The Reconquista

The Reconquista (Spanish for reconquer) is the name given to a long series of wars and battles between the Christian Kingdoms and the Muslim Moors for control of the Iberian Peninsula (see map). The Moors were Muslims who lived in the northern African countries of Morocco and Algeria. In 711 the Moors crossed the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa and invaded the Iberian Peninsula. Over the next seven years they advanced into Europe and controlled the majority of the peninsula. It lasted from 718 to 1492.

The Reconquista began in 718 when King Pelayo of the Visigoths defeated the Muslim army in Alcama at the Battle of Covadonga. This was the first significant victory of the Christians over the Moors. Over the next several hundred years the Christians and the Moors would do battle, with victories and losses on both sides.

For centuries, Christians and Muslims had lived side by side on the peninsula— sometimes as friends, sometimes as enemies. For many, political differences far outweighed religious ones. Christians were as likely to be allied with Muslims as to fight against them. But this was changing. The Pope in Rome considered the tolerant and often friendly relations between Christians and Muslims in Spain to be morally wrong and sought to correct the situation by calling for a crusade against the Moors.

After centuries of fighting, the nation of Spain was united when King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile were married in 1469. Ferdinand and Isabella then turned their united forces on the Moors, taking back the whole of the Iberian peninsula for Christendom in 1492, thereby ending the Reconquista.