1.
Roman province
–
In Ancient Rome, a province was the basic, and, until the Tetrarchy, largest territorial and administrative unit of the empires territorial possessions outside of Italy. The word province in modern English has its origins in the used by the Romans. Provinces were generally governed by politicians of senatorial rank, usually former consuls or former praetors and this exception was unique, but not contrary to Roman law, as Egypt was considered Augustus personal property, following the tradition of earlier, Hellenistic kings. The territory of a people who were defeated in war might be brought under various forms of treaty, the formal annexation of a territory created a province in the modern sense of an administrative unit geographically defined. Republican provinces were administered in one-year terms by the consuls and praetors who had held office the previous year, Rome started expanding beyond Italy during the First Punic War. The first permanent provinces to be annexed were Sicily in 241 BC, militarized expansionism kept increasing the number of these administrative provinces, until there were no longer enough qualified individuals to fill the posts. The terms of provincial governors often had to be extended for multiple years,241 BC – Sicilia taken over from the Carthaginians and annexed at the end of the First Punic War. 237 BC – Corsica et Sardinia, these two islands were taken over from the Carthaginians and annexed soon after the Mercenary War, in 238 BC and 237 BC respectively. 197 BC – Hispania Citerior, along the east coast of the,197 BC - Hispania Ulterior, along the southern coast of the, part of the territories taken over from the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War. 147 BC – Macedonia, mainland Greece and it was annexed after a rebellion by the Achaean League. 146 BC – Africa, modern day Tunisia and western Libya, home territory of Carthage and it was annexed following attacks on the allied Greek city of Massalia. 67 BC – Creta et Cyrenae, Cyrenaica was bequeathed to Rome in 78 BC, however, it was not organised as a province. 58 BC – Cilicia et Cyprus, Cilicia was created as a province in the sense of area of command in 102 BC in a campaign against piracy. The Romans controlled only a small area, in 74 BC Lycia and Pamphylia were added to the smal Roman possessions in Cilicia. Cilicia came fully under Roman control towards the end of the Third Mithridatic War - 73-63 BC, the province was reorganised by Pompey in 63 BC. Gallia Cisalpina was a province in the sense of an area of military command, during Romes expansion in Italy the Romans assigned some areas as provinces in the sense of areas of military command assigned to consuls or praetors due to risks of rebellions or invasions. This was applied to Liguria because there was a series of rebellions, Bruttium, in the early days of Roman presence in Gallia Cisalpina the issue was rebellion. Later the issue was risk of invasions by warlike peoples east of Italy, the city of Aquileia was founded to protect northern Italy form invasions
2.
Hispania
–
Hispania was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula. Under the Republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces, Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior, during the Principate, Hispania Ulterior was divided into two new provinces, Baetica and Lusitania, while Hispania Citerior was renamed Tarraconensis. Subsequently, the part of Tarraconensis was split off, first as Hispania Nova. The name, Hispania, was used in the period of Visigothic rule. The modern placenames Spain and Hispaniola are both derived from Hispania, one theory holds it to be of Punic derivation, from the Phoenician language of colonizing Carthage. Specifically, it may derive from a Punic cognate of Hebrew אי-שפניא meaning Island of the Hyrax or island of the hare or island of the rabbit. Others derive the word from Phoenician span, in the sense of hidden, and make it indicate a hidden, that is, Isidore of Sevilla considered Hispania derived from Hispalis. Occasionally Hispania was called Hesperia Ultima, the last western land in Greek, by Roman writers, another theory holds that the name derives from Ezpanna, the Basque word for border or edge, thus meaning the farthest area or place. The use of Latin Hispania, Castilian España, Catalan Espanya and French Espaigne, a document dated 1292 mentions the names of foreigners from Medieval Spain as Gracien dEspaigne. You are, Oh Spain, holy and always happy mother of princes and peoples and you, by right, are now the queen of all provinces, from whom the lights are given not only the sunset, but also the East. Navarre followed soon after in 1512, and Portugal in 1580, during this time, the concept of Spain was still unchanged. The King of Portugal would protest energetically when during a public act King Fernando talked about the Crown of Spain and it was after the independence of Portugal in 1640 when the concept of Spain started to shift and be applied to all the Peninsula except Portugal. Even so, Portugal would still complain when the terms Crown of Spain or Monarchy of Spain were still used in the 18th century with the Treaty of Utrecht. The Iberian peninsula has long inhabited, first by early hominids such as Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis. In the Paleolithic period, the Neanderthals entered Iberia and eventually took refuge from the migrations of modern humans. In the 40th millennium BC, during the Upper Paleolithic and the last ice age and these were nomadic hunter-gatherers originating on the steppes of Central Asia. When the last Ice Age reached its maximum extent, during the 30th millennium BC, in the millennia that followed, the Neanderthals became extinct and local modern human cultures thrived, producing pre-historic art such as that found in LArbreda Cave and in the Côa Valley. In the Mesolithic period, beginning in the 10th millennium BC and this was an interstadial deglaciation that lessened the harsh conditions of the Ice Age
3.
