The Reconquista or the reconquest of al-Andalus was the successful series of military campaigns that European Christian kingdoms waged against the Muslim kingdoms following the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Umayyad Caliphate. The beginning of the Reconquista is traditionally dated to the Battle of Covadonga, in which an Asturian army achieved the first Christian victory over the forces of the Umayyad Caliphate since the beginning of the military invasion. Its culmination came in 1492 with the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs.
Detail of the Cantiga #63 (13th century), which deals with a late 10th-century battle in San Esteban de Gormaz involving the troops of Count García and Almanzor.
One of the arguments challenging the concept of Reconquista is that for the majority of the 781 years of Islamic rule in Iberia, Muslims and Christians coexisted and were not at war with each other.
Saint James the Great depicted as Saint James the Moor-slayer. Legend of the Reconquista
20th century ceramic depiction of the conquest of Toledo by Alfonso VI, at the Plaza de España
The term Moor is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim populations of the Maghreb, al-Andalus, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a single, distinct or self-defined people. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica observed that the term had "no real ethnological value." Europeans of the Middle Ages and the early modern period variously applied the name to Arabs, Berbers, and Muslim Europeans.
Castillian ambassadors attempting to convince Moorish Almohad king Abu Hafs Umar al-Murtada to join their alliance (contemporary depiction from the Cantigas de Santa María)
Christian and Moor playing chess, from The Book of Games of Alfonso X, c. 1285
Moros y Cristianos festival in Oliva.
The Great Mosque of Kairouan was founded by the Arab general Uqba ibn Nafi in 670 during the Islamic conquest, to provide a place of worship for recently converted or immigrating Muslims.
