Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Spanish Reconquista

Episode Date: December 17, 2022

After the rise of Islam in the 7th century, it spread rapidly, establishing a foothold in Asia, Africa, and in Europe. In Europe, it established a foothold on the Iberian Peninsula.  For almost 800 years, the Europeans who lived in Peninsula sought to expel them. It took the better part of a millennium, but they finally achieved their goal. Learn more about the Spanish Reconquista and the high point of the Islamic Caliphate in Europe on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Picasso 2023 Information https://www.spain.info/picasso-2023/en/ Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Darcy Adams Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EverythingEverywhere Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After the rise of Islam in the 7th century, it spread rapidly, conquering lands in Asia, Africa, and Europe. In Europe, it established its greatest foothold on the Iberian Peninsula. For almost 800 years, Europeans sought to expel the invaders. It took the better part of a millennium, but in the end, they finally achieved their goal. Learn more about the Spanish Reconquista in one of the longest military campaigns in history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by the Tourist Office of Spain. While any time is a great time to visit Spain, in 2023, Spain will be honoring the 50th anniversary of the death of the great artist Pablo Picasso.

While exhibits of the life and works of Pablo Picasso will take place in 33 countries, the biggest celebrations will be taking place in his home country of Spain. There will be several events and exhibitions in his hometown of Malaga. The capital of Madrid will have eight different exhibitions, including one at the Museo Renia Sophia, where his most famous painting, Gurneka, is on display. Barcelona will have three exhibitions. including one at the Barcelona Picasso Museum. There will also be an exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

and the Museum of Fine Arts in Akerunia. If you're interested in visiting any of the Picasso 2023 events in Spain, just visit spain.in.com or click on the link in the show notes. Once again, that's spain.in. It's hard to express just how successful Islam was in its first century of existence. Formerly established in the year 610, over the next century, Arabs exploded out of the Arabian Peninsula into the Levant, North Africa, and Central Asia. On April 30th, 7-11, General Tarik Ibn Zayed of the Umayyad Caliphate crossed the strait of Gibraltar and entered the Iberian Peninsula.

Crossing into Europe did not stop the momentum of the Umiad Caliphate. It would be another 21 years until the Battle of Tours, well into the territory of France, where their advance would be halted. And just because their advance was halted didn't mean that they were going away. They settled in the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula, a region that became known as Al-Andalus. Europeans called these people Moors, which was a catch-all term for all Muslims from North Africa. The word is derived from the Robin province of Mauritania. I've previously done an entire episode on Al-Andalus, but suffice it to say that this part of southern Spain and Portugal was profoundly influenced by Islamic culture for centuries. You can still see it in the Islamic architecture of the region, as well as many of the places.

names. However, this episode isn't about that. This is about the response to the Islamic conquest of the region. The Reconquista, or the Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula, was not a single battle or even a single war. It was a lengthy process which took centuries and began almost immediately after the Moorish conquest began. The Reconquista is said to have started in 718 at the Battle of Covedonga in northern Spain, in what is today the region of Asturias. Prior to the Moorish invasion, the peninsula had been occupied by a European group known as the Visigoths, who swooped in during the vacuum created by the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. It was Covedonga, where the Visigoths managed to finally achieve a victory on the battlefield.

It wasn't a resounding victory, but it was a victory, and it was more of a hold than a stop of the Moorish advance. In 732, the Franks won at the Battle of Tours, which rightfully was one of the most important battles in history. However, it too was not an end. It took another 25 years to push the Moors back behind the Pyrenees. Normally, when you talk about a war between two parties, the war will usually resolve itself in a matter of months or years. On occasion, wars might even extend into decades, like the 80-year war or the 100-years war.

However, the Reconquista was a process that took centuries. In fact, it took the better part of a millennium. In the year 750, the Umiad Caliphate collapsed, which was replaced by the Abbasid Caliphate, which further fractured over the next 200 years. By the year 929, under the leadership of Abid Aramon III, the Muslim lands of the Iberian Peninsula became the Caliphate of Cordoba, named after its capital city. The Caliphate of Cordoba controlled about 80% of the Iberian Peninsula, everything, save for the region around the Pyrenees and the Atlantic Coast. While the Reconquista is traditionally given its start at the Battle of Covadonga,

these first battles were really just a fight for survival. Nobody was thinking of taking back the entire Iberian Peninsula at that point. However, by the 10th and 11th centuries, the idea of taking back the land and the term reconquista was starting to be tossed around. The first real big success was by King Alfonso the 6th of Leon and Castile in 1085, when he took the city of Toledo, which had been the capital of Spain before the Moorish invasion. This success was helped by the fact that the Cordoba Caliphate was suffering from civil wars. However, the Christians were a patchwork of collection of infighting kingdoms

