Christian Reconquista - This is a continuous centuries-long war against the Moors, started by part of the Visigothic nobility under the leadership of Pelayo.
In 718, the advance of the Moorish expeditionary force at Covadonga was stopped.
Pelayo's grandson Alfonso I (739-757), son of the first Cantabrian Duke Pedro and Pelayo's daughter, united Cantabria with Asturias.
In the middle of the 8th century. Asturian Christians under the leadership of King Alfonso I, taking advantage of the Berber uprising, occupied neighboring Galicia. In Galicia, the tomb of St. James (Santiago) was said to have been discovered, and Santiago de Compostela becomes a center of pilgrimage.
Alfonso II (791-842) launched devastating raids against the Arabs as far as the Tagus River and conquered the Basque country and Galicia as far as the Minho River. At the same time, in the north-west of Spain, the Franks, under Charlemagne, stopped the advance of Muslims into Europe and created the Spanish March (the border area between the possessions of the Franks and Arabs) in the north-east of the peninsula, which broke up in the 9th-11th centuries into the counties of Navarre, Aragon and Barcelona (in 1137 Aragon and Barcelona united to form the Kingdom of Aragon) and ensured, through numerous migrations, the dominance of Christianity in Catalonia. In almost continuous wars with infidels, a brave feudal nobility emerged. To the north of the Duero and Ebro, four groups of Christian dominions gradually formed, with legislative assemblies and rights (fueros) recognized for the estates:
1) in the north-west Asturias, Leon and Galicia, which in the 10th century under Ordoño II and Ramiro II were united into the kingdom of Leon, and in 1057, after a short subordination to Navarre, by the son of Sanho the Great, Fernando, united into the kingdom of Castile;
2) the Basque country, together with the neighboring region, Garcia, was proclaimed the Kingdom of Navarra, which, under Sancho the Great (970-1035), extended its power to all of Christian Spain, in 1076-1134 it was united with Aragon, but then freed again;
3) the country on the left bank of the Ebro, Aragon, an independent kingdom since 1035;
4) the hereditary margraviate of Barcelona, or Catalonia, which arose from the Spanish mark. Despite this fragmentation, the Christian states were not inferior in power to the Arabs.
Spain in the year 1000
Map of the Almoravid State
By 914, the kingdom of Asturias included León and most of Galicia and northern Portugal. Spanish Christians expanded their possessions into the mountainous regions between Asturias and Catalonia, building many border fortresses. The name of the province "Castile" comes from the Spanish word "castillo", meaning "castle", "fortress".
The Reconquista resulted in the Spanish peasants and city dwellers who fought alongside the knights receiving significant benefits. Most of the peasants did not experience serfdom, free peasant communities arose on the liberated lands of Castile, and cities (especially in the 12th-13th centuries) received greater rights.
When, after the fall of the Umayyad dynasty (1031), the Arab state fell apart, the County of Leon-Asturias, under the rule of Ferdinad I, received the status of a kingdom and became the main stronghold of the Reconquista. In the north, at the same time, the Basques founded Navarre, and Aragon merged with Catalonia as a result of a dynastic marriage. In 1085, Christians captured Toledo, and then Talavera, Madrid and other cities fell under Christian rule. The Almoravids, summoned from Africa by the Emir of Seville, gave new strength to Islam with victories at Sallak (1086) and Ucles (1108) and again united Arab Spain; but the religious fervor and military courage of Christians at the same time received a new impetus from the Crusades.
Alfonso I of Aragon married Urraca, heiress of Castile, temporarily (until 1127) uniting both kingdoms, took the title of Emperor of Spain (held until 1157), conquered Zaragoza in 1118 and made it his capital. After the separation of Castile from Aragon, both states maintained an alliance with each other in the fight against the infidels; Aragon soon became significantly stronger due to the marriage of the Aragonese heiress, Petronilla, with Raymond Berengar II of Barcelona, which united Aragon with Catalonia.
The Almoravids (1090-1145) briefly stopped the spread of the Reconquista. The period of their reign includes the exploits of the legendary knight Cid Campeador, who conquered lands in Valencia in 1095 and became a national hero of Spain.
In 1147, the African Almoravids, overthrown by the Almohads, turned to Christians for help, who took possession of Almeria and Tortosa on this occasion. The Spanish knightly orders (Calatrava from 1158, Santiago de Compostela from 1175, Alcántara from 1176) fought especially successfully against the Almohads, who subjugated southern Spain, and atoned for the defeat at Alarcos (1195) with a victory at Las Navas de Tolosa (July 16, 1212). This was the most impressive victory over the Almohads, won by the united kings of Leon, Castile, Aragon and Navarre. This was soon followed by the fall of Almogad power.
At the Battle of Merida (1230), Extremadura was taken from the Arabs; after the Battle of Jerez de Guadiana (1233), Ferdinand III of Castile led his army to Cordoba in 1236, and twelve years later to Seville. The Portuguese kingdom expanded almost to its present size, and the king of Aragon conquered Valencia, Alicante and the Balearic Islands. Muslims moved in thousands to Africa and to Grenada or Murcia, but these states also had to recognize the supremacy of Castile. The Muslims who remained under Castilian rule more and more accepted the religion and customs of the victors; many rich and noble Arabs, having been baptized, joined the ranks of the Spanish aristocracy. By the end of the 13th century, only the Emirate of Grenada remained on the peninsula, forced to pay tribute.
While the external power of Castile greatly increased thanks to the victories of Ferdinand III, unrest raged within the country, which, especially during the reign of the patron of science and art, Alfonso X the Wise (1252-1284) and his immediate successors, served as a source of unrest and increased the power of the nobility. Crown lands were stolen by private individuals; communities, unions and powerful nobles resorted to lynching and were freed from all power.
In Aragon, James I (Jaime, 1213-1276) subjugated the Baleares and Valencia and penetrated as far as Murcia; his son Pedro III (1276-1285) took Sicily from the house of Anjou; James II (1291-1327) conquered Sardinia and in 1319, at the Diet of Tarragona, established the indivisibility of the state.
These conquests cost the Aragonese kings many concessions to the estates, of which the Zaragoza "general privilege" of 1283 is especially important. In 1287, Alfonso III added to it the “privilege of union,” which recognized the right of subjects to rebel if their freedom was violated. In both states the clergy was the most powerful class; victories over the infidels increased his rights and wealth, and his influence on the lower classes of the people aroused in them a spirit of persecution and fanaticism. The highest nobility included among its rights the right to refuse obedience to the king. All nobles were free from taxes. Cities and rural communities had their own special rights (fueros), recognized for them by special treaties. In both states, the estates gathered in sejms (Cortes), who deliberated on the well-being and security of the country, on laws and taxes. Trade and industry were protected by provident laws; the court patronized the poetry of the troubadours. The internal improvement of the state advanced most of all in Aragon under Pedro IV (1336-1387), who eliminated some of the painful aspects of noble privileges, among other things, the law of war. Thanks to these measures, when the old dynasty died out (1410), the Castilian dynasty came to the throne in the person of Ferdinand I (1414-1416), who retained power over the Baleares, Sardinia and Sicily and for a short time took possession of Navarre.
In Castile, on the contrary, the highest nobility and knightly orders dominated. The cities' desire for independence from the feudal aristocracy was unsuccessful due to the tyranny of Pedro the Cruel (1350-1369). Either the French or the British intervened in the discord it caused. By the 14th century, the temporary alliances of the Christian kingdoms had disintegrated, and each began to pursue its own personal interests. Henry II (1369-1379), who took possession of Vizcaya, and John I (1379-1390) weakened the kingdom with fruitless attempts to conquer Portugal, but the two-year war ended with the defeat of the Castilian army in 1385 when Portugal victoriously defended its independence at the Battle of Aljubarrota.
Aragon ceded control of trade in the Mediterranean to Genoa. Only Castile during this period fully provided for itself and made profits from the wool trade with the Netherlands.
Cross of the Order of Alcantara
Nevertheless, victories over the Arabs took their course: in 1340, Alfonso XI won a brilliant victory at Salado, and four years later, Grenada was cut off from Africa by the conquest of Algeziras.
Henry III (1390-1406) restored order and took possession of the Canary Islands. Once again Castile was thrown into disarray by the long and weak reign of Juan II (1406-1454). The unrest that increased under Henry IV ceased with the accession of his sister Isabella to the throne. She defeated King Alfonso of Portugal and subdued her rebellious subjects with weapons.
In 1469, a significant event for the future of Spain took place: the marriage between Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, whom Pope Alexander VI called “Catholic kings.” Ferdinand II of Aragon, after the death of his father, John II of Aragon, inherited the Kingdom of Aragon in 1479; the union of the Castilian and Aragonese crowns marked the beginning of the Kingdom of Spain. However, the political unification of Spain was completed only at the end of the 15th century; Navarre was annexed in 1512.
In 1478, Ferdinand and Isabella established an ecclesiastical court - the Inquisition, designed to protect the purity of the Catholic faith. The persecution of Jews, Muslims, and later Protestants began. Several thousand suspected heretics were tortured and ended their lives at the stake (auto-da-fé - initially the announcement, and then the execution of the sentence, in particular, public burning at the stake).
In 1492, the head of the Inquisition, the Dominican priest Tomaso Torquemada, convinced Ferdinand and Isabella to persecute non-Christian converts throughout the country. Torquemada burned Anusim in the fires of the Inquisition - (en: Anusim, אֲנוּסִים, “forced”), Jews who were forced to convert to another religion, but who, to one degree or another, complied with the precepts of Judaism. Many Jews fled from Spain, but the Jews still lived better than other Catholics and held high positions, for example, Don Isaac Abarbanel was the Minister of Finance at the court of the Spanish king.
To put an end to wrongdoing on the part of the nobility, the ancient brotherhood of Hermandad was restored. The highest positions were placed at the disposal of the king; the higher clergy was subject to royal jurisdiction; Ferdinand was elected Grand Master of three orders of chivalry, making them obedient instruments of the crown; the Inquisition helped the government keep the nobility and people in obedience. The administration was reorganized, royal income was increased, part of it went to encourage the sciences and arts in 1492.
Numerous Jews (160,000 thousand) were expelled from the state. The conquest of Grenada (January 2, 1492) ends the Reconquista. And in the same year, Christopher Columbus reached America and founded Spanish colonies there. The discovery of America provided Spain with a wide field of activity on the other side of the ocean.
Encyclopedic YouTube
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✪ Reconquista (Russian) History of the Middle Ages.
✪ Hour of truth - Spain during the Reconquista era - First broadcast
✪ Reconquista. The fate of the Iberian Peninsula in the VIII-XV centuries. Video lesson on General History 6th grade
✪ Hour of truth - Reconquista - XII century
✪ Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile (History of Spain) - LIMB 20
Subtitles
Conquest of Iberia by the Arabs
Julian sent his daughter Cava to the Toledo court to give her an education appropriate to her birth. But she attracted the attention of the Visigoth king Roderic, who dishonored her. In response to this insult, Julian surrendered his city to the Arabs, having previously concluded an agreement beneficial to himself. After this, Julian began to convince Musa to try to conquer Spain, promising his assistance. The latter, who was incited to the campaign by the Spanish Jews oppressed by the Goths, sent to Spain, with the consent of Caliph Walid I, initially a small reconnaissance detachment.
Beginning of the Reconquista
A significant part of the Visigothic aristocracy chose to remain in the conquered territories, for example, the sons of King Vititsa received rich lands of the Visigothic crown from the Arabs for private ownership. However, the remnants of the Visigothic army and other part of the aristocrats and clergy, who did not want to stay in the conquered territories, retreated to Asturias, where they later founded the kingdom of Asturias, and to Septimania. In the summer of 718, the Visigoth noble Pelayo, supposedly a former bodyguard of King Roderic, who had been held hostage in Cordoba, returned to Asturias and was elected the first king of Asturias. The election took place in the Field of Hura, between the village of Cangas de Onís and the Covadonga valley. After receiving news of the meeting at the Field of Hura, Munusa sent a report about this to the Emir of Andalusia.
But only in 722 did a punitive detachment under the command of Alcama arrive in Asturias. The bishop of Seville or Toledo Oppa (Vitica's brother) was also with the punitive forces, called upon to convince Pelayo to surrender. Alqama, moving through Tarna along the banks of the Nalin River, arrived at Lukus Asturum. From there the Arabs entered the Covadonga Valley in search of Christians. However, Alkama's detachment was met by Christians in the gorge and defeated, and Alkama himself died.
When news of the death of Alcama's detachment reached Munusa, he left Gijon with his detachment and moved towards Pelayo. The battle took place near the village of Olalla (near modern Oviedo), where Munusa’s detachment was completely destroyed and Munusa himself was killed. From this moment, historians count the beginning of the Reconquista.
Stopping the Arab advance into Europe
Since virtually all of Iberia was conquered by the Muslims, their further expansion could only continue through the Pyrenees. The newly appointed Wali of Al-Andalus, Al-Samkh ibn Malik, crossed the mountains for the first time in 717, invading Septimania. In 719, the Arabs occupied Narbonne, which was thereafter heavily fortified and for a long time served as a military stronghold for the Muslims in all their military campaigns against the Franks.
