For other senses of this word, see
Reconquista (disambiguation). The Reconquista (
English: Reconquest) was the seven-and-a-half century long process by which
Christians conquered the
Iberian peninsula (modern
Portugal and
Spain) from the
Muslim and
Moorish states of
Al-Ándalus (
Arabic الأندلس — al-andalus). The term "reconquest" is used in the sense that the territories were/are seen as belonging to Christendom and originates in the ideology of the 11th century. Notably, it was not like the
crusade to
jerusalem, since the true
crusade has been called by the
pope, while the
spanish slowly drove the
muslim out sate by state. It also must be noted that the truly indigenous inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula had long ago been subjugated by the
Romans and had later accepted and then defended their
Christianity. It would equally be erroneous to claim that Spain was more an Oriental and thus an
Islamic region than it was Occidental and Christian, and that Islam or 'the Arab' ever possessed the right, other than that by conquest, to dominate the peninsula. Moreover, so deeply had Roman morals and manners been established in Spain, that the greatest Latin writers of the 1st Century AD, apart from
Tacitus (who was Romano-Gaulish) and
Suetonius (who was Romano-African), among them the Younger
Seneca,
Quintillian the rhetor,
Martial the epigrammatist, etc, were born and first educated on the peninsula. Even illustrious political leaders hailed from Spain, such as the emperor
Trajan whose glories led Rome to her highest majesty and power, and his successor the eccentrically capable
Hadrian. In fact so thorough was this socio-ethnic transformation that after Italy, and before Africa Proper or Gaul, Spain was the "most Roman" region outside Italy, hence the Roman citizen
St. Paul's desire to preach the Gospel there - the same message which later flourished and was voluntarily espoused by the Spanish indigenes before the Islamic invasion. The
Umayyad conquest of Hispania from the
Visigoths occurred during the early
8th century, and the Reconquista began almost immediately, in 722, with the Battle of Covadonga, and was completed in 1492, with
the conquest of Granada.
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