themselves. Soon after the capture of Toledo, Pope Urban II took up the cause of the reconquista, or as it was alternatively called, the Iberian Crusade. The Iberian Crusade was overshadowed by the Crusade in the Holy Land, but it was given equal status, at least in the eyes of the church. Sometime in the early 12th century, the spiritual rewards promised for military service in the Iberian Peninsula were equivalent to that for serving in the Holy Land. The biggest difference between the Spanish Crusade and the Holy Land Crusade was that in Spain it was about direct territorial conquest and settlement. Despite there being crusader kingdoms in the Holy Land, there was no real attempt to settle Christians there. So the Iberian Crusade wasn't

really, or at least solely, a religious conflict. The Knights Hospitaller and Knights Templar also operated in Spain as well as the Holy Land, so in a way you could think of the Spanish Crusade as being a second theater of a larger war. One person of note from this period who achieved a level of fame and is probably one of the only people from this period who was known today was the knight known by the name of El Cid. El Cid was born Rodrigo Diaz de Vavar. He was a knight for hire who fought against both Christians and Muslims. However, he achieved his fame by liberating the city of Valencia.

He was given the honorific Al Cid by the Moors, which became El Cid in Spanish, which roughly translates to the Lord. His claim to fame was being immortalized in a poem after his death titled El Cantar Di Mio Sid, or The Song of My Sid. He was painted as the ideal knight, sort of a Spanish version of Lancelot, except that El Cid was real. A series of popes backed the Spanish crusade, but a lack of Spanish unity resulted in no real progress. At the Battle of Alacaros in 1195, the Christian kingdom suffered a major defeat. Each Christian king was more concerned. concerned about their own personal fiefdom than they were about the big picture. Christian kings often established alliances with Morris rulers. The tide started to turn in the 13th century. The Christian

kings engaged in a series of victories, which started the process of permanently taking land from the Caliphate. The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 was a huge turning point, where three Spanish kings from Castile, Navarre, and Aragon worked together to defeat the Caliphate. Cordova was retaken in 1236, Valencia in 1238 and Sevilla in 1248. By the mid-13th century, the entirety of the Moorish possession of Spain consisted of territory along the Mediterranean coast, known as the Emirate of Granada. The Emirate of Granada wound up being a rather stable institution. It managed to survive because it paid a tribute to the Christian kings, and because the Moors had lost the vast majority of their land, it wasn't a pressing need anymore to take the last remaining bit. The Emirate of Granada is probably best known today

for creating one of the most iconic structures in Spain, the Al-Ambra. The Al-Ambra was the palace for the emirs in Granada, and it's one of the best-preserved Islamic palaces in the world. After more than two centuries, the end of the Emirate of Granada began with the 1469 marriage of Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Aragon, and Isabella, the heiress to the throne of Castile. Ferdinand and Isabella created the modern Spanish state and unified the kingdoms.

At the same time, the son of the emir, Abu Abid Allah, made a grab for power from his father, and the result was a civil war. Abu Abed Allah was actually captured by the Spanish, where he was forced to accept punishing terms, and made to continue war on his father with Spanish support. However, Abu Abed Allah eventually lost the support of Ferdinand and Isabella, who turned on him. Malaga fell in 1887 and Baza fell in 1489. That just left the capital of Granada, which was put under siege. Grada had tried to get help from other Muslim forces in Egypt and North Africa,

but by that time there was nothing they could do. Granada had already lost access to the sea, and the Muslims in Spain just weren't to power anymore than anyone would rush to the aid of. The Spanish began a siege on April 1491, which ended on January 2, 1492. The date which officially ended Islamic control over any part of the Iberian Peninsula.

The reconquista was complete. Now, if the year 1492 in the names Ferdinand and Isabella ring a bell, it probably has to do with Columbus. However, for centuries, it was the capture of Granada, which was the important vent for the year, not the European discovery of the new world. From the time, General Tarik Ibn Zayed, set foot on the European continent until the fall of Granada took 781 years. The entire length of the Reconquista, if you start with the Battle of Corvodonga, was 774 years. One of the longest military campaigns in human history, if you want to consider it as such. Both the Moorish conquest and the subsequent reconquista left an indelible mark

on Spain. It can be seen in the Alambra, the Mos Cathedral of Cordoba, and countless other castles and buildings around the countries. And the entire process only took a bit under eight centuries. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over on Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise. Also, if you want to talk to other listeners about the show, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which have links in the show notes.