Traditional historiography has marked the beginning of the Reconquista with the Battle of Covadonga (718 or 722), the first known victory in Iberia by Christian military forces since the 711 military intervention in Iberia of combined Arab-Berber forces. In that small battle, a group led by the nobleman Pelagius defeated a Muslim patrol in the mountains of northern Iberia and established the independent Christian Kingdom of Asturias. The taifas of al-Andalus tried to prevent the Christian threats from the north by paying them parias (a form of tribute). After a Muslim resurgence in the 12th century the great Moorish strongholds in the south fell to Christian forces in the 13th century — Córdoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248 — leaving only the Muslim enclave of Granada as a tributary state in the south.
After 1491, the entire peninsula was controlled by Christian rulers. The conquest was followed by the Alhambra Decree(1492) which expelled Jews who would not convert to Christianity from Castile and Aragon, and a series of edicts (1499-1526) which forced the conversions of the Muslims in Spain, although later a significant part of them was expelled from the Iberian Peninsula.
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 nationalistic and romantic, and occasionally, colonialist, aspects.
In the early Eighth Century, the Umayyad Caliphate began an invasion of Christian Iberia. Although losing control half a century later, their legacy would spark a conflict to last almost 800 years, to decide the peninsula's future as either an Islamic or Christian state. With the destruction of the last Islamic Kingdom in Iberia, Granada, the Reconquista is complete. Three of the remaining Christian kingdoms, Castile, Navarre, and Aragon would unite shortly after to form Spain, and ultimately the Spanish Empire.
📹 The Reconquest (Reconquista) of Iberian Peninsula (VİDEO)
The Reconquest (Reconquista) of Iberian Peninsula (LINK)
The Reconquista (Spanish and Portuguese for the "reconquest") is a name used to describe the period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula of about 780 years between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711 and the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada to the expanding Christian kingdoms in 1492.
The completed Reconquista was the context of the Spanish voyages of discovery and conquest (Columbus got royal support in Granada in 1492, months after its conquest), and the Americas — the "New World" — ushered in the era of the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires. Since the mid-19th century, the idea of a 'reconquest' took hold in Spain associated with its rising nationalism and colonialism.
📹 Reconquista / Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) (VİDEO)
Reconquista / Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) (LINK)
Reconquista is one of the most remarkable events in history. By 718 Islamic Invasion reached and then took over most of the Pyrenees, save for a remote region in the north. Spanish and Portuguese people fought for almost 800 years to reconquer the Christian lands, and that long struggle built them up and allowed to grow into empires that dominated the world for a few more centuries. This is a documentary on the general events of Reconquista and the decisive battle of Las Navas De Tolosa that took place in 1212 between the alliance of Aragon, Castile, Portugal, Navarre, knightly orders of Santiago, Calatrava, Templars and the Almohad Caliphate.