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History 11 · The Iberian Kingdoms

The Reconquista

Spain before it was Spain. In 711 an army crossed from Africa and took the whole peninsula in seven years, except one scrap of mountain. What grew out of that scrap took seven hundred and seventy years to finish the job. Click everything on this page. Most of it opens.

711–1492

1Start here: a scrap of mountain

Before any names or dates, stand where the story starts.

The year is 718. Seven years ago an army crossed the strait from Africa, killed your king in one battle, and took every city in the peninsula. The Visigothic kingdom that ruled this land for three hundred years is gone. Its nobles have submitted, converted, or fled.

You are in the mountains of Asturias, on the north coast, with the men who refused. Everything south of you belongs to the emir. You hold a few hundred square miles of rock, rain, and cattle. Nobody is coming to help.

How does a scrap of mountain become a country?

Click each one. Five of them are partly right, and one of them is the answer the rest of the page follows.

The point to write down

Asturias is the seed. Everything Christian on the map after 722 grows from this scrap of mountain: Asturias becomes León, León's frontier county becomes Castile, and beside them Navarre, Aragon, and Portugal take shape. That is why one small place with a hard-to-spell name matters far beyond its size.

Keep one question running as you scroll: at each step, what did men do, and what did they say God did?

2Iberia is not Spain (yet)

There is no Spain in this story until the last page. There is a peninsula, Iberia, with four layers of rulers laid down on it before this story begins. Click a layer.

Rome called the peninsula Hispania and held it for six hundred years. It gave the land its roads, its cities, its law, and its languages: Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan are all Latin that kept changing. Two emperors, Trajan and Hadrian, were born here, and so was the philosopher Seneca, at Córdoba.

As Rome failed, Germanic peoples came over the Pyrenees: the Vandals first, then the Visigoths, who ruled as a small warrior elite over a large Roman population for three centuries, with their capital at Toledo.

They were Christians until the concerted work of St. Leander and St. Isidore of Seville, with Pope St. Gregory the Great behind them, won the kingdom for the Creed. King Reccared professed the Catholic faith at the Third Council of Toledo in 589.

In 711 Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed the strait with an army of under Arab command. The rock where he landed still carries his name: Gibraltar, from Jabal Tariq, Tariq's mountain. At the river Guadalete he defeated and killed King Roderic, the last Visigothic king. The kingdom's nobles fell to fighting each other over the succession, and city after city surrendered on terms.

By 718 the conquest was complete except for a couple hundred square miles in the mountains of Asturias. The conquerors called their new land al-Andalus.

al-Andalus is the Arabic name for Islamic Iberia, whatever its size at the moment. Its capital was Córdoba. It was ruled in turn by governors sent from Damascus (711–756), by an independent (756–929), by a (929–1031), then by a scatter of small rival kingdoms called (1031–1086), then by two waves of Berber rulers from Morocco, the Almoravids (1086) and the Almohads (1147), and at last by the emirs of Granada alone (1238–1492).

Its people were Muslims, Christians (called Mozarabs, Arabized Christians), and Jews, living under Islamic law side by side and, periodically, at each other's expense. Section 7 returns to them.

The words, so nobody trips.

3The map: 711 to 1492

Drag the year, press the arrows, or press Play. Green is Islamic rule; every other color is a Christian kingdom. Click any region to see who held it that year. The regions are today's provinces, the same ones used on the practice maps.

711 Guadalete, and the conquest

The map needs the geometry file to draw. The dates below carry the same story.

The two lists

Iberia around 1030 is usually summed up as six Christian states and ten Islamic ones. Press a list and the map jumps to that year and lights them up.

With a pencil

Take a blank map of the peninsula. When the map is at 1000, draw the frontier lightly across your own map: everything north of the line is Christian, everything south is the Caliphate. Then move to 1212 and draw it again. Two lines on one sheet are the whole shape of the Reconquista.

4Pelayo and Covadonga

The man the scrap of mountain chose. Read the story, then sort it.

