(This Article used by permission of "History of Jihad.Com.")
The aggressive delusion amongst the Muslims that the lands which they overrun once, always remain Muslim
There is an aggressive delusion amongst the Muslims that the lands which they overrun once, always remain Muslim lands. While the Muslims have a birthright to invade any non-Muslim land on the pretext of converting the non-Muslim population to Islam, the victims of the Muslim invasion have no right to eject the Muslims! They have to meekly subject to the will of the Muslims, who invoke the name of a fantasy they called allah.
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Pelayo – the first Reconquistador
After the Battle of Guadalete river in 711, the Moors had conquered most of Southern and Central Iberia within five years. The reconquest began almost immediately in 718 with the defeat of the Muslim army at the battle of Alcama by the Visigoth chieftain Pelayo who was one of the few survivors of the battle of the Guadalete river.
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The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem was an example of a land occupied by the Muslim invaders that was liberated by the Crusaders and was again re-occupied by the Barbarian Muslims
If the non-Muslims ever regain the land, the Muslims term it an "occupation" and are called upon to wage an everlasting battle to subjugate the non-Muslims once again, till they submit to the rule of Islam and the lands once again are a part of Dar-ul-Islam (land of Islam).
The most glaring example of such re-imposition of a Muslim occupation on lands liberated by Christian forces, is that of the kingdom of Jerusalem, that was set-up by the Crusades after they liberated the land from the stranglehold of the Muslims in the 11th century.
The Muslims had earlier occupied the Middle East in the 7th century, subjugating the local Christian population and forcibly converting it to Islam. The Muslim adventurer, Saladin, re-occupied it in the 13th century, returning Jerusalem to Muslim barbarism once again
Israel is another such example of a land that was occupied by the Muslim that has now been liberated by the Jewish people.
Israel is like a fishbone stuck in the Arab throat and howsoever hard the Arabs try they have not been able to eject Israel. This fishbone Israel, makes the Arabs and Muslim breathless and they have been seething with impotent rage to regain the ancient land of the Jewish people which the Muslims want to devour once again thru the Intifada and the Right to Return
That the Muslims can never reconcile to any land being liberated from their tyranny is seen today in the cannibalistic instincts they display to devour the state of Israel. The Muslims have an uncanny ability to multiply their ranks through dog-like breeding, where one Muslim male can have four wives. And he is not limited to having four wives in his lifetime, he can have four at one point in time. He can divorce one and get one more added to his harem to beget innumerable offspring.
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Queen Isabelle and King Ferdinand lead the Reconqusitadors towards Granada. The Spanish Reconquista, in the Middle Ages, was the most successful example of an European answer to Muslim expansionism.
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The lecherous pedophile prophet of Islam Mohammed-ibn-abdallah had 16 wives. And the Muslim sultans over the ages have stuffed their harems with thousands of wives from the victims of the conquered populations. The sole purpose was to humiliate the defeated enemy, satisfy Muslim lust and procreate endless children who were brought up as Muslims – to add to the number of blood-thirsty murderers.
With these baby creating factories not only did the Muslims breed like rats, but they also treated their wives and concubines (Muslim ladies) worse than cattle. Till today, the Muslims look upon a wife as only a devise given by some allah to beget children, and more the merrier. This why Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world
The lecherous mass-murderer prophet of Islam, has said that no abortion or use of contraceptives is allowed to regulate the growth of population. So the Muslims keep multiplying like mosquitoes and one hundred Muslims turn into one thousand in just one decade. With such monstrous fertility rates, they can inundate any land with their blood-thirsty progeny in no time and then say that the land is a Muslim majority land.
This strategy is seen in action today, when that tricky Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), the President of the Palestinian gang wants the teeming multiplied population of Arab Muslims to inundate Israel and reduce the Jewish population to a minority so that the State of Israel can be destroyed. This is what the Muslims, whose instincts are at an animal level want to do, so they can re-occupy the ancestral homeland which was liberated by the Jewish people in 1948.
Why Osama Bin Laden wants Muslims to re-occupy Al Andalus (Spain)
This is same mentality why that bearded satan, Osama Bin Laden wants Muslims to re-occupy Al Andalus (Spain). Spain is one example where the Muslims were able to sink their claws in for eight hundred years before they were thrown out by the heroic fighters of the Spanish re-conquista. The last sigh of the Moriscos (Moors) still makes the Muslim aggressors breathless, and they pine for the re-occupation of Spain.