But within a few years, the Arabs began a new offensive campaign in Aquitaine. In 726, the Duke of Aquitaine twice defeated the army of the new wali - Anbasa ibn Suhaim al-Kalbi, and the wali himself was killed in 725 by an arrow while crossing the Rhone. However, Ed the Great - Duke of Aquitaine - could not prevent the Arabs from capturing Nîmes and Carcassonne in 725.
Having stopped the advance of the Arabs, Ed the Great, however, remained in a difficult position, since his possessions bordered on the lands conquered by the Arabs. Uthman ibn Naissa, whom the Franks called Munuza. According to folk tradition mentioned in the Chronicle of Alfonso III, Munuza, a Berber chieftain, was one of the four Muslim generals who first entered Spain during the Arab conquest. During one of the raids on Aquitaine, Munuza captured Lampagia, the daughter of Ed the Great. The girl's beauty impressed Munuza so much that he married her. Thanks to this marriage, Munuza became close to his wife's father, Duke Ed.
Munuza, dissatisfied with the fact that Abd-ar-Rahman ibn Abdallah, and not himself, was appointed to replace the deposed al-Khaitan ibn Ubaida al-Kelabi in 730, needed a powerful ally. Ed wanted to protect his possessions from Arab raids. As a result, in /731, an alliance was concluded between the two rulers, one of the conditions of which was that Ed would provide assistance to Munuza in the prepared uprising against Wali Abd ar-Rahman.
At the same time, Ed began to have disagreements with Karl Martell, a Frankish mayor who wanted to subordinate to his power the possessions that had fallen away from the kingdom of the Franks. Carl accused Ed of treason, saying that he was "an ally of the infidels." Using this far-fetched pretext, in 731 he made two trips to Aquitaine. At the same time, he twice captured and ruined Burj, seduced by the rich booty. Martell's incursions into Aquitaine angered Ed. Having secured his rear from the Arabs, he was able to gather forces, move against Charles Martel and recapture Bourges.
After the defeat of Munuz, Abd ar-Rahman decided to deal with his ally, Ed of Aquitaine. Having a huge army at his disposal and becoming the sovereign ruler of Al-Andalus, he hoped to continue the conquests begun by his predecessors. He divided the army into two factions. One army of Abd al-Rahman invaded from Septimania and reached the Rhone, capturing and sacking Albigeois, Rouergue, Gevaudan and Velay. Legends and chronicles also speak of the destruction of Autun by the Moors and the siege of Sens. But unlike his predecessors, who attacked the Frankish state from the east, Abd ar-Rahman dealt the main blow from the west.
It can be assumed that within three months, Abd-el-Rahman’s troops, in the full sense of the word, went around all the valleys, mountains and shores of Aquitaine, without encountering the slightest resistance in an open field. Eudon's army was so defeated on the Garonne that even its remnants disappeared and mixed with the mass of the population driven to despair. Then Abd-el-Rahman decided to go to Tours, take it and steal the treasures of the famous abbey. To do this, he joined forces and, at the head of the entire army, headed towards Tours. Arriving at Poitiers, the Moors found the gates locked and the townspeople on the walls, fully armed and determined to defend themselves boldly. Having placed the city under siege, Abd-el-Rahman took one of its suburbs, where the famous Church of St. Gilarius was located, and plundered it along with nearby houses and finally set it on fire, so that the entire suburb remained a heap of ashes. But that was the extent of his success. The brave inhabitants of Poitiers, prisoners in their city, continued to bravely hold on, and therefore the Moors, not wanting to waste time, which they hoped to use more profitably in Type, headed towards this city. Some Arab historians claim that the city of Tours was taken, but this is an obvious mistake: it is not even known whether it came to a siege.
Abd ar-Rahman's target was most likely the famous Abbey of Saint-Martin-de-Tours. Along the way, the surrounding areas of Périgueux, Saintes and Angoulême were devastated, and the cities themselves were captured. After this, the Moorish army crossed the Charente.
Battle of Poitiers
Having fled from Bordeaux, Ed headed towards the Loire. He did not have the opportunity to assemble a new army, so Ed had only one thing left: to turn for help to his recent enemy - Major Domo Charles Martel. Gathering the remnants of his army, Ed headed to Paris, where Charles Martel was at that time. Arriving in the city, Ed was able to convince Charles, who was busy at that time fighting other Germanic tribes, to jointly oppose the Arabs.
Apparently, the looming formidable danger temporarily stopped numerous strife and strife, both among the Franks themselves and between the Franks and other Germanic tribes. In order to repel the Arab threat, Charles stopped the intertribal war that he waged against other Germans. In a short time he managed to gather a large army, which included, in addition to the Franks, some other Germanic tribes: Alemanni, Bavarians, Saxons, Frisians. With a large united army, Charles moved to cross the army of the Moors.
Abd el-Rahman was still under the walls or in the vicinity of Tours when he learned that the Franks were approaching him in large marches. Considering it unprofitable to wait for them in this position, he broke camp and retreated to Poitiers, hot on his heels by Charles Martel, who was chasing him. But the huge quantity of booty and captives and the large convoys that were with his army made his march difficult, and made retreat more dangerous than battle. According to some Arab historians, there was a moment when he thought of ordering his soldiers to abandon all this ruinous booty and retain only the war horses and weapons. Such an order was in the nature of Abd-el-Rahman. Meanwhile, he did not dare to give it up and decided to wait for the enemy in the fields of Poitiers, between the Vienne River and the Clan River, placing all his hope on the bravery of the soldiers. Near the city, the Arabs plundered and destroyed the Abbey of Saint-Hilaire, but did not besiege the city itself, going around it and moving further towards Tours.
The armies met between Tours and Poitiers. Neither the exact location nor the date of the battle has yet been clearly established by historians. Historians have expressed many versions regarding the location of the battle, placing it in different places between Poitiers and Tours. Different dates for the battle are also given - from October 732 to October 733, however, according to the currently prevailing version, the battle is attributed specifically to October 732. This battle went down in history as the Battle of Poitiers (or the Battle of Tours).
The result of this battle was the defeat of the Arab army and the death of Abd ar-Rahman. The remnants of the Arab army took advantage of the falling night and fled. The Chronicles of Saint-Denis testify: “... Duke Ed of Aquitaine, who brought the Saracen people to France, this supernatural scourge, acted in such a way that he was reconciled with the sovereign Charles and subsequently killed all the Saracens who survived this battle that he could get his hands on...”, which may indicate that Duke Ed set out with the Aquitans to pursue the fugitives. At the same time, the Mozarab Chronicle says: “And since these peoples were not at all concerned about the pursuit, they left, loaded with booty, and returned in triumph to their fatherland.”. The Chronicles of Saint-Denis also note this: "He[Karl Martel] took all the enemy’s tents and all their equipment and took possession of everything they had.”. Based on these and other evidence, historians suggest that one Duke of Aquitaine set out after the retreating Moors, while Charles Martel remained on the battlefield to collect the booty left behind by the Muslims. The Franks did not even think of pursuing the enemy and cheerfully divided the loot of the Moors from the unfortunate Aquitanians, who thus had to exchange only one enemy for another. Having divided the captured booty, Charles Martel returned home with honor.
Nevertheless, this Frankish victory stopped the Arab advance into Western Europe, and Charles Martel was unanimously recognized as a fighter for Christianity and ruler of all of Gaul. However, the Arab threat was not completely eliminated and Charles had to conduct several more military campaigns to drive the Arabs out of Provence and Burgundy.
The Arab army rolled back south beyond the Pyrenees. In subsequent years, Martell continued to expel them from France. After the death of Eudon (about 735), who reluctantly accepted Martell's suzerainty in 719, Charles decided to annex the Duchy of Aquitaine to his lands and went there to collect the tribute due to him from the Aquitanians. But the Aquitaine nobility proclaimed Eudon's son Gunold Duke of Aquitaine, and Charles recognized his legal rights to Aquitaine the following year, when the Arabs invaded Provence as allies of Duke Maurontius. Hunold, who at first did not want to recognize Charles as the supreme ruler, soon had no other choice. He recognized the supremacy of Charles, and Martell confirmed his rights to the duchy, and both began to prepare for a meeting with the invaders. Martell was convinced that the Arabs needed to be kept on the Iberian Peninsula and not allowed to gain a foothold in Gaul.
Not wanting to commit his army to a siege that could last for years, and believing that he would not suffer losses in a frontal attack with all his forces, as was the case at Arles, Martell was content with isolating the few invaders at Narbonne and Septimania. After the defeat of the Moors at Narbonne, the threat of invasion weakened, and in 750 the united caliphate plunged into civil war at the Battle of Zab.
Chronology
April 30, 711 - a mixed Arab-Berber (Moorish) army under the command of the tribal leader Tariq ibn Ziyad is transported from Africa to the Iberian Peninsula via Gibraltar (the modern name comes from a corruption of the Arabic Jabal Tariq, “Tariq Mountain”).
July 19, 711 - Battle of Guadalete. Death of King Rodrigo. The collapse of the Visigothic kingdom, which existed from the beginning of the 6th century.
711-718 - the peninsula falls under Muslim rule completely - with the exception of only a narrow strip in the north, the current province of Asturias, where the remnants of the Visigothic nobility strengthened.
Around 1030 to 1099 - the life and exploits of Count Ruy Diaz de Bivar, nicknamed Cid Campeador, the legendary warrior of the Reconquista, the hero of the epic “Song of My Cid,” as well as numerous later works by Corneille, Herder and others.
1151 - third and final wave of Muslim invasion of Spain. This time the Almohads (“united”) came - adherents of a special teaching within Islam known as “unitarianism.” Manifestations of extreme Islamic fanaticism. Persecution of Christians.
1252-1284 - reign of Alfonso X the Wise in Castile. The flourishing of sciences and arts, nurtured by centuries of interpenetration of religions and cultures. Publication of the first Code of Laws.
Incorporation
The process of incorporation of territories captured from the Moors was distinguished by the complexity of socio-demographic processes. Many Muslims left the territories captured by Christians, moving further south. In many cases, Christians themselves forced Muslims to leave the regions they occupied, especially in strategically important cities and fortresses. The distribution of captured lands among the new Christian owners was carried out by several methods, among which fueros and prisura stood out. At the early stage of the Reconquista, the land was divided into plots, in the center of which stood a castle (castel), hence the names of the regions of Castile and Catalonia. The distance from one castle to another was approximately equal to 1 day's journey on horseback.
Central Spain has never had a high population density. In many regions it was very low (for example, the so-called Duer Desert). Therefore, the policy of attracting peasants from the northern regions received a special name - “repopulation”.
If the Moors were allowed to stay in the city with the status of mudéjara, they were allocated a separate quarter - the moreria, and the Jews - the huderia. Non-Christian neighborhoods in general were called alhama.
End of the Reconquista
The Reconquista proceeded with varying degrees of success, due to the fact that feudal strife forced Christian sovereigns to fight each other and their vassals. There were also obvious failures, for example the Battle of Alarcos. The Reconquista ended in 1492, when Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile expelled the last Moorish ruler from the Iberian Peninsula. They united most of Spain under their rule (Navarre was incorporated into Spain in 1512).
The struggle against the Moors, however, did not deter the Christian kingdoms from fighting each other or forming temporary alliances with Islamic overlords. Moorish emirs often had Christian wives or mothers. Later, the Kingdom of Castile and León had enough military power to conquer the last Moorish emirate, Granada, but it long preferred to receive tribute from the Emirate of Granada instead. Trade through Granada formed the main route for African gold to medieval Europe.
Ethno-social groups of the population of the Iberian Peninsula during the Reconquista
figurative meanings
At the end of the 20th century, the concept of Reconquista acquired new meanings in different regions of the world.
Mexico and USA
The concept of Reconquista is often used in far-right, conservative political circles in the United States to describe the demographic situation in the southwest of the country, where, as a result of uncontrolled illegal migration in recent decades, Mexicans and other Hispanics have again become the majority of the population (see States of the United States with predominance of a minority). For reference, the territory of the southwest before the war of 1848 (see Mexican-American War) was Mexican territory with, albeit a small (about 50,000), but still Spanish-speaking population. Mexico's defeat in the war led to an influx of white English-speaking settlers, who absolutely dominated the region until the late 1970s, but have begun to lose ground in recent years.
Montreal and Quebec in Canada
The concept of Reconquista (French La Reconquête) can also often be found in English and French-language publications in Canada and the USA, describing the development of the demolinguistic situation in the modern province
(Spanish: Reconquista, from reconquistar - to conquer) - the conquest by the indigenous population of the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th - 15th centuries of territories captured by the Arabs (more precisely, the Moors). Moors - in the Middle Ages in Western Europe, the name of the Muslim population of the Iberian Peninsula and the western part of North Africa.
The Reconquista began in 718 with the Battle of the Cavadonga Valley in Asturias. The battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 was decisive. By the middle of the 13th century, only the Emirate of Granada remained in the hands of the Arabs (fell in 1492).
