Reconquista (Sp.: reconquista, reconquest) is the name given to the long process in which the Christians drove the Muslims out of the Iberian peninsula. The Muslim conquest of what is now Spain and Portugal was extremely swift. After the first invasion of 711, the Muslim forces, mostly made up of Berbers from North Africa but largely led by Arabs, swept through the country. By 716 they had achieved some sort of control over the entire peninsula, with the exception of the mountainous areas of the Asturias and the southern valleys of the Pyrenees. Until 732 they also raided deep into France.
It was only slowly that the poor and isolated Christian enclaves to the north could do more than survive. Progress was fastest in the west. Here Muslim settlement never extended further north than the Guadarrama mountains and central Portugal. By 900 the Christians of the Asturias and Galicia had been able to occupy and fortify the almost deserted lands of the Duero valley and the plains to the north, establishing a new capital at Leon. Further east, in the Ebro valley, Muslim settlement reached the foothills of the Pyrenees while in Catalonia the Christians were unable to advance much south of Barcelona.
The strategic position changed dramatically with the collapse of the caliphate of Cordoba in the years after 1010 and the fragmentation of Muslim Spain into small Taifa kingdoms. The Christians, with their heavily armoured cavalry, were able to take immediate advantage. In 1085 Toledo fell to Alfonso VI of Castile, in 1118 Saragossa was taken by Alfonso I (‘the Battler’) of Aragon while in 1147 Lisbon fell to Alfonso I of Portugal, supported by crusaders from Britain and the Low Countries.
After the fall of Toledo and the Christian occupation of the Tagus valley, Muslim Spain was not viable on its own. Its survival was due to the intervention of North African Muslim powers, the Almoravids (1086-1145) and the Almohads (1145-c.1230). The Muslims paid the price of subjection to berber rulers whose main interests lay not in al-Andalus, but in their North African territories. From their capital of Marrakesh, both Almoravid and Almohad rulers were able to launch major campaigns against the Christians. They were much less able to defend the lands they did possess or to reconquer lands they had lost. The Christian military effort was led by the kings of the various states but greatly aided by the military monastic orders and town militias. The latter, raised by the concejos or town councils, were especially important in the 12th century and the armies of cities like Avila played a major part in resisting both Almoravids and Almohads. The Spanish military orders, notably the Knights of Calatrava and Santiago, held the castles of the plains of New Castile against the Almohads in the crucial period between 1195 and 1212.
The climax of the Reconquista came at the end of the 12th century. In 1195 the Almohads decisively defeated the army of Alfonso VIII of Castile at Alarcos but they were unable to take advantage of the victory to retake Toledo or any of the cities which had been lost in the previous century. The Almohad caliph retired to North Africa and it was not until 1211 that another major campaign was launched. This new Almohad invasion united the fractious Christian powers, whose quarrels with each other had frequently occupied more of their energies than the struggle against the Muslims. With the support of the pope, a combined Christian army led by Alfonso VIII inflicted a major defeat on the Almohad army at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212.
Despite the overwhelming victory, the Christians did not immediately advance into Andalusia but the death of the Almohad Caliph al-Nasir in 1213 and the subsequent succession disputes meant that the Muslims were unable to use the respite to repair their defences. When Ferdinand III, now king of reunited Castile and Léon, resumed the Christian advance, neither the local Muslims of Andalusia nor the various pretenders to the Almohad throne could mount a serious resistance. Cordoba fell in 1236 and Seville in 1248. In the east, Jaume I of Aragon-Catalonia took Majorca in 1230 and Valencia in 1236. In the west, the Portuguese had taken control of the Algarve by 1250.
Muslim Spain was now confined to the kingdom of Granada, based on the southern mountains from Algeciras to Almería. The sharply defined border with the Christian sector was known as la frontera and many Spanish towns, including Jerez, the home of sherry, bear that postscript. Despite its small size, the kingdom was able to survive for another two and a half centuries until 1492. This was partly due to the mountainous terrain which favoured the defenders and the fact that the kingdom was densely populated, partly with refugees from areas to the north. Until their defeat at the battle of the Rio Salado in 1340, the Muslims of Granada also enjoyed the support of the Merinid dynasty, the new rulers of Morocco. The kings of Castile, now the only Christian state with a common frontier with Granada, were content to accept the tribute the Nasrid kings paid rather than trying to launch costly invasions. The frontier lands became an area where chivalrous knights could show their prowess and their achievements be recorded in ballads.
This position changed with the accession of Queen Isabella of Castile in 1474 and her marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon. The new monarchs were determined to use the holy war to confirm their position and justify the unification of their kingdoms. Faced with determined Castilian pressure, and lacking any support from fellow Muslims, the Granadans inexorably lost ground until on 1 January 1492 Granada itself was finally taken and the Iberian Reconquista was over. The same year, however, a Spanish-funded expedition landed in the West Indies. The militant ethos of the Reconquista continued in the overseas Spanish and Portuguese empires.
— Hugh Kennedy
