When did the Moors first invade Spain?
Spanish Inquisition
The Spanish Inquisition (Inquisición Española) can be interpreted as a response to the multi-religious nature of Spanish society following the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslim Moors. After invading in 711, large areas of the Iberian Peninsula were ruled by Muslims until 1250, when they were restricted to Granada, which fell in 1492. However, the Reconquista did not result in the total expulsion of Muslims from Spain, since they, along with Jews, were tolerated by the ruling Christian elite. Large cities, especially Seville, Valladolid and Barcelona, had significant Jewish populations centered in Juderia, but in the coming years the Muslims were increasingly subjugated by alienation and torture.
Goa Inquisition
The Inquisition originally targeted New Christians, that is Jews who had been force-converted to Christianity and who migrated from Portugal to India between 1505 and 1560. Later it added in Moors, a term that meant Muslims who had previously invaded the Iberian peninsula from Morocco. In Goa, the Inquisition included Jews, Muslims and later predominantly Hindus.
Moros y cristianos
Moros y Cristianos () or Moros i Cristians () literally in English Moors and Christians, is a set of festival activities which are celebrated in many towns and cities of Spain, mainly in the southern Valencian Community. According to popular tradition the festivals commemorate the battles, combats and fights between Moors (i.e. Muslims) and Christians during the period known as "Reconquista" (from the 8th century through the 15th century). There are also festivals of "Moros y Cristianos" in Spanish America.
The festivals represent the capture of the city by the Moors and the subsequent Christian reconquest. The people who take part in the festival are usually enlisted in local associations called "filaes" (singular: "filà") or "comparses" (companies that represent the Christian or Moor legions). The festivals last for several days, and feature festive parades with bombastic costumes loosely inspired by Medieval fashion. Christians wear fur, metallic helmets, and armor, fire loud arquebuses, and ride horses. In contrast, Moors wear ancient Arab costumes, carry scimitars, and ride real camels or elephants. The festival develops among shots of gunpowder, medieval music, and fireworks, and ends with the Christians winning a simulated battle around a castle.
Visigothic Kingdom
In 711, Tariq ibn Ziyad, a Muslim Berber client of Musa bin Nusair, the governor of Islamic Africa, invaded Spain with about 7,000 Berber men, while Roderic was in the north fighting the Basques. The tale that Julian, Count of Ceuta, facilitated the invasion, because one of his daughters had been dishonored by Roderic, is both late and mythical. By late July, a battle took place at the Guadalete River in the province of Cádiz. Roderic was betrayed by his troops, who sided with his enemies, and the king was killed in battle. The Muslims then took much of southern Spain with little resistance, and went on to capture Toledo, where they executed several Visigothic nobles. In 712, Musa, the governor of Ifriqiya, arrived with another army of 18,000, with large Arab contingents. He took Mérida in 713 and invaded the north, taking Saragossa and León, which were still under King Ardo, in 714. After being recalled by the Caliph, Musa left his son Abd al-‘Aziz in command. By 716, most of the Iberian Peninsula was under Islamic rule, with Septimania taken between 721 and 725. The only effective resistance was in Asturias, where a local or Visigothic nobleman named Pelagius (Pelayo) revolted in 718, and defeated the Muslims at the battle of Covadonga. Resistance also continued in the regions around the Pyrenees with the establishment of the Marca Hispanica from 760 to 785. The Berbers settled in the south and the Meseta Central in Castile. Initially, the Muslims generally left the Christians alone to practise their religion, although non-Muslims were subject to Islamic law and treated as second-class citizens.
Valdemoro
According to legend, the indigenous inhabitants' resistance to the Moorish invaders inspired the saying "En balde, Moro, te cansas" ("You tire yourself in vain, Moor"). This saying evolved to become the name of the area—Valdemoro. Taking into consideration the short amount of time it took for the Moors to completely conquer the Iberian Peninsula, it seems more likely that the name comes from "Valle de Moro" ("Valley of the Moor(s)"), a name the area received after the Reconquista.
Music of Spain
Isidore of Seville wrote about the local music in the 6th century. His influences were predominantly Greek, and yet he was an original thinker, and recorded some of the first details about the early music of the Christian church. He perhaps is most famous in musical history for declaring that it was not possible to notate sounds, an assertion which revealed his ignorance of the notational system of ancient Greece, suggesting that this knowledge had been lost with the fall of the Roman Empire in the west.
The Moors of Al-Andalus were usually relatively tolerant of Christianity and Judaism, especially during the first three centuries of their long presence in the Iberian peninsula, during which Christian and Jewish music continued to flourish. Music notation was developed in Spain as early as the 8th century (the so-called Visigothic neumes) to notate the chant and other sacred music of the Christian church, but this obscure notation has not yet been deciphered by scholars, and exists only in small fragments. The music of the early medieval Christian church in Spain is known, misleadingly, as the "Mozarabic Chant", which developed in isolation prior to the Islamic invasion and was not subject to the Papacy's enforcement of the Gregorian chant as the standard around the time of Charlemagne, by which time the Muslim armies had conquered most of the Iberian peninsula. As the Christian reconquista progressed, these chants were almost entirely replaced by the Gregorian standard, once Rome had regained control of the Iberian churches. The style of Spanish popular songs of the time is presumed to have been heavily influenced by the music of the Moors, especially in the south, but as much of the country still spoke various Latin dialects while under Moorish rule (known today as the Mozarabic) earlier musical folk styles from the pre-Islamic period continued in the countryside where most of the population lived, in the same way as the Mozarabic Chant continued to flourish in the churches. In the royal Christian courts of the reconquistors, music like the Cantigas de Santa Maria, also reflected Moorish influences. Other important medieval sources include the Codex Calixtinus collection from Santiago de Compostela and the Codex Las Huelgas from Burgos. The so-called Llibre Vermell de Montserrat (red book) is an important devotional collection from the 14th century.
Portugal–Spain relations
The War of the Oranges (Portuguese: Guerra das Laranjas; French: Guerre des Oranges; Spanish: Guerra de las Naranjas) was a brief conflict in 1801 in which Spanish forces, instigated by the government of France, and ultimately supported by the French military, invaded Portugal. It was a precursor to the Peninsular Wars, resulting in the Treaty of Badajoz, the loss of Portuguese territory, in particular Olivenza, as well as ultimately setting the stage for the complete invasion of the Iberian Peninsula by Spanish and French forces.
In 1807, the king of Spain and his French allies invaded successfully and unusually fast Portugal, using a route that crossed through Spanish territory. However, the French decided to take over both countries, overthrowing the King of Spain and forcing the Portuguese royal family to escape to the Portuguese colony of Brazil. Spain and Portugal subsequently became allies for the first time in centuries and, allied to a British army under Sir Arthur Wellesley, drove the French back across the border in 1813 after a prolonged, brutal conflict known as the Peninsular War.
Arabs in Europe
After the Moors lost control of Spain, King Philip II made treaties with them allowing them to practice their religion if they gave up their sovereignty, signing the Treaty of Granada in 1491. The Catholic monarchs however, abrogated the treaties and threatened to expel the Moors if they did not become Christians. The Moors did so, but continued speaking Arabic, and using Aljamiado alphabet for spoken Spanish. Some followed Islam in secret (Crypto-Islam). They were later referred to as "Moriscos", Moors and their descendants who converted to Christianity rather than be expelled. Religious conversion was simply not enough for the Catholic monarchs. Phillip II implemented a policy to fully assimilate the Moriscos into the Christian Spanish population and eliminate Moorish and Arab culture from Spain. The Moriscos were forced to abandon their Arabic names and adopt a completely Hispanized heritage and give up their children to be educated by priests. Philip II also made speaking Arabic illegal in the kingdom, ordered all Arabic texts to be burned, and banned Moorish attire. After a failed revolt by Morisco leader Aben Humeya (or Ibn Umayyah) in 1568, the Christian monarchs expelled the Moriscos from Spain. Many of these Moriscos headed for North Africa, mainly in Morocco, where many of their descendants settled.
Cabo Catoche
Catoche was the location of the first intentional landing by Europeans in the territory of modern-day Mexico, during the Córdoba expedition, on 4 March 1517. The Spanish were invited into the native town with ""Cones catoche, cones catoche", which means: 'Come to our houses'." On the way, the Spaniards were ambushed, suffering thirteen wounded to the native's fifteen killed. The Spaniards captured two natives, baptized as Julian and Melchior, who became interpreters on future Spanish expeditions, before Melchior turned against the Spaniards at the Battle of Centla.