Iberian Peninsula
–
The Iberian Peninsula /aɪˈbɪəriən pəˈnɪnsjᵿlə/, also known as Iberia /aɪˈbɪəriə/, is located in the southwest corner of Europe. The peninsula is divided between Portugal and Spain, comprising most of their territory. With an area of approximately 582,000 km2, it is the second largest European peninsula, at that time, the name did not describe a single political entity or a distinct population of people. Strabos Iberia was delineated from Keltikē by the Pyrenees and included the land mass southwest of there. The ancient Greeks reached the Iberian Peninsula, of which they had heard from the Phoenicians, hecataeus of Miletus was the first known to use the term Iberia, which he wrote about circa 500 BC. Herodotus of Halicarnassus says of the Phocaeans that it was they who made the Greeks acquainted with. According to Strabo, prior historians used Iberia to mean the country side of the Ἶβηρος as far north as the river Rhône in France. Polybius respects that limit, but identifies Iberia as the Mediterranean side as far south as Gibraltar, elsewhere he says that Saguntum is on the seaward foot of the range of hills connecting Iberia and Celtiberia. Strabo refers to the Carretanians as people of the Iberian stock living in the Pyrenees, according to Charles Ebel, the ancient sources in both Latin and Greek use Hispania and Hiberia as synonyms. The confusion of the words was because of an overlapping in political, the Latin word Hiberia, similar to the Greek Iberia, literally translates to land of the Hiberians. This word was derived from the river Ebro, which the Romans called Hiberus, hiber was thus used as a term for peoples living near the river Ebro. The first mention in Roman literature was by the annalist poet Ennius in 200 BC. Virgil refers to the Ipacatos Hiberos in his Georgics, the Roman geographers and other prose writers from the time of the late Roman Republic called the entire peninsula Hispania. As they became interested in the former Carthaginian territories, the Romans began to use the names Hispania Citerior. At the time Hispania was made up of three Roman provinces, Hispania Baetica, Hispania Tarraconensis, and Lusitania, Strabo says that the Romans use Hispania and Iberia synonymously, distinguishing between the near northern and the far southern provinces. Whatever language may generally have been spoken on the peninsula soon gave way to Latin, except for that of the Vascones, the Iberian Peninsula has always been associated with the Ebro, Ibēros in ancient Greek and Ibērus or Hibērus in Latin. The association was so known it was hardly necessary to state, for example. Pliny goes so far as to assert that the Greeks had called the whole of Spain Hiberia because of the Hiberus River, the river appears in the Ebro Treaty of 226 BC between Rome and Carthage, setting the limit of Carthaginian interest at the Ebro. The fullest description of the treaty, stated in Appian, uses Ibērus, with reference to this border, Polybius states that the native name is Ibēr, apparently the original word, stripped of its Greek or Latin -os or -us termination
4.