The reconquest was accompanied by the settlement and economic development of war-ravaged lands. The Reconquista had a great influence on the economic and political development of the states of the Iberian Peninsula.
In the 11th century, Muslim Spain split into a number of independent states, which facilitated the liberation of Spain from the Moors by Christians. The offensive against the Moors (Reconquista) that began in 1212 led to the formation of Aragon, Castile and other Spanish kingdoms. Christian kingdoms of Leon, Castile, Navarre, Aragon and the County of Barcelona. Alfonso VI conquers Toledo from the Moors, and the Cid conquers Valencia.
The Castilians brought most of Andalusia under their rule.
After a long struggle for the liberation of Spain from Moorish-Arab rule (Reconquista), the last Moorish state remained on the territory of Spain - the Emirate of Granada, formed in 1238.
By 1250, the Christians had pushed back the Moors. Moorish Spain began to limit itself only to one emirate - Granada.
Castile and Aragon, united in 1469 into one kingdom, completed the liberation of the country from the Moors in 1492 (liberation of Granada).
The Reconquista of Muslim Spain was finally completed with the surrender of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs in 1492.
Pelayo - the first king (died around 737), chosen by the nobility and clergy who took refuge in the Asturian mountains from the Arab invasion. In 718, he won the famous Battle of Covadonga, which marked the beginning of the reconquest of the peninsula.
King Mauregato (8th century) - illegitimate son of the Spanish king Alfonso I.
Bernardo del Carpio is a legendary epic hero portrayed as the conqueror of Roland at the Battle of Roncesvalles.
Cid Campeador Cid, Rodrigo Diaz, nicknamed the Warrior (1043 - 1099) - semi-legendary liberator of Spain from the Moors; the embodiment of knightly valor.
Real name Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar (between 1026 and 1043-1099) is a Spanish knight famous for his exploits in the Reconquista. Sung in “The Song of My Cid” (XII century), in Pierre Corneille’s tragedy “The Cid”.
Rodrigo Ruiz de Bivar (1030 - 1099) - Spanish folk hero. The exploits he accomplished in the fight against the Moors are sung in the poem “The Song of My Sid” and in numerous novels.
Cid (from the Arabic "lord") is the nickname of Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar (1030 - 1099), a brave Spanish warrior who showed miracles of heroism in the fight against the Moors, the hero of countless chronicles and legends.
In 1072, in the village of Santa Gadea in the province of Burgos, Cid demanded an oath from King Alfonso VI that he had not participated in the murder of the previous king. Alphonse gave him this oath, and Sid agreed to serve him.
Guzman the Good - Alfonso Perez de Guzman, nicknamed the Good or the Brave (1258 - 1309) - a famous Spanish warrior who became famous in battles with the Moors and refused to surrender the fortress of Tarifa to them, despite the fact that they killed his seven-year-old son for this. Castilian captain, defender of the Tarifa fortress besieged by the Arabs in 1293. The Infant Don Juan, who went over to the enemy’s side, captured Guzman’s son and demanded, threatening to kill the child, the surrender of the fortress. The answer to the treacherous infante was a dagger thrown at his feet by the unfortunate father.
Gonsal Hernandez y Aguilar Gonzalo de Cordoba (1443 - 1515) - Spanish commander who captured Granada in 1492, the last stronghold of the Moors on the Iberian Peninsula.
Alfonso I (Alfonso) Warrior (? - 1134) - king of Aragon and Navarre. In 1104, he conquered Zaragoza from the Arabs (1118), defeated the Almoravid troops at the Kutanda fortress (1120), and was defeated by them at the Fraga fortress (1134).
Alfonso III the Great (838 - 910 or 912) - King of Asturias since 866. He conquered a number of areas north of the Tagus River from the Arabs. The aristocracy, led by the sons of Alfonso I, forced him to abdicate the throne (910).
Alfonso VI the Brave (1030 - 1109) - King of Leon from 1065 and Castile from 1072. He conquered Toledo, Valencia, and Almeria from the Arabs. Having been defeated in 1086 at Salak, in 1108 at Ukles, he lost a number of previously conquered lands.
Alfonso VII (1104 - 1157) - King of Castile and Leon since 1126. suzerain of Aragon, Navarre, Portugal and a number of French territories (Foy, Cominges, Montpellier). Successfully participated in the Reconquista.
Alfonso X the Wise (1221 - 1284) - King of Castile and Leon since 1252. He conquered Jerez, Cadiz and others from the Arabs. The centralization policy of Alfonso X encountered resistance from the nobility. In 1282 he was actually deprived of power. His son Sancho took over as ruler.
Alfonso XI the Wise (1311 - 1350) - King of Castile and Leon since 1312. He ruled independently from 1325. He pursued a centralizing policy. In 1348 he issued a charter fixing the personal freedom of peasants. Successfully fought with the Arabs. Died during the siege of Gibraltar.
King Fernando III "The Saint" (1199 - 1242) carried out a number of successful campaigns against the Moors and captured almost all Muslim territories in the south of the Prinean Peninsula. Seville was conquered by him in 1248.
Frankish victory over the Arabs at Poitiers
Castilian conquest of Toledo
Formation of the Portuguese State
Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa
Castilian conquest of Cordoba
Aragon's conquest of the Kingdom of Naples
1462 - 1472
Peasants' War in Catalonia
Unification of Aragon and Castile into the Kingdom of Spain
Establishment of the Inquisition in Spain
1482 - 1484
Peasant revolt in Catalonia
Spanish conquest of Granada
The Christian Reconquista (translated as “reconquest”, “return”) is a continuous centuries-long war against the Moors, started by part of the Visigothic nobility under the leadership of Pelayo. In 718, the advance of the Moorish expeditionary force at Covadonga was stopped.
The Muslims occupied territory a thousand miles north of Gibraltar, completely capturing Spain and the southern part of France to the banks of the Loire. In October 732, the army of the Moors, led by Abd al-Rahman, of course, stood not at the gates of Paris, but only two hundred miles from it, approaching from the south to one of the largest shrines of the Frankish state - the monastery St. Martin in Tours. However, on the way from Tours to Poitiers, they met an army of Franks, which, unlike all other armies of Christian states, as Isidore of Seville testifies in his Chronicle, “stood like a wall... like an impenetrable block of ice.” A week later, Rahman was no longer alive, the Moors rolled back to the south, and from that day on, the leader of the Franks, Charles, began to be called “Charles Martell” - “hammer”.
So the city of Poitiers became the top point of the Arab wave that swept across Europe. On the part of the Moors, of course, the battle with Martel was a completely foolhardy enterprise, but, if they had won, it would have been very difficult for them to resist the temptation to go further - to Paris, to the Rhine and even further, and, as Edward Gibbon writes, ) in “The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire,” “perhaps now the colleges of Oxford would be engaged in the interpretation of the Koran, and from its pulpits the holiness and truth of the revelations of Mohammed would be demonstrated to the circumcised population.”
There would be no trace of Christian Europe. The Angles and Celts who eventually settled America would have been Muslims. Poitiers, writes Gibbon, was “an event that changed the fate of the whole world.”
In the middle of the 8th century. Asturian Christians under the leadership of King Alfonso I, taking advantage of the Berber uprising, occupied neighboring Galicia. In Galicia, the tomb of St. James (Santiago) was said to have been discovered, and Santiago de Compostela becomes a center of pilgrimage, and the Reconquista something of a new crusade in defense of Christianity and Christians.
At the end of the 8th - mid 9th centuries. During the reign of Charlemagne, the Franks stopped the advance of Muslims into Europe and created the Spanish March (the border area between the possessions of the Franks and Arabs) in the northeast of the peninsula, which existed until the collapse in the 9th – 11th centuries. into the counties of Navarre, Aragon and Barcelona (in 1137 Aragon and Barcelona united to form the Kingdom of Aragon).
By 914, the kingdom of Asturias included Leon and most of Galicia and northern Portugal. Spanish Christians expanded their possessions into the mountainous regions between Asturias and Catalonia, building many border fortresses. The name of the province "Castile" comes from the Spanish word "castillo", meaning "castle", "fortress".
The Reconquista resulted in the Spanish peasants and city dwellers who fought alongside the knights receiving significant benefits. Most of the peasants did not experience serfdom, free peasant communities arose on the liberated lands of Castile, and cities (especially in the 12th – 13th centuries) received greater rights.
In the middle of the 11th century. under the rule of Ferdinand I, the County of León-Asturias received the status of a kingdom and became the main stronghold of the Reconquista. In the north, at the same time, the Basques founded Navarre, and Aragon merged with Catalonia as a result of a dynastic marriage. In 1085 Christians captured Toledo.
The Almoravids (1090-1145) briefly stopped the spread of the Reconquista. The period of their reign includes the exploits of the legendary knight Cid, who conquered lands in Valencia in 1095 and became the national hero of Spain.
The next successes of the Reconquista date back to the end of the 12th – beginning of the 13th centuries. The most impressive victory over the Almohads was won in 1212 by the united kings of Leon, Castile, Aragon and Navarre. In 1236, the Castilian king Ferdinand III (the Saint) led his army to Cordoba, and twelve years later - to Seville. The Portuguese kingdom expanded almost to its present size, and the king of Aragon conquered Valencia, Alicante and the Balearic Islands. By the end of the 13th century. only the Cordoba Caliphate remained on the peninsula, forced to pay tribute By the 14th century. The temporary alliances of the Christian kingdoms fell apart, and each began to pursue its own personal interests. Castile attempted to annex Portugal, but a two-year war ended with the defeat of the Castilian army at Aljubarotta in 1385. Aragon ceded control of trade in the Mediterranean to Genoa. Only Castile during this period fully provided for itself and made profits from the wool trade with the Netherlands.
Beginning of the Reconquista
Muslims were actually unable to establish dominance in the far north of the Iberian Peninsula. In 718, a detachment of Christian warriors under the command of the legendary Visigothic leader Pelayo defeated the Muslim army in the mountain valley of Covadonga.Gradually moving towards the river. Duero, Christians occupied free lands that were not claimed by Muslims. At that time, the border region of Castile (territorium castelle - translated as “land of castles”) was formed; It is appropriate to note that back at the end of the 8th century. Muslim chroniclers called it Al-Qila (castles). In the early stages of the Reconquista, two types of Christian political entities arose, differing in geographical location. The core of the Western type was the kingdom of Asturias, which, after the transfer of the court to Leon in the 10th century. became known as the Kingdom of Leon. The County of Castile became an independent kingdom in 1035. Two years later, Castile united with the Kingdom of León and thereby acquired a leading political role, and with it priority rights to the lands conquered from the Muslims.
In the more eastern regions there were Christian states - the kingdom of Navarre, the County of Aragon, which became a kingdom in 1035, and various counties associated with the kingdom of the Franks. Initially, some of these counties were the embodiment of the Catalan ethno-linguistic community, the central place among them was occupied by the County of Barcelona. Then the County of Catalonia arose, which had access to the Mediterranean Sea and conducted a lively maritime trade, in particular in slaves. In 1137 Catalonia joined the Kingdom of Aragon. This is a state in the 13th century. significantly expanded its territory to the south (to Murcia), also annexing the Balearic Islands.
In 1085 Alfonso VI, king of Leon and Castile, captured Toledo, and the border with the Muslim world moved from the Duero River to the Tagus River. In 1094, the Castilian national hero Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, known as the Cid, entered Valencia. However, these major achievements were not so much the result of the zeal of the crusaders, but rather a consequence of the weakness and disunity of the rulers of the taifa (emirates in the territory of the Cordoba Caliphate). During the Reconquista, it happened that Christians united with Muslim rulers or, having received a large bribe (parias) from the latter, were hired to protect them from the crusaders.
In this sense, the fate of Sid is indicative. He was born approx. 1040 in Bivar (near Burgos). In 1079, King Alfonso VI sent him to Seville to collect tribute from the Muslim ruler. However, soon after this he did not get along with Alphonse and was expelled. In eastern Spain, he embarked on the path of an adventurer, and it was then that he received the name Sid (derived from the Arabic “seid”, i.e. “lord”). The Sid served such Muslim rulers as the emir of Zaragoza al-Moqtadir, and the rulers of Christian states. From 1094 Cid began to rule Valencia. He died in 1099.
Castilian epic Song of my Sid, written ca. 1140, goes back to earlier oral traditions and reliably conveys many historical events. The song is not a chronicle of the Crusades. Although the Cid fights the Muslims, in this epic it is not they who are portrayed as the villains, but the Christian princes of Carrion, the courtiers of Alfonso VI, while the Cid's Muslim friend and ally, Abengalvon, surpasses them in nobility.
Completion of the Reconquista
Muslim emirs were faced with a choice: either constantly pay tribute to Christians, or turn to co-religionists in North Africa for help. Eventually, the Emir of Seville, al-Mu'tamid, turned to the Almoravids for help, who had created a powerful state in North Africa. Alfonso VI managed to hold Toledo, but his army was defeated at Salac (1086); and in 1102, three years after the death of the Cid, Valencia also fell.The Almoravids removed the Taif rulers from power and at first were able to unite Al-Andaluz. But their power weakened in the 1140s, and by the end of the 12th century. they were supplanted by the Almohads - the Moors from the Moroccan Atlas. After the Almohads suffered a heavy defeat from the Christians at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), their power was shaken.
