Alcazaba Death Trap

I went to the Alcazaba castle with my brother Zorion and Mom. The Alcazaba is a Muslim castle that was built in 1000 AD in Malaga, Spain. In this blog post I am going to be talking about why this castle is hard to break into. I really liked this tour because the tour lady made it like a story. The story was that we were all soldiers and we were trying to infiltrate the Alcazaba.

The tour started at the front door of the castle. She explained that the Muslims were smart with their doors. The Muslims made their doors very, very strong by using strong wood and reinforcing it with metal so you can not just barge in. You probably could with a battering ram, but it would be very difficult. Sometimes there were even double doors one after the other. There were lots more doors like this one.

Now I will talk about the towers. While you were trying to break into the door, there would be Muslim village people shooting down at you through little slit windows in the towers. When you are the one shooting through the little slit, it is much easier because you are closer. But if you are the soldiers trying to barge through the door and being shot at, because the slits in the tower are so small, you might not even see where the arrows were coming from. So you would probably die at this point. However, if you did survive, then there is more to come!

Next was the "mouse trap". The reason why it is called the mouse trap is because it is a little square room that is so small you cannot escape. It was a room with no roof and one big metal door. It was really hard to break through this door because the room was so small that you could not bring your battering ram into it. You would be trapped there while people shoot you. If you went backwards then you would also get shot from the towers.

If you got through the doors, past the towers and out the mouse trap, then you had to walk up a hill with these smooth rocks. When you tried to run up the hill to invade the village and steal all their stuff, the Muslims would put down oil over the smooth rocks so you would slip down the hill while they shot at you.

The Alcazaba was built on a steep mountain with lots of stairs and turns. It would be very hard for invaders to bring horses up the mountain. There were bits of the castle that were part of the mountain. You can see in this photo that the mountain is mixed with other building materials.

They also used old roman pillars to save some money.

My favourite part of the tour was feeling the smooth slippery rocks because it felt nice and cold. I am glad I am not a soldier invading the Alcazaba and having to go through the mouse trap, break down all the doors and slip down the slope while being shot at.