Asturias was overrun in 714. The people who would not submit went higher into the mountains. Among them was a man the Latin sources call Pelagius and Spain calls Don Pelayo. He had been captured by the Muslims and had escaped. The men in the mountains elected him their war chief, and he gathered the scattered resistance under one banner.

About 722 a column was sent to finish the holdouts. At Covadonga, at a cave in the mountains, Pelayo's men beat it. The victory was small in numbers and enormous in consequence: it turned a refusal into a state. Pelayo's family ruled it after him, and it grew, under his son-in-law Alfonso I and his descendants, into the Kingdom of Asturias, reaching eventually from the Atlantic to the Pyrenees. Later rulers broke it into pieces that became León, Castile, and Navarre, which grew into kingdoms of their own.

In Spanish memory Pelayo is a sort of King Arthur meets Robin Hood, an outlaw leader fighting for justice and a noble ruler anointed by God, both at once. Later sources call him king; the earliest one calls him an elected war chief. Every later Iberian dynasty descends from him.

Fact or legend?

0 of 0 sorted right

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The seam between fact and telling is the question of the whole story. In section 6 a man wins a battle after he is dead, and the same question comes back with a text on the table.

5From the seed: the five kingdoms, and the one that was not

Six cards, one per kingdom, each with its own map. Open a card below, or click a kingdom on the big map.

The cards run in the order the kingdoms were founded: Asturias (about 722), Navarre (824), Castile and Aragon (both 1035, from one father's will), Portugal (1139). Portugal and Catalonia began earlier as counties, in the 860s and in 801, but Portugal became a kingdom late and Catalonia never did. Every place a card names is on that card's map, and every person it names is introduced on the card. The phrases in red are the important facts: the founder, the founding year, and how the kingdom joined the others or ended. The chart at the end of this section holds one row per kingdom; say each answer before you show it.

The map needs the geometry file to draw. The cards below carry the same story.

How to read these maps. The shapes are the provinces of Spain and Portugal as they are today, the same shapes as the practice map; there are no medieval borders on them. The strong color shows where each kingdom began in the Middle Ages, drawn onto those modern shapes. The pale color shows land that kingdom's kings conquered later in the Middle Ages. Rivers and mountains are drawn simply. The dots are the places named on the cards. On the big map, click a kingdom to open its card.

Where it is
The north coast of Spain: a strip of mountains between the sea and the high plain. Oviedo, in the mountains, was its first capital. Galicia is the rainy corner of Spain in the far north-west, above Portugal; its city is Santiago. León is a city on the plain south of the mountains; the kingdom later took its name.
Founder
Don Pelayo. The men who refused to submit to the Muslim conquerors went up into these mountains, and about 722 they elected Pelayo their war chief. His first victory was at the cave of Covadonga. Every Christian kingdom that pushed back against al-Andalus grew out of his.
What happened
Pelayo's son-in-law Alfonso I (king 739–757) added Galicia, the north-west corner, to the kingdom. South of the mountains it was a different story. The Muslim soldiers posted there, mostly Berbers from North Africa, marched away south in the 740s during a revolt and a famine; Alfonso raided the plain they left and carried its Christians north into his mountains; and for a hundred years the high plain south of the mountains, all the way to the river Duero, was a no-man's land, too far from Córdoba for the Muslims to settle and too big for the Christians to hold. Then Alfonso III the Great (king 866–910) pushed the border south to the Duero and settled new towns along the river: Porto at its mouth (in today's Portugal), Zamora on its bank, and Burgos, El Cid's town, near it. When Alfonso III died, his three sons fought each other for the crown. The winner moved the capital out of the mountains, from Oviedo down to the city of León, and from 924 the kingdom is called the Kingdom of León.
Then
So Asturias did not disappear: it was the same kingdom and the same royal family, with a new capital and a new name. Asturias stayed a region inside it, and to this day the heir to the Spanish throne is called the Prince of Asturias. León and its eastern frontier, Castile (card 3), sometimes had one king and sometimes two, until 1230, when they were joined for good.