By this time, the mentality of the crusaders had formed, as evidenced by the life of Alfonso I the Warrior, who ruled Aragon and Navarre from 1102 to 1134. During his reign, when memories of the first crusade were still fresh, most of the p. Ebro, and the French crusaders invaded Spain and took such important cities as Zaragoza (1118), Tarazona (1110) and Calatayud (1120). Although Alphonse was never able to fulfill his dream of going to Jerusalem, he lived to see the spiritual-knightly order of the Templars established in Aragon, and soon the orders of Alcantara, Calatrava and Santiago began their activities in other areas of Spain. These powerful orders provided great assistance in the fight against the Almohads, holding strategically important points and establishing economy in a number of border areas.
Throughout the 13th century. Christians achieved significant success and undermined the political power of Muslims in almost the entire Iberian Peninsula. King Jaime I of Aragon (reigned 1213–1276) conquered the Balearic Islands and, in 1238, Valencia. In 1236, King Ferdinand III of Castile and Leon took Cordoba, Murcia surrendered to the Castilians in 1243, and in 1247 Ferdinand captured Seville. Only the Muslim Emirate of Granada, which existed until 1492, retained its independence. The Reconquista owed its successes not only to the military actions of Christians. A major role was also played by the willingness of Christians to negotiate with Muslims and grant them the right to live in Christian states, preserving their faith, language and customs. For example, in Valencia, the northern territories were almost completely cleared of Muslims; the central and southern regions, except for the city of Valencia itself, were inhabited mainly by Mudejars (Muslims who were allowed to remain). But in Andalusia, after a major Muslim uprising in 1264, the policy of the Castilians completely changed, and almost all Muslims were evicted.
From the Spanish epic “The Song of My Cid” (XII century)
The Spanish heroic epic of Cid is about true events and real people. Its main character is the Spanish knight Rodrigo (Ruy Diaz) (c. 1040-1099), nicknamed the Cid (Lord) by the Arabs. Ruy Diaz, at the head of a detachment of desperate warriors, successfully fought with the Moors, either as a vassal of the Spanish king, or even at his own peril and risk. Sometimes he went into the service of one of the noble and rich Moors. As a result of his campaigns and raids, a significant part of Spain found itself again under Christian rule.The sea became aware of Sid. He is in great joy with his vassals: The Almighty has granted him victory. At night his squad went on raids with him, entered Guhera and Khativa in battle, and broke into Day, descending to the south. He plundered the Saracen region as far as the sea, Pena-Cadella submitted to him. Sid Peña-Cadella submitted. Xativa groans, Guhera mourns, Valencia is also in immeasurable grief. So, robbing his enemies, ruining the entire region, sleeping during the day, raiding at night, taking cities, he lived for three years. My Sid taught the Valencians a lesson: They cannot leave the city gates. He cut down their gardens and is doing damage to them. It interferes with the delivery of bread to the city. Valencians in grief: what should they do? They don't let the bread down in any way. Neither the father, nor the parent, nor the son, nor the friend, will teach how to be. It’s a bad thing, senors, if there is no food, if wives and children are dying of hunger. The Valencians do not know how to escape. They send news to the King of Morocco, But he has no strength to help them - He must wage the War for the Atlas. Campeador* was glad of this news... He ordered that the cry be shouted in Casgilia: He who wants to be rich and not poor, Let him hurry to join Campeador - he decided to take possession of Valencia. “Whoever wants to go to Valencia with us of his own free will - I don’t need anyone else - I’m waiting for those in the Self Gorge for three days.” Campeador said this and returned to Murviedro, conquered by him. Everywhere his cry is carried by word of mouth. Having heard how generous and lucky he is, Christians flock to him. Rumors are buzzing about him everywhere. Whoever joins him will never leave. My Cid de Bivar* is getting richer in the treasury. He is glad that his army is growing, He does not hesitate, he brings it out into the field. The Bivarians encircled Valencia, occupied the approaches from all sides, Moor cut off both the exit and the entrance, The Valencians gave him a rebuff. Exactly nine months - a considerable period of time. The tenth came - their army surrendered. Great fun reigned all around when Sid entered Valencia. The one who was on foot until now became mounted. Everyone got hold of gold and silver. Anyone there became rich. My Sid took a fifth of everything - Thirty thousand marks he had, And who knows the count of the other booty? My Sid rejoices that he was born in a good hour: His banner soared over Alysasar*... The exiles* are rich, happy with everyone, Everyone was generously sought by Campeador, Homes and lands were given to everyone. My Sid pays without stinting at all, even to those who came to Valencia later. But my Sid sees: everyone wants to leave and take their prey with them. On the advice of Minaya*, he gave the order: If, without kissing hands, someone goes home without asking and is caught, let them take away all the property from such a person, impale him mercilessly and immediately. My Sid arranged everything as it should, called Minaya, and said to him: “If you agree, I want to know how many wealth I have given. Let all the people be counted, And if anyone wants to run away, Let them take away his property and give it to those who did not abandon the city.” “This is a wise order,” Minaya approved. My Sid called the squad together for a gathering and ordered them to count the fighters who had come. There were thirty-six hundred of them in total. My Sid smiled - he was both happy and proud. “Glorified is our Lord forever and ever! Not so many of us left Bivar. We are rich, and we will become richer still. I, Minaya, since you are not averse, will send you to Castile: we have a house there, There is our lord, King Don Alfonso. From what we managed to get here, take one hundred horses with you as a gift to him. For me, kiss his hands, ask him to allow me to take my wife and children away. Tell me that I will send for the family, that Don Ximena, Elvira and Sol will be delivered with great honor and great honor to the land that I have conquered.” Minaya answered: “I will fulfill everything.” And he began to get ready without further ado. The ambassador took a hundred warriors with him, so that he would not have any worries or worries on the way... While my Sid was having fun with his squad, a worthy cleric came to them from the east, Bishop Jerome, the Lord's servant, Intelligent and knowledgeable in the wisdom of books, Brave and on foot and in cavalry. He had heard enough about the exploits of Sid and longed to measure his strength with the Moors: If only he could grapple with them, the Christians would never shed tears. My Sid Rui Diaz was very happy to see him. “For God’s sake, Minaya, listen. In gratitude to the Creator for his great mercy, I decided to establish a diocese here on the land of Valencia for Don Jerome, and you deliver this news to Castile.” Minaya liked Sid's speech. The bishop's table was occupied by Jerome. He received land and lived in abundance. Oh God, how glad all Christians are that a bishop has been appointed to them in Valencia!
(Campeador (“warrior”) is the nickname of Sid. )
(Bivar is the name of Sid's castle. )
(Alcazar - in Spain the name of the city citadel, the Kremlin. )
(The Cid and his vassals were expelled from Castile by King Alfonso VI, but were later forgiven for their victories over the Moors. )
In the 8th century, the territory of modern Spain was captured by the Arabs, who almost unhindered occupied the entire Iberian Peninsula, excluding only the irreconcilable Asturias. Eight centuries passed from the moment King Rodrigo fell under the Damascus blade until the Catholic sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella raised the cross over Granada. This eight-hundred-year expulsion of the Arabs from the Iberian Peninsula is called in history the Reconquista - the Reconquest.
In the summer of 1492, an elderly sailor rushed in despair along the Spanish coast, trying in vain to hire a ship's crew. There were no free hands in any port. Thousands of people randomly loaded onto any floating craft, be it a ship or a miserable little boat. In the sultry southern air there was a great cry that had no end. The panic in this human anthill was as if the Iberian Peninsula was about to go under water: this is how people flee from a sinking ship.
Meanwhile, in Granada, recently occupied by Christians, festive fireworks soared into the sky, drums thundered victoriously, and the Spanish troops rejoiced. Queen Isabella, tidied up and washed, changed her already snow-white undershirt every day to the delight of her subjects.
The unknown sailor who lost his footing in search of a crew was named Christopher Columbus. And in order to understand what caused the panicked flight of an entire people from Spain - this truly biblical exodus, which almost indirectly prevented the discovery of America - to find out what Granada has to do with it and what the queen’s underwear has to do with what is happening, we will have to turn back eight pages of history , each of which is a century old.
Culprit La Cava
“West is West, East is East, and they cannot come together,” the poet remarked an eternity after the events described. He was not mistaken - poets in general rarely make mistakes. The West and the East have different worldviews, different philosophies - in this sense they are truly dissimilar. If we talk about the history of mankind, then the East sometimes had the opportunity to converge with the West, or rather, to bump heads, to boil in a single cauldron, smelting new, unprecedented forms of culture and life from the steel and wax of human relations.
By the time the Arabs invaded the peninsula, the concept of “Spain”, of course, did not exist. Here at that time the kingdom of the Visigoths was located. Little is known about them. Let's say that it was not those wild Germans who came from the north who destroyed ancient Rome, but tribes that had already been ground down and partially cultivated by Rome. Back in the 4th century, the Visigoths adopted Christianity, although not of the canonical kind, but of the Arian sense, where the human nature of Christ came to the fore. It is an honor to descend from the Goths. Until now, speaking about the antiquity of the family and its undoubted nobility, the Spaniard will say: “This one is ready.” The last ruler of this mysterious people was the ill-fated King Rodrigo.
Ancient Spanish romances brought to us a dramatic story of love and betrayal, as a result of which the Visigothic kingdom fell and Spain found itself in the power of the Arabs for eight centuries. This happened, of course, because of a woman who, as they say in folk Spanish romances, was called La Cava. She was the daughter of the ruler of Ceuta, the powerful Count Julian. It was with her that the Visigothic king Rodrigo fell in love:
“What is it Troy! What Elena
Next to this beauty.
All of Spain, perhaps
I would burn in fire like Troy”...
(Hereinafter - translation by A. Revich).
It is unbecoming for kings to say such words! Especially if they had previously had ominous and prophetic dreams! - dreams about the invasion of foreigners. Burning with passion, Rodrigo lost his head so much that he committed a very unroyal act: having lured the beauty into a trap, he took her by force. Sobbing bitterly, La Cava told her father everything, and he vowed to take revenge on Rodrigo. At night, he secretly opened the gates of the guard fortress on Gibraltar to the Arabs, and their hordes poured into Spain. Rodrigo fell in the first battle. The chronicles tell the story of what happened a little differently, building a historical edifice not on the follies of passion, but on a major game of political interests. It is known that the unlucky King Rodrigo reigned for only a year: from 710 to 711. Before him, the king of the Visigoths was a certain Vititsa, who before his death bequeathed the kingdom to his son Agila, unloved by the Visigothic nobility. Dissatisfied feudal lords rebelled and proclaimed Rodrigo king. A civil war actually began in the country. This is where the Arabs enter the scene, having long encroached on the fertile lands of Andalusia. The Arab Caliphate, centered in Damascus, was powerful and truly immense. It was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty, which increasingly expanded its possessions. By the beginning of the 8th century, the Arabs had conquered all of northwestern Africa, the indigenous population of which were warlike Berber tribes. A supporter of the Crown Prince of Agila, Don Julian, commandant of the Ceuta fortress, which actually controlled the Strait, which is now called the Strait of Gibraltar, entered into a conspiracy with the Arab and Berber military leaders. No one then imagined that the consequences of a simple military agreement would be so catastrophic. The allies were offered to defeat Rodrigo's army, and as a reward receive the treasury of the capital city of Toledo.
In the spring of 711, an Arab army of seven thousand under the command of Tariq entered the European continent. Of course, it crossed on ships provided by Julian, since the Arabs did not have their own fleet at that time. The rock on which Tariq landed received his name: Gibraltar means “Tarik’s mountain”... But then something incomprehensible happened: Aguila suddenly invited Rodrigo to join forces in the fight against a common enemy. What was it? The lack of communication between Aguila and Julian, who did not have time to inform the prince that he was acting in his interests? Or did Aguila turn out to be a decent person and the methods of the Seutian commandant seemed unacceptable to him? Or is everything simpler, and the noble proposal only masked a trap set for Rodrigo? It seems so: after all, having moved the army to the south to help the royal army, Aguila himself evaded command and for some reason chose to stay in the north.
Until now, in schools in Arab countries, Tariq’s appeal to soldiers before battle is memorized as an example of eloquence: “O people, where to run? The sea is behind you, the enemy is in front of you, you have nothing but steadfastness and patience...” Between July 19 and July 26, 711, a battle took place whose name to the ears of the Spaniards sounds like the sound of a funeral bell: the Battle of Guadaleta. Rodrigo was completely defeated. The flanks of his army were led by the brothers of the late King Vititsa - Agila's uncles. They couldn't withstand the blow. Most likely there was a banal betrayal. Rodrigo was killed, according to some sources, in this battle, according to others - in the next one. In any case, here traces of him are lost. As for La Cava, the chroniclers are silent about her. For some reason, I still think that it existed.