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A Spanish Reconquistador.
Christian European forces battled incessantly for eight hundred years and eventually liberated the entire Iberian Peninsula, permanently from Muslim tyranny.
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The Spanish Reconquista, in the Middle Ages, was the most successful example of an European answer to Muslim expansionism. Christian European forces battled incessantly for eight hundred years and eventually liberated the entire Iberian Peninsula, permanently from Muslim tyranny. The origins of the movement, however, were exceedingly modest.
After the Battle of Guadalete river in 711, the Moors had conquered most of Southern and Central Iberia within five years. The reconquest began almost immediately in 718 with the defeat of the Muslim army at the battle of Alcama by the Visigoth chieftain Pelayo who was one of the few survivors of the battle of the Guadalete river.
Pelayo refused to accept Islamic overlordship of his homeland. He escaped capture at the battle of Guadalete, where he was a member of the Visigothic King Rodrigo’s bodyguard, and returned to his native Asturias in the northern part of Spain. He soon became the leader of a rebellion against Munuza, the Moorish governor of the area. He was captured in 717 and imprisoned by the Moors, but soon escaped and returned to Asturias, where he defeated Munuza and established the Kingdom of Asturias in 718, with its capital at Cangas de Onis.
In accordance with Visigothic custom, he was elected as his nation’s first king by a vote of his countrymen. For a few years after that, Pelayo’s kingdom was always under the threat of extinction, as he was facing attacks from Muslim forces much stronger than his own.
It wasn’t until 722 that his kingdom was secured, when a powerful Muslim force sent to conquer Asturias once and for all was defeated by Pelayo at the Battle of Covadonga. Today, this is regarded as the first Christian victory of the Reconquista. The Muslims, ungracious in their defeat,
as usual, described Pelayo and his men as "thirty wild donkeys" in their chronicles. But this itself tells a story. Pelayo, with a small band of brave warriors had tamed the Muslims. Pelayo’s was a story of bravery matching that of King Arthur and Robin Hood.
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Statues of the Reconquistadors.
The Spanish and Portuguese have kept alive the memories of the valiant struggles their ancestors waged against the Muslims to regain their homeland. The Reconquista is re-enacted through floats and plays during every carnival throughout Spain, Portugal and Latin America
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Pelayo had won independence for his country. Pelayo died in 737. His son Favila succeeded him as king but could not enjoy the throne for a long time: legends claim that he was killed by a bear. After Pelayo, the subsequent kings of Asturias, León, Castile and Spain itself could trace their lineage back to him in some manner for hundreds of years. Some sources link Pelayo to the royal house of the Visigoths (he is supposed to be the grandson of the Visigothic King Chindaswinth (563-653).
After Pelayo the resistance continued, but could become substantial in the course of the next four centuries. When the Muslim hordes overran Spain from 711 to 730, Pelayo’s tiny Kingdom of Asturias, centered on Oviedo, had survived as a sole Christian sentinel in Spain, exposed to continuous Muslim raiding. This kingdom was helped by Charlemagne’s March in Catalonia on the Pyrenees that threw the Muslim barbarians out of France. In the early 900s, the Asturias king took advantage of Muslim infighting to move his capital south to Leon and the County of Castile.
Though not a Crusader-type state and content to work with Muslim amirs in order to survive, its leaders began to attract freemen as colonists with generous offers of agricultural land and tax rebates. Warring with Muslims when it suited them, Castilian leaders were not at this point fighting a war of liberation.
Continued resistance was put up, to rebuff the renewed attacks launched to overrun this tiny Christian enclave by the Ummayad Khilfah al Qurdubah (Caliphate in Cordoba). By 1034, Sancho the Great had incorporated Aragon, Sobrarbe, Barcelona, as well as Asturian Leon and Castile.
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El Cid – The legendary hero of the Re-conquista
El Cid (1045-1099), also called El Cid Campeador, is the name commonly used for the important Castilian knight and hero, Rodrigo (or Ruy) DÃÂÂaz de Vivar, who was born in Bivar (Vivar). He battled the Morsicos (Spanish for Moors or Muslims)
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The penal Tax Jeziya and unbearable tyranny of the Christian peasantry in Muslim occupied Spain, fuelled the Christian Reconquista
By 1000, Muslim occupied Spain was the most oppressed part of Europe. The Christian population of the countryside was subject to heavy taxation called the Jeziya, and large numbers of Christians had been forced to convert to Islam. Spain had the largest cities of Europe, which were connected to the Levantine and far eastern trade routes to integrate Spain with the Islamic Caliphate that stretched from Persia across the Middle East and North Africa to Spain.
