The Arabs ruled Spainyears, far-reaching.
Spain and Portugal, two European countries that have had a time in their history like no other. For more than 700 years, the Iberian Peninsula was part of the cultural sphere of West Asia and North Africa, as it was occupied by Arabs and Berbers.
During that time, how did Iberia break away from Europe and integrate into the culture of West Asia and North Africa? What was it that made Iberia what it is now Spain and Portugal?
The answer to all this lies in the long history of the fall of the Visigothic kingdom of the Arab Empire. In 218 BC, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by the Roman Republic and became its Spanish province.
Around the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Germanic barbarians such as the Suebi and Vandals and their allies, the Alans, entered the Iberian Peninsula and established their rule. Soon after, however, another Germanic barbarian Visigoths invaded Iberia again and managed to defeat the Vandals and Alans.
At the end of the 6th century, the Visigoths defeated the Suebi and absorbed the remnants of these three groups to establish their own Visigothic kingdom. This was how Iberia emerged from Europe and eventually became what it is now Spain and Portugal.
In the 7th century AD, the Arab Empire rose rapidly in the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia and began to expand outward. In 709 AD, after decades of war, the Arabs succeeded in conquering the Maghreb region, a northwestern African territory of Eastern Rome across the sea from Iberia.
However, at that time Iberia was still under the rule of the Visigothic kingdom, but the Visigoths did not integrate with the natives and made up only 1 to 2% of the total local population.
Despite this, the Visigothic kingdom fell into civil strife around 710 AD due to the sudden death of the Visigothic king Vitiza and the acquisition of the throne by a duke named Roderick, but many Visigothic princes accused him of killing Vitiza and strongly opposed him becoming king.
This civil strife gave the Arabs an opportunity.
In 711 BC, Tariq ibn Ziyad, a Berber from North Africa and an Arab governor appointed by the Arab Empire in Tangier, led an army of 7,000 to attack the Iberian Peninsula across the sea.
Shortly after the landing, Tariq's army encountered the Visigothic army led by Roderick in Guadalet, in the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula. However, the battle did not go according to the plans of the Visigothic princes.
Because at that time, a large number of Visigothic princes hoped to use the power of the Arabs to kill Roderick and sit on the mountain to watch the tiger fight. As a result, the Arab army was victorious, and Roderick and many Visigothic nobles were killed in battle.
The battle marked the foothold of the Arab Empire on the Iberian Peninsula. In the following months, the Arab Empire sent another 1With 80,000 reinforcements, they managed to capture Toledo, the capital of the Visigothic kingdom in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula.
Soon after, the Arab armies occupied almost two-thirds of the Iberian Peninsula.
In 714, the Arab Empire conquered Iberia and began a new offensive in the north, capturing the Basque Country and Catalonia, and for a time conquering places such as present-day Gijón.
The whole of Iberia, with the exception of the Pyrenees in the northernmost, fell into Arab hands. Most of the Visigothic princes were exterminated, and a few were subservient to the Arabs.
Soon after, the Arabs established the province of Al-Andalus, with its capital in Córdoba in present-day southern Spain. A large number of Arabs and Berbers from North Africa also migrated there.
Arab armies broke through the Pyrenees and moved further north, capturing the Aquitaine region in present-day southwestern France. Some Arabic sources even record that their plan was to start from Iberia and sweep across the continent, eventually capturing Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Romans.
However, the European nobility of Aquitaine, after being defeated by the Arabs, sent a request for relief to the Frankish kingdom, the strongest in Europe at the time. In 732, the Arab army was defeated at the Battle of Poitiers by the Frankish leader Charles Matte.
The campaign marked the end of Arab expansion in Europe, and their plans failed to materialize.
The Berbers of the Iberian Peninsula rebelled in 740 AD, a reaction to the failed expansion of the Arab Empire in Al-Andalus after the Battle of Poitiers.
Although the Arabs were dominant in the early years of the conquest, the number of Berbers among the subjects who moved to Iberia far outnumbered the Arabs. They fought the Europeans on the front lines in difficult conditions, and discontent built up to a level that eventually led to a rebellion.
In order to quell the rebellion, the Arab Empire brought in troops from Syria and other places, but after suppressing the rebellion, the new army came into conflict with the army that had initially entered Iberia and fought for about a year.
Although the new armies eventually gained the upper hand, they no longer valued the old system of rule and began to have a great deal of autonomy, leading to the loosening of the Arab Empire's rule in Iberia.
The sphere of influence of the Kingdom of Asturias gradually expanded, and the remnants of the Visigothic nobility took the opportunity to break away from Arab rule, establish their own kingdom, and begin to fight back against the Arabs.
In 759 AD, the Frankish kingdom succeeded in seizing the territory occupied by the Arabs in present-day southwestern France. However, during this period, significant changes also took place within the Arab Empire.
In 747 AD, Abu Abbas, with the support of Abu Muslim, successfully rebelled and overthrew the Umayyad dynasty three years later and established the Abbasid dynasty.
Despite the fact that the Umayyad royal family was almost **, Prince Abdurrahman managed to escape to North Africa and hid there for 4 years. In 755 AD, he successfully crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to the coastal area of present-day Spain.