Thomas Darcy, 1st Baron Darcy de Darcy
In 1511 Darcy was sent to Spain at his own request to aid Ferdinand in his war against the Moors, the Spanish king having solicited the aid of fifteen hundred English archers. On 8 March, or rather apparently on the 28th, he received his commission from Henry VIII to serve as Ferdinand's admiral, and on the 29th Lord Willoughby de Broke and others were commissioned to muster men for him. The expedition sailed from Plymouth in May and arrived at Cadiz on 1 June. But no sooner had the troops landed than misunderstandings arose between them and the natives, and Ferdinand politely intimated that their services would not be required, as he had made a truce with the Moors in expectation of a war with France. Darcy, much disgusted, re-embarked on 17 June and returned home. On 3 August he had only reached Cape St. Vincent, where he was obliged to give out of his own money £20 to each of his captains for the victualling of his men; but apparently this was repaid a year after his return home by the Spanish ambassador, who in a letter of Wolsey's dated 30 September is said to have 'dealt liberally with Lord Darcy in the matter of his soldiers'.
The Historians' History of the World
"Book I" begins briefly with Spain's earliest known history under the Celts, the Phoenicians, and the Ancient Greeks through to the Roman conquest of Hispania, and the Gothic invasion; it quickly moves on to the Muslim conquest of Spain to the overthrow of the Muslims; it discusses the Kingdom of Aragon and of Castile before going in some greater detail regarding the reigns of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, and of the monarchs of Habsburg Spain; this is followed by the House of Bourbon, Spain during the French Revolution, and the Peninsular War and ends in 1902 with the regency of Maria Christina of Austria.
Horses in warfare
Mounted Muslim warriors conquered North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula during the 7th and 8th centuries AD following the Hegira, or Hijra, of Muhammad in 622 AD. By 630 AD, their influence expanded across the Middle East and into western North Africa. By 711 AD, the light cavalry of Muslim warriors had reached Spain, and controlled most of the Iberian peninsula by 720. Their mounts were of various oriental types, including the North African Barb. A few Arabian horses may have come with the Ummayads who settled in the Guadalquivir valley. Another strain of horse that came with Islamic invaders was the Turkoman horse. Muslim invaders travelled north from nowadays Spain into France, where they were defeated by the Frankish ruler Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732 AD.
Moro people
The word "Moro" itself was a exonym which had been used before in the 16th century by Spanish colonisers in reference to a Muslim group of "Moors", which originating from "Mauru", a Latin word that referred to the inhabitants of the ancient Roman province of Mauritania in northwest Africa, which today comprises the modern Muslim states of Algeria, Mauritania and Morocco. With the rise of Mauritania as part of the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate, Muslim armies conquered and ruled much of the Iberian Peninsula from 711 to 1492, for about a total of 781 years in which the term was revived when the Christian-majority Spanish became involved in a war with them and started to call the Muslims as "Moors".
Marinid dynasty
It was in this period that the Spanish Christians were first able to take the fighting to Morocco: in 1260 and 1267 they attempted an invasion of Morocco, but both attempts were defeated. After gaining a foothold in Spain, the Marinids became active in the conflict between Muslims and Christians in Iberia. To gain absolute control of the trade in the Strait of Gibraltar, from their base at Algeciras they started the conquest of several Spanish towns: by the year 1294 they had occupied Rota, Tarifa and Gibraltar.
Bubión
Bubión is thought to have been founded in Roman times, and in any case it certainly antedates the Moorish invasion of the 7th century. Under the Moors, it was under the authority of Ugíjar. In the 16th century, after the fall of Granada to the "Catholic Monarchs", the village participated in the rebellions by the Moors (or "Moriscos" - Moors supposed to have been converted to Christianity). In the second rebellion, which started in December 1568, Bubión was one of the first villages of the Alpujarra to fall to the Catholic forces, after a major battle in the Poqueira valley. Following their defeat in 1571, almost all Moriscos were expelled from the province of Granada. They were partially replaced by Christian settlers from other parts of Spain.
Matachines
The Matachina dance, or "Danza de Matachines" (Spanish) is explained by oral tradition among most Indian Tribes as "The Dance of the Moors and Christians" and is the first masked dance introduced by the Spaniards. The Moors were driven out of Spain in 1492 and the missionaries introduced the dance to show the superiority of the Christians. The dance was adopted by the people, and today many forms of this dance still exist, though the dance steps vary among tribes the dance formations are all similar. Masks continue to be used, but the style changes from village to village, or tribe.
European colonization of the Americas
In 1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and led the first European expedition to see the Pacific Ocean from the west coast of the New World. In an action with enduring historical import, Balboa claimed the Pacific Ocean and all the lands adjoining it for the Spanish Crown. It was 1517 before another expedition, from Cuba, visited Central America, landing on the coast of Yucatán in search of slaves.
These explorations were followed, notably in the case of Spain, by a phase of conquest: The Spaniards, having just finished the "Reconquista" of Spain from Muslim rule, were the first to colonize the Americas, applying the same model of governing their European holdings to their territories of the New World.
Palma de Mallorca
The arrival of the Moors in the Balearic Islands occurred at the beginning of the 8th century. During this period, the population developed an economy based on self-sufficiency and piracy, and even showed evidence of a relative hierarchy. The dominant groups took advantage of the Byzantine withdrawal due to Islamic expansion across the Mediterranean, to reinforce their domination upon the rest of the population, thus ensuring their power and the gradual abandonment of Imperial political structures.
Architecture of Portugal
The invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in the year 711 by Moors from the Maghreb put an end to Visigoth rule in Hispania, called Al-Andalus by the newcomers. Moorish presence strongly influenced art and architecture in Portuguese territory, especially in Southern Portugal, where the Reconquista was only finished in 1249. However, in contrast to neighbouring Spain, few Islamic buildings in Portugal have survived intact to this day. Traditional houses in many cities and villages in Portugal have simple, white façades that lend the ensemble of streets and neighbourhoods a distinct Islamic look, similar to that of villages in Northern Africa. Many villages and city neighbourhoods have retained the street layout from Islamic times, like the Alfama in Lisbon. Moorish buildings were often constructed with the rammed earth ("taipa") and adobe techniques, followed by whitewashing.
Islam in Europe
Muslim rule endured in the Emirate of Granada, from 1238 as a vassal state of the Christian Kingdom of Castile, until the completion of La Reconquista in 1492. The Moriscos (Moorish in Spanish) were finally expelled from Spain between 1609 (Castile) and 1614 (rest of Spain), by Philip III during the Spanish Inquisition.
Moraira
During the Reconquista, the Moors were expelled by Jaime I de Aragón and became part of the Kingdom of Aragon between 1270 and 1280 - this is still celebrated today during the annual Moros y cristianos festival. In the years that followed, the Moors were replaced by Christian settlers from Catalonia and Aragon, who introduced the Valencian language to the area. In 1386 Teulada was founded five kilometers from the coast by the Lords of Lluria, Serria and Grandia and became a municipality in its own right.
Moors
The fall of Granada in 1492 marked the end of Muslim rule in Iberia, although a Muslim minority persisted until their expulsion in 1609.
History of the Jews in Spain
With the victory of Tariq ibn Ziyad in 711, the lives of the Sephardim changed dramatically. For the most part, the invasion of the Moors was welcomed by the Jews of Iberia.
Menorca
The Vandals easily conquered the island in the 5th century. The Byzantine Empire recovered it in 534. Following the Moorish conquest of peninsular Spain, Menorca was annexed to the Caliphate of Córdoba in 903, with many Moors emigrating to the island.
Battle of Guadalete
The author of the late Asturian "Chronica Prophetica" (883) dates the first invasion of Spain to "the Ides of November in the year 752 era", that is, 11 November 714. He also identified two invasions, the first by an Abu Zubra and the second, a year later, by Ṭāriq; probably he has divided the historical figure Ṭāriq ibn Ziyad into two persons.