The map needs the geometry file to draw.

Strong color: where the kingdom of Asturias, later León, began. Pale color: Galicia, which Alfonso I took in the 700s. The shapes are today's provinces.

Words on this card. The river Duero runs west across the north of Spain and through northern Portugal to the sea at Porto. For two hundred years it was the border between Christian and Muslim land. Galicia: the north-west corner of Spain.

The short version
  • Where: the north coast, the mountains between the sea and the plain.
  • Founder: Don Pelayo, elected war chief about 722, after the victory at Covadonga.
  • One story: the empty plain, the towns settled along the Duero, or the capital moving down to León (924).
  • On the map: find Oviedo, then León.
Where it is
The western Pyrenees mountains, on the French border, around the city of Pamplona. This is Basque country. The Basques are the people of that corner, the mountains and the coast around Bilbao. They were there before the Romans came, and their language is older than Latin and related to no other language in Europe. The people are ancient; the kingdom is not. It was founded in 824, when a Basque chief first made himself a ruler.
Founder
Íñigo Arista, a Basque chief, about 824. The Franks were Charlemagne's people, north of the Pyrenees in today's France, and they kept crossing the mountains to take land on the Spanish side. In 778 the Basques had ambushed the rear of Charlemagne's own army at the pass of Roncevaux (the battle in the Song of Roland). In 824 another Frankish army was beaten at the same pass, and Íñigo Arista, who beat it, made himself ruler of Pamplona. Later the kingdom took the name of the whole region, Navarre.
Greatest ruler
Sancho III the Great (king 1004–1035). Navarre was a small kingdom, but Sancho, through marriage, war, and luck, came to control most of Christian Spain for a few years: Navarre itself, Castile, much of León, and the county of Aragon in the mountains (card 4). When he died in 1035 he split it all among his sons. García got Navarre. Ferdinand got Castile (card 3). Ramiro got Aragon (card 4). So one king made two new kingdoms.
Then
In 1212 King Sancho VII the Strong of Navarre led the charge at Las Navas de Tolosa (a battlefield in the mountains of the south, on the road from Toledo to Córdoba; the name means “the upland plains of Tolosa”) that broke through the chain of slaves guarding the Muslim camp; the chains are on Navarre's coat of arms to this day. The kingdom sat on both sides of the Pyrenees. In 1512 Spain conquered the larger part, south of the mountains (the part on this map). The small part north of the mountains, in France, stayed a kingdom of its own, conquered by nobody, until its king inherited the French throne as Henry IV in 1589; after that the kings of France called themselves “King of France and Navarre,” into the 1800s.

The map needs the geometry file to draw.

Strong color: Navarre, on today's provinces, shown closer up. Pale color: the rest of Basque country. Roncevaux is the pass on the road to France.

Words on this card. The Basques: the people of the western Pyrenees and the coast around Bilbao. The Franks: Charlemagne's people, from today's France. Roncevaux: the mountain pass on the road from France to Pamplona. The Pyrenees: the mountain wall between Spain and France.

The short version
  • Where: the western Pyrenees on the French border, around Pamplona.
  • Who: the Basques (the people there) and the Franks (Charlemagne's people, from France).
  • Founder: Íñigo Arista, about 824, after beating the Franks at the pass of Roncevaux.
  • One story: the pass of Roncevaux, or Sancho the Great splitting his lands among his sons (1035).
  • On the map: find Pamplona and at the Pyrenees.
Where it is
The north-center of Spain: the high plain around Burgos, between the river Duero and the river Ebro. This was the eastern edge of the Kingdom of León (card 1), the side that faced the Muslim raids coming up the two rivers every summer.
The name
Castile means the land of castles. The settlers on this frontier built castles against the raids, and the castles gave the country its name. At first it was a county, land ruled by a count (a lord who serves a king), under the king of León.
Founder as a kingdom
Ferdinand I, in 1035. He was a son of Sancho the Great, king of Navarre (card 2), who had taken control of Castile. When Sancho died in 1035 he left Castile to Ferdinand as a kingdom of its own. Ferdinand then married the sister of the king of León, beat and killed that king in battle in 1037, and so became king of León as well. El Cid grew up in Ferdinand's household, and Ferdinand's son, Sancho II, was El Cid's first king.
Then
Castile and León were joined for good in 1230 under Ferdinand III, the king who went on to take Córdoba (1236) and Seville (1248) from the Muslims. Castile became the biggest kingdom in Spain, and its way of speaking, Castilian, is the Spanish people speak today, with its famous lisp on certain c and z sounds.