Abdurrahman launched a large-scale conquest campaign in Iberia, quickly capturing Malaga and Seville, and encircling Córdoba, the capital of Al-Andalus.
Faced with this situation, the Arab Governor's governor in Córdoba, Fihri, showed great calmness and quickly organized a strong defensive line to resist. However, Abdulrahman's army was exhausted after continuous fighting, and there were problems with food and grass**, which caused a large number of soldiers to go hungry.
Under these circumstances, Fihri decided to take advantage of this opportunity to set up a series of feasts in front of the battle to lure the enemy soldiers to surrender. However, Abdulrahman managed to stabilize his army and eventually defeated Fihri a few months later and captured Córdoba.
Subsequently, he proclaimed himself the emir of Córdoba and established the Emirate of Córdoba.
The territory of the post-Umayyad dynasty was gradually consolidated over the next hundred years, especially in the Iberian Peninsula. However, rebellions broke out in other parts of Arabia, leaving the Abbasids in chaos and no longer a threat to Córdoba.
Thus, in 929 AD, the emir of Córdoba no longer submitted to the Abbasid monarchs, but announced the re-establishment of the post-Umayyad dynasty, a period known as the post-Umayyad era.
During this period, the post-Umayyad dynasty made remarkable achievements in Al-Andalus, the Iberian region under Arab rule. At that time, an extensive agricultural irrigation system was established in the region, which made the level of agriculture one of the leading in Europe.
At the same time, the post-Umayyad dynasty also carried out regular exchanges with other Islamic regions and European countries, which promoted the overall economic development. Its capital, Córdoba, had a rapidly growing population, soon reaching 500,000 people, making it the largest city in Europe, surpassing even Constantinople under Eastern Roman rule.
During the post-Umayyad period, several universities were opened in Córdoba, which attracted scholars from many neighboring countries. The vast amount of knowledge accumulated during this period later gave rise to institutions such as the Toledo Translation Institute after the Spanish occupation of the region, which translated a large number of Arabic philosophical and scientific works into European languages, and greatly promoted the development of European society.
A large number of books from the post-Umayyad dynasty also made their way to Italy, exerting considerable influence on the European Renaissance that followed. However, in 976, the post-Umayyad monarch Hakam II died and his 10-year-old son Hisham II succeeded to the throne, but the power of the post-Umayyad dynasty was soon taken over by the vizier (vizier) Almansol.
However, there were still many forces in the post-Umayyad dynasty that opposed Almansol, and in order to consolidate his power, Almansol vigorously supported the Berber community that supported him at that time, but this exacerbated the contradictions between different factions within the dynasty.
After Armansol's death, his two sons succeeded him in power, which sparked a post-Umayyad civil war. In 1008 AD, Almansol's son Sancchiero forced the puppet monarch Hisham II to make himself crown prince and prepare to formally take over the Later Umayyad dynasty, but this angered the forces still loyal to the Later Umayyad dynasty, leading them to mutiny in 1009 AD.
As a result, the Later Umayyad dynasty fell into the chaos of warlord division and finally officially fell to an end in 1031 AD. During this chaotic period, the religious power of northern Iberia began to rise, and the aforementioned kingdoms of Asturias, which had been suppressed by the post-Umayyad dynasty, merged with the native ethnic groups of Spain and Portugal, and evolved into the Navarre, León, Portuguese, Castilian, Aragon, and Barcelona regimes.
They quickly reversed the defensive and launched a campaign against the remnants of the post-Umayyad warlords, whose "Reconquista" began to bear substantial results.
In 1086 AD, some remnants of the post-Umayyad warlords invited the Berber Murabit dynasty of Morocco in North Africa to come to their aid. The army of Mulabit, having defeated Castile and thwarted its momentum, saw the weakness of the remnants of the post-Umayyad warlords.
In the years that followed, the Murabit dynasty pacified the remnants of the Later Umayyad one by one and became the new rulers of southern Iberia. For more than two hundred years, southern Iberia was under Berber control.
However, during this period, the Berber dynasty underwent two dynastic changes and gradually declined in power. In 1236, Córdoba, the long-standing center of Islamic influence in Iberia, was captured by the combined forces of Castile and León.
In 1249, the Portuguese conquered the southernmost region of the Algarve. The remaining Berber forces retreated to the Granada region in southern Iberia, forming the Emirate of Granada.
In 1492, the rule of the Emirate of Granada came to an end with the surrender of Mehmed XII, marking a decisive victory for the Reconquista in Spain and Portugal.
Although the Emirate of Granada held out for more than 200 years after the capture of Córdoba, its demise was sealed when they began to submit to Castile.
In 1469, the marriage of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon laid the foundations of Spain. After that, Spain launched a final offensive against the Emirate of Granada, which emerged victorious in 1492.
The surrender of Alhambra bears witness to the historic moment when Mehmed XII and his family members surrendered to the enemy. In the decades that followed, large numbers of Muslims, such as Berbers and Arabs, who had originally inhabited the Iberian Peninsula, were forced to flee or convert.
After 1526 AD, the Islamic power of the Iberian Peninsula disappeared completely, and the influence of the Arabs and Berbers ended. Modern research shows that 4 to 10 percent of the paternal genes of the population of the Iberian Peninsula come from North Africa, which may be the only legacy left by the centuries of Islamic domination of the Iberian Peninsula.