What was the Reconquista? Well, for over
seven hundred years parts of the Iberian peninsula were ruled by a variety of different
Muslim states, collectively called al-Andalus. The Reconquista, Spanish and Portuguese
for “reconquest,” was the centuries-long era during which the remnants of the old Christian
order that had maintained control over the region, in one form or another since Rome’s
conversion to Christianity, vied for control with the Muslim Andalusians. But it was
not a sustained military campaign, and in fact, for the first 360 years of the Reconquista, it
didn’t really have any significant religious undertones at all. Christians and Muslims fought
amongst themselves just as often as they did with each other and they warred for control of
territory, not out of religious zeal. But in order to understand any of that, we first
have to examine why a Christian reconquest of Iberia could happen at all, and so we have to
take a look at the rise of the Islamic Empire. At the start of the 7th century AD
the religion Islam… didn’t exist, but by the beginning of the 8th, after a
series of, frankly, absurdly successful wars of expansion, the Islamic Empire spanned
from the Indus river valley in northern India, all the way to Morocco. The empire was ruled
by a leader called a Caliph or a successor to the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. The Caliph served
as both the political leader of the empire and the spiritual head of the Muslim community.
Sort of like if the roles of Pope and King were combined, and if that person was given
all of Europe. The Islamic Empire’s history is divided up into three Caliphates, times when
different dynasties held the title of Caliph, but the only one to ever rule Iberia was the
second Caliphate, led by the Umayyad family. When the Umayyad Caliphate began its conquest,
Iberia had been ruled by the Christian Kingdom of the Visigoths for about 200 years, but like
many states that are about to violently collapse, it was experiencing a little bit
of instability. Something that the Muslims would use to their advantage. In 711
a relatively small force of Umayyad Moors, a generic term for North Africans who themselves
had only been conquered and converted to Islam by the Umayyads in the preceding decade,
landed in southern Iberia at Mons Calpe, soon to be renamed Jabal Tariq or Gibraltar after
the Moorish leader, Tariq ibn Ziyad. At first, Tariq likely only intended to raid the
Visigoths (all though according to legend the conquest was launched at the behest of a
North African nobleman who sought revenge on the Visigothic King for violating his daughter), but
the Kingdom’s disunity certainly made it weak, and only months after landing at Gibraltar, Tariq had
defeated the Visigoths at the battle of Guadelete, in the process killing their king,
Roderick, and a good chunk of the nobility. With the Visigoth state collapsing, taking
the capital, Toledo, proved to be only too easy for Tariq, and then the next year the
Umayyad governor of North Africa led an Arab army into Iberia to help him out. By 718,
the combined Moorish-Arab force had claimed most of the peninsula for the Caliphate,
bringing about the beginning of al-Andalus. Though, it wouldn’t remain under the
Islamic Empire’s control for long. But before we get to that, it’s important to
note that even under the Umayyads, al-Andalus never quite covered the entirety of Iberia; the
northernmost part of the peninsula successfully resisted the Muslim conquest. A Visigoth nobleman,
Pelagius, led a Christian force to victory against the Muslims at the Battle of Covadonga in 718 AD.
His victory there allowed for the creation of the Kingdom of Asturias, which marks the traditional
starting point of the Reconquista. It was from Asturias that Christian forces would, over
the centuries, work their way southwards. Not to fight a unified Islamic Empire though.
In 749, after a succession of rebellions against the Umayyads across Iraq, Syria, and
Persia, they were deposed, and a new dynasty, the Abbasid, seized the Caliphate and
then slaughtered the Umayyad family. Well, actually, they only got almost all of
the Umayyads; one Abd al-Rahman I fled to al-Andalus where he established the Emirate
of Cordoba, independent from the Abbasids. Under the Emirate, al-Andalus experienced
a cultural and economic golden age. Muslim domination of the Mediterranean sea meant
that old Roman trading routes could be reopened and as a result, massive amounts of wealth flowed
from Abbasid Persia and Arabia to the Emirate, making Cordoba itself one of the richest cities
on the planet, rivaling even the Abbasid capital Baghdad. Though goods and material wealth weren’t
the only things that came to al-Andalus from the Muslim world. As Europe experienced its Dark Age
between Classical Antiquity and the Renaissance, the Islamic middle-east led the world in advances
of science, literature, and philosophy. Going so far as to preserve ancient Greek works, which
had been lost in Europe, by translating them into Arabic. In al-Andalus, Abd al-Rahman ordered
the construction of infrastructure including a road network and aqueducts, created a standing
army which ensured that (for the most part) the Emirate could hold off Asturias, the Franks, and
in 763 the Abbasids, and began building what would eventually become the Great Mosque of Cordoba.