The map needs the geometry file to draw.

Strong color: old Castile, the land of castles, on today's provinces. Toledo, to the south, stayed Muslim until 1085.

Words on this card. County, count: a piece of land and the lord who rules it under a king. The river Ebro runs from the mountains near the north coast south-east past Zaragoza to the Mediterranean Sea. Frontier: the border land where two enemies meet.

The short version
  • Where: the high plain around Burgos, El Cid's town, between the Duero and the Ebro.
  • The name: the land of castles.
  • Founder: Ferdinand I, 1035, a son of the king of Navarre; king of León too by marriage and the battle of 1037.
  • One story: how Ferdinand got two crowns, or Castile and León joined for good in 1230.
  • On the map: find Burgos.
Where it is
The north-east of Spain, south of the middle of the Pyrenees mountains, along the river Ebro. Zaragoza, on the Ebro, is its great city. In El Cid's day Zaragoza was still a Muslim kingdom, and El Cid served its ruler for years.
Origins
Aragon began as a small county (land ruled by a count) high in the Pyrenees, named after the little river Aragón. Sancho the Great of Navarre (card 2) took it over, and when he died in 1035 he left it to his son Ramiro I as a kingdom of its own. That is why Aragon and Navarre are two kingdoms and not one: a father with several sons divided his lands (the father: Sancho the Great of Navarre; the sons: García, who got Navarre; Ferdinand, who got Castile; Ramiro, who got Aragon).
Growth
Aragon grew two ways. By war: King Alfonso I the Battler took the Muslim city of Zaragoza in 1118, and the kingdom came down out of the mountains onto the Ebro. And by marriage: in 1137 the heiress of Aragon, Petronilla, aged one, was promised to the count of Barcelona (card 6; Catalonia is the pale land on the map). Their son Alfonso II ruled both lands, and from then on the king of Aragon also ruled Catalonia and its coast. People call the joined lands “the Crown of Aragon.” With a coast came ships.
Greatest ruler
James I the Conqueror (king 1213–1276). With Catalonia's ships he took Mallorca (1229), the big island off Spain's east coast, then ruled by Muslims, and then the city of Valencia (1238), El Cid's old city, which the Muslims had held again since 1102. Later kings of Aragon took Sicily and Sardinia too, so Aragon ruled islands and coasts all round the western Mediterranean Sea. James is the last king in this story: by the end of his reign the Christian kingdoms held all of Spain except Granada in the south. He did not unite Spain. That took the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1469, and the fall of Granada in 1492, two hundred years after him.

The map needs the geometry file to draw.

Strong color: Aragon, on today's provinces. Pale color: Catalonia, joined to it by the marriage of 1137. James I took Mallorca and Valencia in the 1200s.

Words on this card. Zaragoza: the big city on the Ebro. Catalonia, Barcelona: the north-east corner and its chief city (card 6). Mallorca: the largest of the islands off the east coast. The Crown of Aragon: Aragon and Catalonia under one ruler, from 1137.