Arabs in Europe
The Iberian Peninsula was mapped as "Al-Andalus" by the new Muslim invaders. The Arabs, as well as the overall Muslim populations (a mix of Berbers and Arabs) of Al-Andalus and North Africa, were referred to as "Moors". Spain enjoyed a golden era of Islamic culture, accompanied by a golden age of Sephardic Jewish culture. This era spawned great Arabic polymaths and intellectuals such as Averroes and Albucasis. The Islamic rule in Spain also saw the birth of the Aljamiado alphabet, an Arabic alphabet for the Spanish language. In the 15th century, the Muslims were defeated by the Christian armies in a historical process called Reconquista (meaning reconquest in Spanish and Portuguese), which led the Christian monarchs to regain control over the Hiberian peninsula. Much of the architecture that was concocted from this era remains intact in Spain and functions as famous tourist destinations since the Catholic monarchs decided to use them rather than destroy them.
France–Morocco relations
Following the invasion of Spain from the coast of Morocco by the Berber Commander Tariq ibn Ziyad in 711, during the 8th century Arab and Berber armies invaded Southern France, as far as Poitiers and the Rhône valley as far as Avignon, Lyon, Autun, until the turning point of the Battle of Tours in 732.
Slavery in Portugal
After the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the 8th century, in which Moors from North Africa crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and defeated the Visigothic rulers of Iberia, the territory of both modern-day Portugal and Spain fell under Islamic control. The pattern of slavery and serfdom in the Iberian Peninsula differs from the rest of Western Europe due to the Islamic conquest. They established Moorish kingdoms in Iberia, including the area that is occupied by modern Portugal. In comparison to the north, classical-style slavery continued for a longer period of time in southern Europe and trade between Christian Europe, across the Mediterranean, with Islamic North Africa meant that Slavic and Christian Iberian slaves appeared in Italy, Spain, Southern France and Portugal; in the 8th century, the Islamic conquest in Portugal and Spain changed this pattern.
European colonialism
Some commentators identify three waves of European colonialism.
The three main countries in the first wave of European colonialism were the early Ottoman Empire, Spain and Portugal. .The Portuguese started the long age of European colonisation with the conquest of Ceuta,Morocco in 1415, and the conquest and discovery of other African territories and islands, this would also start the movement known as the Age of Discoveries. The Ottomans conquered South Eastern Europe, the Middle East and much of Northern and Eastern Africa between 1359 and 1653. The Spanish and Portuguese launched the colonisation of the Americas, basing their territorial claims on the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. This treaty demarcated the respective spheres of influence of Spain and Portugal. The expansion achieved by Spain and Portugal caught the attention of Britain, France and the Netherlands. The entrance of these three powers into the Caribbean and North America perpetuated European colonialism in these regions.
History of Gibraltar
Gibraltar became part of the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania following the collapse of the Roman Empire and came under Muslim Moorish rule in 711 AD. It was permanently settled for the first time by the Moors and was renamed "Jebel Tariq" – the Mount of Tariq, later corrupted into "Gibraltar". The Christian Crown of Castile annexed it in 1309, lost it again to the Moors in 1333 and finally regained it in 1462. Gibraltar became part of the unified Kingdom of Spain and remained under Spanish rule until 1704. It was captured during the War of the Spanish Succession by an Anglo-Dutch fleet in the name of Charles VI of Austria, the Habsburg contender to the Spanish throne. At the war's end, Spain ceded the territory to Britain under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713.
History of Portugal
The Visigothic territories included what is today Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Gibraltar, and the southwestern part of France known in ancient times as Septimania. The invading Moors wanted to conquer and convert all of Europe to Islam, so they crossed the Pyrenees to use Visigothic Septimania as a base of operations.
Voyages of Christopher Columbus
Portugal had been the main European power interested in pursuing trade routes overseas. Their next-door neighbors, Castile (predecessor of Spain) had been somewhat slower to begin exploring the Atlantic because of the bigger land area it had to re-conquer (the "Reconquista") from the Moors. It was not until the late 15th century, following the dynastic union of the Crowns of Castile and Aragon and the completion of the "Reconquista", that the unified crowns of what would become Spain (although countries still legally existing) emerged and became fully committed to looking for new trade routes and colonies overseas. In 1492 the joint rulers conquered the Moorish kingdom of Granada, which had been providing Castile with African goods through tribute. Columbus had previously failed to convince King John II of Portugal to fund his exploration of a western route, but the new king and queen of the re-conquered Spain decided to fund Columbus's expedition in hopes of bypassing Portugal's lock on Africa and the Indian Ocean, reaching Asia by traveling west.
Expulsion of the Jews from Sicily
Muslims had ruled much of the Iberian Peninsula since the first invasion in 711. By the late Middle Ages, Christian kings had begun to wage war on the Moors and recapture some of the peninsula. After the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon to Queen Isabella I of Castile, the Moors were finally forced out of Granada in 1492, completing the so-called Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula.
Military history of Spain
For almost seven hundred years, Spain was the battleground for the opposing forces of the Islamic Caliphate and Western Christian forces. Both Muslims and Christian were motivated by religious conviction, which inspired the warfare. The initial Islamic invasion of Iberia was sudden and unexpected. The varied Moorish tribes of Morocco united under the leadership of Arab generals sent by the reigning Umayyad caliph and crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 711 under the leadership of the Berber Tariq ibn Ziyad. Tariq won a swift victory at the Guadalete and defeated and killed the reigning Gothic king, Roderic. In a campaign lasting eight years, the whole of Iberia was subjected to Umayyad authority, except for the Asturias mountain range in the far northwest and the pockets of resistance in Navarre. The Islamic offensive ultimately paused after the losses it suffered in Frankland and in the Asturias, where battles such as those at Tours and Covadonga showed some of the potential weaknesses of the Arab methods of warfare.
Tin-glazed pottery
The Moors introduced tin-glazed pottery to Spain after the conquest of 711.
Alcantarilla
Alcantarilla soon became part of Al-Andalus. In the 8th century, nearly all the Iberian peninsula, which had been under Visigothic rule, was quickly conquered (711–718), by Muslims (the Moors), who had crossed over from North Africa, defeating the Visigoths. Visigothic Spain was the last of a series of Christian and pagan lands conquered in a great westward charge from the Middle East and across north Africa by the religiously inspired armies of the Umayyad empire.
Islam in Spain
Nevertheless, throughout modern history there has always been a constant presence of Muslims in Spain, many of which were former slaves (known as 'moros cortados') freed in the early 18th century. Furthermore, Spain's proximity to North Africa and its small land border with the Kingdom of Morocco (as well as a colonial presence in North Africa lasting between 1912 and 1975) made Muslim presence in Spain possible. Moroccan Muslims played a significant role in Spain's Civil War (1936-1939), fighting on the National side, including a Lieutenant General Mohamed Meziane, a close friend of General Francisco Franco, who later became Captain General of Ceuta, Galicia and the Canary Islands during his post-war career.
Spanish–Moro conflict
Following the reconquista, a period during which Spanish and Christian culture were restored to those areas of Spain invaded by the Umayyad Caliphate, the Inquisition required Jews and Muslims to convert to Roman Catholicism, or face exile or the death penalty. Thus, the Spaniards tried to suppress Islam in areas they conquered. To this end, they attacked the Moro Muslim sultanates in the south at Mindanao. The Moro Datus and sultans raided and pillaged Spanish towns in the northern Philippine islands in retaliation for Spanish attacks, and terrorized the Spanish invaders with constant piracy. The Spanish were prepared to conquer Mindanao and the Moluccas after establishing forts in 1635, but the Chinese threatened the Spanish with invasion, forcing them to pull back to defend Manila. Several thousand Chinese who were evicted by the Spanish joined the Moros.
