Reconquista

Reconquista

The Reconquista (Spanish and Portuguese for 'reconquest') or the fall of al-Andalus was a series of military campaigns by northern Iberian Christian polities against Muslim-ruled al-Andalus, which had 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 Umayyad state of Córdoba fell apart under the sustained military pressure into a series of petty successor states known as taifas. The northern kingdoms advanced further against these fiefdoms and often made them pay parias…