The short version
  • Where: the north-east, along the river Ebro; Zaragoza is its city.
  • How it began: Sancho the Great's son Ramiro I, 1035.
  • One story: taking Zaragoza (1118), the baby heiress and the count of Barcelona (1137), or James I taking Mallorca (1229) and Valencia (1238).
  • On the map: find Zaragoza, then Valencia.
Where it is
The strip of land along the Atlantic coast, west of León and Castile. Porto is the city at the mouth of the river Duero. Lisbon is the city at the mouth of the river Tagus, further south.
The name
The Romans called the harbor at the mouth of the Duero Portus Cale. Porto is that harbor today (porto means harbor). The land around it was called Portucale, and that became Portugal. In the 860s the king of León sent a nobleman, Vímara Peres, to take the land around Porto back from the Muslims, and he ruled it as a county (land ruled by a count) under the king of León.
Founder as a kingdom
Afonso Henriques. In 1128 he beat her army at São Mamede, near Guimarães in the north of Portugal, and took the county for himself. Why a son fought his mother: Teresa was a daughter of Alfonso VI, El Cid's king. When her husband, the count, died in 1112, she ruled the county for their small son. As Afonso grew up she kept ruling, with a nobleman from Galicia at her side, and the Portuguese barons feared the county would be folded back into León. They took the young Afonso's side; after São Mamede she was sent into exile in Galicia. Then he fought the Muslims to the south for nineteen years. After his victory at Ourique, in the south, in 1139, his men called him king. In 1147 a fleet of crusaders from England, Germany, and Flanders, sailing round Spain to reach the Holy Land for the Second Crusade, stopped at Porto. Afonso hired them, and together they besieged Lisbon for four months and took it.
Then
Portugal's kings kept pushing south. In 1249 they took the Algarve, the southern strip of coast, and after that no Muslim ruler ever held land in Portugal again. So Portugal finished its Reconquista more than two hundred years before Spain did. It then turned to the ocean: Portuguese ships were the first from Europe to sail round Africa.

The map needs the geometry file to draw.

Strong color: the county of the 860s, around Porto, on today's provinces. Pale color: the land Portugal's kings conquered between 1128 and 1249.

Words on this card. The river Tagus runs west from the middle of Spain, past Toledo, to the sea at Lisbon. Crusaders: the armies of the Second Crusade (1147), on their way to the Holy Land. The Algarve: the far south of Portugal. Reconquista: the Christian kingdoms taking the peninsula back, 722 to 1492.

The short version
  • Where: the Atlantic coast; Porto at the mouth of the Duero, Lisbon at the mouth of the Tagus.
  • The name: Portus Cale, the harbor at Porto.
  • Founder: Afonso Henriques, called king after Ourique in 1139.
  • One story: the son who beat his mother's army (1128), or the crusaders hired at Porto to take Lisbon (1147).
  • On the map: find Porto, then Lisbon.
Where it is
The north-east corner of Spain, on the Mediterranean coast, just south of the eastern Pyrenees mountains. Barcelona is its chief city; Girona is a town to the north of it.
Not a kingdom
Catalonia never had a king of its own. About 800 the Franks (Charlemagne's people, from today's France) crossed the Pyrenees and took Girona (785) and Barcelona (801) from the Muslims, to make a strip of border land between their empire and the Muslim south. The Franks called it the Spanish March (a march is a border district) and put counts in charge of it. Over the next two hundred years the counts of Barcelona stopped obeying the kings of France and ruled for themselves, though they never called themselves kings.
Why it matters
In 1137 the count of Barcelona, Ramon Berenguer IV, was promised to Petronilla, the baby heiress of Aragon (card 4). From their son onward, one ruler was both king of Aragon and count of Barcelona. Catalonia gave that ruler what Aragon did not have: a long coast, ports, ships, and a second language, Catalan (a Latin language like Spanish, but different). King James I wrote the story of his own life in Catalan.
Then
With Catalonia's ships the Crown of Aragon took Mallorca (1229), Valencia (1238), and later Sicily and Sardinia. Barcelona became one of the great trading cities of the Mediterranean Sea.

The map needs the geometry file to draw.

Strong color: Catalonia, on today's provinces. Pale color: Aragon, joined to it by the marriage of 1137.

Words on this card. March: a border district. Count: a lord who rules a piece of land under a king. Catalan: the language of Catalonia, still spoken there. Girona: the town north of Barcelona, the first the Franks took.

