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.