Talk:Middle Ages
Spain on maps. A geographic synopsis
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Thematic structure > History > Historical overview > Middle Ages
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The Middle Ages in the Peninsula is the historical period that goes from the battle of Guadalete (711) –other records situate its beginning in 540 when the new seat of the Visigothic kingdom is established in Toledo– up to 1492, the year of the conquest of Granada, the discovery of America, the first grammar of the language by Nebrija, and the expulsion of the Jews. It is debated however, whether the period led by the Catholic Monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand (1469-1517) can no longer be considered medieval but typical of the Modern Age, the next period. On the other hand, traditional historiography calls Reconquista to these eight hundred years, understood as a permanent struggle for the “recovery of Spain”. This idea was coined by the Mozarabs, who fled from the Islamised south of the Peninsula to the Christian lands of the north.
The battle of Guadalete, in which the last Visigothic king, Don Rodrigo, is defeated in an expedition of the Muslim leader Tariq, begins the fulmimant campaign that reaches the capital city of Toledo that same year. In successive journeys, along the Hispano-Roman road network, the different territories of the Hispano-Visigothic aristocracy or the episcopate were subjugated. Some great lords were maintained through pacts of submission, such as Count Teodomiro (Tudmir, in Murcia), or that of the family of Count Cassius who, Islamised as Banu Quasi, remained in the middle valley of the Ebro.
The speed of the conquest prevented an effective occupation of many territories. Pelayo, the Visigothic noble welcomed by the Cantabrian tribe of the Vadinienses, led a legendary resistance in the Picos de Europa, where the Battle of Covadonga (722) took place. The kingdom of Asturias will be the territorial reference for unsubjugated Christians, with successive capital cities in Cangas de Onís (eighth century) and Oviedo (ninth century). Covadonga is magnified by the early medieval Christian chronicles (and minimised by the Muslims) as the initial milestone of the Reconquista.
The Peninsula became an emirate (military and adminitrative territory) of the Umayyad Caliphate in Damascus, which renounced further expansion to the west (Al-Andalus) after being defeated by the Franks of Charles Martel in Poitiers (732).
The triumph of the rebellion of the Abbasids against the Umayyads (750) caused the flight of a young prince through North Africa to Córdoba, where he was proclaimed emir, but independent of Baghdad, the new capital city of the Abbasid Caliphate. It was Abd-al Rahman I, who inaugurated the dynasty of the Spanish-Muslim Umayyads in 756.
Meanwhile, between the eighth and ninth centuries, the Asturian kingdom extended east and west. New pockets of resistance emerged (the kingdom of Pamplona, counties of Aragon, Sobrarbe, Ribagorza…). Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Emperor since 800, interposed a Marca Hispánica (an area of feudatory regions) in front of the Muslims territory, in the southeast of the Pyrenees. At the end of the ninth century, these Catalan counties were freed from Frankish dependence: Pallars, Urgell, Ampurias, Gerona and Barcelona.
Co-authorship of the text in Spanish: María Sánchez Agustí, José Antonio Álvarez Castrillón, Mercedes de la Calle Carracedo, Daniel Galván Desvaux, Joaquín García Andrés, Isidoro González Gallego, Montserrat León Guerrero, Esther López Torres, Carlos Lozano Ruiz, Ignacio Martín Jiménez, Rosendo Martínez Rodríguez, Rafael de Miguel González. See the list of members engaged
Islamic Spain
Islamic Spain, which emerged when Abd-al Rahman III was proclaimed caliph, remained stable throughout the three centuries of the independent emirate of Baghdad (756-929) and the Caliphate of Cordoba (929-1031), both represented on the maps of the same name. The caliphate brought peninsular Islam to its zenith and slowed down the northern kingdoms. Its swan song was the rule of Almanzor (929-1002), the favourite of the caliph Hisham II, the terror of the Christians. Both maps show the kuras, or provinces, which in the border areas had a military character.
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The Muslim Presence in Spain (711-1492)
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In Christian Spain, when Ordoño II (914) transferred the court to León, the Asturian-Leonese kingdom was formed, soon to be only Leon. The county of Pamplona also became a kingdom. In the Pyrenees, the counties of Aragon, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza followed, and between these and the sea, the Catalan counties were consolidated, particularly Urgel and Barcelona (the Berenguer dynasty).
The death of Almanzor (1002) precipitated the implosion of the caliphate which, in contrast to the unifying Christian project of Sancho III el Mayor de Navarra, fragmented into independent kingdoms: the taifas. The most extensive were the ones on the border: Badajoz, Toledo and Zaragoza. The others were small but soon the ones of Sevilla and Valencia stood out and, along with them, those of Málaga, Granada and Almería, the future kingdom of Granada. Forced to pay high paria (annual payment) to the Christian Monarchs, and after the loss of Toledo (1085), they called on the help of North African empires.
When Sancho III el Mayor de Navarra (1035) died, he had left his two sons the counties of Castile and Aragon, transformed into kingdoms. In the west, Fernando I of Castile united his kingdom with the kingdom of Leon. His son Alfonso VI was the conqueror of Toledo (1085). In the east, Alfonso I of Aragon conquered Saragossa in 1118; and the marriage pact of Count Ramón Berenguer IV of Barcelona with the child Queen Petronila (1137), joined the Catalan counties with the emerging kingdom.