The short version
  • Where: the north-east corner on the Mediterranean; Barcelona is its city.
  • Why it is on a card: never a kingdom; the Franks' border district (Girona 785, Barcelona 801), ruled by counts.
  • For the chart: founded 801, as a county under the Franks, never a kingdom; founder: Charlemagne's Franks, then the counts of Barcelona.
  • One story: the counts who stopped obeying France, or the marriage of 1137 that joined it to Aragon.
  • On the map: find Barcelona and at the Pyrenees.

The chart

One row per kingdom: when it was founded, who founded it, the important facts, and where it is (the letter on the map). Say the answer first, then show it.

The map needs the geometry file to draw.

KingdomFoundedFounderImportant factsWhere
Asturias, then Leóncard 1c. 722 as Asturias; called León from 924Don Pelayo, elected war chief of the men in the mountains after CovadongaThe seed of the rest. Grew to the river Duero under Alfonso III (866–910); after his sons' war the capital moved from Oviedo to León; joined to Castile for good in 1230.A
Navarrecard 2c. 824Íñigo Arista, a Basque chief, after beating the Franks at the pass of RoncevauxSancho III the Great (1004–1035) controlled most of Christian Spain and split it among his sons: Navarre, Castile, Aragon. Sancho VII's charge at Las Navas (1212). Southern part to Spain 1512; the northern part's king became Henry IV of France in 1589.B
Castilecard 31035 (a county of León before that)Ferdinand I, son of Sancho the Great of Navarre; king of León too by marriage and the battle of 1037The land of castles, León's eastern frontier. El Cid's kingdom (Sancho II). Joined to León for good in 1230 under Ferdinand III, who took Córdoba (1236) and Seville (1248). Castilian became Spanish.C
Aragoncard 41035 (a Frankish county in the Pyrenees before that)Ramiro I, son of Sancho the Great of NavarreAlfonso I the Battler took Zaragoza (1118); joined to Catalonia by the marriage of 1137 (the Crown of Aragon); James I the Conqueror (1213–1276) took Mallorca (1229) and Valencia (1238). He did not unite Spain: that was 1469 and 1492.D
Portugalcard 5a county from the 860s; a kingdom from 1139Afonso Henriques, called king after Ourique (1139); the county's first count was Vímara Peres (860s)Beat his mother's army at São Mamede (1128); took Lisbon (1147) with Second Crusade crusaders; the Algarve taken 1249, the first Reconquista finished.E
Cataloniacard 6801 as a county under the Franks; never a kingdomCharlemagne's Franks (Girona 785, Barcelona 801); then the counts of BarcelonaThe Spanish March. The counts stopped obeying the kings of France; the marriage of 1137 joined Catalonia to Aragon and gave the Crown of Aragon its coast, its ships, and Catalan.F

Places and words on these cards

The rivers, the regions, the peoples, and the words for how land was held.

IberiaThe whole peninsula, Spain and Portugal together. There was no country called Spain until 1492.
al-AndalusThe Arabic name for the Muslim-ruled part of the peninsula, whatever its size at the time: nearly all of it in 718, only Granada by 1250.
The PyreneesThe mountain wall between Spain and France. Roncevaux is a pass through it.
The Cantabrian mountainsThe mountains along the north coast, where Asturias began.
The river DueroRuns west across the north of Spain and through northern Portugal to the sea at Porto. For two hundred years it was the border between Christian and Muslim land.
The river EbroRuns south-east past Logroño and Zaragoza to the Mediterranean.
The river TagusRuns west from the middle of Spain past Toledo to the sea at Lisbon.
GaliciaThe north-west corner of Spain, above Portugal. Its city is Santiago.
The BasquesThe people of the western Pyrenees and the coast around Bilbao, with a language older than Latin.
The FranksCharlemagne's people, from today's France. They crossed the Pyrenees to take land in the north-east (Catalonia) and were beaten in the north-west of the mountains (Navarre).
County, countA piece of land, and the lord who rules it under a king. Castile, Aragon, Portugal, and Catalonia all began as counties.
MarchA border district. The Franks' Spanish March became Catalonia.
TaifaOne of the small Muslim kingdoms the south broke into after 1031: Zaragoza, Toledo, Valencia, Seville, Granada, and more.
CrusadersHere, the armies of the Second Crusade (1147) sailing to the Holy Land, some of whom stopped to help take Lisbon.
The Crown of AragonAragon and Catalonia under one ruler, from the marriage of 1137.
ReconquistaThe Christian kingdoms taking the peninsula back from Muslim rule, 722 to 1492. Portugal finished in 1249; Castile and Aragon took Córdoba, Valencia, and Seville in 1236–1248 and left only Granada, which fell in 1492.

