Estructuras defensivas aisladas dibujadas en la primera mitad del siglo XVII en la parte occidental de la provincia de Jaén (España)

Abstract

[EN] Martín de Ximena Jurado was born in 1615 in the province of Jaén (Spain). He was a humanist with ecclesiastical studies who showed great interest in history and in the monuments and objects of the past, and who came to be considered one of the most authoritative historians in the ancient Kingdom of Jaén. He was a pioneer in the cartographic study of this territory, and tried to represent the defensive architecture of the region in his own particular graphic language. This is demonstrated by the vast documentation compiled in the work known as Antigüedades del Reyno de Jaén (Ms. 1180 B.N. of the Spanish National Library), an unfinished collection of drawings of various types, personal notes, and a variety of informative notes.The around thirty of Ximena Jurado’s drawings that depict fortifications of which there still remain today can be divided into three main categories: fortified towns and cities, small fortified enclosures, and isolated towers. The Islamic and Christian fortresses that he mapped were drawn with their most characteristic elements of construction, representing the idealized hypothesis of their state in the time after the Castilian conquest in the 13th century.This paper studies the sketches drawn of several isolated towers located next to religious buildings or to other fortified enclosures. To three of them Ximena Jurado dedicated an entire page each: Tower of Cazalilla, Tower of San Julián and Tower of Escañuela. He also pointed out some watchtowers linked to other fortifications. These drawings allow us to understand the evolution of these examples of medieval defensive architecture and what remains of them.