Conquered by the Christian Monarchs (12th and 13th centuries), the taifas were incorporated with their own characteristics, and their names resounded in the titles of the Christian Monarchs, which were also monarchs of the Algarve, Toledo, Badajoz, Murcia, Jaen, Valencia, Majorca and so on.
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Co-authorship of the text in Spanish: María Sánchez Agustí, José Antonio Álvarez Castrillón, Mercedes de la Calle Carracedo, Daniel Galván Desvaux, Joaquín García Andrés, Isidoro González Gallego, Montserrat León Guerrero, Esther López Torres, Carlos Lozano Ruiz, Ignacio Martín Jiménez, Rosendo Martínez Rodríguez, Rafael de Miguel González. See the list of members engaged
Christian Spain
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The trail of a Hispanic Islam, once the caliphate had disappeared, and although generating a rich and flourishing cultural and economic period, was impossible because of the irrepressible pressure of the Christian kingdoms. The taifa kings successively called on the help of two warlike fundamentalist movements that emerged in North Africa: the Almoravids (11th-12th centuries) and the Almohads (12th-13th centuries). Nevertheless, for almost three centuries, the two North African empires were a suprastructure, more military and less political, with which the Spanish-Muslim aristocracies coexisted. Great victories of the Almoravids (Sagrajas and Uclés) and Almohads (Alarcos) did not reverse the situation in the Peninsula.
When Alfonso I of Aragon, after conquering Saragossa, defeated the Almoravids in Cutanda Battle and when Alfonso VI of Castile withstood the onslaught against Toledo, it was predicted that the Christian configuration was going to be consolidated. The crucial test would come with the Almohad invasion. The Castilian King Alfonso VIII, with the help of the Portuguese, Navarrese and Aragonese, military orders and knights from all over Europe, was already capable of inflicting on Islam its most spectacular defeat, Las Navas de Tolosa (1212). In turn, Alfonso IX of Leon his son-in-low, and the only one who had not responded to the call for a crusade to Las Navas, seizes all of Extremadura. Hispanic Islam is definitively sentenced, except for a beleaguered Kingdom of Granada. The Kingdom of Leon, except for two brief periods (1035-1037 and 1065-1072) had constituted a single monarchy. Between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the division into two kingdoms would last from 1157 to 1230, when Fernando III (son of Alfonso IX and Berenguela of Castile) definitively united the two crowns of Castile and Leon, which resulted in an immediate expansion through the Guadalquivir valley to the Atlantic coasts and east to the Mediterranean coasts. In this territory it was going to collide with Aragon, where James I had been advancing south of the Ebro river along the coast, parallel to Fernando III, a territory under discussion due to the constant treaties of future limits, evidence of the secular planning of the Reconquista.
In addition to the Navas de Tolosa, another battle had marked an important turn in the Peninsular Middle Ages: that Muret, after which the Aragonese crown, held since 1137 by the Catalan dynasty of the Berenguer, renounced the north-Pyrenean territories (recognised in the Treaty of Corbeil of 1258, between James I of Aragón and Louis IX of France), and turned south to complete its peninsular expansion. Immediately after that, the Mediterranean expansion began.
James I, like Louis IX, organised a crusade, but failed. In 1282, after the Sicilian Vespers, Peter III of Aragon was crowned king of Sicily. In 1304 the Almogavars, called by the emperor of Byzantium,defeated the Turks in Asia Minor and seized Athens. In 1323, James II began the conquest of Sardinia. In 1352, the Catalan squadron defeated the Genoese in the Bosphorus. In 1442, Alfonso V conquered Naples.
The five kingdoms: Castile and Aragon have been definitively consolidated. Navarra, after its successful participation in the Battle of Las Navas, remains more in the rearguard. Portugal became a kingdom after the victory of Alfonso Enriquez in Ourique; its borders (recognised in the Treaty of Zamora) are the oldest in Europe. Granada, the fifth kingdom, survived as a trade link between Africa and the East. Castile had to face the North African invasion of the Benimernes in El Salado and Palmones battles and then focused on the opening of the Gibraltar Strait, with the conquests of Tarifa, Algeciras and Gibraltar. Later, under the rule of the Trastámara dynasty, enthroned after a civil war (1336-1339), they put greater pressure on the Nasrid borders and took Zahara (1407), Antequera (1410) and Archidona (1462).
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Repopulations
8th – 9th centuries With the advances to the South, it was necessary to populate the new territory. At first, some peasants, the foramontanos, came down from the North and occupied these empty lands and some monks (Mozarabs) also went up fleeing from the Muslims and built monasterys. It was the Asturian-Leonese presura and the sub-Pyrenean aprisio system. 10th – 11th centuries To legalise the occupations and encourage repopulation, the Monarchs promoted councils, through the granting of cartas pueblas, or municipal charter with privileges for those who populated an area. 12th – 13th centuries The North African invasions were answered by military orders, which obtained extensive territories in reward. 13th – 15th centuries The conquered cities suffered repartitions, handing over of houses and orchards as spoils to the participants in the campaign, and in turn the nobility received huge estates. |
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Pacts of territorial occupation and distribution of power (12th - 15th centuries)
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Co-authorship of the text in Spanish: María Sánchez Agustí, José Antonio Álvarez Castrillón, Mercedes de la Calle Carracedo, Daniel Galván Desvaux, Joaquín García Andrés, Isidoro González Gallego, Montserrat León Guerrero, Esther López Torres, Carlos Lozano Ruiz, Ignacio Martín Jiménez, Rosendo Martínez Rodríguez, Rafael de Miguel González. See the list of members engaged
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