Lusitania
–
Lusitania or Hispania Lusitana was an ancient Iberian Roman province including approximately all of modern Portugal south of the Douro river and part of modern Spain. It was named after the Lusitani or Lusitanian people and its capital was Emerita Augusta, and it was initially part of the Roman Republic province of Hispania Ulterior, before becoming a province of its own in the Roman Empire. Romans first came to the territory around the mid 2nd century BC, a war with Lusitanian tribes followed, from 155 to 139 BC. In 27 BC, the province was created, the etymology of the name of the Lusitani remains unclear. Luís de Camões epic Os Lusíadas, which portrays Lusus as the founder of Lusitania, extends these ideas, in his work, Geography, the classical geographer Strabo suggests a change had occurred in the use of the name Lusitanian. He mentions a group who had once been called Lusitanians living north of the Douro river but were called in his day Callacans. The Lusitani, who were Indo-European speakers, established themselves in the region in the 6th century BC, some modern authors consider them to be an indigenous people who were Celticized culturally and possibly also through intermarriage. The archeologist Scarlat Lambrino defended the position that the Lusitanians were a group of Celtic origin related to the Lusones. Some have claimed that both came from the Swiss mountains. Others argue that the points to the Lusitanians being a native Iberian tribe. In 179 BC, the praetor Lucius Postumius Albinus celebrated a triumph over the Lusitani, but in 155 BC, on the command of Punicus first and Cesarus after, here they were defeated by the praetor Lucius Mummius. From 152 BC onwards, the Roman Republic had difficulties in recruiting soldiers for the wars in Hispania, in 150 BC, Servius Sulpicius Galba organised a false armistice. Two years after, in 137 BC Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus led a campaign against the Lusitani. Its northern border was along the Douro river, while on its side its border passed through Salmantica. Felicitas Iulia Olisipo was a Roman law municipality) and 3 other towns had the old Latin status (Ebora, the other 37 were of stipendiarii class, among which Aeminium, Balsa, or Mirobriga. Other cities include Ossonoba, Cetobriga, Collippo or Arabriga, under Diocletian, Lusitania kept its borders and was ruled by a praeses, later by a consularis, finally, in 298 AD, it was united with the other provinces to form the Diocesis Hispaniarum. In the second book in the science fiction novels comprising the Enders Game series, titled Speaker for the Dead and it is explained in the book that it was named for the historical people and territory in Portugal, which the inhabitants are descended from
5.
Hispania Tarraconensis
–
Hispania Tarraconensis was one of three Roman provinces in Hispania. It encompassed much of the Mediterranean coast of modern Spain along with the central plateau, southern Spain, the region now called Andalusia, was the province of Hispania Baetica. On the Atlantic west lay the province of Lusitania, partially coincident with modern-day Portugal, the Phoenicians and Carthaginians colonised the Mediterranean coast in the 8th to 6th centuries BC. The Greeks later also established colonies along the coast, the Romans arrived in the 2nd century BC. The Imperial Roman province called Tarraconensis, supplanted Hispania Citerior, which had ruled by a consul under the late Republic. The Cantabrian Wars brought all of Iberia under Roman domination, within the Tarraconensis, the Cantabri on the northern coast of Iberia were the last people to be pacified. Tarraconensis was an Imperial province and separate from the two other Iberian provinces — Lusitania and the Senatorial province Baetica, corresponding to the part of Spain. Servius Sulpicius Galba, who served as Emperor briefly in 68–69, pliny the Elder served as procurator in Tarraconensis. Under Diocletian, in 293, Hispania Tarraconensis was divided in three provinces, Gallaecia, Carthaginensis and Tarraconensis. The invasion resulted in exploitation of metals, especially gold, tin. The alluvial gold mines at Las Medulas show that Roman engineers worked the deposits on a large scale using several aqueducts up to 30 miles long to tap water in the surrounding mountains. By running fast water streams on the rocks, they were able to extract large quantities of gold by hydraulic mining methods. When the gold had been exhausted, they followed the seams underground by tunnels using fire-setting to break up the much harder gold-bearing rocks. Pliny the Elder gives an account of the methods used in Hispania. The most popular deity in Hispania was Isis, followed by Magna Mater, the Carthaginian-Phoenician deities Melqart and Tanit-Caelestis were also popular. The Roman pantheon quickly absorbed native deities through identification, ba‘al Hammon was the chief god at Carthage and was also important in Hispania. The Egyptian gods Bes and Osiris had a following as well, exports from Tarraconensis included timber, cinnabar, gold, iron, tin, lead, pottery, marble, wine and olive oil. J. Drinkwater, A. Esmonde-Cleary, W. Harris, R. Knapp, S. Mitchell, S. Parker, C
6.
