Reconquista

The Reconquista (Spanish and Portuguese for the "reconquest") is the period of history of the Iberian Peninsula spanning approximately 770 years between the Islamic conquest of Hispania in 711 and the fall of the last Islamic state in Iberia at Granada to the expanding Christian kingdoms in 1492. The Reconquista ended just before the European discovery of the Americas—the "New World"—which ushered in the era of the Portuguese and Spanish colonial empires.

Historians traditionally mark the beginning of the Reconquista with the Battle of Covadonga (718 or 722), the first victory by Christian military forces since the 711 Islamic conquest of Iberia by the Umayyad Caliphate. During the Battle of Covadonga, a small Christian army led by the nobleman Pelagius defeated the caliphate's army in the mountains of northern Iberia and established the independent Christian Kingdom of Asturias.

Traditional historiography, especially Spanish scholarship, has stressed since the 19th century the existence of the Reconquista, a continuous phenomenon by which the Christian Iberian kingdoms opposed and conquered the Muslim kingdoms, understood as a common enemy who had militarily seized Christian territory. The concept of a Christian reconquest of the peninsula first emerged, in tenuous form, at the end of the 9th century. A landmark was set by the Christian Chronica Prophetica (883–884), a document stressing the Christian and Muslim cultural and religious divide in Iberia and the necessity to drive the Muslims out.

Nevertheless, the difference between Christian and Muslim kingdoms in early medieval Spain was not seen at the time as anything like the clear-cut opposition that later emerged. Both Christian and Muslim rulers fought amongst themselves. Alliances between Muslims and Christians were not uncommon. Blurring distinctions even further were the mercenaries from both sides who simply fought for whoever paid the most. The period is looked back upon today as one of relative religious tolerance.

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