Music of Galicia, Cantabria and Asturias
Celtic culture is known to have extended over a large part of the Iberian Peninsula as early as 600BC. During the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, the Roman Empire slowly conquered Iberia, which they called Hispania. The Celtic regions put up a long and fierce struggle to maintain their independence but were eventually subdued. In the centuries that followed, the language of the Romans, Latin, came to gradually supplant nearly all the earlier languages of the peninsula, including all Celtic languages, and is the ancestor of all the current languages of Spain and Portugal, including Galician and Astur-Leonese-Mirandese but not Basque. The departure of the Romans in the 5th century led to the invasions of Germanic tribes. The Suebi people conquered the northwest but the poor documentation from the period has left their cultural impact on the region unclear. In the 6th century, a final small Celtic influx arrived from Britain; the Britons were granted their own diocese, Britonia, in northern Galicia. Galicia was then taken over by the Visigothic Kingdom when the Suebian kingdom fell apart. Galicia came under the control of the Moors after they defeated the Visigoths in 717 but Moorish rule was little more than a short lived military occupation, although an indirect Moorish musical influence arrived later, through Christian troubadours. Moorish rule ended after two decades when their garrison was driven out by a rebellion in 739. The region was incorporated into the Kingdom of Asturias and, after surviving the assaults of the Moors and Vikings, became the springboard for the Reconquista.
Moorish Castle
The Moorish conquest of Spain was led by Tarik ibn Ziyad and Musa ibn Nusayr, who may have landed in Europe at or near Gibraltar. Gibraltar thus became the stepping-stone to the Moorish conquests of most of Spain and part of France. This spectacular feat of arms took a mere twenty-one years, no mean task considering the distances and terrain involved, and the fact that mechanical transport on land was not then in use. The strategic importance of Gibraltar rose in the last years of the Moorish rule, when, after the successful Spanish reconquest of the entire Guadalquivir valley, Gibraltar became one of the key elements in communication between the Kingdom of Granada and Moorish domains in northwestern Africa.
Adra, Spain
Adra was the last stronghold of the Moors in Spain. In January 1492 it was here that the forces of Boabdil were defeated ending the power of the Moors in Spain.
History of Spain
The first Germanic tribes to invade Hispania arrived in the 5th century, as the Roman Empire decayed. The Visigoths, Suebi, Vandals and Alans arrived in Spain by crossing the Pyrenees mountain range, leading to the establishment of the Suebi Kingdom in Gallaecia, in the northwest, the Vandal Kingdom of Vandalusia (Andalusia), and the Visigothic Kingdom in Toledo. The Romanized Visigoths entered Hispania in 415. After the conversion of their monarchy to Roman Catholicism and after conquering the disordered Suebic territories in the northwest and Byzantine territories in the southeast, the Visigothic Kingdom eventually encompassed a great part of the Iberian Peninsula.
Portugal
At the end of the 9th century, the region of Portugal, between the rivers Minho and Douro, was freed or reconquered from the Moors by Vímara Peres on the orders of King Alfonso III of Asturias. Finding that the region had previously had two major cities – Portus Cale in the coast and Braga in the interior, with many towns that were now deserted – he decided to repopulate and rebuild them with Portuguese and Galician refugees and other Christians.
Apart from the Arabs from the South, the coastal regions in the North were also attacked by Norman and Viking raiders mainly from 844. The last great invasion, through the Minho (river), ended with the defeat of Olaf II Haraldsson in 1014 against the Galician nobility who also stopped further advances into (the County of) Portugal.
Reconquista
In 711, Muslim Moors, mainly North African Berber soldiers with some Arabs, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and began their conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania. After their conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom's Iberian territories, the Muslims crossed the Pyrenees and took control of Septimania in 719, the last province of the Visigothic Kingdom to be occupied. From their stronghold of Narbonne, they launched raids into the Duchy of Aquitaine.
Pipil people
In the early 16th century, the Spanish conquistadores ventured into Central America from Mexico, then known as the Spanish colony of New Spain. After subduing the highland Mayan city-states through battle and cooptation, the Spanish sought to extend their dominion to the lower Atlantic region of the Pipiles, then dominated by the powerful city-state of Cuscatlán. Pedro de Alvarado, a lieutenant of Hernán Cortés, led the first Spanish invasion in June 1524. He was accompanied by thousands of Mayan allies, who had long been rivals of Cuscatlán for control over their wealthy cacao-producing region. The Pipil armies met the Spanish forces in two major open battles, but were massacred by the Spaniards' superior weaponry and later by diseases. The surviving Cuscatlán forces retreated into the mountains, where they sustained a guerrilla war against the Spanish who had proceeded to occupy the city of Cuscatlán. Unable to defeat this resistance, and with Alvarado nursing a painful leg wound from a Pipil arrow in the first battle, the Spanish forces returned after a few months to the Mayan cities in the highlands of Guatemala. Two subsequent Spanish expeditions were required to achieve the complete defeat of Cuscatlán: one in 1525 and another in 1528.
Treaty of Orihuela
The first notable Islamic conqueror to enter Spain was the Berber commander Tariq ibn Ziyad. Musá ibn Nusayr was the governor of Northern Africa under the caliph of that period, and it was he who ordered Tariq to make the initial surge into Spain via Gibraltar in spring of the year 711. Once in Gibraltar, Tariq took time to secure a base of operations for his forces and fortified it with a wall, among other defenses. As soon as this was accomplished, Tariq sent an invasion force to the city of Carteya (or Cartaja) and the district of Algeciras, and both were promptly subdued. In little more than two months, Tariq had worked his way steadily through the south of Spain; he began his plunge into central Spain in a battle with the Visigothic King Roderic at Wadi Bakkah. Here, Tariq defeated the army of Roderick against reportedly overwhelming odds. Tariq moved thence to the cities of Écija and Córdoba, effectively ignoring commands he had previously received from Musá to return to Africa or to remain stationary until the governor’s arrival in Spain. After attacking and overpowering these cities, Tariq moved on with relative ease as far as Guadalajara, Spain. He quickly took control of Toledo and its surrounding territories before lack of reinforcements from Musá necessitated his withdrawal, whereupon he retreated to Toledo and remained there until Musá himself came to meet him with scorn and jealousy, demanding the spoils of the conquest.
History of saffron
Saffron cultivation in Europe declined steeply following the fall of the Roman Empire. For several centuries thereafter, saffron cultivation was rare or non-existent throughout Europe. This was reversed when Moorish civilisation spread from North Africa to settle the Iberian peninsula as well as parts of France and southern Italy. One theory states that Moors reintroduced saffron corms to the region around Poitiers after they lost the Battle of Tours to Charles Martel in AD 732. Two centuries after their conquest of Spain, Moors planted saffron throughout the southern provinces of Andalucia, Castile, La Mancha, and Valencia.
Moors
The Maghreb fell into a civil war in 739 that lasted until 743 known as the Berber Revolt. The Berbers revolted against the Umayyads, putting an end to Eastern dominion over the Maghreb. Despite racial tensions, Arabs and Berbers intermarried frequently. A few years later, the Eastern branch of the Umayyad dynasty was dethroned by the Abbasids and the Umayyad Caliphate overthrown in the Abbasid revolution (746-750). Abd al-Rahman I, who was of Arab-Berber lineage, managed to evade the Abbasids and flee to the Maghreb and then Iberia, where he founded the Emirate of Córdoba and the Andalusian branch of the Umayyad dynasty. The Moors ruled northern Africa and Al-Andalus for several centuries thereafter. Ibn Hazm, the polymath, mentions that many of the Caliphs in the Umayyad Caliphate and the Caliphate of Córdoba were blond and had light eyes. Ibn Hazm mentions that he preferred blondes, and notes that there was much interest in blondes in al-Andalus amongst the rulers and regular Muslims:
History of Spain
The peoples whom the Romans met at the time of their invasion in what is now known as Spain were the Iberians, inhabiting an area stretching from the northeast part of the Iberian Peninsula through the southeast. The Celts mostly inhabited the inner and north-west part of the peninsula. In the inner part of the peninsula, where both groups were in contact, a mixed culture arose, the Celtiberians. The Celtiberian Wars were fought between the advancing legions of the Roman Republic and the Celtiberian tribes of Hispania Citerior from 181 to 133 BC. The Roman conquest of the peninsula was completed in 19 BC.
History of the Spanish language
In 711 Spain was invaded by Moors, who brought the Arabic language to the Peninsula. From then until the fall of the Emirate of Granada (1492), Spanish borrowed words from Arabic, such as alcalde "mayor", álgebra "algebra", and zanahoria "carrot". It is thought that the bilingualism of the Mozarabs facilitated the transfer of vocabulary from Arabic to Castilian.