Visigoths
–
The Visigoths were the western branches of the nomadic tribes of Germanic peoples referred to collectively as the Goths. These tribes flourished and spread throughout the late Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, the Visigoths emerged from earlier Gothic groups who had invaded the Roman Empire beginning in 376 and had defeated the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Relations between the Romans and the Visigoths were variable, alternately warring with one another and making treaties when convenient, the Visigoths invaded Italy under Alaric I and sacked Rome in 410. The Visigoths first settled in southern Gaul as foederati of the Romans – a relationship established in 418, however, they soon fell out with their Roman hosts and established their own kingdom with its capital at Toulouse. They next extended their authority into Hispania at the expense of the Suebi, in 507, however, their rule in Gaul was ended by the Franks under Clovis I, who defeated them in the Battle of Vouillé. After that, the Visigoth kingdom was limited to Hispania, in or around 589, the Visigoths under Reccared I converted from Arianism to Nicene Christianity, gradually adopting the culture of their Hispano-Roman subjects. Their legal code, the Visigothic Code abolished the practice of applying different laws for Romans. Once legal distinctions were no longer being made between Romani and Gothi, they became known collectively as Hispani, in the century that followed, the region was dominated by the Councils of Toledo and the episcopacy. In 711 or 712, a force of invading African Moors defeated the Visigoths in the Battle of Guadalete and their king and many members of their governing elite were killed, and their kingdom rapidly collapsed. During their governance of the Kingdom of Hispania, the Visigoths built several churches that survive and they also left many artifacts, which have been discovered in increasing numbers by archaeologists in recent times. The Treasure of Guarrazar of votive crowns and crosses is the most spectacular and they founded the only new cities in western Europe from the fall of the Western half of the Roman Empire until the rise of the Carolingian dynasty. Many Visigothic names are still in use in modern Spanish and Portuguese, contemporaneous references to the Gothic tribes use the terms Vesi, Ostrogothi, Thervingi, and Greuthungi. Most scholars have concluded that the terms Vesi and Tervingi were both used to refer to one particular tribe, while the terms Ostrogothi and Greuthungi were used to refer to another. In addition, the Notitia Dignitatum equates the Vesi with the Tervingi in a reference to the years 388–391, the earliest sources for each of the four names are roughly contemporaneous. The first recorded reference to the Tervingi is in a eulogy of the emperor Maximian, delivered in or shortly after 291 and it says that the Tervingi, another division of the Goths, joined with the Taifali to attack the Vandals and Gepidae. The first known use of the term Ostrogoths is in a document dated September 392 from Milan and this would explain why the latter terms dropped out of use shortly after 400, when the Goths were displaced by the Hunnic invasions. Wolfram believes that the people Zosimus describes were those Tervingi who had remained behind after the Hunnic conquest, for the most part, all of the terms discriminating between different Gothic tribes gradually disappeared after they moved into the Roman Empire. The last indication that the Goths whose king reigned at Toulouse thought of themselves as Vesi is found in a panegyric on Avitus by Sidonius Apollinaris dated 1 January 456, most recent scholars have concluded that Visigothic group identity emerged only within the Roman Empire
7.
Spanish language
–
Spanish —also called Castilian —is a Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain, with hundreds of millions of native speakers around the world. It is usually considered the worlds second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese and it is one of the few languages to use inverted question and exclamation marks. Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Beginning in the early 16th century, Spanish was taken to the colonies of the Spanish Empire, most notably to the Americas, as well as territories in Africa, Oceania, around 75% of modern Spanish is derived from Latin. Greek has also contributed substantially to Spanish vocabulary, especially through Latin, Spanish vocabulary has been in contact from an early date with Arabic, having developed during the Al-Andalus era in the Iberian Peninsula. With around 8% of its vocabulary being Arabic in origin, this language is the second most important influence after Latin and it has also been influenced by Basque as well as by neighboring Ibero-Romance languages. It also adopted words from languages such as Gothic language from the Visigoths in which many Spanish names and surnames have a Visigothic origin. Spanish is one of the six languages of the United Nations. It is the language in the world by the number of people who speak it as a mother tongue, after Mandarin Chinese. It is estimated more than 437 million people speak Spanish as a native language. Spanish is the official or national language in Spain, Equatorial Guinea, speakers in the Americas total some 418 million. In the European Union, Spanish is the tongue of 8% of the population. Spanish is the most popular second language learned in the United States, in 2011 it was estimated by the American Community Survey that of the 55 million Hispanic United States residents who are five years of age and over,38 million speak Spanish at home. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the language of the whole Spanish State in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas. Article III reads as follows, El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado, las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas. Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State, the other Spanish languages as well shall be official in their respective Autonomous Communities. The Spanish Royal Academy, on the hand, currently uses the term español in its publications. Two etymologies for español have been suggested, the Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary derives the term from the Provençal word espaignol, and that in turn from the Medieval Latin word Hispaniolus, from—or pertaining to—Hispania
8.
