Reconquista, 1000-1250
The Spanish Reconquista was the most successful example
of European Middle Ages expansionism. Christian European forces
eventually took the whole peninsula, permanently. The origins
of the movement, however, were exceedingly modest. From the 730s,
the tiny Kingdom of Asturias, centered on Oviedo, had survived
as a sole Christian state in Spain, exposed to continuous Muslim
raiding. This was in addition to Charlemagne's March in Catalonia
on the Pyrenees. In the early 900s, the Asturias king took advantage
of Muslim infighting to move his capital south to Leon and the
County of Castile. Though not a Crusader-type state and content
to work with Muslim amirs in order to survive, its leaders began
to attract freemen as colonists with generous offers of agricultural
land and tax rebates. Warring with Muslims when it suited them,
Castilian leaders were not at this point fighting a holy war. Good
relations with the Ummayad Caliphate in Cordoba were maintained.
By 1034, Sancho the Great had incorporated Aragon, Sobrarbe, Barcelona,
as well as Asturian Leon and Castile. /PARGRAPH By 1000, Muslim
Spain was the most developed part of Europe. The countryside was
prosperous, and large numbers of Christians had converted to Islam.
The area contained the largest cities of Europe, which were connected
to the Levantine and far eastern trade routes. Basically, the
Muslims had occupied only the best parts of Spain. Leaving he
cold, damp mountains of the north to the Christians, the Islamic
states had emerged in the east coast, the south, as well as the arid,
high central mesta areas. In the Christian areas
of the north, eleventh-century society was similar to its French
counterpart. Mostly peasant populated, there was a small aristocracy
and several independent political units. The western Kingdom of
Leon/Castile and the Kingdom of Navarre were mostly small, with
simple government structures. At the beginning of the eleventh
century they were unable to stand against the Muslim states, and
hadn't the ideological inclination to do so. A somewhat civil
relation emerged between the two confessional groups, taking advantage
of the fact that the Iberian Muslims never maintained political
unity for long. Andalusia broke into a number of small units at
this time--the taifa states--and since the Christian
Spaniards were not yet ideologically inclined towards reconquest,
they would often work for different Muslim rulers as mercenaries.
This was before the era of the reform Papacy, so holy war as such
was not yet an element in Christian Iberian thinking. Still, working
as mercenaries or allies of various Muslim amirs, Christian leaders
levied protection money on the Muslim kings, and portions of al-Anadalus'
fantastic wealth began to go northward. The Muslim kings got these
funds by taxing the Muslim peasants. As this was quite questionable
in Islamic terms, it was only a matter of time before there would
be a backlash, and the peaceable relationship between Muslim and
Christian kings would end.
This came from two sides. First, the reform movement
of the Church began to seep into northern Spain. Though the Spanish church
in the beginning of the eleventh century was corrupt with a non-standardized
monastic system, the Cluny
monasteries were just across the French border. By
the 1030s, the kings of Navarre and Leon invited Cluniac monks to
reform the monasteries. Going beyond this, Ferdinand I of Leon
began appointing French monks as Spanish bishops from the 1050s.
These monks were not as impressed with Muslim grandeur as the
Spaniards had been, and the Church reformation gave the Spaniards
a reinvigorated Christian identity, highlighting confessional differences
from the Muslims, with whom they culturally shared much. Indeed,
Cluniac monks began clamoring for reconquest of Christian lands
as a holy duty.
Reaction also came from the Muslim side. With the large amounts
of gold going to Christian Spain from the south, monasteries were
built in larger numbers. More importantly, a societal change emerged--more
Spaniards could afford to be full-time professional soldiers.
