No victor but God: the Nasrid army of Granada, and what's on our 28mm models

For two and a half centuries, from 1238 to 1492, the Nasrid sultans of Granada held the last Muslim kingdom in Iberia, squeezed between Castile to the north and the sea to the south. Spanish still calls a rider a jinete, a word that goes back to the Zanata Berber horsemen who fought for Granada, and their palace, the Alhambra, is covered in a six-word motto: "there is no victor but God". This is the history behind our 28mm Grenadine jinetes, archers and armoured infantry from Reconquer Designs: how the army was organised, what each piece of kit is, where the emblems come from, whose side Granada fought on in the Castilian civil war, and how to paint them.

Period

Nasrid Granada, 1238–1492 (our sets: 14th century)

Scale

28mm, resin

Sets

Jinetes, archers, armoured infantry, Berbers at camp

Inside

History, heraldry, painting recipes

What was Nasrid Granada?

The Nasrid dynasty took power in Granada in 1238, after the great Almohad defeat at Las Navas de Tolosa had broken Muslim power in the peninsula. Its founder, Muhammad I, was known as al-Ghalib, "the victor", and he ruled as a tributary vassal of Ferdinand III of Castile (Britannica). His successors spent the next two centuries balancing between two powerful neighbours: Christian Castile, and their fellow Muslims the Marinids of Fez in Morocco, who sent armies across the strait until the Marinid and Granadan defeat at the Salado River in 1340.

The 14th century, the period of our figures, was Granada at its height. Under Muhammad V, who reigned 1354–1359 and again 1362–1391, the kingdom "attained its greatest splendour", in Britannica's words, and the Alhambra gained its most famous rooms (Britannica). The kingdom lasted another century, until Ferdinand and Isabella took Granada in 1492, the date usually given for the end of the Reconquista.

What is a jinete?

A jinete is a light horseman who rides a la jineta: with short stirrups and the legs bent (RAE dictionary). Put simply, it's the opposite of the long, straight-legged seat of a heavy knight. Riding that way, a man can stand up in the stirrups to throw a javelin, wheel away and come back again. The jinete fought with a light lance or javelins and the leather adarga shield, and he relied on speed rather than armour.

The word itself is a piece of history. Linguists trace jinete (Catalan genet, Portuguese ginete) back to the Zanata, a Berber people of North Africa, usually through the Arabic word for a man of that tribe, zanati (RAE dictionary, Merriam-Webster). The Spanish Royal Academy's dictionary still defines a jinete as a horse soldier armed with lance and adarga, riding with short stirrups and bent legs. The linguist Helmut Lüdtke argued it may have come straight from the Berber form of the name instead, and noted that the word first turns up in Castilian and Catalan in the early 14th century: the century of our figures (Lüdtke, Estudis Romànics). The Marinids who ruled Morocco were themselves a Zanata tribe (Britannica).

So did the Zanata bring the riding style with them? That was the old view. The arms historian José Ferrandis argued in 1943 that Zanata troops serving the first Nasrid sultan brought riding a la jineta to al-Andalus in the late 13th century. Later research by Álvaro Soler del Campo showed he was wrong: pictures show this way of riding in both the Christian kingdoms and al-Andalus as far back as the Caliphate of Córdoba. Ferrandis had misread a line in the chronicle of Alfonso X, and the Zanata horsemen were simply the first large North African force to cross the strait after Las Navas de Tolosa (Silva Santa-Cruz, Universidad Complutense). You'll still read the old story in many books, so it's worth knowing it has been overturned.

Both sides fought this way on the frontier, and Castile fielded jinetes of its own beside its knights. Christian knights in Iberia had taken up the adarga too, by the 13th century (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).

What you can see on our jinetes

• The adarga. A two-lobed, heart-shaped leather shield with a raised panel in the middle, carried high on the left arm.
• Light lances. Most riders in the full set carry a long, slim lance for thrusting or throwing.
• Javelins. The rider in the close-up below has a javelin raised overarm to throw, and a sheaf of spares slung behind his back.
• Short stirrups. Look at the bent knees: that's riding a la jineta.
• Light kit. An open round helmet, a mail hood or collar, a padded coat, and no armour on the horse.
• Two heads per rider. Swap helmets for broad-brimmed hats on some riders. The set also includes heater shields (not shown in our renders) to fit in place of adargas, so the same set can ride as Castilian jinetes, or as the mounted sergeants of other 14th-century armies.

What is an adarga shield?

