bridged (Seville, Ecija, Cordova), or on elevations rising from the plain (Carmona, Marchena, Baena), or in commanding positions on the borders of the foothills (Moron,, Osuna, Lucena) . Cadiz, however, lies on the coast on a narrow-necked peninsula. Between the Rio Tinto and the Guadalquivir a large area of marshlands, fringed with dunes along the coast, is practically uninhabited.
Upper Andalusia rises somewhat abruptly from the south side of the Guadalquivir lowlands, but as these rise towards the nar rows its boundary becomes less distinct. The sierras of Upper Andalusia are aligned roughly in a cordillera, for the origin and structure of which see general article SPAIN, under heading Geology. They culminate in the Sierra Nevada (q.v.). A series of structural depressions, aligned with the sierras, provides most of the flat ground in this mountainous country, and the cities and towns are situated to command these (Granada, Antequera, Guadia and Baza), or on the coastal plains at the mouths of the short rivers of the Mediterranean slope (Malaga, Matril, etc.). The vegas, or fertile flats, of this area are thus unusually im portant. The climates of Upper Andalusia are attitudinal vari ants of that of Lower Andalusia. The towns of the mountain and of the coast are both, for different reasons, tolerable in summer. The coastal strips are notable for the mildest winter climate in Europe ; here are to be found the sugarcane, the plantain, the cherimoya, even the coffee-plant, and cotton is now being re-intro duced experimentally under Government control. Between the sub-tropical coastal district and the Nevada summits, lying some 500 or 600ft. below the theoretical snow-line, there is a great range of climates and vegetations, which are brought into close superposition in the Alpujarras (q.v.). Nowhere, however, is there significant rainfall in summer ; the only advantage possessed by Upper Andalusia over the lowlands is the availability of water for irrigation.
The accessibility of the interior by the waterways of the Guad alquivir (the only important river of Spain for navigation) and, to a lesser extent, of the Odiel and Rio Tinto, together with the mineral wealth of the Sierra Morena and of the plateau leading to Portugal, contributed to the early advance of civilization in Andalusia and to early contact with the outside world. The king dom of Tartessus, perhaps the Biblical Tarshish, flourished here in the latter half of the second millennium B.C., and its port, of the same name, on the Atlantic front served both as depot for the ore of Andalusia and as entrepot for the tin of northern lands, brought here in Tartessian ships. The Phoenicians, who may have been preceded here by the Cretans, established about 1100 B.C. a colony, Gadir, the earliest Cadiz, on a small coastal islet at some distance south, and also tapped the resources of Andalusia at points on the Mediterranean coast (Malaga, Adra). The Phoenicians were followed—after an interval during which the Phocaean Greeks controlled the trade with Tartessus—by the Carthaginians, who destroyed the Tartessian kingdom and finally established themselves firmly in southern Spain. Anda lusia did not blossom again until, as the senatorial province of Baetica (which extended, however, farther north and reached east only to the Linares district), it became integrally Roman. The brief occupation by the Vandals in the 5th century A.D., and the failure of the Eastern empire to hold Andalusia as an outlier of the imperial territory in Africa, seem to illustrate the untena bility of Andalusia by a power not firmly established on the cen tral plateau of Spain. The Muslim period, beginning in 711, brought Lower Andalusia to the highwater mark of its history. Cordova, more conveniently situated with respect to the Morena passes than the other Andalusian towns, became under the Umaiy ads the chief centre of authority in the peninsula and a world centre of culture. But the disadvantages, for control of the penin sula, of an administrative centre in Andalusia required to be coun teracted by the energy of an Abderrahman III. or an Almanzor, and with the death of the latter effective control from Cordova and, for the time, from Andalusia ceased. In the succeeding period superior local advantages of site contributed to make Seville outstanding among the numerous small Muslim states of Spain. When, after the defeat at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, the Muslims lost control of the Despenaperros pass, and their Guadiana states, now outflanked, fell to the Christians, Lower Andalusia ceased to be tenable.
The Muslim concentration in Upper Andalusia from 1257 on wards brought that region in turn to the zenith of its historical destiny. Granada, dominating the Genil depression, the most central of the Cordillera, became the centre of authority for a kingdom extending from Algeciras to the neighbourhood of Aguilas. To the loose coherence of the kingdom of Granada, re garded as ending Arab civilization, the physical isolation of the local administrative centres of Malaga, Almeria, Guadix, Baza, etc., and the lack of continuous lines- of easy communication con tributed obviously.
The long period of Muslim domination in Andalusia has left behind four great monuments—the Giralda and Alcazar of Seville, the Mosque of Cordova and the Alhambra at Granada. Though the buildings which survive from that period are few, the impress of the Muslim is still clear in the plan of cities and towns where, as in Cordova, later economic currents have not been sufficiently strong to modify it seriously, and is everywhere traceable. The internal arrangement of the house is derived by evolution from the Arab interior. The influence of Arabic in the everyday language of the common people is obvious, but it is not possible to assess the relative parts played by physical environment and the successive immigrations in determining the "Gaston" tempera ment of the people, the physical type—dark complexioned, hand some, graceful, and the clipped speech and phonetic peculiarity of the seses, or sibilation of the lisped Castilian c and z. The ex tension of the seses in the New World is a testimony to the part played by Andalusia in its settlement.