Spanish military strength thus improved. In 1085, Alfonso VI of
Leon took Toledo. This evoked a Muslim backlash. Already opposing
Muslim rulers' taxing of peasants, Andalusian Muslims welcomed
a new dynasty to Iberia. The Almoravids originated in the Atlas
mountain areas of North Africa, and were rigidly puritanical in
their interpretation of Islam. They arrived to fight off the Christians
in 1086. At the Battle of Sagrajas they routed Alfonso's forces,
and created a new unified Muslim state in Andalusia. Alfonso still
held Toledo though, by establishing fortified towns. To attract
settlers, people were offered freedom or amnesties, and were granted
a house, some land, and local self-government. What emerged, then
was a wild west-like environment, the chief means of subsistence
being sheep-raising and inter-confessional warfare. Towns developed
civil militias for both defensive and offensive purposes, so that
raiding, animal husbandry, and trading were the natural occupations
of people living on the mesta. Tremendous social
mobility developed. The aristocracy was very small, and peasants
maintained their freedom. Initially the sole purpose was to win
booty and more land, but increasingly the combat on both sides
was surrounded by religious symbols. By the time of Gregory VII,
it was referred to as a holy campaign against infidels, and during
the Crusading period of Urban II and after, Spanish knights were
exempted from taking up the Cross for Jerusalem, as they were said
to be fighting their own Crusade in Iberia.
During the time of Alfonso VII (1126-1157), he saw that
mere raiding for booty was going so well as to facilitate conquest
of surrounding Muslim towns. In 1145, though, the Almoravids were overthrown
by another Islamic revivalist group from North Africa, the Almohads.
With an even more literalist interpretation of Islam, they would
have no truck with the encroaching Christians. In 1148 they arrived
in Spain and shored up the Muslim defenses, retaking towns lost
to the Christians. In 1157, Alfonso VII died fleeing in the Pyrenees
passes from Almohad forces. By this time, however, Christian control
had extended to the center of the Peninsula. The Reconquista then
stopped into the thirteenth century, mostly due to the lack of
Christian political unity. Upon Alfonso's death, the Castilian
lands were divided between Leon and Castile, while Portugal had
already emerged and Navarre and Aragon had split in 1134.
The beginning of the thirteenth century saw a Christian
Spanish refinement corresponding in its vigor to the Almoravids
and Almohads. Warrior-monks began to arrive from Palestine. There
were two chief orders, those of Santiago, and Calatrava. These
were knights who took all the monastic vows and one more--to fight
the Muslim infidels. In 1211, after the Calatravans had lost their
headquarters in one of the continuing back and forth raids between
them and the Almohads, Alfonso VIII of Castile (1158-1214) decided
to try an offensive. He met the Almohads in battle at Las Navas
de Tolosa, where the Muslims were defeated. As he died two years later,
Castile did not immediately exploit the victory. The Almohads
were so orthodox and unbending in their interpretation of Islam,
however, as to alienate Muslim urban elites. Thus, they were not
able to maintain political ascendancy in Muslim Andalusia, and were
eventually forced out. In the 1220s, then, Muslim Spain began to
politically fragment all over again, at the same time as Ferdinand III
of Castile was reaching majority, and James of Aragon was coming
into his own. Starting from 1229 and lasting to 1250, the majority
of Spain was retaken for the Christians. This was bracketed by
the 1235 fall of Cordoba, once the Ummayad capital, and the 1248
conquest of Seville by Ferdinand. Only the Muslim kingdom of Grenada
persisted in the southern coast of Spain. Leon/Castile took the
central regions, while Aragon took the east coast. The whole era
was characterized by sieges and negotiations with Muslim inhabitants
whereby surrender allowed indigenous Hispano-Arabs to keep their
property and religion. Thus, in the thirteenth century, the Christian
kingdoms in Spain had mostly Muslim-Jewish populations. to attract
Christians, kings had recourse to the same preferential policies
as were used from Alfonso on, including land and legal freedoms
better than feudal arrangements elsewhere. A Christian land rush
into Iberia emerged in the 1240s- 1260s, providing the demographic
backbone and elites for the expanding Christian states into the
fourteenth century.