The adarga is a light shield of hardened leather, made for horsemen, though Granada's foot soldiers carried it too: the historian Luis Seco de Lucena, working from Arabic writers and the Alhambra's wall paintings, counts "men of adarga and sword" among the Nasrid infantry (Seco de Lucena, Cuadernos de la Alhambra, our translation). The finest adarga to survive is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna: a Granadan shield made before 1492, 89 cm high and 75 cm wide, made of two sheets of leather stuck and stitched together, stiffened by a rod down the middle, plain on the outside and embroidered in coloured silk inside, with an inscription calling on God (Allah) round the edge (KHM). The museum explains that these shields began round or oval and, in the 14th century, took the shape of two overlapping ellipses, a little wider at the top: exactly the outline on our figures. It may have been taken as spoil after the fall of Granada in 1492, though the museum says plainly that nobody knows how it reached Austria.

Why leather? It's light, it can be shaped, and layered and hardened it takes a blow well enough for a man who plans to be somewhere else by the time the enemy arrives. The adarga lasted long after Granada: the KHM notes later versions were used in Spain's colonies in the Americas.

How was the Nasrid army organised?

The clearest short account is by the Granadan historian Luis Seco de Lucena, drawing on Ibn Khaldun and on Ibn al-Khatib, Muhammad V's own minister. He describes three separate forces under the sultan (Seco de Lucena, "El ejército y la marina de los nazaríes", Cuadernos de la Alhambra 7, 1971):

• The Andalusi army. Granada's own troops, with their own recruiting offices: archers, crossbowmen and men with adarga and sword on foot, and light horsemen with long, slim lances and javelins.
• The African militias. North African soldiers of several tribes, among them Marinids and Zanata, who first came over under Muhammad II, in the late 13th century. They garrisoned the frontier from districts based on Granada, Málaga, Ronda, Guadix and Almería, and fought, in Seco de Lucena's words, "always in the front line" (our translation).
• The palace guard. A closed corps of soldiers of Christian birth who had converted to Islam.

The African militias had their own commander, the shaykh al-ghuzat, usually a member of the Marinid royal family: the sultans of Morocco liked to send awkward relatives and dangerous pretenders off to Granada to lead them. That made the militias powerful and hard to control. One commander, the Marinid prince Uthman ibn Abi al-Ula, led the African cavalry that crushed a Castilian army at Sierra Elvira, near Granada, in 1319, a battle in which two Castilian royal princes died; he also meddled in Granada's palace politics and backed a rival sultan. After the defeat at the Salado River, Granada relied less on Morocco, and Muhammad V abolished the post, took command of the militias himself and treated them as auxiliaries. He also reorganised his own army, with a register of soldiers, recruiting offices and pay in gold (Seco de Lucena, above). English-language books often call the militias the "Volunteers of the Faith".

Our Berbers at Camp are six Berber warriors off duty round a fire (sold as spearmen, shown here at rest): the kind of North African soldiers who served Granada in these militias, and who crossed in larger armies while the Marinids waged war in Spain, a campaign that, as Britannica puts it, helped the Nasrids consolidate their position (Britannica).

Who fought on foot for Granada?

The jinete is Granada's famous soldier, but its armies also needed men to hold walls, mountain passes and a battle line. Our two foot sets show both sides of that.

What's on the armoured infantry:

• A turban wound round a helmet on the swordsman in the close-up, and pointed helmets with mail hanging from them on most of the others.
• A heavy mail collar over a long padded coat.
• Curved and straight swords. The close-up swordsman swings a curved blade, others carry straight swords, and the set includes a lance.
• An adarga with four bosses on the close-up swordsman and one other, and round shields on the rest.
• A command group: a captain, a standard bearer with a plain flag, ready for the motto or the band shield (see below), and a drummer with a pair of drums at his waist.

The Grenadine archers wear turbans and long belted coats with no armour, and draw recurved bows. In our renders of the set they carry a quiver at the hip, a sword at the belt and a small round shield slung on the back. That is close to the Nasrid archer Seco de Lucena describes from Arabic writers and the wall paintings of the Partal in the Alhambra: a turban, a coat called an aljuba, belts and baggy breeches (Seco de Lucena, above). Our studio painted one in a teal coat and a pale turban, built without his back shield:

What does "there is no victor but God" mean?

The Nasrid motto is wa-lā ghāliba illā Allāh (simplified, wa-la ghaliba illa Allah; also written wa la ghalib illa Allah): "and there is no victor but God". It is carved, painted and tiled all over the Alhambra. The Victoria and Albert Museum has a stucco roundel (probably a cast) of a design from about 1370, with the motto on a shield at its centre; roundels like it run round the Court of the Myrtles in the Comares Palace, the Alhambra's throne and reception rooms, and date from Muhammad V's rebuilding (V&A). Some scholars now translate it closer to "only God is sovereign" (Silva Santa-Cruz, Universidad Complutense).