6El Cid: whose side is he on?

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, c. 1043–1099. Step through his career and keep a tally. Then read his death in the source, binder pp. 19–24.

The names

El Cid, from Arabic as-Sayyid, the lord. Campeador, from Latin campidoctor, master of the field. Two swords, Tizona and Colada. A horse, Babieca. A wife, Jimena.

The record

Never lost a battle. Served two Christian kings, two Islamic rulers, and himself. Prince of Valencia 1094–1099.

The source

The Chronicle of the Cid, an anonymous Castilian compilation of the 1200s, translated by Robert Southey in 1808. Binder pp. 19–24. It cites an Arabic historian, Abenalfarax, three times. Ask why.

Reading the death ride, pp. 19–24

Read it with the Five Ws in the margin and at least two questions of your own. These are the places to slow down. The answers are yours to find, not the page's to give.

  1. p. 19. The Cid gives orders for his own body: washed, anointed, dressed, tied upright on Babieca with Tizona in his hand. Whose idea is the ride, in this telling? What does that change about how you read what follows?
  2. p. 20. The testament: money to the knights, cloth for four thousand poor, the sacraments, the prayer, "pure and without spot." Which lines are about a soldier, and which are about a saint? Who needed him to die like this?
  3. pp. 21–22. Thirty-six kings, fifteen thousand tents, a Moorish queen and her two hundred archers. Then the exit at midnight and the charge. Mark the exact sentence where the account stops being something a witness could have seen.
  4. p. 22. "Seventy thousand knights, all as white as snow," led by a knight on a white horse with a bloody cross. Who is that supposed to be? Who says they saw it, and whose report is the chronicle passing on?
  5. p. 23. The Arabic writer Abenalfarax, the Moors' amazement, the writing on the wall, and the last line: Valencia stays Moorish 170 years "till it was won by King Don Jayme of Aragon." The source ends by introducing the man in the Aragon card above. Why would a Castilian chronicle end a Castilian hero's story with a king of Aragon?
A comparison, if the argument stalls

King Arthur and Robin Hood are myths with a kernel of fact. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are facts wearing myths. Which is El Cid? Decide, and say what evidence would change your mind.

7Splintered light

In Reconquista Iberia, morality was often discarded for ambition, on both sides of the religious divide. It was also a place of intense scholarship and art. Both have to be held at once.

The road back to Aristotle

Most of Aristotle was lost to the Latin West for centuries. It survived in Arabic, was argued over by Muslim and Jewish philosophers in Córdoba (Averroes, Maimonides) and the East (Avicenna), and came back into Latin largely through the translators of Toledo after 1085. The Aristotle St. Thomas Aquinas argued with at Paris traveled that road. Aquinas's Prayer Before Study has an Iberian back story.

The Alhambra

The palace of the emirs of Granada, built mostly in the 1300s by the last Islamic state in Iberia, and the most beautiful building on the peninsula. Ferdinand and Isabella took it in 1492 and, to their credit, did not pull it down.

Living together

How Muslims, Christians, and Jews actually lived together under Islamic law, and what changed when the Almoravids and Almohads arrived: the dhimmi code, sparingly used for three centuries and then enforced hard. An old saying for the whole picture: God draws straight with crooked lines.

