- Heritage & Antiquities Act Listings
- 2. Monuments
- Upper Rock
- Advance Look out Post – Moorish with stone conical roof
Advance Look out Post – Moorish with stone conical roof
Ref: HLMP2/030
The advance lookout post is a small sentry post with a conical roof, probably of Moorish origins. It stands perched to the North of Mount Misery which connects to Douglas’s Path. From this high vantage point, this particular lookout provided a 360° view of the Mediterranean, Strait and Bay of Gibraltar. This point also offers spectacular view to North Africa just over 20 km away.
Gibraltar was first occupied by the Moors after Tariq ibn-Ziyad was said to have landed on, or close (Carteia or La Atunara), to the shores of the Rock of Gibraltar on the 27th April 711 at the start of the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. The rock the was henceforth named after him (Jabal-ı Tārıq (جبل طارق), which in English translates to "Mountain of Tariq" – a name which was later corrupted into "Gibraltar" by the Spanish. However, there is no mention to a permanent occupation of Gibraltar is found in either Arab or Christian chronicles, nor archaeological evidence is found until the 12th century. 1
It has been argued that some kind of fortification was probably constructed at Gibraltar thereafter. According to the 13th Century Kurdish historian Ali ibn al-Athir, Tariq built a fort on the Rock, but this was "only for temporary use, and after he had captured the area of Algeciras, he abandoned it ... He descended from the mountains to the desert tract and conquered Algeciras and other places, and he abandoned the fort which was in the mountain." 2 The "fort" probably consisted of no more than a look-out post on the Rock to observe movements in and around the bay during the period of landing; there would have been little need for anything more substantial (as better landing points such as Algeciras or Tarifa were in his hands), and Tariq would not have had the manpower to construct a sizeable fortification. 3
1462 Moorish Gibraltar George Palao
The 14th Century Moroccan chronicler, Ibn Idhari al-Marrakusi who wrote the Al-Bayan al-Mughrib (History of the Magreb) quoting excerpts from lost works recorded that:4
When the Muslims, Arabs and Berbers crossed the straits, they disembarked on the port and tried to climb the cliffs of the Mountain. To make it easier for themselves they levelled the pathways with their battle-axes and rode over them on horseback to the top of the mountain. There they constructed a wall to defend themselves. They call it the Wall of the Arabs.
It cannot be ascertained, however, if this fort or lookout, is part of this wall built by Tarik, but this location would undoubtedly have provided the Moors with a direct line of communications with their main base at Algeciras, serving as an advanced warning for any enemy forces advancing along the coast of the Alboran Sea. In any case, such a temporary structure would have been abandoned as Umayyad forces advanced further into the interior.
Gibraltar was not re-occupied by the Moors until Almohad caliph Abd al-Mu'min ordered the construction of a fortified city there, to be called the Madinat al-Fath ("City of Victory") in 1160 AD. It is unclear how much of Madinat al-Fath was actually built, since after the death of Abd al-Mu'min, his son and successor Abu Yaqub Yusuf had preferred Seville as his capital.5
A portion of wall some 500 metres (1,600 ft) long still survives to the south of the main part of the city of Gibraltar, of similar design to defensive walls in Morocco. It may have protected a settlement on the upper part of the Rock, around where the modern Queen's Road is, but firm archaeological evidence is lacking.6
Documentary evidence, however, indicates that a settlement did exist in the area of Europa Flats during Gibraltar's Medieval Moorish Period (711-1462). In fact, it is believed that when Tarik arrived in 711 AD he found a small Genoese settlement above the Europa Flats in the area known as the Buffadero. An old Genoese tower and a windmill (hence the name Windmill Hill) dates back to this early settlement, but because of an existing trading treaty between the City State of Genoa and the Umayyad empire, this small settlement was left in peace. The Moors nevertheless established a fortified settlement of their own on the Europa Flats below which became known as the Coral de Fez. The southern plateau known as Europa Flats was later called by the Spaniards ‘Tarfes Bajos’, whilst the Windmill Hill above was known as ‘Tarfes Altos’.
Any settlement either on the western slopes or in the south would have necessarily have required an advanced lookout post overlooking the eastern side of the Rock. So it is probable that such a lookout post, not necessarily the present structure, could have been built on or near this site around this time. An advanced warning system such as this lookout would have been critical for the safety of the town below given that much of the southern suburbs of the town, known as La Turba, had no defensive walls to prevent an attack from this direction. Such a lookout, and others which dotted the coastal landscape as far as Europa Flats were supposed to give a timely warning of an impending raid allowing plenty of time for the inhabitants to flee to the relative safety of the castle complex, whilst the militia organised a defence and called for reinforcements from the nearby towns.