"Look around, Don Rodrigo,
Where is your land and your glory?
All of Spain was destroyed
Your whim and La Cava..."
Thus, in a Spanish romance, the death of an unlucky king is mourned with reproach.
Meanwhile, the Arabs, on light horses, and mostly on mules, fulfilling the terms of the treaty of alliance, moved straight to Toledo. From 711 to 718 they occupied almost all of Spain. True, Christian uprisings sometimes broke out in their rear, but on the whole the campaign unfolded successfully. The refugees brought the sad news to the Pope: Christianity on the Iberian Peninsula had come to an end.
How could this happen? How did a Christian state, in a few years, almost completely come under Muslim rule, and many of its residents, without much hesitation, exchanged the cross for the crescent? The solution to this mystery sounds somewhat paradoxical: the aborigines accepted Islam because no one forced them to do so...
Asturias - a stronghold of irreconcilables
The caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty were far from Islamic fanaticism. By the time of the capture of Spain, Islam was a very young religion - not even a century had passed since the death of the Prophet Mohammed. Lovers of the joys of life, patrons of free secular poetry and various sciences, the Umayyads were not aggressive towards the peoples of the occupied territories. They did not seek to forcibly convert the inhabitants of the conquered lands to Mohammedanism: they did not chop off the heads of civilians, did not pour molten lead down their throats, in a word, they did not do anything that, say, Rus' got used to during the Mongol-Tatar invasion.
A few decades after the conquest of Spain, the Umayyad dynasty fell. It was replaced by the Abbasid dynasty. The capital of the caliphate was moved from Damascus to Baghdad. The escaped Umayyad, nicknamed the Stranger, or Disinherited, took possession of Cordoba and in 756 proclaimed himself ruler of the independent Emirate of Cordoba. His name was Abdarrahman I.
As historians say, in foreign policy the Arabs of that era were not inclined to bloodshed on the occupied lands: everything came down to more or less regular fleecing. Residents were subject to tribute, which, in essence, was the main economic goal of Arab military campaigns. The Islamic poll tax turned out to be much lighter than the onerous taxes that the Visigothic nobility levied on the local population. It was reconciling. Women, children and other socially vulnerable elements were automatically exempted from taxes. And most importantly, all those who converted to Islam had equal rights with the winners and did not pay any tribute. In addition, the commandments of Mohammed, in the opinion of the Roman and Visigothic aborigines with their weakly rooted Christianity, differed little from the commandments of Christ. Even the polygamy of the Arabs did not strike the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula as a shocking novelty: here everyone had seen enough of the free morals of the Visigothic elite, where even representatives of the clergy openly appeared with their concubines, not paying much attention to the proceedings carried out from time to time by Rome on this sensitive issue. If we add to all that has been said that Spain at that time was sparsely populated and in many places there was simply no one to repel the tireless Arab cavalry, we will understand how the Muslims quickly advanced north in such a short time.
However, the fate of nations, like the fate of individual people, is difficult to predict. Who will make the next decisive move in the great and exciting game of life? Maybe for someone who doesn’t relax after grabbing a jackpot, and doesn’t lose heart after losing in smoke?
One small area in the north remained unconquered - Asturias.
Guerilla Kings
The heir to the Spanish throne still bears the honorary title of Prince of Asturias. In the city of Oviedo in Asturias, the prestigious Prince of Asturias Prize for achievements in the field of science and art is awarded annually - the national equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Laureates arriving at the award ceremony traditionally stay at the best hotel in the city. It's called "Reconquista". All this is a tribute to respect and memory of those distant times, when from here, from Asturias, the reconquest of Spain from the Arabs slowly but steadily began.
After the defeat of the Visigothic troops, their remnants took refuge in the Asturian mountains. It was then that a new hero, the legendary Don Pelayo, soon appeared. Who he is is not really known. Nowadays they would say “charismatic leader”, “passionary personality”. It was he who achieved the unity of the Visigoths who survived the battles to fight the invaders and already in 718 inflicted a strong defeat on the Arabs at the Battle of Covadonga.
The Vascons are another people on the territory of modern Spain who did not succumb to the victorious Muslim conquest. The Vascons were the ancestors of the Basques, semi-wild inhabitants of the Pyrenees mountains. Noble Visigothic counts with their family pride, court etiquette and swords passed down by inheritance, and Vascon highlander shepherds dressed in homespun shirts, whose favorite weapons were huge boulders rolling from the rocks onto the heads of the enemy - these two forces did not allow the Arabs to rest on their laurels, disturbing them with unexpected guerrilla attacks.
“From somewhere, this unbroken donkey, Don Pelayo, stuck his head on our heads! - the Muslims exclaimed. - Surrounded, he is able to do without food. His warriors are dying of hunger, but they do not give up. For weeks they eat nothing but wild honey!” It happened that the Arabs lifted the siege and left, consoling themselves: “Three dozen stubborn donkeys, Allah is with them! What danger can they pose to the all-powerful caliphate? However, there was danger. And it consisted in the fact that Christians felt: these countless and invincible ones can and should be beaten! In 724, the Visigothic nobility, together with the Basques, defeated the Muslims near the city of Ainsa. There are rumors among the people about a miraculous appearance of the Virgin Mary at the site of the battle.
Arab march
At that time, Spain, conquered by the Arabs, was called Al-Andalus or Andalusia. The capital of Andalusia was Cordoba. It was ruled by an emir subordinate to the caliph seated in Damascus.
But being the Emir of Cordoba is not easy! In the distance is the watchful eye of the caliph, who fears, not without reason, that the distant emirate may desire autonomy. Local leaders also strove to separate from Cordoba and become independent emirs in Toledo or Zaragoza. Christians raised their voices, and then there was the difficult international situation: either the Vikings would come from the sea and burn flourishing Seville, or the Franks would pull their forces to the Pyrenees.
By the way, it was after the terrible devastation of Seville by the Vikings in 845 that the Emir of Cordoba, Abdarrahman II, made a great decision: to build a fleet capable of protecting Andalusia from attacks from the sea. Soon the Arab fleet of Spain became one of the strongest in Europe. Alas, for many centuries he gave birth to a new disaster in the Christian world - Saracen piracy. The Arabs everywhere made Christian captives lifelong slaves in galleys. Later, during the Reconquista, the growing Christian monasteries took upon themselves the work of ransoming the unfortunate. To this day, when passing by the Toledo Cathedral of San Juan de los Reyes, you can see garlands of rusty shackles on its walls. Each such chain testifies to a freed prisoner.
But let's return to the Arab rulers. Another problem for them is the heterogeneity of the Arabs themselves, the secret and overt confrontation between the Syrians, Yemenis, and Berbers. The Emir of Cordoba did not manage to sit in his place for long. As they would say in our time, there was a high turnover of personnel. All that was heard was: the emir was recalled, deposed, executed, expelled, killed right in the mosque... Naturally, the emir’s special anger was caused by the unification of his Muslim conspirators with Christians. Here they punished everyone indiscriminately.
One of these punitive expeditions was the forced march of Arab troops into the territory of modern France. The operation, initially directed against the Duke of Aquitaine, who had offended the emir, was distinguished by unprecedented cruelty. The Arab army advanced along the route Zaragoza - Pamplona - Roncesvalles - Bordeaux - Poitiers - Tours. Villages and cities burned. Murders, looting and all kinds of outrages became commonplace. Now it’s hard to imagine, but the emir’s army was almost near Paris - it’s a stone’s throw from Poitiers to Paris! About the same as from Tver to Moscow. France could be the caliph's next acquisition in Damascus - it was something to gasp at!
And here the Frankish commander Charles Martel comes into play. In 732, a grandiose battle took place near Poitiers, a real battle of nations, where the emir’s troops were defeated and driven back by the Franks, and the emir himself was killed. And although the Arabs more than once made forays against Christians, they never again managed to advance so far into Europe, much less gain a foothold there for a long time.
In 736, the rebel Basques temporarily expelled the Arabs from Pamplona. In 750, the Christian king Alfonso I, as a result of a series of victories, recaptured all of Galicia. Sixteen years later, Christians successfully repulse a Muslim cavalry raid near Alava.
But the year 778 unexpectedly showed how complex the situation in the Pyrenees actually was and how conflicting interests competed on the peninsula. The clang of swords and the death rattle of the battle horn merged in one sorrowful word - Roncesval.
Roncesvalles detective, or the case of the plundered train
The Battle of Roncesvalles is legendary. The French epic, created in the 11th-12th centuries, tells about the campaign of the Frankish emperor Charlemagne against the Spanish Moors, about the heroic death of Charles’s nephew, the noble Count Roland, in the Roncesvalles Gorge of the Pyrenees and about Charles’s terrible revenge on the treacherous Saracens for his death. The events described are most directly related to the Reconquista: Christians are trying to oust Muslims from European territory. The heroic epic presents us with a bloody conflict between two religions, two worldviews and, ultimately, the same clash between East and West.
The Arab governor of Zaragoza, Suleiman ibn Arabi, came in 777 with an embassy to the Frankish king Charles. Suleiman asked Charles for help in the fight against the Cordoba emir Abdarrahman I. The Zaragoza governor swore by Allah that, as a reward for his support, the gates of Zaragoza would be opened without a fight - he just had to immediately set out on a campaign. Karl moved south. The pass overgrown with dense forest in the Pyrenees Mountains and the gloomy Roncesvalles Gorge passed the king's paladins safely - the mountain spurs were deserted. Only in Pamplona did Charles’s soldiers meet people. They were half-wild Basques, silently watching from under their brows the magnificent foreign army. Having stocked up on goat cheese, the army moved on. Alas, the gates of Zaragoza were closed. The embarrassed Suleiman continued to swear that they would certainly be opened, they just had to lay siege to the city and wait until it ran out of food and water. Days passed after days, but stubborn Zaragoza did not give up. Finally, intelligence reported to Charles that the Emir of Cordoba had moved a large army against Zaragoza. The king sensed something was wrong: behind, behind the wide yellow river, was the city bristling in defense, ahead were the approaching troops of the emir. Isn't this a trap? Isn't it a provocation from the very beginning?
Charles ordered to seize Suleiman and put him in chains, and send his sons as hostages with a convoy to France. After which he turned his army around and rushed back to the Pyrenees. The return from this completely inglorious campaign seemed to be successful. The French soldiers had already set foot on the green hills of Gascony, but the lagging convoy, commanded by the king's favorite nephew, Roland, was still missing. A day later, a worried Karl ordered the horses to be turned around. In the Roncesvalles Gorge, called the “Valley of Death” by chroniclers, a terrible sight opened up to the French. Empty overturned wagons, horses dying under the rubble of rocks and piles of dead bodies, mutilated and naked. Among them they found the body of Count Roland. It was clear that he and his companions repelled the attack to the last, back to back. Nearby lay Roland's richly decorated horn, covered in blood, which he was supposed to blow in case of danger. The robbers, who took everything, for some unknown reason did not touch him. Who so treacherously attacked the lagging convoy in the narrowest place of the Roncesvalles gorge? These were hardly Arabs - the Pyrenees Mountains were not their territory. And the savage nature of the attack - throwing boulders down, and the fact that the dead were completely robbed and even stripped, everything pointed to the Basques. But something else is even more mysterious: Suleiman’s sons were not found among the dead. What actually happened? Was the Zaragoza governor a provocateur? Did the Muslims collude with the Basques to rescue their own? Or did they just set the freedom-loving mountaineers against Charles’s warriors, hinting to them that the Franks had come to the local forests to encroach on the ancestral rights of the local inhabitants? Or maybe the Basques acted independently, and took hostages with them so that, on occasion, they could dictate their terms to the Muslims? Or did the mountaineers simply take pity on the captives and let them go?
Be that as it may, history tied a tight knot in 778 in Roncesvalles: Christians who came at the call of Muslims to fight other Muslims were killed by Christians!
However, there is another version, a mystical one. According to legend, somewhere near the Roncesvalles gorge, in the mountains, the famous Grail cup full of Christ's blood is kept secret from people. The Franks actually made their campaign in search of her, and all the ups and downs with the Arabs are just a cover for the true goal. However, according to legend, no one is allowed to approach the Grail with impunity, and, therefore, it is not surprising that the detachment led by Roland fell victim to unknown forces under very vague circumstances...
The riddle of Roncesval has not been solved to this day. “The Song of Roland” speaks only of the struggle of Christians with the Saracens. This is natural, considering that it was created much later, in an era when the Christian world was increasingly united, supporting the Spanish Reconquista.
