For other uses, see Reconquista (disambiguation).

Detail of the Cantiga #63 (13th century), which deals with a late 10th-century battle in San Esteban
de Gormaz involving the troops of Count García and Almanzor.[1]

The Reconquista (Portuguese and Spanish for "reconquest"[a]) or the reconquest of al-Andalus[b]
was the series of military campaigns that Christian kingdoms waged against the Muslim kingdoms
following the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Umayyad Caliphate.[4] The beginning
of the Reconquista is traditionally dated to the Battle of Covadonga (circa 718 or 722), in which an
Asturian army achieved the first Christian victory over the forces of the Umayyad Caliphate since the
beginning of the military invasion.[5] Its culmination came in 1492 with the fall of the Nasrid
kingdom of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs.[4]

In the late 10th century, the Umayyad vizier Almanzor waged a series of military campaigns for 30
years in order to subjugate the northern Christian kingdoms. When the Caliphate of Córdoba
disintegrated in the early 11th century, a series of petty successor states known as taifas emerged.
The northern kingdoms took advantage of this situation and struck deep into al-Andalus; they
fostered civil war, intimidated the weakened taifas, and made them pay large tributes (parias) for
"protection".[6][7][8][9]

Following a Muslim resurgence under the Almohads in the 12th century, the great Moorish
strongholds fell to Christian forces in the 13th century, after the decisive Battle of Las Navas de
Tolosa (1212), the Siege of Córdoba (1236) and the Siege of Seville (1248)—leaving only the Muslim
enclave of Granada as a tributary state in the south. After the surrender of Granada in January 1492,
the entire Iberian peninsula was controlled by Christian rulers. On 30 July 1492, as a result of the
Alhambra Decree, the Jewish communities in Castile and Aragon—some 200,000 people—were
forcibly expelled. The conquest was followed by a series of edicts (1499–1526) which forced the
conversions of Muslims in Castile, Navarre, and Aragon, who were later expelled from the Iberian
realms of the Spanish Crown by a series of decrees starting in 1609.[10][11][12] Approximately three
million Muslims emigrated or were driven out of Spain between 1492 and 1610.[13]

Beginning in the 19th century,[14] traditional historiography has used the term Reconquista for what
was earlier thought of as a restoration of the Visigothic Kingdom over conquered territories.[15][16]
The concept of Reconquista, consolidated in Spanish historiography in the second half of the 19th
century, was associated with the development of a Spanish national identity, emphasizing Spanish
nationalist and romantic aspects.[17] It is rememorated in the Moros y Cristianos festival, very
popular in parts of Southeastern Spain, and which can also be found in a few places in former
Spanish colonies.[18][19]

Concept and duration

vte

Battles in the Reconquista

The term Reconquista, used to describe the struggle between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian
peninsula during the Middle Ages, was not used by writers of the period. Since its development as a
term in medieval historiography occurred centuries after the events it references, it has acquired
various meanings. Its meaning as an actual reconquest has been subject to the particular concerns or
prejudices of scholars, who have sometimes wielded it as a weapon in ideological disputes.[20]

A discernible irredentist ideology that would later become part of the concept of "Reconquista", a
Christian reconquest of the peninsula, appeared in writings by the end of the 9th century.[21] For
example, the anonymous Christian chronicle Chronica Prophetica (883–884) claimed a historical
connection between the Visigothic Kingdom conquered by the Muslims in 711 and the Kingdom of
Asturias in which the document was produced, and stressed a Christian and Muslim cultural and
religious divide in Hispania, and a necessity to drive out the Muslims and restore conquered
territories. In fact, in the writings of both sides, there was a sense of divide based on ethnicity and
culture between the inhabitants of the small Christian kingdoms in the north and the dominant elite
in the Muslim-ruled south.[21]

One of the arguments challenging the concept of Reconquista is that for the majority of the 781
years of Islamic rule in Iberia, Muslims and Christians coexisted and were not at war with each other.
[21][22]