Al-Andalus
–
Al-Andalus, also known as Muslim Spain or Islamic Iberia, was a medieval Muslim territory and cultural domain occupying at its peak most of what are today Spain and Portugal. At its greatest geographical extent in the century, southern France—Septimania—was briefly under its control. Rule under these kingdoms led to a rise in cultural exchange, a number of achievements that advanced Islamic and Western science came from al-Andalus including major advances in trigonometry, astronomy, surgery, pharmacology, and other fields. Al-Andalus became an educational center for Europe and the lands around the Mediterranean Sea as well as a conduit for culture. For much of its history, al-Andalus existed in conflict with Christian kingdoms to the north, after the fall of the Umayyad caliphate, al-Andalus was fragmented into a number of minor states and principalities. Attacks from the Christians intensified, led by the Castilians under Alfonso VI, the Almoravid empire intervened and repelled the Christian attacks on the region, deposing the weak Andalusi Muslim princes and included al-Andalus under direct Berber rule. In the next century and a half, al-Andalus became a province of the Berber Muslim empires of the Almoravids and Almohads, ultimately, the Christian kingdoms in the north of the Iberian Peninsula overpowered the Muslim states to the south. In 1085, Alfonso VI captured Toledo, starting a gradual decline of Muslim power, with the fall of Córdoba in 1236, most of the south quickly fell under Christian rule and the Emirate of Granada became a tributary state of the Kingdom of Castile two years later. In 1249, the Portuguese Reconquista culminated with the conquest of the Algarve by Afonso III, finally, on January 2,1492, Emir Muhammad XII surrendered the Emirate of Granada to Queen Isabella I of Castile, completing the Christian Reconquista of the peninsula. The toponym al-Andalus is first attested to by inscriptions on coins minted by the new Muslim government in Iberia, the etymology of the name has traditionally been derived from the name of the Vandals. A number of proposals since the 1980s have contested this, Vallvé proposed a corruption of the name Atlantis, halm derives the name from a Gothic term *landahlauts. Bossong suggests derivation from a pre-Roman substrate and they crossed the Pyrenees and occupied Visigothic Septimania in southern France. Most of the Iberian peninsula became part of the expanding Umayyad Empire and it was organized as a province subordinate to Ifriqiya, so, for the first few decades, the governors of al-Andalus were appointed by the emir of Kairouan, rather than the Caliph in Damascus. Visigothic lords who agreed to recognize Muslim suzerainty were allowed to retain their fiefs, resistant Visigoths took refuge in the Cantabrian highlands, where they carved out a rump state, the Kingdom of Asturias. In the 720s, the al-Andalus governors launched several raids into Aquitaine. At the Battle of Poitiers in 732, the al-Andalus raiding army was defeated by Charles Martel, in 734, the Andalusi launched raids to the east, capturing Avignon and Arles and overran much of Provence. In 737, they climbed up the Rhône valley, reached as far as Burgundy, Charles Martel of the Franks, with the assistance of Liutprand of the Lombards, invaded Burgundy and Provence and expelled the raiders by 739. Relations between Arabs and Berbers in al-Andalus had been tense in the years after the conquest
9.