Santiago - Matamoros
The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset was inclined to doubt the fighting spirit of his compatriots. He noted, not without malice, that among a people endowed with a thirst for military feat, the reconquest of their own country does not stretch over eight centuries. One may not agree with this, if only because the Spanish people, as such, did not yet exist in the first centuries of the Reconquista. It was an Ibero-Romano-Gothic population. As a people endowed with unique national characteristics, the Spaniards were formed precisely in the process of the Reconquista. The fight against a common enemy strengthened and united them, and left its mark on their character type. They say “proud as a Spaniard”, why would that be? Almost all travelers to Spain noted the freedom of the Spaniards from class prejudices: the peasant in this country always behaved with the dignity of a grandee, and in the attitude of the servant to the master there was never a trace of humiliation or ingratiation. In general, the distinction between peasants, artisans and knights was not as obvious in Spain as in other countries of medieval Europe. The reasons should be sought precisely during the Reconquista, when all layers of society fought with Muslims on equal terms, and cities and peasant communities that found themselves on the border and were forced to guard this border received special rights and freedoms enshrined in the codes of laws - fueros. Peasants free from feudal dependence formed independent unions - begetria. The free and rebellious spirit of the Begetria laid the foundations for an independent national character. In a word, this country was not crippled by the vices of serfdom.
For unification, a certain common banner, a single shrine was needed. That is why the discovery of the relics of St. James in Santiago in Galicia, in the town of Compostela, in the 9th century is so important in the history of the Reconquista. Saint James becomes the banner of the Reconquista. "Santiago!" - the battle cry of Christians. The peaceful apostle receives the nickname “Santiago Matamoros,” that is, “Santiago the Slayer of the Moors.” He is still considered the patron saint of Spain.
Santiago de Compostela was raided. The Arabs destroyed the church dedicated to Santiago, but did not desecrate the tomb itself, and did not even touch the monk who guarded it. "What are you doing here?" - they asked him. “I pray to the saint,” was the calm answer. The attackers appreciated the foreigner’s courage and treated the Christian shrine with respect. True, the bells were removed from the bell tower and transported on the shoulders of Christian slaves to Cordoba to be melted down into lamps for the famous mosque. When King Fernando III of Castile finally took Cordoba on June 29, 1236, the lamps cast from the bells were sent back to Santiago - already on the shoulders of Muslim slaves.
To this day, the pilgrimage route from France runs to Santiago de Compostela. The first pilgrims walked along it, leaning on a staff and singing songs about the death of the brave Count Roland.
Another banner of the Reconquista was Sid the Warrior, who led the fight against the Moors in the 11th century. Ruy Diaz de Bivar, or Cid Campeador, the hero of the Spanish epic “The Song of Cid,” is a real person. With his exploits in the war against the Muslims, he glorified Spanish weapons. Both the epic and folk romances pay tribute to him, describing him as a man of honor, a fighter for justice, an invincible warrior-hero. The real Sid was not such a paragon of virtue as the imagination of storytellers portrays him. While defending Christianity, he nevertheless willingly served both the Spanish kings and the Muslim emirs. However, the growing self-awareness of the people, who increasingly felt themselves to be a single nation, simply needed a hero-symbol, a shining example to follow.
As for Sid’s courage, even the hostile side unconditionally recognized it. The Arab chronicler wrote: “This man was the scourge of his time, but due to his love of glory, wise strength of character and heroic valor, he was a true miracle of the Lord.”
Return of Toledo
The Reconquista proceeded on its own. The border of the Christian world slowly but steadily moved from north to south. Some areas changed hands several times: Christians paid tribute to Muslims, then vice versa. New Christian kingdoms arose on the conquered lands: Aragon, Navarre, Castile, Leon, Catalonia. It happened that their kings were at enmity with each other, often attracting one or another Moorish ruler to their side to resolve the dispute. But it happened that kingdoms entered into alliances and formed various kinds of unions on a family or business basis: the union of Navarre and Aragon, Aragon and Catalonia, Castile and Leon.
Alas, sometimes the unity achieved with such difficulty suddenly collapsed due to someone’s political shortsightedness. Thus, King Fernando I (1037-1065), who united under his rule the two large Christian kingdoms of Castile and Leon and even assumed the title of emperor, dying, unexpectedly divided his possessions between his children.
The eldest son Sancho got Castile, the middle son Alfonso got Leon, the youngest Garcia got Galicia. The old man did not offend his daughters either, leaving each a flourishing city. The results were immediate: Sancho, who, by the way, had the legendary Sid in his service at the time, went to war against everyone at once. During numerous military vicissitudes, the ill-fated Garcia died in prison, Sancho himself was killed by a man sent by his own sister, and the middle brother Alfonso became king. It is easy to imagine what advantages such feuds gave to Muslims!
True, the middle brother, having become Alfonso VI, ruler of Castile, Leon and Galicia, decisively took up the sword and conquered the glorious city of Toledo from the Muslims. On May 25, 1085, the united troops of the Spaniards triumphantly entered the former capital of the Visigothic kingdom. This was a significant milestone in the centuries-old history of the Reconquista. But Alfonso VII, the ruler of Leon, was not content with the title of king and in 1135 he was crowned in the Leon Cathedral as Emperor of all Spain, although, of course, not all of Spain had yet been conquered by Christians.
Crossing of three religions
It would, however, be a deep mistake to believe that war and hostility are the only conditions for the coexistence of peoples on the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages. Here, despite everything, during the stay of the Arabs, an extremely harmonious way of life developed, and the richest Andalusian culture was born.
Almost the entire population was bilingual: they spoke El Romance and colloquial Arabic. Many knew classical Arabic, Latin, and Hebrew. Arabs, Jews, and Spaniards communicated freely, traded, and entered into marriage alliances. This continued for centuries, almost until the very end of the Reconquista. In this Spain it would be absurd to talk about purity of blood and show religious intolerance.
In addition to Christians, Muslims and Jews, the Muwallads lived here - Christian Spaniards who converted to Islam. Mozarabs are Spanish Christians who live in the Arab Emirates and Caliphate, but have retained their religion while adopting Arab culture and language. Mudejars are Arabs who remained in Spanish territories after the reconquest, retaining their faith, but becoming carriers of not so much purely Arab, but rather Arab-Spanish, Andalusian culture. Finally, the Moriscos are Arabs or muwallads who, after the final expulsion of the Arabs from Spain, adopted Christianity. Cultures mixed, peoples mixed.
For an example, let's go back a little, to the beginning of the 10th century, to Cordoba, where Emir Abdarrahman III came to power. Good emir. Orthodox. Only his eyes are blue and his hair is brown. He paints them so as not to embarrass his subjects.
By the way, this same blond emir would break his formal dependence on Baghdad, announcing in 929 the creation of an independent Cordoba caliphate. This will be a great kingdom. What is one Cordoba mosque worth: a magical forest of columns and intertwining arches, in which a person gets lost, as if in eternity, with a happy feeling, as if this is what he wanted all his life.
The University of Cordoba was also highly respected. People came here to study from France, England, and Germany. Cordoba was famous throughout the world for its libraries. The library of Caliph al-Hakam II consisted of at least four hundred thousand volumes. Here, in Cordoba, was born the poet Ibn Hazm, the author of “The Necklace of the Dove,” one of the best books about love. The famous philosopher Averroes lived here, translator of Aristotle into Arabic, who also left works on physics, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, religion and law.
The Arab cities of Seville and Granada were beautiful and rich with the luxurious Moorish palace of the Alhambra, where the soul rests among fountains, pools and myrtle gardens, and the honeycombs of carved ceilings and niches seem to reproduce in its entirety the molecular structure of the Universe and the complex, but not at all disorderly connection between of its inhabitants.
The different groups of the population generally existed in harmonious balance. If this was not an earthly paradise, then, in any case, a certain reflection of the heavenly city, which, as we know, exists outside of religious strife. A cathedral, a mosque, a synagogue - this is the normal cityscape of Granada or Toledo. During the reconquest, Catholics, however, were inclined to open their cathedrals in mosques and synagogues. To this day in Toledo the phrase strikes the ear: Synagogue of the Dormition of the Mother of God! And yet, the Castilian kings, starting with the enlightened sovereign Alfonso the Wise, for a long time called themselves “kings of three religions.” The monarch, returning from a campaign, was greeted by the people who poured out to meet him in three languages: Arabic, Spanish, and Hebrew.
A famous school of translators was created in Toledo, which enriched Europe with the works of Averroes and Avicenna.
The Spaniards say: “Where the olive tree does not grow, the border of Arab rule lies.” Olive grows almost throughout the country, as do wonderfully smelling orange groves, peaches, and almonds. Throughout the country, water still gurgles melodiously in acequias - local irrigation ditches. Here, on a hot day, you suddenly realize like never before: this murmuring sound and life itself are one. A trickle of water, the bitterness of an olive, an orange filled with sweetness - this is also the merit of the Arabs, the fruit of their scientific knowledge and painstaking centuries-old work. A merit that the “Christ-loving army”, moving further and further south for decades, chose to happily forget about.
Papal blessing
Since the 11th century, the Reconquista has moved forward uncontrollably. In view of the obvious Christian threat, the Mauritanian emirs turned for help to a new political force in the Muslim world - a militant alliance of Saharan Berber tribes calling themselves the Almoravids. They were cruel and fanatical rulers. The name of their strong-willed and ruthless commander Yusuf ibn Teshufin (Tashfin) terrified everyone without exception. In 1086, Yusuf inflicted a crushing defeat on the troops of the Leonese king Alfonso VI the Brave on the Rio Salado (Salt River). For the first time, militant Islam reigned in Spain. Even local Muslims preferred to come under the rule of the King of Castile and pay him tribute rather than endure the oppression of the Almoravids. Yusuf without hesitation deposed the local emirs and proclaimed himself ruler of Spain (1090-1091). By 1111, all of Muslim Spain except Rueda was subject to Almoravid rule.
The Almohads (“united”), who replaced the Almoravids, turned out to be even more fanatical. They oppressed Christians, carried out pogroms against Jews, and burned priceless Arab libraries.
Christians resisted the new invasion with varying success - they, as always, were hampered by internecine strife.
Finally, the Pope responds to the Spanish king's calls for help. In the spring of 1212, Pontiff Innocent III proclaimed a crusade against the infidels with absolution for all crusaders. On July 16, at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolos, the largest Christian army utterly defeats the Almohad army. The power of Muslim Spain has been undermined forever. This is the turning point of the Reconquista.
Turning over the pages of history, you discover a paradoxical truth: kings are not born - they are made.
In the last three centuries of the Reconquista, the rulers of Castile and Aragon came to the fore. The Aragonese ruler Jaime I the Conqueror began the reconquest of the Balearic Islands in 1229, completing it in 1235. In 1238, Jaime I entered Valencia. He expelled the Muslims from Murcia.
And Fernando III the Saint, ruler of Castile and Leon, rejected the proposal of the French king Louis IX for Spanish participation in the campaign against the Eastern Muslims, explaining briefly: “I have enough of my Moors!” And in 1236 he victoriously entered Cordoba, and in 1248 - into Seville.
Here the chroniclers' testimonies differ. Some claim that the capture of Seville was orderly and noble. Others... Others say that after a long siege, when the inhabitants, exhausted by hunger and epidemics, finally capitulated, they were ordered to leave their homes without property. From three to five thousand people - look for more such populous cities in that era! - wandered along the roads homeless. And the Christian sovereign, the destroyer of the Moors, entered the ghost town. Four years later he died there from the plague. Fernando the Saint founded the most beautiful cathedrals in Burgos and Toledo, as well as the famous University of Salamanca. I would like to think that he was subsequently canonized precisely for this.
To the sound of swords
XIII and XIV centuries - the height of the Reconquista. The Christian population of the Iberian Peninsula increasingly recognizes itself as Spaniards, Catholics and loyal subjects of kings. We can say that during this period the reconquest becomes a conscious, purposeful movement, the task of which is the final displacement of Muslims from Europe. Orders of knighthood begin to play a significant role in the defense of newly conquered areas.
The events of that era include many feats and examples of valor on both sides. Treason, betrayal, manifestations of extreme cruelty and fanaticism also left their bloody mark on the history of the Reconquista.
In 1292, for six months, the Spaniards besieged the fortress of Tarifa on the Mediterranean Sea. In the end, the Arabs, exhausted by hunger, were forced to surrender. The knight Alonso Perez Guzman, nicknamed the Good - El Bueno, volunteered to defend the fortress in case of new attacks. His name thundered throughout Spain, but for this he paid a truly exorbitant price.
The Muslims did not keep themselves waiting: quite soon they besieged Tarifa, and they were commanded by a Spaniard, a certain Don Juan, who boasted that he would take the fortress with small forces in a way known to him and already proven. This method was as follows: don Juan grabbed the son of Guzman the Good and, standing under the walls of the fortress, publicly promised to cut his throat if the commandant refused to open the gates. Alonso Guzman did not flinch at the sight of the crying child and answered: “I raised my son to fear the enemies, and not so that he would become a tool in their hands! Why are you delaying? Maybe you don't have a knife? Here, take mine!” And he contemptuously threw his dagger from the wall to the blackmailer. The enraged Don Juan cut the boy's throat in front of everyone, and the Muslims, who were horrified, were ashamed and retreated from the walls of the fortress.
True, Tariffa’s misadventures did not end there. In 1340 it was again besieged. This time from the Moroccan side. On October 30, Christian troops clashed with the enemy on the Rio Salado (Salt River). One of the largest battles of the Reconquista took place here, in which the Moors were completely defeated.
