AL-ANDALUS

The Moors were not a single tribe or people, but a term that the Greeks and Romans applied to the peoples of northwestern Africa. In the 7th century CE, this region was conquered from the Byzantine Empire by Muslim armies advancing west from Egypt. The local peoples soon converted to Islam themselves. In 711 CE, a Muslim army made up largely of North African Moors crossed into Spain and quickly conquered most of it.

In the centuries that followed, Muslim or Moorish Spain became one of the great centers of Islamic civilization. Cordoba in Spain was ranked alongside Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo as centers of art, philosophy, and science. Moorish Spain was also one of the main paths by which Islamic ideas, and Arabic translations of ancient Greek ideas, influenced medieval civilization in Europe.

Gradually, however, Moorish Spain - or al-Andalus, as they called it - became politically weak and divided. The Christian kingdoms that had arisen in northern Spain following the incomplete Muslim conquest exploited these political and resulting military weaknesses, and gradually pushed back the borders of the fragmented Muslim states in Spain, a process that Christian Spaniards came to call the reconquista, "reconquest." At last, in 1492, the last independent Muslim state in Spain, Grenada, fell to Christian Spanish armies. The age of Moorish Spain was over.

The following discussion traces the mixture of pe

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ks (from which comes the name France). The Frankish kings had gradually become purely symbolic figures; the kingdom was run by a sort of prime minister called the Mayor of the Palace, whose name at this time was Charles. He raised an army and defeated the Muslim raiders near the city of Tours. The Battle of Tours has gone down as one of the great decisive battles of history, that saved Western Europe from being conquered by Muslims. In fact the Moorish army seems to have been intent on raiding, displaying its strength and bringing back plunder, not on conquest. However, if they had defeated Charles and the Franks, further raids might have followed, and perhaps eventual conquest. As it was, Charles came to be known as Charles Martel, "Charles the Hammer." His son became king of the Franks, and his grandson was the emperor Charlemagne. In 777, Charlemagne himself led a raid in the other direction, into Moorish Spain. This raid was in no sense a Christian crusade against Muslims - in fact, Charlemagne was an ally of the Caliph in Damascus, who was happy to see the Emir of Spain cut down to size. Charlemagne's raid was not very successful, and on the way back part of his army was ambushed by (Christian) Basques at Ron

Category: History - A