Where did it come from? The record says only that the founder, Muhammad I, bore the title al-Ghalib, "the victor". The famous story is a legend, best known from Washington Irving's The Alhambra (1832, revised 1851, and often published as Tales of the Alhambra): coming home from helping Ferdinand III take Seville in 1248, Muhammad was hailed by the crowds as "the victor" and answered, sadly, that there is no victor but God. Irving told it as a romantic tale and gave no source for it, so treat it as a story. It explains the motto beautifully, but no medieval source we found tells it.

What is the Nasrid band shield?

The Nasrids also used a coat of arms, in the Western manner. The escudo de la banda is a shield with a pointed base, crossed by a slanting band that often carries the motto in Arabic script (sometimes the motto is split across the fields either side of the band, or runs round the shield instead), sometimes with a crown on top. It turns up on Alhambra tiles and plaster, and on royal silks, lustreware, swords, a dagger and a scabbard mouth now in museums from Madrid to London (Universidad Complutense, Medieval Iconography database).

Where it came from is a proper historians' argument, and it ties Granada to our Castilian figures:

• A gift from Castile? The traditional view links it to the Order of the Band, the knightly order Alfonso XI of Castile founded in 1330. Peter I is said to have granted the band to Muhammad V in thanks for his help, so the Nasrids would have used it from Muhammad V's second reign.
• Older than that? Other scholars point to examples from before Muhammad V, including carved wood in a tower built around 1309–1314 and painted plaster under Yusuf I (1333–1354).
• Borrowed, but not from the Order. Heraldry is a Western habit, so a third view sees the band shield as a Christian loan, but one unconnected with the Order of the Band.
• Or from Egypt? Another suggestion is that the Nasrids imitated the heraldry of the Mamluks of Egypt, with whom they had close ties from the later 14th century.

Whichever is right, the Nasrids took a Western idea and made it their own by putting their motto on it. That's what makes it such a good detail for a standard bearer.

Whose side was Granada on in the Castilian civil war?

From 1366 Castile tore itself apart. King Peter I fought his half-brother Henry of Trastámara, who came into Castile with French mercenary companies under Bertrand du Guesclin. Peter won at Nájera in 1367 with English help, then lost everything at Montiel in March 1369, where Henry killed him (Britannica).

Granada was on Peter's side. Muhammad V had been, in the words of the Spanish historian Antonio Torremocha Silva, "a loyal friend and ally" (our translation) of Peter in that war, and in the spring of 1368 he campaigned through the lands of Jaén, Córdoba and Seville in support of Peter's cause (Torremocha Silva, Almoraima 62, 2025). When Peter died, Muhammad refused to renew the truce with the new King Henry, took back three frontier castles in April 1369 (López de Coca, Meridies 5–6, 2002), and at the end of July captured Algeciras, according to his own minister and eyewitness Ibn al-Khatib (Torremocha Silva, above).

So on the table your Grenadine archers and jinetes can stand beside Peter's army against Henry and du Guesclin, or, for a frontier raid, face Castile's own crossbowmen, sergeants and royal standard.

What do the Hall of the Kings paintings show?

For anyone painting Granadan troops, the best picture source is on the ceiling of the Alhambra itself. The Palace of the Lions was built by Muhammad V in his second reign, 1362–1391 (Alhambra and Generalife Trust). The alcoves of its Hall of the Kings are roofed with painted domes (Alhambra and Generalife Trust). The paintings of the central one are on leather, from around 1360–1390, by Gothic painters linked to the workshops of Toledo (Silva Santa-Cruz).

• The central dome shows ten men seated with swords and belts, in Nasrid-style turbans, deep in conversation. The hall is named after them. They were once taken for members of the Nasrid dynasty, then for judges (until the 19th century the room was called the Hall of Justice); today they're read as a gathering of dignitaries, perhaps before the sultan (Alhambra and Generalife Trust).
• The side domes show knights in Muslim and in Christian dress in a tale of chivalry: a game of chess in a castle, Christian knights overcoming a lion and a bear, a joust watched from a tower, a Muslim rider spearing a wild boar, and a lady rescued from a beast (Alhambra and Generalife Trust, above).
• The swords on the central dome are so varied and so richly drawn that historians use them to study the Nasrid jineta sword, a type made in al-Andalus with no known parallel elsewhere. The earliest pictures of that sword are on wall paintings from El Partal in the Alhambra, from the reign of Yusuf I (Silva Santa-Cruz, above).