On August 21, 1415, Portuguese troops took Ceuta almost without a fight - the same ill-fated fortress from which the capture of the Iberian Peninsula began seven hundred years ago.
And in 1487 it was Malaga’s turn.
Granada "colors of Isabel"
Rome, meanwhile, demands from the Christian rulers of Spain more stringent measures against infidels in the newly conquered territories: what does this mean - they don’t want to kiss the cross? Force by any means!
But the Spanish sovereigns hesitate and not at all out of the goodness of their hearts - it simply seems unnatural to them to oppress a good half of their subjects. But everything changes with the accession of Fernando of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, who went down in history under the name of the Catholic kings. Their marriage in 1469 united the two largest kingdoms of Christian Spain. From that time on, the Spanish kings finally ceased to be “kings of three religions.” From now on they represent only one faith and are completely subordinate to Rome.
In 1487, King Fernando besieges Malaga. The siege and capture of this major port is an endless series of brave forays, heroic attacks and equally brave resistance. This is an endless list of the wounded, killed and died from disease in the camps of both opponents, this is famine within the walls of Malaga, individual deadly attempts by the besieged to conclude a separate truce, and even a failed armed attempt by a half-mad Muslim dervish on the life of Queen Isabella, who came to support her knights.
The Emir of Granada, Boabdil, provided unexpected military and economic assistance to Christians, hoping in this way to protect himself in the future. But - he didn’t know the Catholic kings well.
Four years after the fall of Malaga, this couple, in which Isabella played the leading role, began to prepare for a campaign against the last stronghold of Islam - Granada. Preparations took the entire year 1491. The Emirate of Granada, caught in a hostile circle of Christians, was doomed. The Christian rulers borrowed money for the military campaign from the terrified Jews, imposing unaffordable taxes on the synagogues, or even simply robbing them completely. In 1491, a protracted siege began, during which Queen Isabella shared with the soldiers all the hardships of camp life. Her appearance on horseback under the walls of the besieged city caused howls of delight. The Queen vowed not to change her shirt until the Castilian flag flew over Granada. Days passed by. The snow-white royal underwear gradually deteriorated, acquiring a grayish-yellow color. The Spaniards have since called this exquisite shade “Isabel color”. In January 1492, Boabdil, the last emir of Granada, left the Alhambra weeping. He left through an inconspicuous door in the back wall of the fortress. This door can still be seen today. It was locked from the moment the inconsolable emir crossed its threshold. And high in the mountains there is a village called Moor's Sigh. From there, the exile looked back at the beautiful city below for the last time, and his mother allegedly said: “Cry like a woman over what you couldn’t protect like a man.” True, historians dryly comment: “The phrase is fictitious.”
From the heroic Mount Tariq on Gibraltar to the sad Sigh of the Moor near Granada - the circle is closed. An era has ended.
We're back where we started. To the panicky flight of the Moors and Jews, to whom the Catholic kings set a strict condition: to leave the country within three months. The Jews, by the way, were expelled somehow at the same time, having fallen under the hot hand. Or maybe everything was much simpler, and they were dealt with so as not to repay the debts? The first wave of exiles was followed by a second, a third: Moriscos, Mudejars, Crosses - all those without whom Andalusia was orphaned. At the same time, “brilliant poetry, astronomy, and architecture, which had no equal in Europe, were doomed to destruction,” Federico Garcia Lorca would say several centuries later. Ahead of the country lay the Inquisition and an unprecedented scale of mass repressions. Could something like this have been dreamed of by Don Pelayo, the brave founder of the Reconquista? At what point do the persecuted turn into persecutors, and is this inevitable? This is truly a mystery of history. However, in the significant year of the capture of Granada, along with the end of the Reconquista, the formation of the Spanish people and the Castilian language was completed: 1492 was also the year the first Spanish grammar was published. The country was finally united. America was discovered, since Columbus nevertheless set off on his great voyage from the provincial port of Palos, recruiting a team to visit prisons. Ahead were colonial gold and the Spanish Golden Age, but this is a completely different story with other mysteries. By the way, Spanish champagne is called Cava. The title has a hint: drink, but don’t lose your head, otherwise you might end up without a kingdom.
Reconquista - chronology
April 30, 711- a mixed Arab-Berber (Moorish) army under the command of the tribal leader Tariq ibn Ziyad is transported from Africa to the Iberian Peninsula through Gibraltar (the modern name comes from the distorted Arabic Jabal Tariq, “Mountain of Tariq”).
July 19, 711- Battle of Guadalete. Death of King Rodrigo. The collapse of the Visigothic kingdom, which existed from the beginning of the 6th century.
711-718- the peninsula falls under Muslim rule completely - with the exception of only a narrow strip in the north, the current province of Asturias, where the remnants of the Visigothic nobility were strengthened.
718- Don Pelayo, supposedly the former bodyguard of King Rodrigo, elected by the Asturian king, defeats the Muslims in the Covadonga valley. The Reconquista begins.
732- Battle of Poitiers. The Muslim advance is repulsed by Charles Martell in the heart of the Frankish kingdom. Further Arab advance into Europe was stopped forever.
738-742- Taking advantage of the military clashes between the Berbers and Arabs, Alfonso I, king of Asturias, made a series of successful raids on Galicia, Cantabria and Leon.
791-842- reign of Alfonso II of Asturias. Numerous clashes between Christians and Muslims occur with varying success, but in the end the Christians manage to gain a foothold on the banks of the Duero River.
874- Wifredo the Shaggy, Count of Barcelona, seeks virtual independence from the Franks and begins to actively oppose the Moors, whose possessions are located to the south and southwest of modern Catalonia. This is how a new focus of the Reconquista arises.
905-925- Basque king Sancho Garces strengthens the Kingdom of Pamplona. This is another outpost of the Reconquista in the northeast of the peninsula.
939- Battle of Simancas. Ramiro II of León (930-950) defeats the Cordoba caliph Abdarrahman III. However, the jubilation of Ramiro II is overshadowed by the uprising of the Castilians led by Count Fernand Gonzalez (930-970), who declares himself the de facto ruler of Castile.
978-1002- the reign of Almansor in Cordoba (Muhammad ibn Abu Amir, nicknamed al-Mansur - “The Winner”), who seized the military initiative from Christians and forced them to pay tribute to the Arabs.
1020- Alfonso V of Leon (994-1027), who assumed the title of King of Castile, Leon and Asturias, convenes a council in Leon, which approves a set of constitutional laws (fueros).
1000-1035- consolidation of another part of Christian Iberia. Sancho III the Great, King of Navarre, expands the borders of his possessions to the south. True, after his death many of his achievements were lost again. Regular pilgrimages of Christians to the relics in Santiago de Compostela begin.
1031- collapse of the Cordoba Caliphate.
Around 1030 to 1099- the life and exploits of Count Ruy Diaz de Bivar, nicknamed Cid Campeador, the legendary warrior of the Reconquista, the hero of the epic “Song of Cid,” as well as numerous later works by Corneille, Herder and others.
1037-1065- Fernando I, King of Castile and Leon, captures Coimbra and forces the Muslim rulers of Toledo, Seville and Badajoz to pay him tribute.
1065-1109- the reign of Alfonso VI the Brave, king of Leon (from 1065) and Castile (from 1072), one of the most famous warriors of the Reconquista era. Christian reconquest of Toledo (1085). Declaration of Tolerance towards Muslims.
1086- Concerned about the successes of Christians, the Muslim rulers of Granada, Seville and Badajoz are asking for military assistance from the Almoravids - an association of warlike tribes of Sahrawi Berbers who, by the 11th century, had created a vast empire stretching from Senegal to Algeria. At the end of the 11th century, the outstanding commander Yusuf ibn Teshufin (ibn Tashfin) became the leader of the Almoravids.
1086- Battle of Salak. Yusuf defeats the army of Alfonso VI.
1090 -1091- Yusuf deposed the Andalusian emirs and proclaimed himself supreme ruler.
1094- the army of the legendary Sid occupies Valencia, where Sid will be an independent ruler until his death.
1111- The Reconquista is “rolling back”. Almost all of Muslim Spain is subject to the Almoravids.
1118- Alfonso I of Aragon took Zaragoza.
1135- Alfonso VII of Leon proclaims himself, in the face of a common danger, “emperor of all Spain” (in fact, this is not the entire Iberian Peninsula).
Around 1140- the appearance of the Spanish national epic “Song of Cid”.
1151- the third and final wave of the Muslim invasion of Spain. This time the Almohads (“united”) came - adherents of a special teaching within Islam known as “unitarianism.” Manifestations of extreme Islamic fanaticism. Persecution of Christians.
1162- Alfonso II of Aragon becomes simultaneously Count of Barcelona. Thus, the northeastern "corner" of Spain is also united into a powerful state.
1195- the last severe defeat of Christians during the Reconquista - the battle of Alarcos. Almohad troops attacked the sleeping Castilian camp.
July 16, 1212- the climax of the Reconquest. The famous Battle of Las Navas de Tolos. The united Castilian-Leonese, Navarrese, Aragonese, and Portuguese troops defeat the Muslim army. Many knights who came from all over the Christian world also took part in the battle.
1229-1235- Jaime I of Aragon, the Conqueror, recaptures the Balearic Islands.
1238- Jaime I of Aragon enters Valencia.
1230-1252- reign of Fernando III the Saint, King of Castile and Leon. Christian troops triumphantly occupy the main cities of southern Iberia - Cordoba, Murcia, Jaen and Seville. Only the Emirate of Granada remains in Muslim hands.
1218- founding of the University of Salamanca.
1252-1284- reign of Alfonso X the Wise in Castile. The flourishing of sciences and arts, nurtured by centuries of interpenetration of religions and cultures. Publication of the first Code of Laws.
1309- Fernando IV of Castile (1295-1312) hoists the Christian banner on the Cape of Gibraltar.
1340- Battle of Rio Salado. Victory of the troops of Alfonso XI of Castile over the Muslims.
1350- Alfonso XI of Castile, who repeatedly tried to take Granada, dies. The Spanish states seem to have forgotten for a century about the small Islamic enclave in the southern part of the peninsula.
1469- Isabella I of Castile and Fernando (Ferdinand) II of Aragon enter into a marriage alliance. The actual foundation of the Kingdom of Spain, the establishment of an absolute monarchy.
January 2, 1492- the fall of Granada and the flight of the last emir Boabdil. Ferdinand and Isabella renounce the title of monarch of three religions and proclaim themselves Catholic Kings. Muslims and Jews are expelled from Spain.
The main states that existed on the Iberian Peninsula during the Reconquista
Visigothic Kingdom
The Visigoths entered the Iberian Peninsula at the beginning of the 5th century. The capital of the Visigothic kingdom was the city of Toledo. In 711, the Visigothic state was destroyed by Arabs who came from Africa.
Kingdom of Asturias
Founded around 718 by the Visigothic aristocrat Don Pelayo. During the first centuries of the Reconquista, it occupied a small piece of land in the north of the Iberian Peninsula.
Kingdom of Navarre
It was located in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. Provided constant resistance to both Muslims and Franks. During the Reconquista, as a rule, it opposed the Muslims in an alliance with Castile-Leon and independent Aragon.
Spanish Stamp
At the beginning of the 8th century, the territory of modern Catalonia was occupied by the Arabs. They were soon ousted by the Franks, who formed the state of the Spanish Mark on the conquered lands. In the 9th century, the Spanish March was divided into virtually independent counties, but formally this territory was considered the possession of the French kings until 1258. The Arabs called this region Alfaranja - “land of the Franks”.
Kingdom of Leon
One of the oldest Christian states on the territory of modern Spain. Formed in 909-910. It got its name from the city of the same name (Roman “legion”). In 924 it also included the territories of Galicia and Asturias.
Kingdom of Castile
Castile was part of the Kingdom of Leon. In the 930s, Count Fernand Gonzalez proclaimed himself the head of a new entity - an independent Castile. In 1037 León and Castile were reunited. This union fell apart and was restored again during the Reconquista.
Kingdom of Castile and Leon
Formally existed since 1037. The main driving force of the Reconquista and the core of the future Spain. It was his troops who played a key role in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolos, during the capture of Cordoba, Murcia, Seville and, finally, Granada.
Kingdom of Aragon
Formally proclaimed in 1035. During the Reconquista, Aragon showed itself to be a formidable military force. The troops of Pedro II of Aragon contributed greatly to the victory at Las Navasda Tolos.
County and Kingdom of Portugal
The County of Portugal was created in 1095. In 1139, Count Alfonso Henriques won a major victory over the Moors, winning the Battle of Ourique and proclaiming himself the first king of Portugal.
Emirate of Cordoba and Caliphate
Known in the Arab world as Al-Andalus. It existed as an emirate since the conquest of Spain by the Arabs, and as a caliphate since 929, when Emir Abdarrahman III proclaimed himself caliph - sovereign, independent of the ruler of the faithful in distant Baghdad. Until 1031, this state was perhaps the most prosperous in Europe. Under the blows of Christians moving from the north, as well as as a result of internal strife and invasions of semi-savage Berber hordes from Africa, the caliphate fell, breaking up into emirates.