Somport
There is recorded evidence of both the Vandals and the Visigothic invaders having used the relatively easy entrance to Spain from France in the fifth century. The Roman road constructed here, known as the Via Tolosana, was also used by Muslim invaders in the eighth century in their attempt to conquer France. The pass was fortified in the 16th century by the Habsburgs in fear of French invasion, which however would not occur until the Peninsular War and the arrival of Napoleon's general Louis Gabriel Suchet in 1808. He was later followed by Colonel Leonard Morin who records in his Memoirs of the 5th Regiment (1812–13) both the danger of the pass and the horrible existence of the population of Canfranc. The French would leave by the same road after their defeat by General Francisco Espoz y Mina in 1814.
Portus Cale
Another Germanic people, the Visigoths, also invaded the Iberian Peninsula and would eventually conquer the Suebi kingdom in 584. The region around Cale became known by the Visigoths as "Portucale". Portus Cale would fall under the Moorish invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 711.
Vandalic language
Very little is known about the Vandalic language other than various phrases and a small number of personal names of Vandalic origin, mainly known from documents and personal names in Spanish. The regional name Andalusia is believed to be derived from the Vandals, according to the traditional view. When the Moors invaded and occupied Spain from the 8th century to the end of the 15th, the region was called "Al-Andalus".
Palma de Mallorca
In 848 (maybe 849), four years after the first Viking incursions had sacked the whole island, an attack from Córdoba forced the authorities to ratify the treaty to which the city had submitted in 707. As the city still occupied an eccentric position regarding the commerce network established by the Moors in the western Mediterranean, the enclave was not immediately incorporated into Al-Andalus.
Military history of Spain
Despite a resurgence during the 10th century, the Caliphate of Córdoba's attempts to reverse the Reconquista failed, and by the 11th century, Christian Iberia was united under Sancho the Great, the King of Navarre, whilst the caliphate was divided and engulfed by civil war, the period of the "taifas". The 11th century saw the development of a concept of Christian holy war, to be waged against Islam with the purpose of the Christians recapturing long lost territories – the Crusade. Crusading, under other names, also took place in Spain; Franks and Normans and even Papal troops took to Spain in increasing numbers to join the locals in their fight against "the Moor." The last threat of the 11th century came in the form of the Almoravids, who with their well disciplined forces first established a hegemony over Morocco and then extended it over al-Andalus. While the "Reconquista" paused in the west, to the east Alfonso the Battler, the King of Aragon, redoubled efforts to retake the valley of the Ebro. In 1212, the "Reconquistadores" gained a decisive victory over the Almohads at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. Shortly after the battle, the Castilians took Baeza and, then, Úbeda, major fortified cities near the battlefield, and gateways to invade Andalucia. Thereafter, Ferdinand III of Castile retook Córdoba in 1236, Jaén in 1246, and Seville in 1248; then he took Arcos, Medina-Sidonia, Jerez and Cádiz, effectively bringing the bulk of the reconquista to a conclusion.
Spanish Maquis
The most notable operation of the Spanish maquis was the invasion of Spain by between 4,000 and 7,000 guerrillas through the Aran Valley and other parts of the Pyrenees, well equipped and with heavy armaments, on October 19, 1944, after the German army had been driven from the south of France. The invasion was named "Operation Reconquest of Spain".
Moors
In 711 the Islamic Arab and Moors of Berber descent in northern Africa crossed the Strait of Gibraltar onto the Iberian Peninsula, and in a series of raids they conquered Visigothic Christian Hispania. Their general, Tariq ibn Ziyad, brought most of Iberia under Islamic rule in an eight-year campaign. They continued northeast across the Pyrenees Mountains but were defeated by the Franks under Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732.
Algiers
The Peñón of Algiers, an islet in front of Algiers harbour had been occupied by the Spaniards as early as 1302. Thereafter, a considerable amount of trade began to flow between Algiers and Spain. However, Algiers continued to be of comparatively little importance until after the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, many of whom sought asylum in the city. In 1510, following their occupation of Oran and other towns on the coast of Africa, the Spaniards fortified the islet of Peñon and imposed a levy intended to suppress corsair activity.
Spanish wine
Following the decline of the Roman Empire, Spain was invaded by various barbaric tribes-including the Suebi and the Visigoths. Little is known about progress of viticulture and winemaking during this period but there is evidence that some viable form of wine industry was present when the Moors conquered the land during the early 8th century AD. While the Moors were Muslim and subjected to Islamic dietary laws that forbid the use of alcohol, the Moorish rulers held an ambiguous stance on wine and winemaking during their rule. Several caliphs and emirs owned vineyards and drank wine. While there were laws written that outlawed the sale of wine, it was included on lists of items that were subject to taxation in Moorish territories. The Spanish "Reconquista" reopened the possibility of exporting Spanish wine. Bilbao emerged as a large trading port; introducing Spanish wines to the English wine markets in Bristol, London and Southampton. The quality of some of these exported Spanish wines appears to have been high. In 1364, the court of Edward III established the maximum price of wine sold in England with the Spanish wines being priced at the same level as wines from Gascony and higher than those from La Rochelle. The full bodied and high alcohol in most Spanish wines made them favoured blending partners for the "weaker" wines from the cooler climate regions of France and Germany though there were laws that explicitly outlawed this practice.
History of Alicante
The Moors ruled southern and eastern Spain until the 11th century "reconquista" (reconquest). Alicante was finally taken in 1246 by the Castilian king Alfonso X, but it passed soon and definitely to the Kingdom of Valencia in 1298 with the Catalan King James II of Aragon. It gained the status of Royal Village ("Vila Reial") with representation in the medieval Valencian Parliament.
After several decades of a battle field between the Kingdom of Castile and the Crown of Aragon, Alicante enjoyed a "segle d'or" (golden age) during the 15th century together with the whole Kingdom of Valencia, rising to become a major Mediterranean trading station exporting rice, wine, olive oil, oranges and wool. Between 1609 and 1614 King Felipe III expelled thousands of moriscos who had remained in Valencia after the reconquista, due to their allegiance with Berber pirates who continually attacked coastal cities and caused much harm to trade. This act cost the region dearly - with so many skilled artisans and agricultural labourers gone, the feudal nobility found itself sliding into bankruptcy.
Spanish invasion of Portugal (1762)
During the first invasion, 22,000 Spaniards commanded by Nicolás de Carvajal, Marquis of Sarria, entered the Province of Alto Trás-os-Montes (northeast of Portugal) having Oporto as their ultimate goal. After occupying some fortresses they were confronted with a national uprising. Taking advantage of the mountainous terrain, the guerrilla bands inflicted heavy losses on the invaders and practically cut off their communication lines with Spain, causing a shortage of essential supplies. Near starvation, the Spaniards tried to conquer Oporto quickly, but were defeated in the battle of Douro (1762) and in the battle of Montalegre before retreating to Spain. After this failure, the Spanish commander was replaced by Pedro Pablo Abarca de Bolea, Count of Aranda.
3rd Spanish Armada
The 3rd Spanish Armada, also known as the Spanish Armada of 1597, was a major naval event that took place between October and November 1597 as part of the Anglo–Spanish War. The armada, which was the third attempt by Spain to invade or raid the British Isles during the war, was ordered by King Philip II of Spain in revenge for the English attack on Cadiz following the failure of the 2nd Spanish Armada months before due to a storm. The Armada was executed by the Adelantado, Martín de Padilla, who was hoping to intercept and destroy the English fleet under Robert Devereux the 2nd Earl of Essex as it returned from the failed Azores expedition. When this was achieved, the Armada would go on to capture either the important port of Falmouth or Milford Haven and use those places as a base for invasion.
Moors
Moors—or more frequently their heads, often crowned—appear with some frequency in medieval European heraldry, though less so since the Middle Ages. The term ascribed to them in Anglo-Norman "blazon" (the language of English heraldry) is "maure", though they are also sometimes called "moore", "blackmoor", "blackamoor" or "negro". Maures appear in European heraldry from at least as early as the 13th century, and some have been attested as early as the 11th century in Italy, where they have persisted in the local heraldry and vexillology well into modern times in Corsica and Sardinia.
Hispania
The North African Muslims, referred to as Moors, conquered Hispania (اسبانيا, Arabic: Isbānīya) (711–719), and called the area they controlled Al-Andalus (الأندلس). In the chronicles and documents of the High Middle Ages the terms derived from Hispania, "Spania", "España" or "Espanha", continued to be used by the Christians but only in reference to Muslim controlled areas. King Alfonso I of Aragon (1104–1134) says in his documents that "he reigns over Pamplona, Aragon, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza", and that when in 1126 he made an expedition to Málaga he "went to the lands of "España"".
