The Reconquista
Over seven and a half centuries the Christian states of northern Spain take back the whole peninsula.
The movement will take seven and a half centuries. A few years after the Arab conquest of Spain, a small Christian principality forms in the mountains of Asturias, and from it the long movement south is conventionally counted. It runs unevenly: centuries of neighbourliness and alliance alternate with campaigns, and the frontier is held not so much by armies as by settlers and castles. In 1085 Toledo is taken—where translators will open Arabic and Greek books to Europe; in 1212 the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa decides the issue. In 1492 falls Granada, the last Muslim dominion—and in that same year the Jews are expelled from Spain.
Sources
Documents of the period
- documents and chronicles of the period — the chronicles of the northern Spanish kingdoms
Scholarship
- general histories of the region — seven centuries from Covadonga to Granada
Basis: documents and evidence.