Moors
–
Moors are not a distinct or self-defined people, and mainstream scholars observed in 1911 that The term Moors has no real ethnological value. Medieval and early modern Europeans variously applied the name to Arabs, Berber North Africans and Muslim Europeans. The term has also used in Europe in a broader, somewhat derogatory sense to refer to Muslims in general, especially those of Arab or Berber descent. During the colonial era, the Portuguese introduced the names Ceylon Moors and Indian Moors in Sri Lanka, in 711, troops mostly formed by Moors from North Africa led the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. The Iberian peninsula then came to be known in classical Arabic as Al-Andalus, in 827, the Moors occupied Mazara on Sicily, developing it as a port. They eventually consolidated the rest of the island and some of southern Italy, in 1224 the Muslims were expelled from Sicily to the settlement of Lucera, which was destroyed by European Christians in 1300. The fall of Granada in 1492 marked the end of Muslim rule in Iberia, the Berber tribes of the region were noted in Classical literature as Mauri, which was subsequently rendered as Moors in English and in related variations in other European languages. Mauri is recorded as the name by Strabo in the early 1st century. This appellation was also adopted into Latin, whereas the Greek name for the tribe was Maurusii, in medieval Romance languages, variations of the Latin word for the Moors developed different applications and connotations. During the context of the Crusades and the Reconquista, the term Moors included the suggestion of infidels. Apart from these associations and context, Moor and Moorish designate a specific ethnic group speaking Hassaniya Arabic. They inhabit Mauritania and parts of Algeria, Western Sahara, Tunisia, Morocco, Niger, in Niger and Mali, these peoples are also known as the Azawagh Arabs, after the Azawagh region of the Sahara. Some authors have pointed out that in modern colloquial Spanish use of the term moro is derogatory for Moroccans in particular, however, this designation has gained more acceptance in the south. In the Philippines, a former Spanish colony, many modern Filipinos call the large, local Muslim minority concentrated in Mindanao, the word is a catch-all term, as Moro may come from several distinct ethno-linguistic groups such as the Maranao people. The term was introduced by Spanish colonisers, and has since been appropriated by Filipino Muslims as an endonym, moreno can mean dark-skinned in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and the Philippines. Also in Spanish, morapio is a name for wine, especially that which has not been baptized or mixed with water. Among Spanish speakers, moro came to have a broader meaning, Moro refers to all things dark, as in Moor, moreno, etc. It was also used as a nickname, for instance, the Milanese Duke Ludovico Sforza was called Il Moro because of his dark complexion, in Portugal, mouro may refer to supernatural beings known as enchanted moura, where moor implies alien and non-Christian
10.
Andalusia
–
Andalusia is an autonomous community in southern Spain. It is the most populated and the second largest in area of the communities in the country. The Andalusian autonomous community is recognised as historical nationality. The territory is divided into eight provinces, Almería, Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga and its capital is the city of Seville. Andalusia is the only European region with both Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines, the small British overseas territory of Gibraltar shares a three-quarter-mile land border with the Andalusian province of Cádiz at the eastern end of the Strait of Gibraltar. The main mountain ranges of Andalusia are the Sierra Morena and the Baetic System, consisting of the Subbaetic and Penibaetic Mountains, in the north, the Sierra Morena separates Andalusia from the plains of Extremadura and Castile–La Mancha on Spains Meseta Central. To the south the geographic subregion of Upper Andalusia lies mostly within the Baetic System, the name Andalusia is derived from the Arabic word Al-Andalus. Including an intense relationship with Naples, Italy, Andalusia has been a traditionally agricultural region, compared to the rest of Spain and the rest of Europe. However, the growth of the community especially in the sectors of industry and services was above average in Spain, the region has, however, a rich culture and a strong cultural identity. Many cultural phenomena that are seen internationally as distinctively Spanish are largely or entirely Andalusian in origin and these include flamenco and, to a lesser extent, bullfighting and Hispano-Moorish architectural styles. Andalusias hinterland is the hottest area of Europe, with cities like Córdoba, Late evening temperatures can sometimes stay around 35 °C until close to midnight, with daytime highs of over 40 °C common. Seville also has the highest average temperature in mainland Spain and mainland Europe. Its present form is derived from the Arabic name for Muslim Iberia. However, the etymology of the name Al-Andalus is disputed, the Spanish place name Andalucía was introduced into the Spanish languages in the 13th century under the form el Andalucía. This was a Castilianization of Al-Andalusiya, the form of the Arabic language al-Andalus. The etymology of al-Andalus is itself somewhat debated, but in fact it entered the Arabic language before this came under Muslim rule. Like the Arabic term al-Andalus, in historical contexts the Spanish term Andalucía or the English term Andalusia do not necessarily refer to the territory designated by these terms today. To designate the territories the Christians had regained by that time in the Guadalquivir valley and in the Kingdoms of Granada, in a document from 1253, Alfonso X styled himself Rey de Castilla, León y de toda Andalucía