Moors
During the classical period, the Romans interacted with, and later conquered, parts of Mauretania, a state that covered modern northern Morocco, western Algeria, and the Spanish cities Ceuta and Melilla. The Berber tribes of the region were noted in the Classics as "Mauri", which was subsequently rendered as "Moors" in English and in related variations in other European languages. "Mauri" (Μαῦροι) is recorded as the native name by Strabo in the early 1st century. This appellation was also adopted into Latin, whereas the Greek name for the tribe was "Maurusii" (). The Moors were also mentioned by Tacitus as having revolted against the Roman Empire in 24 AD.
History of the Catholic Church in Spain
By 689 Arabs and Berbers conquest Melilla, and by 709 the already then Visigothic Spanish city of Ceuta was taken. 
By 711 Islam dominated all the north of Africa. The process of islamization of the Berber tribes had already begun, though most of the population was still Christian, Jew or polytheist. A raiding party recruited mostly amongst these newly subjugated, still non-Muslim Berbers and led by convert Tariq ibn-Ziyad was sent to plunder the south of the Visigothic Kingdom of Spain, which faced strong internal tensions and was at the verge of a civil war between the Chindasvintan, Witizan and nobiliary parties. Crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, it won a decisive victory in the summer of 711 when the Visigothic king Roderic was betrayed by the Witizan wings of his army and killed on July 19 at the Battle of Guadalete. Roderic´s body was never found and lots of rumors about his fate arose, which led to a paralysis on the Visigothic command. Tariq's commander, Musa bin Nusair quickly crossed with substantial Muslim reinforcements from the Caliphal garrison of North Africa, and by 718 the Muslims dominated most of the peninsula. The advance into Europe was stopped by the Franks under Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732.
Marchena, Spain
As the Roman Empire declined, in the early 5th century CE the Vandals (a Germanic people), the Alans (an Iranian nomadic people of the North Caucasus), and the Suebi (another Germanic tribe) entered Spain from the north. In their division of Spain, Hispania Baetica fell to the Vandals. The Visigoths also invaded Spain from the north. They ruled Baetica from 497 CE to 711 CE. However, in comparison to the flourishing economy under Roman rule, under the Visigoths, the population decreased, agricultural endeavours were abandoned and once trading towns became small forts. Evidence for this change comes from the archaeological surveys of the kilns used for manufacturing amphora, and of olive presses and basins.
Stidia
Before the foundation of the European settlement down the hill, the Moors who were expelled from Spain after 1492, founded the original Stidia on the hill and it is called now "Douar" Stidia to differentiate it from " Village" Stidia which is the part built during the French occupation.
The moorish influence is obvious in the territory of Stidia and Fornaka. The ethnic groups living in the territory keep the remembrance of the epic History of the fighting against the Spanish crusades.
History of Spain
Tariq's commander, Musa, quickly crossed with Arab reinforcements, and by 718 the Muslims were in control of nearly the whole Iberian Peninsula. The advance into Western Europe was only stopped in what is now north-central France by the West Germanic Franks under Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732.
Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1568–71)
The Spanish campaign was led by the Marqués de Mondéjar in the west of the Alpujarra and the Marqués de Los Vélez in the east. Mondéjar, coming from Granada in January 1569, had quick success, over terrain which should have favoured the defenders. He overcame the first natural obstacle – a bridge at Tablate, which the Moors had partially destroyed – and reached Órgiva in time to rescue Christians held captive in the tower. 
The first major battle was fought in a river valley east of Órgiva, where the Moors were defeated. An advance detachment then contrived to cross a narrow ravine (picture) and climb a steep mountainside to reach the village of Bubión, in the Poqueira valley, where Aben Humeya had made his headquarters and the Moors had stored equipment and valuables. They were soon joined by the Marqués and the bulk of his army, taking a longer but safer route.
Spaniards
The earliest modern humans inhabiting Spain are believed to have been Neolithic peoples who may have arrived in the Iberian Peninsula as early as 35,000–40,000 years ago. In more recent times the Iberians are believed to have arrived or developed in the region between the 4th millennium BC and the 3rd millennium BC, initially settling along the Mediterranean coast.
Celts settled in Spain during the Iron Age. Some of those tribes in North-central Spain, which had cultural contact with the Iberians, are called Celtiberians. In addition, a group known as the Tartessians and later Turdetanians inhabited southwestern Spain and who are believed to have developed a separate civilization of Phoenician influence. The seafaring Phoenicians, Greeks, and Carthaginians successively founded trading colonies along the Mediterranean coast over a period of several centuries. The Second Punic War between the Carthaginians and Romans was fought mainly in what is now Spain and Portugal.
Spanish invasion of Portugal (1762)
In addition to these setbacks, and similarly to the Napoleonic soldiers a few decades later, the Spaniards were experiencing carnage. A contemporary document notes that it was impossible to walk in the mountains of the province of Trás-os-Montes because of the nauseating odour of countless Spanish corpses, which the peasants refused – motivated by pure hate – to bury. Even inside the occupied cities the invaders were not safe: of about half a thousand miqueletes who entered Chaves (21 May 1762), only eighteen were still alive by the end of June. According to the Spanish military historian José Luis Terrón Ponce, the total Spanish casualties during the first invasion of Portugal (caused by the guerrillas, diseases and desertion) was over 8,000 men. (In 1766, Dumouriez had evaluated this number at 10,000 losses, and he recommended the Spaniards to avoid this province of Trás-os Montes in a future invasion).
Moors
Moorish architecture is the articulated Islamic architecture of northern Africa and parts of Spain and Portugal, where the Moors were dominant between 711 and 1492. The best surviving examples of this architectural tradition are the Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba and the Alhambra in Granada (mainly 1338–1390), as well as the Giralda in Seville (1184). Other notable examples include the ruined palace city of Medina Azahara (936–1010) and the Mosque of Cristo de la Luz, now a church, in Toledo, the Aljafería in Zaragoza and baths at for example Ronda and Alhama de Granada.
Móra d'Ebre
The area was reconquered from the Moors in 1153, by count Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona. Later the town became part of the Barony of Entença.
The baronial castle of Móra d'Ebre is located on a hill overlooking the river and the town. It is now in a state of semi-ruin, for it was used as a fortress during the Spanish Civil War and was heavily shelled and bombed. Nowadays some reconstruction has taken place in the western side. Many of the houses of the town are also in a ruinous state and reconstruction has only been haphazard.
Monarchies in Africa
Ceuta and Melilla are two cities on the northwestern coast of Africa bordering Morocco. Both were founded by the Carthaginians and later fell under successive Roman, Vandal, and Byzantine control before being conquered by the Arabs in the eighth century. Ceuta, in particular, served as the base for the Moorish conquest of Spain during that time period. In 1415, Ceuta was conquered by the Portuguese, with Melilla falling to the Spanish in 1497. When the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal united in 1580, Ceuta also came under Spanish control and has remained Spanish ever since. During the Spanish-Moroccan War, both cities gained additional territory to expand to the present boundaries. Autonomy was granted to both cities in 1995. Today, Morocco still claims that the two cities are part of Moroccan territory, which has created tension between the neighboring countries.
Carrazeda de Ansiães
The Berber settlers vacilited considerable with Moorish influence after 711. Taking advantage of the ancient territories, Pagus gave way to Valiato de Alfândica. There are several local toponymic names from this period, including Reimoira, Mourinha, Pala da Moura and Mourãozinho. It was the arrival of the Moors that drove many Christians, who did not wish to be ruled by Muslim tribes, to take refuge in Asturias, pushing there, for the Reconquista of Christian Iberia. It was at this time that the town of Ansiães began to take on a strategic role. The town was a walled outpost that defended Christian territory, and for that role Ferdinand I of León and Castile issued a foral in the 11th century (1055/1065) in order to fix the frontier. This foral, which pre-dated the Portuguese Kingdom, was the first to be issued for lands that today pertain to Portugal.
