On May 5, 1276, during a Muslim skirmish at the gates of the city of Alcoy, Abu Abd Allah Muhammad Ibn Hudhayl died. Your name probably doesn’t tell you anything. Not even the nickname by which he is known: Al Azraq. History wipes the losers off the map. And Al Azraq was a loser. James I the Conqueror, king of Aragon, Valencia and Majorca, overcame their fierce resistance and put an end to the Islamic domination of eastern Al Andalus in the 13th century.

But Al Azraq was a triumphant defeat. Seven and a half centuries later, his figure survives in one of the most deeply rooted traditions of the Valencian Community. We are referring to the well-known Moors and Christians festival. And what is more surprising: thanks, to a certain extent, to its winner. Much of what is known today of the Andalusian warrior is due to Jaime I and his chronicle of the Llibre dels feits. The king devotes no less than 19 chapters to the Muslim rebel who stood up to him and, according to the chronicles, almost ended his life in an ambush.

The vizier Al Azraq entrenched himself in a large mountainous area that coincides today with the regions of Marina Alta, Marina Baixa, Alcoià and Comtat, in the province of Alicante. In that vast area he controlled a group of eight castles, which he defended with tenacity and ardor for more than a decade. The first documentary evidence of the fierce Andalusian fighter dates back to 1245, when Al Azraq signed with the King of Aragon the so-called Pouet or Well Pact , which stipulated a progressive surrender of his fortresses .

The agreement broke down and the two contenders prolonged their hostilities for eleven years, according to the writer and researcher Just Sellés in his historical novel The Blue Mountain. Chronicle of Vizier Al Azraq. In 1258, the Andalusian warrior was betrayed by one of his advisors and Jaime I banished him. Eighteen years later, Al Azraq returned from Granada at the head of 250 horsemen to support the Mudejar revolts against feudal oppression, where he died in a scuffle with Christian troops.

“Almost everything that sabemos de Al Azraq is from the mouth of his enemy. Therefore, we should not believe what the king says at face value,” Sellés explains. Predictably, the chronicle significantly distorts reality. “When you make your enemy great and you have defeated him, you are greater than he is,” warns the writer to properly focus the scope of the royal chronicles that, by definition, used to be of a propagandistic nature. In any case, the narrative of Jaime I suggests that the Andalusian vizier was an intelligent warrior and a skillful diplomat, who maintained relations with the most important kings of the Middle Ages, among them the monarch of Aragon and Alfonso X the Wiseas well as with the Aragonese and Castilian princes. A letter from Al Azraq is also evidence of his link with ViolanteQueen consort of Aragon.

The book by Just Sellés portrays the “perverse effort of King James I to sully the image” of his “bravest enemy”. And the writer, in a way, tries to reverse this negative profile drawn by the monarch of Aragon who conquered Valencia in 1238. “I have written the counter-chronicle of the vanquished. The story told backwards. The one that is never told,” says the novelist. From this point of view, the challenge is obviously difficult. “Here, in the Valencian Community, King Jaime I is well liked by right and left. It’s difficult to say one word more loudly than the other about him because you tend to get beaten up,” Just Sellés admits without beating around the bush.

In order to shield himself from possible criticism of his historical novel, the writer assures that all the data contained in the book has been solidly grounded. “When you are well documented, no one can contradict you if you speak ill of King James I. And in my case I have documented the character very well, even when I echo the darker side of the monarch,” says the researcher and novelist.

Just Sellés also assures to have verified in situ that the figure of Al Azraq still has sympathy in the regions where he took refuge in the 13th century. “He is a character who, because of his fierce defense of his land, the people of the area still have a lot of respect for him,” he explains. Throughout this region the Moors and Christians festivities still maintain a consolidated popular roots and in them the figure of Al Azraq plays a capital role. Between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, chroniclers have included the Andalusian vizier in their local narratives, although giving him a manifestly improvable profile. “Always disfiguring its image,” Sellés laments. Even so, his memory has survived in the collective imagination.

Not much is known about his personal biography. The nickname Al Azraq comes from Arabic and means The Blue. Some chroniclers claim that the appellative referred to the color of his eyes, but Just Sellés categorically rejects this hypothesis. “That’s not so,” the writer denies. “It’s part of the legend. It was probably a family nickname. We don’t know why, but it is possible that his grandfather or great-grandfather wore blue clothing or blue jewelry. From his ancestry, it’s hard to argue that he had blue eyes. It doesn’t make any sense.

It also refutes the theory that Al Azraq led three Mudejar revolts. “They were not revolts. It was a war. And in no way were they Mudejars because they had not yet been conquered by the Christians. Therefore, the Muslims in the mountainous areas of Alicante should be considered Andalusian,” he remarked. By that time, the Taifa Kingdoms had crumbled and the Almohad power had also been extinguished. “It was every man for himself. Valencia had fallen seven years earlier in the hands of Jaime I and was a decaying regime”.

After the conquest of the King of Aragon, the Muslims of the mountain remained in the region as Mudejars and later as Moors converted to Christianity. “It was cheap Christian labor,” Sellés points out. And in 1609, almost four centuries later, hundreds of thousands of Moors were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula by order of Philip III.

The importance of the Andalusian vizier in the history of eastern Al-Andalus has persuaded a group of citizens to promote the declaration of 2026 as the Al Azraq Year. To this end, they have promoted the creation of a Cultural Coordinating Committee for the 750th Anniversary of the death of the Muslim warrior, which is being joined by municipalities and citizens’ associations.

“Our purpose is to coordinate a cultural agenda to commemorate the ephemeris of the vizier Al Azraq, a historical figure of capital importance in the collective imagination of our regions”, says the manifesto of the initiative posted on the corporate website. The Coordinating Committee has already programmed a series of 12 historical conferences, as well as theatrical and musical activities, and some thematic routes that recover the legendary itinerary of the Andalusian fighter.

The citizen proposal seeks to rehabilitate the figure of a courageous Andalusian leader that history buried for centuries and now emerges on the back of the collective memory as a central character of our past.