Al-Andalus was the name Muslims gave to the lands of the Iberian peninsula under their rule. Its extent changed greatly over time: almost the whole peninsula in the early eighth century, only the small kingdom of Granada at the end of the fifteenth. Its legacy is everywhere in today's Spain, especially in Andalusia, which bears its name.
Conquest and emirate
In 711 the Berber general Tariq ibn Ziyad landed near the rock that took his name, Jabal Tariq, Gibraltar, and defeated the Visigothic king Roderic. Within a few years the Arab and Berber armies reached the Pyrenees, stopped only in France in 732. In 756 Abd al-Rahman I, the sole survivor of the Umayyad dynasty massacred in Damascus by the Abbasids, founded an independent emirate in Córdoba.
The caliphate
In 929 Abd al-Rahman III proclaimed himself caliph, formally breaking with Baghdad. The Caliphate of Córdoba was the period of greatest splendour: Córdoba was perhaps the largest and most learned city in western Europe, with libraries, baths, markets and its great mosque, the Mezquita. At the end of the century power passed to the chamberlain Almanzor, who sacked Santiago de Compostela in 997. After his death the caliphate disintegrated and was abolished in 1031.
Taifas, Almoravids and Almohads
Al-Andalus split into some thirty small kingdoms, the taifas, rich and refined but militarily weak, which often paid tribute to the Christian kings. After the fall of Toledo in 1085 the taifa kings called in the Almoravids, Berbers from Morocco, who reunified the territory; in the twelfth century they were replaced by the Almohads, who made Seville their capital and built the Giralda there. The Almohad defeat at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 opened the way to rapid Christian advance (see the Reconquista).
The kingdom of Granada
From 1238 the Nasrid dynasty ruled the last Muslim kingdom of the peninsula, with its capital at Granada, paying tribute to Castile. Under the Nasrids the Alhambra was built, a masterpiece of Islamic art. On 2 January 1492 the last sultan, Boabdil, surrendered the city to the Catholic Monarchs.
A civilisation of exchange
Al-Andalus was not a homogeneous world: Arabs, Berbers, muladíes (Hispanic converts to Islam), Arabic-speaking Christians (Mozarabs) and Jews lived side by side. Their coexistence, often idealised, alternated tolerance and persecution, but produced an extraordinary intellectual life: the philosopher Averroes and the Jewish physician and philosopher Maimonides were both from Córdoba. Through al-Andalus and the translators of Toledo, Christian Europe rediscovered Aristotle and Greek science, Arabic mathematics and astronomy.
The Arabs introduced or spread irrigation with waterwheels and canals, and crops such as rice, citrus fruit, sugar cane, cotton and saffron. Spanish keeps thousands of words of Arabic origin, often recognisable by the article al-: aceite (oil), azúcar (sugar), almohada (pillow), alcalde (mayor), ojalá (hopefully, from the invocation "if God wills"). See the Spanish language.
What to see
- The Mezquita of Córdoba and the palace city of Medina Azahara, both UNESCO sites.
- The Alhambra and Generalife in Granada, with the Albaicín quarter.
- The Giralda and the Real Alcázar of Seville, the latter largely Mudéjar work for Christian kings (see Mudéjar art).
- The Aljafería in Zaragoza, palace of the taifa kings.
- The Alcazabas of Málaga and Almería, the Cristo de la Luz mosque in Toledo, and the Arab baths of Jaén, Ronda and Palma.
The last Muslim communities that remained after 1492, the Moriscos, forced to convert, were expelled from Spain between 1609 and 1614.