Hispano-Moresque ware
Around 711, the Moors conquered Spain. Over the following centuries, they introduced two ceramic techniques to Europe: glazing with an opaque white tin-glaze, and lustreware, which imitates metallic finishes with iridescent effects. Hispano-Moresque wares use both processes, applying the paint as an overglaze which is then fired again. Lustreware was a speciality of Islamic pottery, at least partly because the use of drinking and eating vessels in gold and silver, the ideal in ancient Rome and Persia as well as medieval Christian societies, is prohibited by the Hadiths, with the result that pottery and glass were used for tableware by Muslim elites, when Christian medieval elites still normally used metal for both dishes and cups.
Badajoz
Conquered by the Moors in the 8th century, Badajoz became a Moorish kingdom, the Taifa of Badajoz. After the reconquista, the area was disputed between Spain and Portugal for several centuries with alternating control resulting in several wars including the Spanish War of Succession (1705), the Peninsular War (1808–1811), the Storming of Badajoz (1812), and the Spanish Civil War (1936). Spanish history is largely reflected in the town.
Spain in the Middle Ages
In many ways, the history of Spain is marked by waves of conquerors who brought their distinct cultures to the peninsula. After the passage of the Vandals and Alans down the Mediterranean coast of Hispania from 408, the history of medieval Spain begins with the Iberian kingdom of the Arianist Visigoths (507–711), who were converted to Catholicism with their king Reccared in 587. Visigothic culture in Spain can be seen as a phenomenon of Late Antiquity as much as part of the Age of Migrations.
From Northern Africa in 711, the Muslim Umayyad dynasty crossed into Spain and sparked a Muslim versus Christian war called the Reconquista, or the Reconquest (i.e.: The Christians "reconquering" their lands as a religious crusade). They came at the invitation of a Visigothic clan to assist it in rising against King Roderic. The border between Muslim and Christian lands wavered southward through 700 years of war, which marked the peninsula as a militarily contended space. The medieval centuries also witnessed episodes of warfare between Spain's Christian states. Wars between the Crown of Aragon and Castile-León, though sometimes sparked by dynastic rivalries, normally originated with disagreements over tracts of land conquered or to be conquered from the Muslim south.
Moors
Some Muslims converted to Christianity and remained permanently in Iberia. This is indicated by a "high mean proportion of ancestry from North African (10.6%)" that "attests to a high level of religious conversion (whether voluntary or enforced), driven by historical episodes of social and religious intolerance, that ultimately led to the integration of descendants." According to historian Richard A. Fletcher, "the number of Arabs who settled in Iberia was very small. 'Moorish' Iberia does at least have the merit of reminding us that the bulk of the invaders and settlers were Moors, i.e., Berbers from Algeria and Morocco."
History of Catalonia
After repelling Muslim incursions as far north as Tours in 732, the expanding Frankish Empire set about creating a buffer zone of Christian counties in the south that became known as the "Marca Hispanica" or the Spanish March. The first county to be conquered from the Moors was Septimania which became Roussillon (with Vallespir), following the conquest of Narbonne (759). In 785 the County of Girona (with Besalú) on the south side of the Pyrenees was captured. Ribagorza and Pallars were linked to Toulouse and were added to this county around 790. Urgell and Cerdanya were added in 798. The first records of the county of Empúries (with Perelada) are from 812, but the county was probably under Frankish control before 800. After a series of struggles, Charlemagne's son Louis took Barcelona from the Moorish emir in 801 and set up the County of Barcelona.
Slate industry in Spain
711 – 718AD The Moors attempted to gain control over Galicia, as they had done the rest of Spain, but with little success.
Nayarit
Hernán Cortés was the first known European to enter into the area now known as Nayarit, which he claimed for Spain as part Nueva Galicia. Under Nuño de Guzman, Spaniards took the region with considerable brutality, causing the indigenous inhabitants to revolt, in what was later referred to as the Mixtón War. After almost two centuries of resistance, the last independent Cora communities were incorporated into Spanish administration by force in 1722. Then followed intense missionary efforts by Jesuits to convert the indigenous.
Spanish chivalry
Chivalry, or chivalric codes of manners and proper military engagement, is believed to have arrived in the Iberian Peninsula during the 10th century CE, in the context of the Reconquista, when Frankish knights, who were willing to fight the Muslim invaders of Iberia prior to the Crusades, appeared to protect pilgrims flocking to what was believed to be the tomb of the apostle James in Galicia. St. James himself was known and celebrated in Christianity as ‘the slayer of the Moors’ and the discovery of his body by Christians has been considered a possible igniting factor of the Reconquista. The Reconquista had begun under Alfonso II (791–842), and would last nearly 700 years as Christians attempted to suppress and push Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula. However, the instatement of chivalric knightly orders and the chivalric ideals and codes of conduct weren’t present on the Iberian Peninsula until almost the second century of the Reconquista. In the context of the Reconquista, and the geographically close proximity of Christian and Muslim populations, the atmosphere for the development of Knightly Orders was ripe and in the subsequent centuries chivalry flourished in Spain to a greater extent than it did in other Christian states.
Almogavars
The Catalan, Aragonese, and later, Valencian Almogavars played an important role in the advance of the Crown of Aragon against the Islamic States, participating moreover in countless raids, in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), in the crusade against Majorca (1229-1232) and in the conquest of Valencia (1233-1245). In 1232, Almogovar armies took the strategic enclaves of Ares and Morella, opening the doors to the conquest of Valencia. When the Moorish rebellion in Murcia took place in 1264, and James I went to this kingdom to the aid of his son-in-law, he says in his Chronicle (""Llibre dels Fets"") that while he was in Orihuela, studying how to take the capital to end the rebellion, "two Almogavars from Lorca came at midnight and knocked on the door" to alert him that, from Lorca, they had spotted a large contingent of Moors who headed towards Murcia.
Battle of Muros Bay
The Battle of Muros Bay (Spanish: "Batalla de Muros") took place on 25 July 1543, during the Italian War of 1542–1546, between the French fleet under Jean de Clamorgan, Lord of Soane and the Spanish fleet commanded by Don Álvaro de Bazán, 1st Marquis of Viso, father of Don Álvaro de Bazán, 1st Marquis of Santa Cruz, who was also present at the battle being no more than 18 years old. This battle is considered to be the first big Atlantic naval battle.
Spanish conquest of the Maya
The sources describing the Spanish conquest of Guatemala include those written by the Spanish themselves, among them two letters written by conquistador Pedro de Alvarado in 1524, describing the initial campaign to subjugate the Guatemalan Highlands. Gonzalo de Alvarado y Chávez wrote an account that mostly supports that of Pedro de Alvarado. Pedro de Alvarado's brother Jorge wrote another account to the king of Spain that explained it was his own campaign of 1527–1529 that established the Spanish colony. Bernal Díaz del Castillo wrote a lengthy account of the conquest of Mexico and neighbouring regions, the "Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España" ("True History of the Conquest of New Spain"); his account of the conquest of Guatemala generally agrees with that of the Alvarados. He also included his own description of Cortes' expedition, and an account of the conquest of the Chiapas highlands. Conquistador Diego Godoy accompanied Luis Marín on his reconnaissance of Chiapas, and wrote an account of the battle against the inhabitants of Chamula. Hernán Cortés described his expedition to Honduras in the fifth letter of his "Cartas de Relación". Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas wrote a highly critical account of the Spanish conquest of the Americas and included accounts of some incidents in Guatemala.
Spanish Requirement of 1513
In Spain itself in 1492, the Moorish population of Granada had been given the choice by the first Archbishop of Granada, Hernando de Talavera: become Christian, or leave the country. In a letter to his religious brothers, Cardinal Cisneros, Talavera's successor, would celebrate the “peaceful domination” of the Moors of the Albaicin, a neighborhood of Granada, praising converts, lauding killing and extolling plunder. This letter came, however, after centuries of struggle by Christians in Spain to recapture what they saw as their homeland, which had been under Muslim rule for generations. Thus the war in Iberia, between Christians trying to "reconquer" land they thought of as properly Christian and Muslims defending the land their forefathers claimed by right of conquest, heightened religious tensions and fervor on both sides.
Iberian Peninsula
From the 8th–15th centuries, only the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula was part of the Islamic world. It became a center of culture and learning, especially during the Caliphate of Córdoba, which reached its height of its power under the rule of Abd-ar-Rahman III and his successor al-Hakam II. The Muslims, who were initially Arabs and Berbers, included some local converts, the so-called Muladi. The Muslims were referred to by the generic name, "Moors" The Reconquista gained momentum on c. 718, when the Christian Asturians opposed the Moors.
