Reconquista

The Reconquista (Spanish and Portuguese for 'reconquest') or the fall of al-Andalus was a series of military and cultural campaigns by Northern Christian polities against Muslim-ruled al-Andalus, which had previously been part of the Visigothic Kingdom before the Muslim Conquest of 711. The Reconquista concluded in 1492 with the capture of Granada by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, thereby ending the presence of any Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula.

The beginning of the Reconquista is traditionally dated to the Battle of Covadonga (c. 718 or 722), approximately a decade after the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula began, in which the army of the Kingdom of Asturias achieved the first Christian victory over the forces of the Umayyad Caliphate since the beginning of the military invasion. By the early 11th century, the Caliphate of Córdoba endured state collapse into a series of petty successor states known as taifas. The northern kingdoms advanced further against these fiefdoms and often made them subject to tribute.

In the 12th century, Portugal, León and Castile, and the Crown of Aragon made territorial advances sometimes offset by Almohad campaigns. Military orders took a prominent role both in warfare and settlement policies. Castile conquered the Guadalquivir basin with the largest Muslim population centres in the 13th century—leaving the Muslim enclave of Granada as a tributary state in the south. After the surrender of Granada in 1492, the entire Iberian peninsula was controlled by Christian rulers. While a share of the Muslim population in conquered territories exiled from the peninsula to the Maghreb, State edicts enacting the forced assimilation and social discrimination of the remaining people (Moriscos) ensued throughout the following century.

Beginning in the 19th century, traditional historiography has used the term Reconquista as the restoration of the Visigothic Kingdom over conquered territories. The concept of Reconquista, consolidated in Spanish historiography in the second half of the 19th century, was associated with Spanish nationalism during the period of Romantic nationalism. Recent scholarship describes the Reconquista as a process that unfolded in multiple episodes, with regional variation. It is the inspiration for the Moros y cristianos festival, popular in the southern Valencian Community. and which is also celebrated in parts of Spanish America.