Due to a lack of reliable contemporary sources, it’s hard to know exactly what happened when the
Muslims entered the Iberian Peninsula, or why. However, a combination of possibly authentic
contemporary sources and later-written accounts give us an idea of what occurred,
starting with the prior Muslim conquest of Maghreb and the ongoing Visigoth civil war in Hispania.
While it’s not crystal clear as to how the Visigoths in Hispania had turned on each other,
it does seem evident that a civil war was afoot in the early 8th century. The Visigoth elites had
been on a downward spiral for some time and upon the death of their king, Wittiza, the situation
escalated rapidly. There was no clear successor as none appeared to have majority support,
although two contenders stood out in particular - Roderic and Achila II. Sources conflict when
it comes to who was or if there was one single king at the time of Islam’s entry into Spain,
but it’s generally believed that there was a state of royal division based on numismatic
evidence. In this reality, Achila would have ruled over the Ebro Basin and Septimania while Roderic
managed the rest. It was Roderic, however, who proved most relevant in the events to follow…
As the Visigoth kingdom of Hispania was struggling to stay afloat in 711, North African
Umayyad governor Tariq ibn Ziyad led thousands of his Muslim warriors into southern Spain.
King Roderic led his own men against the invaders, meeting them in the south at the
Battle of Guadalete. Though there is a severe lacking of contemporary sources recounting
the events of the invasion as a whole, we know that the Battle of Guadalete was decisive and
brought about the death of the Visigoth king. How the monarch died is not entirely clear,
but it’s speculated that a portion of the Visigoth army refused to support the alleged usurper king,
and thus either withdrew entirely or at a minimum, pulled back enough to
allow the Muslim attackers to surround the fighting portion of the Visigoth troops.
The latter was then routed, and Roderic was slain in the final leg of the battle…
Now, the door was wide open for Tariq and his men to push forward. The surviving Visigoths remained
divided and at odds with one another, and the Muslims soon gained reinforcements under the
command of Musa ibn Nusayr. Aside from a small region on the northern border, the Umayyad’s
had seized the whole of the Iberian Peninsula in only a few years. Their next challenge then was
to set up a new administration to manage what would now be named Al-Andalus. However,
this was not altogether difficult for the Muslims to do. While religious and cultural differences
between the invaders and their victims were stark, much of the Visigoth elite hadn’t cared all that
much about supporting their kingdom anyway, and thus would do whatever they were asked in order
to protect their own power. This led to a series of agreements between the Umayyads and Visigoths,
which ultimately kept life fairly consistent for the conquerors’ new Christian subjects.
Many of the local Christians nevertheless would soon begin converting to Islam,
though exact numbers are unknown, and Spain would remain under Muslim rule for
centuries. From the Umayyad Caliphate to the Emirate of Granada, the Iberian
Peninsula was becoming more and more Islamic. However, this was still a temporary status,
because as we know, Spain would soon become synonymous with Christianity yet again…
The Christian inhabitants of the region had been piece by piece chipping away at the Muslim rulers
in Iberia in an effort known as the Reconquista, starting back in the 8th to 9th century. In 1035
the Kingdom of Aragon was established on the east end of the peninsula by the Christian reconquers,
shortly followed by the formation of the Kingdom of Castile toward the center,
which would eventually be sandwiched by the Christian Kingdom of Portugal.
This left a relatively small chunk of Iberian lands to the Muslim conquerors,
and internal strife was beginning to bubble within the remaining emirate.
As the Muslim stronghold weakened,
the Christian kingdoms were strengthening. In 1469, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella
of Castile were wed and the race was on to once and for all unite the Spanish lands…
After convincing Pope Sixtus IV to deem the planned invasion a Crusade,
the Catholic Monarchs, as they were often called, laid siege to the Muslim resistance. On January 2,
1492, the sultan of the Emirate of Grenada, Muhammad XII finally surrendered his land
to the Christian kingdoms. And just like that, Al-Andalus was no more…
Nevertheless, the Islamic faith throughout Iberia didn’t disappear overnight. At its peak,
Islamic Spain had housed upwards of 5 million Muslims. And while the number had declined
somewhat drastically by the fall of the Emirate of Granada, there was still at least half a million
Muslims throughout the Al-Andalus lands. This is because at first, the Christian reconquers
had opted to fein tolerance for both the Muslim and Jewish populations within Iberia. In the
Treaty of Granada, the Catholic Monarchs agreed to treat their new Muslim subjects,
or Moors, with tolerance and fair treatment. As for the Jewish citizens,
the treaty gave them the option to either convert to Christianity or leave the Iberian Peninsula
within the next three years. This agreement, however, never really mattered to the Spaniards.
In March of 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella issued the Alhambra Decree which ordered
the full expulsion of all practicing Jews from all of the monarchs’ territories. Any
who wished to remain in Spain would be required to convert to Catholicism, and many reluctantly did.
There was also a push for the remaining Moors to convert to Catholicism alongside the Jews, notably
urged by the Archbishop of Granada, Hernando de Talavera, and the Archbishop of Toledo,
Francisco Cisneros. By 1499, pressure for such forced conversions sparked a rebellion
among the Moors, but this only ended in the complete reversal of religious tolerance from
the Catholic Monarchs, who now gave the Muslims the same ultimatum that the Jews had previously
received. This drastically reduced the Moor population throughout the Spanish lands,
but it wouldn’t be the last expulsion either. At the beginning of the 17th century,
King Philip III of Spain issued a decree aimed at expelling all descendants of the
former Muslim population - even those who had converted to Catholicism. By this point,
the Arabic language had already been outlawed by Philip II and Arabic books had been burned
en masse. It’s believed that fear of continued rebellions and a want for religious unity is what
led to these acts, but whatever the reason, they made being Muslim in Spain essentially impossible.
It’s believed, formally, that indigenous Islam had finally come to an end in Spain by 1727 after
the final large-scale crackdown on those who had remained. All the while, the Muslim world of North
Africa and the newly expanded Ottoman Empire had become safe havens, not just for Muslims, but even
for the Iberian Jews. Many of both faiths fled to these lands as opposed to trying to remain on the
Iberian Peninsula in the face of persecution. By this point, there wasn’t much of a reason for any
religious minority to remain under the Spanish crown, especially for the Jews and Muslims.
This means that the answer to “what happened to the Muslim majority in Spain” can be explained
in two parts. For one, the fall of the Muslim leadership over Al-Andalus meant that many Muslims
began to leave or convert voluntarily as they saw their own rulers and final Islamic emirate
collapsing around them. But given that there were still around half a million Muslims in the Spanish
lands even at that time, it’s clear that something else caused indigenous Islam to die out - and
that’s exactly the case. The Catholic Monarchs and their descendants saw no reason to follow the
rules they’d agreed to with the Treaty of Granada, and overall had essentially no tolerance for
religious dissension. Thus, the determination to force conversions and expel all Jews and Muslims
who refused to become Catholic led to a stunning decrease in both populations. As for the Muslims,
the Spanish crown gave no leniency by the reign of Philip III, even for the descendants of the
converts to Christianity. This ensured that even Islam being practiced in secret would disappear
from the kingdom. And with the nearby North African and Ottoman lands welcoming the expelled
Muslims and their descendants with open arms, why would they have wanted to stay in Spain anyhow?...