Spanish occupation of Jolo (1638)
The Spanish occupation of Jolo or Battle of Jolo was a military expedition to pacify the Moro people of the Sulu Sultanate in the 1630s. The expedition, personally led by Sebastian de Corcuera, the then Governor-General of the Spanish East Indies was a follow-up expedition to the earlier successful campaigns against the Maguindanao Sultanate under Sultan Qudarat. It was initially successful, partly due to an epidemic within the Sultan Wasit's fort early in the campaign, resulting in the Sulu forces retreating to Tawi-Tawi.
Spanish–Moro conflict
For three centuries, intermittent attempts were made by the Spaniards to destroy the homes of tihe Moro pirates, who, almost without exception, raided the Spanish colonies throughout the Philippine Islands, south of Luzon, and even occasionally on that island. Many reverses and some successes were met with by the Spanish expeditions against the JoJo ami Mindanao Moros. The names of some of the Spanish Captains-General who figured in these conflicts, and of the Moro chiefs, would convey no significance to those English-speaking people who have not, during the last six or seven years, participated in Moro campaigns. In 1637 Corcuero inaugurated a new conquest of Jolo and of Mindanao. His force consisted of 76b Europeans. He made a landing at Jolo. The following year, he landed at Zamboanga and proceeded past Cattobats up the Rio Grande against the Dato Corralat and the Datos of Buhayen and Basilan. The following year, Corcuero and Almonte built a fort at Sabonflla, now called Malabang, on Plana Bay. During 1639, Spanish soldiers and priests, under the warlike Recoleto friar, Augustin de San Pedro, led a party of 560 against the Lanao Moros, where Camps Vicars and Keithley now stand. In 1642, Generals Corcuero and Almonte made peace with Corralat, but piratical depredations by the Moros continued; Chinese rebellions embarrassed the Spaniards, who evacuated manv places, and many fights were chronicled between the Moro fleets of Praus and the Spanish fleets.
Koxinga's son did not take up the task of invading the Philippines after Koxinga's death.
Asturias
With the conquest of Asturias by the Romans under Augustus (29–19 BC), the region entered into recorded history. The Astures were subdued by the Romans but were never fully conquered. After several centuries without foreign presence, they enjoyed a brief revival during the Germanic invasions of the late 4th century AD, resisting Suevi and Visigoth raids throughout the 5th Century AD, ending with the Moorish invasion of Spain. However, as it had been for the Romans and Visigoths, the Moors did not find mountainous territory easy to conquer, and the lands along Spain's northern coast never fully became part of Islamic Spain. Rather, with the beginning of the Moorish conquest in the 8th century, this region became a refuge for Christian nobles, and in 722, a "de facto" independent kingdom was established, the "Regnum Asturorum", which was to become the cradle of the incipient "Reconquista" (Reconquest).
Moors
The Kingdom of Asturias, a small northwestern Christian Iberian kingdom, initiated the "Reconquista" ("Reconquest") soon after the Islamic conquest in the 8th century. Christian states based in the north and west slowly extended their power over the rest of Iberia. The Kingdom of Navarre, the Kingdom of Galicia, the Kingdom of León, the Kingdom of Portugal, the Kingdom of Aragon, the "Marca Hispánica", and the Crown of Castile began a process of expansion and internal consolidation during the next several centuries under the flag of Reconquista. In 1212, a coalition of Christian kings under the leadership of Alfonso VIII of Castile drove the Muslims from Central Iberia. The Portuguese side of the Reconquista ended in 1249 with the conquest of the Algarve ( – "al-Gharb") under Afonso III. He was the first Portuguese monarch to claim the title "King of Portugal and the Algarve".
Spain
In the 8th century, nearly all of the Iberian Peninsula was conquered (711–718) by largely Moorish Muslim armies from North Africa. These conquests were part of the expansion of the Umayyad Caliphate. Only a small area in the mountainous north-west of the peninsula managed to resist the initial invasion. Legend has it that Count Julian, the governor of Ceuta, in revenge for the violation of his daughter, Florinda, by King Roderic, invited the Muslims and opened to them the gates of the peninsula.
Moors
The term "Moors" refers primarily to the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and Malta during the Middle Ages. The Moors initially were the indigenous Maghrebine Berbers. The name was later also applied to Arabs.
Spanish slug
The invader was identified in 1997 as "Arion vulgaris", which had been described by Alfred Moquin-Tandon in 1855 from an unrecorded site in France, presumably from western or southwestern France. The results of these studies were first published in a local journal in Spain. The news were not noticed outside Spain until they were mentioned in a widely dispersed atlas of British molluscs.
Benidorm
It is thought there were settlements in the Benidorm area possibly as far back as 3000 BC, including evidence of Roman and Punic remains. However, settlements in the area were small and it was not until the arrival of the Moors (from whom the town derived its Arabic origin name) that the local population began to grow. The Christian King James I of Aragon reconquered the region in 1245 and Benidorm first officially became known in 1325, when Admiral Bernat de Sarrià of Polop awarded it a town charter as a way of removing the Moors and allowing Christians to inhabit the area.
Mauri people
Mauri raids into the southern Iberian Peninsula are mentioned as early as the reign of Nero in the Eclogues of Calpurnius Siculus: "Geryon's meads, a wealthy prize to tempt the fierce Moor's avarice, where Baetis huge, so legends say, rolls downward on his western way to find the shore." The Baetis is the modern Guadalquivir, so this poem implies Mauri raiding into Baetica in the first century CE. Mauri from the mountains beyond the border of the Roman Empire crossed the straits of Gibraltar to raid into the Roman province of Baetica, in what is today southern Spain, in the early 170s. Mauri raided Baetica again in the late 170s or 180s in the reign of Commodus. At that time they besieged the town of Singilia Barba, which was freed from the siege by the arrival of Roman troops from the province of Mauretania Tingitana, led by C. Vallius Maximianus.
Military history of Spain
During the third through 6th centuries, the Roman Empire was beset by numerous barbarian invaders, mostly Germanic, who migrated through its borders and began warring and settling in its territories. While the Vandals and Alans were fighting each other for supremacy in southern Gaul, the confederation of the Suevi crossed the Pyrenees and passing through Vasconia, entered Gallaecia in 409. The Vandals soon followed the Suevi example, with the Alans close behind. The Alans settled in Lusitania and Carthaginiensis and the Siling Vandals in Baetica, while the Asding Vandals vied with the Suevi for Gallaecia. The Visigoths crossed the Pyrenees to expand their kingdom in 416. They pushed the Vandals and Alans south, defeating and killing the Alan king Attaces in 426 and forcing the two tribes to amalgamate and retreat across the Straits of Gibraltar into Africa. For almost thirty years, Spain was the location for vicious tribal conflicts.
The first barbarians to settle were the Suevi, whose king Hermeric, a former "foederatus" of Rome, ratified a peace with the local Hispano-Roman population in 438. Weary of fighting, Hermeric abdicated in favour of his son Rechila. As the Visigothic kingdom expanded into Iberia, expelling the Vandals and Alans, the Suevi expanded their own realm as far south as Mérida. In 456, the new Catholic king, Rechiar, died in battle with the Visigoth king Theodoric II and the Suevi kingdom began to retreat under Gothic pressure. Beset by internal political conflict, the Suevi capitulated to the Visigoths in 585. Some resistance was maintained for a few years, but soon the last of Suevi resistance was erased.
Spanish invasion of Portugal (1762)
On 30 April 1762 a Spanish force penetrated into Portugal through the province of Trás-os-Montes and posted a proclamation entitled "reasons for entering Portugal", in which the Spaniards declared that they were coming not as enemies, but as friends and liberators who came to free the Portuguese people from the "heavy shackles of England", the "tyrant of the seas". On May 5, the Marquis of Sarria, leading an army of 22,000 men started the real invasion. Portugal declared war on both Spain and France (18 May 1762).
Habsburg Spain
The marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1469 had enabled the union of two of the greatest of these kingdoms, Castile and Aragón, which led to their largely successful campaign against the Moors, peaking at the conquest of Granada in 1492.