8The dates to know

Seven. Click one for the reason it is on the list.

Tariq ibn Ziyad defeats King Roderic. The Visigothic kingdom falls in one battle; the conquest is complete by 718.
Pelayo's victory in the Asturian mountains. The traditional first day of the Reconquista and the seed of every later kingdom.
Charles Martel stops the Islamic advance in France. The Pyrenees become the frontier, and the Franks turn back south to carve out the Spanish March.
Alfonso VI takes the old Visigothic capital. The next year the Almoravids land in answer, and El Cid's world is made.
Alfonso VIII of Castile, with Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal, breaks the Almohads on 16 July. The door to the south opens.
The great advance: Ferdinand III takes Córdoba and Seville, James I takes Valencia. Only Granada is left, for 250 years.
The last Islamic state surrenders to Ferdinand and Isabella on 2 January. Columbus sails in August. Now there is a Spain.

Say it as one breath: 711, 722, 732, 1085, 1212, 1248, 1492. Two beginnings, one stop, one turn, one break, one sweep, one end.

9Questions worth arguing about

Answer one, then press “More” and answer that too. The follow-up is the real question.

10Quiz yourself

Fifteen questions, shuffled. Run it until it is boring. Then open the Map Trainer to drill the regions and cities.

Spain before Spain

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What to know from memory

Guilds

Where the word comes from. The four kinds, one line each. The three rungs, in order. What a guild protected and what it cost. One modern comparison and where it breaks.

Universities

The first university in Western Europe, with its date, and the two after it. A guild of whom, at Bologna; of whom, at Paris. Four of the scholar-saints and one thing each is known for. Trivium and Quadrivium, and why music is where it is.

Early Spain

Hispania, Visigoths, 711, al-Andalus. Pelayo and Covadonga. How long the Reconquista lasted. Two Christian and three Islamic states about 1000. El Cid's real name, where he ruled, and the legend of his death. The seven dates above.

Terms

IberiaThe peninsula, from the Greek name for the river Ebro. The land, whoever holds it.
HispaniaThe Roman name for Iberia, and the ancestor of the word Spain.
VisigothsThe Germanic people who ruled Iberia c. 420–711 from Toledo, Arian until 589.
ArianThe heresy that the Son is less than the Father. The Goths' Christianity until Leander, Isidore, and Gregory the Great.
GuadaleteThe river and battle of 711 where King Roderic fell to Tariq ibn Ziyad.
al-AndalusArabic name for Islamic Iberia, whatever its size. Capital Córdoba.
MoorMedieval Christian word for the Muslims of Iberia and North Africa. From Latin Mauri.
BerberThe native peoples of North Africa, the bulk of the army of 711 and of the Almoravids and Almohads later.
Emir, emirateCommander, prince; a ruler who does not claim to lead all Islam. Córdoba was an emirate 756–929.
Caliph, caliphateSuccessor of Muhammad, leader of all Muslims. Córdoba claimed the title 929–1031.
TaifaFaction. One of the small rival kingdoms al-Andalus broke into after 1031, each named for its city.
AlmoravidsBerber reformers from Morocco who landed in 1086, beat Alfonso VI, and swallowed the taifas.
AlmohadsThe stricter Berber movement that overthrew the Almoravids and crossed to Iberia in 1147. Broken at Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212.
CovadongaThe cave in the Asturian mountains where Pelayo won about 722.
ReconquistaReconquest. The later name for the Christian kingdoms' 770-year advance, 722–1492.
CampeadorMaster of the field. El Cid's battlefield title, from Latin campidoctor.
as-SayyidArabic, the lord. Said by Muslims and Christians alike of Rodrigo Díaz; in Castilian, El Cid.
MozarabsChristians living under Islamic rule in al-Andalus, Arabic-speaking and keeping their own rite.
DhimmiNon-Muslims (Christians and Jews) protected under Islamic law, with restrictions. See section 7.