Reconquista in faces
Don Pelayo, first king of Asturias (died 737)
He came from a noble Visigothic family. He took part in the battle of Guadalete, which was unfortunate for his fatherland. He raised an uprising against the Muslim rulers, which ended in a successful battle for the Goths with a many times superior enemy at Covadonga.
Almansor (Muhammad ibn Abu Amir), the greatest of the rulers of the Cordoba Caliphate (940-1002)
The man who almost caused the Reconquista to fail. He was nicknamed Almansor after suppressing one of the rebellions. “Al-Mansur bi-Allah” means “the winner inspired by Allah.” Although not a caliph, he ruled in the caliph's name and during his 20 years of unlimited dictatorship he introduced significant civil and trade reforms, as well as carried out 57 successful expeditions against Christians.
Cid Campeador, legendary commander of the Reconquista (circa 1030-1099)
Real name Ruy Diaz de Bivar. Born near Burgos. Served King Sancho II and, after his death, his brother and political opponent Alfonso VI. He had serious disagreements with both kings, as a result of which Cid was expelled from the kingdom twice. At certain periods of his life he was in the service of Muslim emirs, participating in their wars among themselves. The nickname Sid is from the Arabic “seid” (lord), Campeador means “warrior” in Spanish. Hero of the national epic "Song of Sid".
Yusuf ibn Teshufin (ibn Tashfin) (died 1106)
Muslim commander, leader of the Almoravids. At the end of the 11th century, at the call of the Andalusian emirs, he came to the Iberian Peninsula from the African coast to fight the Christian danger. In the decisive battle of Salak (1086), he inflicted a crushing defeat on the troops of the Leonese king Alfonso VI. He deposed the Andalusian emirs and proclaimed himself the supreme ruler of Muslim Spain (1090-1091). Became a serious obstacle to the Reconquista.
Alfonso X the Wise, King of Castile and Leon (1221-1284)
He became famous for his great learning and wisdom. He openly proclaimed the synthesis of Jewish, Muslim and Christian cultures at his court. The Toledo poetic, scientific and translation school achieved such fame under him that even Batu Khan from the other side of the world asked to send him Spanish “literates”. This monarch is known as a major legislator, a talented poet and the greatest chess player of his era. In alliance with Aragon, he led a successful fight against the Arabs.
Boabdil, last emir of Granada (1460-ca. 1527)
Boabdil is a corruption of the Spanish word. Real name is Muhammad Abu Abdullah. In his youth, he was distinguished by his militant disposition, as if not noticing the hopelessness of any active actions on the part of Muslims in Spain in the 15th century. As soon as he ascended the throne, he bravely invaded Castile and was immediately captured. Having lost Granada, he was forced to cross to North Africa, where he died.
Natalia Vanhanen
There are wars that have become legends. Not only because of the large number of heroic battles, cunning moves of sovereigns or the use of new types of weapons, but also because of the role played by the outcome of the war. The Reconquista also became a legend. This is a whole chain of battles that has had a significant impact on modern history. It can be called a war of liberation, which determined the fate of Christians. Bloody battles claimed many lives. The completion of the Reconquista came only eight centuries after it began. These were difficult centuries for all conquered peoples. But liberation from oppression was heroic. And, of course, one cannot help but be interested in the capture of which city completed the Reconquista.
Causes of the war
In 711, Visigoth tribes lived in the lands where beautiful Spain is currently located. They were not savages and pagans. Thanks to Rome, the Visigoths adopted Christianity. However, it differed from the faith of the Romans. The Visigoths emphasized the humanity of Jesus. Those times cannot be called calm. The Arabs had already conquered all of northwestern Africa and, believing that military success was with them, did not want to stop. Ahead were the lands of the Visigoths.
There are several stories about how the Arabs were able to subjugate the tribes. The first is a story of love and revenge. If you believe her, then at that time there lived the beautiful La Cava, who eclipsed the sun with her face. Of course, King Rodrigo couldn’t help but fall in love with her. But the proud beauty refused to connect her fate with him. Then Rodrigo took the girl by force. La Cava's family could not let such a crime go unpunished. At night, the father of the unfortunate beauty allowed the Arabs into the city to punish Rodrigo.
According to another version, Rodrigo should not have become king. The former ruler named his son as heir, but he did not enjoy the support of noble families. They liked Rodrigo much more. And then they helped him become a leader. But the supporters of the crown king were not ready to reconcile. One of them entered into an alliance with the Arabs so that they would enter the city and kill Rodrigo and his supporters. As a reward they were promised the capital's treasury. But the Arabs, having killed the king, did not stop. The treasury was not enough for them. They wanted the entire state.
Within a year, the Arabs were able to subjugate the entire territory, which centuries later would be called Spain. The Christian state was conquered by the Muslims. Nobody forced the Visigoths to convert to Islam. Arab caliphs were tolerant of foreign religions. However, taxes and ongoing hostilities still made the Reconquista period a difficult time for the conquered peoples.
Unruly Asturias
The Visigoths were not ready to give a worthy rebuff to the Arabs. They did not have a large, strong army or sufficient weapons. Therefore, many cities surrendered to the invaders without a fight. Without knowing the difficulties, the Arabs moved north. But on their way was Asturias - a city that did not want to give up. Most of the Spanish aristocracy remained to live where they lived. The Arabs had mercy on them. But the remnants of the defeated troops and people who did not want to live in subordination fled to Asturias. It was this city that brought the end of the Reconquista closer.
In order to win, the aristocrats from Asturias had to unite with the poor, uneducated inhabitants of Vascona. These two cities were worlds apart. But they were united by a common goal. Don Pelayo took charge of Asturias. The Arabs could not understand how a small group of resisting people could inflict one defeat after another on them. Thanks to Don Pelayo, who became the national hero of Spain, the residents of Asturias and Vascona realized that the Arabs could be defeated. Christians caused a lot of trouble to the conquerors, who unleashed partisan warfare in the rear, as well as raids from the north carried out by the Vikings.
Beginning of the Reconquista
The independence of Asturias infuriated the conquerors. Therefore, in 722, a punitive detachment was sent there, which was called upon to crush the resistance and subjugate the city. Alkama took the lead. Together with Bishop Oppa, he tried to persuade the Christians to surrender. Otherwise, they would all have died. But Alkama failed to break their spirit. It seemed that Asturias had no chance. But an army of Christians waylaid Alkama and his soldiers in the gorge and defeated them. Alkama himself was killed that day.
The invaders still continued to try to subjugate the rebellious city. In the same year, as punishment for the death of Amalcam, another detachment moved to Asturias, headed by Munusa. But this detachment was also defeated. Munusa was killed. And his failure marked the beginning of the Reconquista.
Fighting in France
The Arabs decide to continue their campaigns of conquest and move deeper into Europe. France was on the way. There are many legends about how heroically this country fought. Perhaps the most famous literary work that has come down to us is the epic of Roncesval.
At that time, Charlemagne ruled the Franks. The governor of Zaragoza turned to him for help. For assistance in military operations, he promised the king military glory and great wealth. Karl accepted the tempting offer. It was said that the king's army would not have to fight. The doors of the city will be opened for them to enter. But the gates were not open. They did not open after some time. Charles realized that he and his army had fallen into a trap. He captured the governor and sent his sons back to France along with his nephew. It seemed to Karl that he would not be able to return home alive. But he was wrong.
Imagine Karl’s surprise when, upon returning home, he learned that his nephew Roland had not yet arrived with the prisoners. Karl went in search. He found them in the Ronselvan Gorge. A terrible sight was revealed to his eyes: the army was practically torn to pieces, not a single living person remained. Every soldier was robbed; they didn't even have any clothes left. Among the piles of dead bodies, Karl found his nephew, but the little prisoners were not there. It still remains a mystery who killed Roland and his warriors. It is believed that these were Christians. But in this case, we can assume that Christians went to war against Christians.
Civil wars during the Reconquista
Slowly the Christians gained strength. The soldiers conquered more and more lands, founded new cities and even states. Many of them have reached their peak. These were Aragon, Castile, Navarre, Catalonia and Leon. Sometimes the rulers of these states were at enmity with each other, but sometimes they could enter into alliances through dynastic marriages. For example, King Fernando I was able to unite León and Castile, two prosperous states. It seemed that later others could join them and begin to collect lands. But suddenly Fernando decides that after his death the kingdoms should be divided between his sons, and his daughters should get beautiful cities famous for their wealth. And so they did.
The thirst for power has deprived young people of their minds. The brothers and sisters started an internecine war. And each of them wanted, having killed his closest people, to stand at the head of a large number of lands. The victory was won by the middle son Alfonso. After the war with his brothers and sisters, he went against the Muslims and recaptured the city of Toledo from them, expanding the borders of the Christian world. Alfonso's heir, Alfonso VII, would be styled King of Spain. Although not all of Spain was liberated, Christians already felt that the end of the Reconquista was approaching. Civil wars were not uncommon for that time. Many brothers and sisters started fighting among themselves. Such quarrels only played into the hands of Muslims. Their enemies destroyed themselves.
Blessing of the Pope
In the 11th century, the life of Christians under the yoke of the Arabs became significantly more difficult. The Almoravids came to power. These were cruel people who did not accept other people's religions. They executed people with particular sadism and brought order to their lands. The time of militant Islam has come.
The Pope could not ignore the death of a large number of Christians. In 1212, he announced that a crusade was beginning. Those Christians who take part in it and liberate their native lands from Muslims will go to heaven and all their sins will be forgiven. The call had its result. On July 16, a battle took place in which a huge Christian army defeated the Almoravid army. Since then, the Muslim army has never been so strong. The liberation of Spanish lands from the invaders slowly began.
The height of the Reconquista
The 13th and 14th centuries are the real heyday of war. Finally, those peoples who lived in the occupied and already liberated territories realized themselves as a single whole. They considered themselves Spaniards who must free themselves from Muslim oppression, unite into a single state and begin to build a new life under the rule of the Spanish king. Crusader knights played a major role in the liberation of lands. The Reconquista progressed with varying degrees of success. It will not be possible to talk about this briefly, we can only note that it was not possible to end the battles with minimal losses. Some cities passed from Christian to Muslim hands and back several times.
Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon
In 1469, the wedding of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile took place. No one could have imagined then that this particular couple would be able to change not only the life of all of Spain, but the whole world. The year of the end of the Reconquista was approaching. Thanks to cunning and military talent, Ferdinand was able to unite a large number of lands. But he and his wife had exceptional ambition and a lot of ambition. That is why such a kingdom was small for them. Isabella and Ferdinand were true Catholics. For them, their faith was the only correct and acceptable one in Spain.
The end of the "three religions" policy
Before this married couple came to power in Spain, three religions tried to get along: Christianity, Islam and the Jewish faith. However, the Pope did not like the fact that in the liberated territories there were people who refused to accept Christianity. The rulers of Spain did not demand that they convert to Catholicism, because they were afraid that the Gentiles would start uprisings.
Everything changed when Ferdinand and Isabella came to power. They, being Catholics and enlisting the support of Rome, began to spread Christianity. This contributed to the further liberation of lands from Muslim invaders. In 1487, the siege of Malaga, one of the main Muslim cities in Spain, began. Ferdinand and his wife were able to achieve success. Only Grenada was ahead. The year was approaching when the Reconquista ended.
Capture of Grenada
For all people studying this chain of military encounters, the most important question is which city was captured to end the Reconquista. It was Grenada. Ferdinand and Isabella carefully prepared for the decisive battle. In order for it to be successful, a lot of money was needed. Therefore, they decided to raise taxes, and the Pope allowed them to use for their own purposes the money that the church received from believers. Thanks to this, she was able to recruit hired knights into her army, who fought the Muslims for money.
The king and queen did everything to strengthen their authority among the people. They communicated with the soldiers and tried to take an active part in everything. The kings, with the assistance of the partisans who started the fight in the rear, were able to win. Now everyone knew which city was captured to complete the Reconquista. The city fell in 1491. It can be called the year of birth of Spain. Every modern Spaniard can easily answer in which year the Reconquista ended. Then the lands were finally able to free themselves from centuries-old subjugation to Muslims.
After the end of the war
When the Reconquista ended in Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, beloved by the people, stood at the head of the state. They were wise rulers, without whom not only Spain, but also America would not have flourished. After all, it was these sovereigns who helped Columbus make his great geographical discovery. Ferdinand and Isabella transformed Spain into a strong Catholic state. Representatives of other religions could not find a place for themselves in these lands. The king and queen drove the Muslim Moors and Jews out of their country.
This royal family remained the most famous for many centuries. And now they are revered in Spain. They did a lot for their state, Catholicism, and also had a significant influence on other countries. In Grenada, everything tells about the capture of which city completed the Reconquista. The Spaniards are proud of their history and that heroic page when their native lands were liberated from invaders. It is important to remember in what year the Reconquista ended. This year has become one of the decisive years in the history of the whole world.