Muslim and Christian knights hunting and jousting together on a sultan's ceiling, painted in a Christian style: the same mix as the band shield, and a reminder that Granada and Castile were neighbours as well as enemies. The scholar Carmen Vallejo Naranjo reads the ceiling as chivalry working as a shared language across the frontier (Eikón Imago, 2014).

How should you paint Granadan troops?

The paints below are Games Workshop's Warhammer Colour range (the pots that used to be called Citadel, same names). They're our suggested recipes, not a record of how our studio painted the archer above. The colour dots are a guide only: paint looks different on every screen.

How to use these paints on Granadan figures

• Vary the coats, keep the shields together. Give each man his own coat colour from the documented silk palette (teal and green, red, dark blue, gold), but paint every adarga in the same leather tones. The unit reads as one body of men without looking like it wears a uniform, which no 14th-century army did.
• Leather, not wood. Paint the adarga like a boot, not a plank: smooth blends and a soft sheen, no wood grain. Pick out the edge binding and the raised panel a shade lighter so the two-lobed shape shows from across the table.
• Turbans with a wash. A sepia wash such as Seraphim Sepia runs into the folds of a turban and does most of the shading for you. Go back over the top of each fold with the base colour.
• Metal under cloth. On the armoured infantry, the turban sits over a steel helmet and the mail shows at the collar. A quick Leadbelcher and Nuln Oil gives you steel that contrasts with the soft cloth.
• The flag. Paint the standard bearer's flag one strong colour, add a pale slanting band for the band shield, and suggest the script as described in the tip above.
• Bases. Dry, stony ground suits the hills and passes of the Granadan frontier. Our guide to basing miniatures has a full earth-and-rock recipe, and Small Rock basing bits make scattered stones easy.

How do you build a Nasrid army in 28mm?

Every set here is from Reconquer Designs, printed to order in resin under licence. Browse the whole 28mm Reconquista range, or start here:

• Light horse: 14th Century Jinetes, eight riders.
• Battle line: 14th Century Grenadine Armoured Infantry, nine figures with a captain, standard bearer and drummer.
• Missile troops: 14th Century Grenadine Archers, Set A, four archers.
• Camp and allies: Berbers at Camp.
• More shields: the Reconquista Weapon and Shield Pack includes 14 Almoravid and Andalusian round, kite and hide shields, plus a javelin and spare swords, to vary a unit.
• Bases and scenery: Reconquista Jagged Bases for units and command stands, and a Dilapidated Sentry Tower or Spanish Water Well for a frontier table.

Sources and further reading

• Britannica: Nasrid dynasty, Muhammad V, Marinid dynasty, Peter of Castile and Reconquista.
• Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna: Adarga (Moorish shield), Granada, before 1492.
• Victoria and Albert Museum: stucco roundel with the Nasrid motto, about 1370; silk with the crowned Nasrid arms, 1360–1420; inscribed silk, Granada, 14th century.
• Noelia Silva Santa-Cruz, "Escudo nazarí de la banda", Medieval Iconography database, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2015.
• Noelia Silva Santa-Cruz, "La espada de Aliatar y dos pomos en marfil nazaríes", Anales de Historia del Arte 22 (2012).
• Carmen Vallejo Naranjo, "Iconographic considerations on the paintings of the Hall of the Kings in the Alhambra", Eikón Imago 3 (2014).
• Alhambra and Generalife Trust: The Hall of the Kings and The Court of the Lions.
• Antonio Torremocha Silva, "Los términos de 'las Algeciras' (1383–1514)", Almoraima 62 (2025).
• José Enrique López de Coca Castañer, "Sobre las relaciones de Portugal con el reino de Granada (1369–1415)", Meridies 5–6 (2002), Universidad de Córdoba.
• Luis Seco de Lucena, "El ejército y la marina de los nazaríes", Cuadernos de la Alhambra 7 (1971), pp. 35–40.
• Helmut Lüdtke, "Sobre el origen de cat. genet, cast. jinete", Estudis Romànics 8 (1961); Merriam-Webster: jinete; RAE dictionary: jinete and jineta.
• Washington Irving, The Alhambra (1832; revised edition 1851, often published as Tales of the Alhambra), for the legend of the motto.

Read the rest of the series: Bertrand du Guesclin, the Eagle of Brittany and Henry of Trastámara: brothers at war.