Reconquista

For other uses, see Reconquista (disambiguation).

Detail of the Cantiga #63 (13th century), which deals with a late 10th-century battle in San Esteban de Gormaz involving the troops of Count García and Almanzor.[1]

The Reconquista (Spanish and Portuguese for 'reconquest')[a] or the reconquest of al-Andalus[b] was a series of military and cultural campaigns that European Christian kingdoms waged against the Muslim kingdoms following the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Umayyad Caliphate, culminating in the reign of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain.[4][5] The beginning of the Reconquista is traditionally dated to the Battle of Covadonga (c. 718 or 722), in which an Asturian army achieved the first Christian victory over the forces of the Umayyad Caliphate since the beginning of the military invasion.[6] The Reconquista ended in 1492 with the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs.[5]

In the late 10th century, the Umayyad vizier Almanzor waged a series of military campaigns for 30 years in order to subjugate the northern Christian kingdoms. When the Caliphate of Córdoba disintegrated in the early 11th century, a series of petty successor states known as taifas emerged. The northern kingdoms took advantage of this situation and struck deep into al-Andalus; they fostered civil war, intimidated the weakened taifas, and made them pay large tributes (parias) for "protection".[7][8][9][10]

In the 12th century, the Reconquista was above all a political action to develop the kingdoms of Portugal, León-Castile and Aragon. The king's action took precedence over that of the local lords, with the help of the military orders and also supported by repopulation.[11] Following a Muslim resurgence under the Almohads in the 12th century, the great Moorish strongholds fell to Christian forces in the 13th century, after the decisive Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), the Siege of Córdoba (1236) and the Siege of Seville (1248)—leaving only the Muslim enclave of Granada as a tributary state in the south. After the surrender of Granada in January 1492, the entire Iberian peninsula was controlled by Christian rulers. On 30 July 1492, as a result of the Alhambra Decree, the Jewish communities in Castile and Aragon—some 200,000 people—were forcibly expelled. The conquest was followed by a series of edicts (1499–1526) which forced the conversions of Muslims in Castile, Navarre, and Aragon, who were later expelled from the Iberian realms of the Spanish Crown by a series of decrees starting in 1609.[12][13][14] Approximately three million Muslims emigrated or were driven out of Spain between 1492 and 1610.[15]

Beginning in the 19th century,[16] traditional historiography has used the term Reconquista for what was earlier thought of as a restoration of the Visigothic Kingdom over conquered territories.[17][18] 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 Spanish nationalist and romantic aspects.[19] It is rememorated in the Moros y Cristianos festival, very popular in parts of Southeastern Spain, and which can also be found in a few places in former Spanish colonies. Pursuant to an Islamophobic worldview, the concept is a symbol of significance for the 21st century European far-right. [20][21]

  1. ^ Chico Picaza, M.ª Victoria (2012). "Composición, estilo y texto en la miniatura del Códice Rico de las CSM". Alcanate: Revista de Estudios Alfonsíes. 8: 170−171. ISSN 1579-0576.
  2. ^ Kabha, M. (2023). "The Fall of Al-Andalus and the Evolution of its Memory in Modern Arab-Muslim Historiography". The Maghreb Review. 48 (3): 289–303. doi:10.1353/tmr.2023.a901468. S2CID 259503095.
  3. ^ Al-Mallah, M. (2019). "The Afterlife of Al-Andalus: Muslim Iberia in Contemporary Arab and Hispanic Narratives". Comparative Literature Studies. 56 (1): e–22. doi:10.5325/complitstudies.56.1.e-22. S2CID 239092774.
  4. ^ Caraccioli, Mauro José (2021), "Narratives of Conquest and the Conquest of Narrative", Writing the New World, The Politics of Natural History in the Early Spanish Empire, University Press of Florida, pp. 14–38, ISBN 978-1-68340-170-4, JSTOR j.ctv1gt9419.6, retrieved 11 September 2024, La Reconquista: a 700-year military and cultural campaign against the Moorish Caliphates of Southern Iberia that culminated in the joint reign of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile as Reyes Católicos.
  5. ^ a b "Reconquista". Britannica. 23 November 2022.
  6. ^ Collins 1989, p. 147; Reilly 1993, pp. 75–76; Deyermond 1985, p. 346; Hillgarth 2009, p. 66 n. 28
  7. ^ "parias." Diccionario de la Lengua Española, 22nd ed. (online).
  8. ^ According to Catlos, 83, Arabic authors referred to the parias as a jizya, the equivalent of the Islamic head tax on non-believers.
  9. ^ Fletcher, 7–8.
  10. ^ Reilly, 9.
  11. ^ Porto Editora – Reconquista Cristã na Infopédia [em linha]. Porto: Porto Editora. [consult. 2024-04-16 12:44:27]. Disponível em https://www.infopedia.pt/$reconquista-crista
  12. ^ Mary Elizabeth Perry (2012). "8: Morisco Stories and the Complexities of Resistance and Assimilation". In Kevin Ingram (ed.). The Conversos and Moriscos in Late Medieval Spain and Beyond: Volume Two: The Morisco Issue. Brill. p. 167. ISBN 978-90-04-22860-3.
  13. ^ Dadson, Trevor J. (2014). Tolerance and Coexistence in Early Modern Spain: Old Christians and Moriscos in the Campo de Calatrava. Boydell & Brewer Ltd. p. 101. ISBN 978-1855662735.
  14. ^ Boase, Roger (4 April 2002). "The Muslim Expulsion from Spain". History Today. 52 (4). The majority of those permanently expelled settling in the Maghreb or Barbary Coast, especially in Oran, Tunis, Tlemcen, Tetuán, Rabat and Salé. Many travelled overland to France, but after the assassination of Henry of Navarre by Ravaillac in May 1610, they were forced to emigrate to Italy, Sicily or Constantinople.
  15. ^ "Islamic Encounters". www.brown.edu. Brown University. Retrieved 25 May 2023. Between 1492 and 1610, some 3,000,000 Muslims voluntarily left or were expelled from Spain, resettling in North Africa.
  16. ^ "La reconquista es un mito". Diario de Burgos (in Spanish). 2 November 2013. Archived from the original on 25 September 2019. Retrieved 13 September 2019.
  17. ^ Ríos Saloma, Martín. La Reconquista: génesis de un mito historiográfico (PDF) (Report). Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas/UNAM Departamento de Historia México. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 March 2016.
  18. ^ Sanjuán, Alejandro García. "Al-Andalus en la historiografía del nacionalismo españolista (siglos xix–xxi). Entre la Reconquista y la España musulmana." A 1300 Años de la conquista de Al-Andalus (711–2011) (2012): 65.
  19. ^ García Fitz 2009, pp. 144–145 "Hay que reconocer que la irrupción de este concepto en la historiografía hispánica del siglo XIX, con su fuerte carga nacionalista, romántica y, en ocasiones, colonialista, tuvo un éxito notable y se transmitió, manteniendo algunos de sus rasgos identitarios más llamativos, a la del siglo XX. [It is necessary to recognize that the emergence of this concept in Iberian historiography of the 19th century, with its strong dual nationalistic, romantic and, at times, colonialist emphasis, had a remarkable success and was transmitted, retaining some of its most striking features, into the 20th century.]"
  20. ^ Silva 2020, pp. 57–65.
  21. ^ Paone, Antony; Thomas, Leigh (6 December 2021). "Far-right French presidential hopeful promises 'reconquest' at rally". Reuters. Retrieved 22 June 2022.


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