The linear approach to the origins of a Reconquista taken in early twentieth-century historiography
is complicated by a number of issues.[21] For example, periods of peaceful coexistence, or at least of
limited and localised skirmishes on the frontiers, were more prevalent over the 781 years of Muslim
rule in Iberia than periods of military conflict between the Christian kingdoms and al-Andalus.[21]
Additionally, both Christian and Muslim rulers fought other Christians and Muslims, and cooperation
and alliances between Muslims and Christians were not uncommon, such as between the Arista
dynasty and Banu Qasi as early as the 9th century.[21][23] Blurring distinctions even further were
the mercenaries from both sides who simply fought for whoever paid the most.[23] The period is
seen today to have had long episodes of relative religious coexistence and tolerance.[24] The idea of
a continuous Reconquista has been challenged by modern scholars.[25][26]

The Islamic Almohad dynasty and surrounding states, including the Christian Kingdoms of Portugal,
Leon, Castile, Navarre, and the Crown of Aragon, c. 1200.

The Crusades, which started late in the 11th century, bred the religious ideology of a Christian
reconquest.[27] In the years just before the Council of Clermont took place, Spanish kings used
religious differences as a reason to fight against Muslims, although this argument was not
extensively used beforehand.[27] In al-Andalus at that time, the Christian states were confronted by
the Almoravids, and to an even greater degree, they were confronted by the Almohads, who
espoused a similarly staunch Muslim Jihad ideology. In fact, previous documents which date from
the 10th and 11th centuries are mute on any idea of "reconquest".[26] Propaganda accounts of
Muslim-Christian hostility came into being to support that idea, most notably the Chanson de
Roland, an 11th-century French chanson de geste that offers a fictionalised retelling of the Battle of
Roncevaux Pass dealing with the Iberian Saracens (Moors), and centuries later introduced in the
French school system with a view to instilling moral and national values in the population following
the 1870 defeat of the French in the Franco-Prussian War, regardless of the actual events.[28][29]
[30]

The consolidation of the modern idea of a "Reconquista" is inextricably linked to the foundational
myths of Spanish nationalism in the 19th century, associated with the development of a Centralist,
Castilian, and staunchly Catholic brand of nationalism,[31] evoking nationalistic, romantic and
sometimes colonialist themes.[17] The concept gained further track in the 20th century during the
Francoist dictatorship.[32] It thus became one of the key tenets of the historiographical discourse of
National Catholicism, the mythological and ideological identity of the regime. The discourse was
underpinned in its most traditional version by an avowed historical illegitimacy of al-Andalus and the
subsequent glorification of the Christian conquest.[33]

The idea of a "liberation war" of reconquest against the Muslims, who were viewed as foreigners,
suited the anti-Republican rebels during the Spanish Civil War, the rebels agitated for the banner of
a Spanish fatherland, a fatherland which, according to them, was being threatened by regional
nationalisms and communism.[34] Their rebellious pursuit was thus a crusade for the restoration of
the Church's unity, where Franco stood for both Pelagius of Asturias and El Cid.[34] The Reconquista
has become a rallying call for right and far-right parties in Spain to expel from office incumbent
progressive or peripheral nationalist options, as well as their values, in different political contexts as
of 2018.[35][32][36][37][38]

The same kind of propaganda was circulated during the Spanish Civil War by the Republicans, who
wanted to portray their enemies as foreign invaders, especially given the prominence of the Army of
Africa among Franco's troops, an army which was made up of native North African soldiers.[39]

Some contemporary authors[who?] consider the "Reconquista" proof that the process of Christian
state-building in Iberia was frequently defined by the reclamation of lands that had been lost to the
Moors in generations past. In this way, state-building might be characterised—at least in ideological,
if not practical, terms—as a process by which Iberian states were being "rebuilt".[40] In turn, other
recent historians dispute the whole concept of "Reconquista" as a concept created a posteriori in
the service of later political goals. A few historians point out that Spain and Portugal did not
previously exist as nations, and therefore the heirs of the Christian Visigothic Kingdom were not
technically reconquering them, as the name suggests.[41][42] One of the first Spanish intellectuals
to question the idea of a "reconquest" that lasted for eight centuries was José Ortega y Gasset,
writing in the first half of the 20th century.[43] However, the term Reconquista is still widely in use.
[44]

History and military campaigns

Background