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Despite the fact that due to its orography the hill presents an almost impregnable defense on all sides, except for the southern front that descends forming a gentle slope, during the Caliphate period a wall of more than 2 m wide and up to 1.5 m high in some sections was built, creating a fortified enclosure in the shape of an irregular trapezoid of an extension of approximately 48 ha around it. The wall, built using masonry and dry ashlars, has some sections in which there seem to be remains of lime mortar pointing the stone elements.  At its highest point, to the North, three buildings can be seen, Buildings I and III having been excavated between 2007 and 2009.

The historiography about the site goes back to the pioneering work of Cristóbal Sanz, in his 1621 manuscript Recopilación en que se da cuenta de las cosas antiguas como modernas de la ínclita villa de Elche (Compilation reporting both ancient and modern matters of the illustrious town of Elche), published under the title “Antigüedades y Glorias de la Villa de Elche” (“Antiques and Glories of the Town de Elche”), where the heritage asset already appears, although attached to Roman times. The first archaeological works were carried out in the first decades of the 20th century by Pedro Ibarra Ruiz, who released a publication with information about a series of materials obtained from the excavations carried out at the site in 1914 in his essay “Elche. Materiales para su historia” (“Elche. Materials for its history”) from 1926. The following work was a study carried out by the Grupo Ilicitano de Estudios Arqueológicos and published in the early 1980s, being the first attempt to establish a historical evolution of the different existing construction remains in El Castellar de la Morera. To do so, the group prepared the first existing planimetry for the site, which identifies different areas of settlement ranging from Prehistory to the Middle Ages.

In the study carried out by the researcher Pierre Guichard in 2007, focused on the historical and social significance of Islamization, El Castellar de la Morera is registered as the questioned settlement identified as the placename al-‘Askar (the camp), described at the end of the 9th century by the oriental geographer Ya’qūbī in his work Kitāb al-buldān. This circumstance led to the beginning of a series of systematic archaeological interventions, carried out between 2007 and 2009 – promoted by the Archaeological Museum of Alicante (MARQ), with the participation of the University of Alicante and the support of the Archaeological and History Museum of Elche (MAHE)–, aimed at documenting the site and reconsidering the problem of the settlement, regardless of whether or not it was identified with al-‘Askar quoted by the sources.

Thanks to the current state of research, we know that this rural settlement already controlled the territory in the transition from the 10th to the 11th century, just before the formation of urban centers. There are contemporary settlements in nearby areas, such as La Rábita and the presumable farmhouse at El Moncayo, both in Guardamar del Segura; and also in what shortly after would be the madinat Ilš itself, in the current Vila Murada, and El Arsenal, to the south of the historical core of El Raval-Salvador, without discarding the existence of other communities scattered throughout the rural areas known as Campo de Elche.

For further information: http://rua.ua.es/dspace/handle/10045/72190