This warning system, however, failed miserably when on the 10th September 1540, Turkish pirates under the command of the renegade Caramani and a Corsair Captain attacked the city catching the inhabitants completely unawares. This would suggest that the advance lookout post overlooking Catalan Bay, where the corsairs had hidden before the attack had been abandoned by this time. Pedro Barrantes Maldonado reported the terrifying experience that resulted from this lack of security:7
‘The Turks, as has been said, had already reached the city, and spreading themselves through it, they entered through the principal street from the direction of the suburb (south) and began sacking the street all the way up to the Monastery of St. Francis, where the friars hearing the noise, fled to the Barcina district, with the Turks looting the monastery.’
Following this rampaging attack, the Baluarte de Nuestra Señora del Rosario (now South Bastion), protecting the tail end of La Turba was significantly strengthened and the Muralla de San Benito (English: St. Benedict's Wall), was built in 1540 to help defend the Rock against further attacks from the south.8
However, it was not until 1552 that the Emperor, Charles V sent a Milanese engineer, Giovanni Battista Calvi, to design adequate fortifications, including the southern wall, just beyond the extent of the Franciscan lands (Huerta de Ceberos). A traverse that ran north–south along the top of the cliff, and then a zigzag wall ran up to the crest of the Rock.
Philip II, who succeeded Charles V in 1558, later commissioned a Genoese engineer Giovan Giacomo Paleari Fratino to continue the improvements to Gibraltar's fortifications initiated by Calvi. Fratino decided that the traverse should be abandoned, and that the work already completed on Calvi's zigzag wall should be demolished (but it never was). He argued, quite rightly, that the upper wall should continue the line of the lower wall from the top of the cliff to the crest of The Rock. Fratino's upper wall was completed by 1575, running parallel but to the north of Calvi's zigzag upper wall ending at a fort known as El Hacho in what is now the Signal Station. This wall, originally known as the Muralla de San Reymondo (English: St. Raymond's Wall) and later as Phillip II Wall, was erroneously attributed by the British to have been an old Moorish wall, hence the popular name, but was actually the original extension of Charles V Wall in the Upper Rock.
sketch of Gibraltar dated circa 1710.
After 1704, the British either built or re-constructed the advance lookout beyond the southern wall which would have served as a picket post for the fort (El Hacho) at the top of the Rock. The relative good condition of the present structure attests to the fact that the structure received regular maintenance throughout the 18th and 19th Century. James tells us that both the signal house within Charles V Wall and the advance lookout post were guarded:9
‘…within the side of Charles the fifth wall, is the signal-house, built by the Spaniards to give intelligence to the town, (by a person paid and appointed for that purpose) of what number of ships are seen in the ocean, or Mediterranean Sea. A sarjeant’s (sic) mounts there every morning. There is, a little to the south-ward, a corporal’s guard-house, at the top of Charles the fifth wall.’
In 1727, 500 Spanish soldiers, led by Colonel Don Antonia de Figueroa and guided by a local shepherd called Simon Susarte managed to climb the precipitous east face of the Rock using an old goat path. Once at the top, the Spaniards managed to subdue the guard at El Hacho after climbing over Charles V wall: a feat which could not have been accomplished unless they had surprised and subdued the corporal’s guard at the lookout post first. The popular story is that the slaughtered guard at the signal station was discovered by a boy taking his father’s breakfast to him, who then raised the alarm, whilst another account states that the Colonel’s men were spotted by the Catalan Guard at El Salto del Lobo.10
James simply attributes the discovery ‘to a drum, who had been sent to town’ and who subsequently raised the alarm.11
Lookout Duty by an unkbown artict circa 1850.
In 1789, the construction of Douglas’s Path connected the advance lookout post to O’Hara’s Road. At one point along this path a second path deviates towards Breakneck but it is now heavily overgrown and inaccessible.
The advance lookout post continued to be used as such well into the 19th Century. A painting by an unknown artist, possibly a British Officer, dating to circa 1850 shows a sentry standing guard next to the lookout post. With the heavy militarization of the Upper Rock in the late 19th Century and the erection of the unclimbable fence this type of sentry post would have been rendered obsolete.