The Reconquista was effectively put on hold. The Umayyad Caliphate had been overthrown as a
result of the dissatisfaction of non-Arabs across a multicultural empire, so when he took over
al-Andalus and created the Emirate of Cordoba, Abd al-Rahman I did something fairly rare for
a historical figure and learnt from others' mistakes. He recognized that the tiny Muslim-Arab
minority in the Emirate couldn’t hope to control his mostly Christian population without some
serious concessions, and so he began a tradition among the Emirs of Cordoba of treating their
non-Muslim subjects tolerantly. Christians and Jews in al-Andalus were, with some restrictions,
it was the 8th century, after all, permitted to worship freely across the entirety of the
Emirate of Cordoba as fellow peoples of the book, or followers of Abrahamic religious tradition.
Many even rose to high-ranking positions within the state, which for the Jews, in particular, was
unprecedented in Europe. Though, perhaps the most symbolic example of the Emirate’s tolerance was
the fact that the Great Mosque of Cordoba, despite being a Mosque, was specifically designed to
incorporate Christian as well as Muslim worship. All that continued for about 250 years, with
the Umayyads in al-Andalus reaching the zenith of their power in 929 AD when Emir Abd
al-Rahman III upgraded the Emirate to a Caliphate. But with the death of his son and
successor in 976, the Caliphate of Cordoba was firmly set on a path towards its own destruction.
The new Caliph, Hisham II, was only 12 years old and was really only ever in charge on paper,
while a clan of powerful advisers, the Amirids, actually ran the state. In 1009
mercenaries hired by the Amirids, as mercenaries will do when they don’t get
paid, looted Cordoba itself and sent the Cordoban Caliphate into a 20 year-long period
of chaos. It was officially dissolved in 1031. In Cordoba’s place arose an assortment of much
smaller independent states called Taifas and it was around this time that the Christians,
who had seen little success for 300 years, began to gain some ground. By 1031 Asturias had
split into the Kingdoms of Leon and Castile, and several other Christian states, notably the
Kingdom of Aragon, had been forged out of small Frankish conquests in the north of Iberia.
Over the next few decades, they expanded against the disunified Taifas, especially Badajoz
and Toledo which was destroyed by Alfonso VI of Leon and Castile (they had united again) in
1085. At this point though the stereotypical view of the Reconquista, a conflict fought not
just by peoples of different faiths, but because of the differences between their religions
had not yet materialized. Up until 1085 when wars were fought on the Iberian peninsula, it was
for more conventional reasons, not primarily to proselytize. Like the old Caliphate of Cordoba,
the Taifas remained tolerant of non-Muslims, and even after taking Toledo, Alfonso VI was committed
to toleration of the city’s Muslim inhabitants. Unfortunately, its central location meant that
it had become a real possibility that Castile and Leon might conquer the entire peninsula and that
didn’t sit well with one of the southern Taifas, Seville. They called for aid from the
North African Almoravid Empire which invaded al-Andalus in 1086 and unified
the Taifa. But the Almoravids and their successors the Almohads, while they
were interested in a lot of things, weren’t big fans of anyone who wasn’t a
Muslim. So from the Almoravid conquest onwards, the wars between Christians and Muslims in Iberia
took on a much more overtly religious nature, especially as the First Crusade was called
in 1096 and Christians across Europe began to become more and more interested in reclaiming
formerly Christain lands from Muslim rulers. No Crusade was ever officially called against
any Andalusians, but the efforts of the northern Christian Kingdoms were definitely supported by
the Catholic Church. Notably, the Knights Templar helped to create, in 1139, and then expand the
Kingdom of Portugal during a brief period between Almoravid and Almohad rule when Taifas once again
controlled al-Andalus. By 1172 the Almohad had consolidated their power, but in 1212 they were
decisively defeated by a coalition of Christian forces at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa,
and over the course of the next fifty years almost all Almohad land in Iberia was conquered
by the Kingdoms of Portugal, Castile, and Aragon. In the remainder a local dynasty, the Nasrid,
rose up against the Almohad and established the last Muslim State in Spain; the Emirate
of Granada, as a protectorate of Castile. And that marks what is probably the last
great example of Umayyad Cordoban-style religious toleration in Iberia. The Christian
kingdoms, by not outright conquering the Emirate, allowed Andalusian culture to thrive
for another 2 centuries. Of course, that wouldn’t last and in 1492 Queen Isabella
I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon, who through marriage, had united
their Kingdoms into what today we would recognize as Spain, conquered Granada
and brought the Reconquista to a close. If you enjoyed this video don’t forget
to subscribe and hit the notification bell below so you don’t miss the next one. To
know what happened next in Spain, find out how, after the Reconquista, they built a globe-spanning
empire in the video to the left. Or if you’re watching this in the first few weeks after it’s
release, and that video’s not out yet, they’ll be another one there. And as always, I’ve been James,
and thank you for watching Look Back History.