Basically, the Muslims had occupied only the best parts of Spain. Leaving the cold, damp mountains of the north to the Christians, the Islamic states had emerged in the east coast, the south, as well as the arid, high central mesta areas. In the Christian areas of the north, eleventh-century society were suffering immensely under heavy penal taxation, a suffering which was made worse by the recurrent famines, as the Muslim invaders had destroyed all irrigation facilities and built none, where the majority of the population remained Christian.
How the Papacy infused a spirit of Holy War to liberate the homeland from the Muslim occupiers
Amongst this mostly peasant populated Christian countryside, there was a small aristocracy and several independent and disparate political units. The western Christian Kingdoms of Leon and Castile and the Kingdom of Navarre were very small, with simple government structures. At the beginning of the eleventh century they were unable to stand against the renewed attacks of the Muslim states, and did not have the ideological inclination to do so.
Andalusia broke into a number of small units at this time–the taifa states–and since the Christian Spaniards were not yet sufficiently organized and ideologically inclined towards reconquest, they would often work for different Muslim rulers as mercenaries. This was before the era of the reform infused by the Papacy based in Italy.
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A Reconquistador battling the Morsicos
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So long as the Spanish peninsula remained under Muslim occupation, the Italian Peninsula was always under threat of invasion from the across the narrow straits of Corsica and Sardinia. So the papacy felt it imperative to infuse the Christian kingdoms of Northern Spain to keep up the pressure on the Moors through a series of holy wars. But up to the 11th century the Holy War as such was not yet an overriding element in Christian Iberian thinking and so the Christian noblemen worked intermittently as mercenaries of their Muslim overlords.
Still, while working as mercenaries or allies of various Muslim Amirs (noblemen, although there is nothing noble about Muslims), the Christian leaders began to become powerful as compared to their corrupt and lecherous Muslim overlords. And consequently they began to levy protection money on the Muslim kings. Consequently, portions of al-Anadalus’ fantastic wealth began to go northward.
Contempt for Muslims was one spark for the Reconquista
As a retribution for the growing Christian power in the north, the Muslim kings began extracting funds by levying crushing taxes in addition to the Jeziya on the Christian peasants living in their domains. As this was quite permissible in Islamic terms, it was only a matter of time before there would be a backlash, and the temporary peaceable relationship between Muslim and Christian kings would end.
The spark for the Reconquista came from two sides. First, the reform movement of the Church began to seep into northern Spain. Though the Spanish church at the beginning of the eleventh century was corrupt with a non-standardized monastic system, the reclusive but militaristic Cluny Monasteries were just across the French border.
By the 1030s, the kings of Navarre and Leon invited Cluniac monks to reform the monasteries. Going beyond this, Ferdinand I of Leon began appointing French monks as Spanish bishops from the 1050s. These monks were not as impressed with Muslim grandeur as the Spaniards had been, and the Church reformation gave the Spaniards a reinvigorated Christian identity, highlighting confessional differences from the Muslims, with whom the Spaniards had begun to culturally share much. Indeed, Cluniac monks began clamoring for reconquest of Christian lands as a holy duty.
Reaction also came from the Muslim side. With the large amounts of revenue collected from the oppressed Christian Spanish peasantry from the south, grand Mosques were built in larger numbers in Cordoba, Granada, Seville, and other cities occupied by the Muslims. More importantly, a societal change emerged in the north where more Span
iards were employed by the Muslims as mercenaries and who could now afford to be full-time professional soldiers.
Christian Mercenary soldiers gave the winning edge to the Reconquista
Thus the military strength of Spanish Christian soldiers of fortune in the employ of the Muslim occupiers improved. But their relations with their Muslim paymasters were not based on loyalties and they looked upon their function in purely monetary terms for which they had a dislike, as they were being used to oppress their Christian compatriots.
When conditions permitted, some of them gave up their positions as mercenaries of the Muslims and offered their services to the Christian kings of northern Spain. Using the services of such soldiers of fortune and of the increasing awakening to liberate occupied Spain, in 1085, Alfonso VI of Leon, liberated Toledo from the yoke of the Moriscos (Moors). The Andalusians who were embittered by Muslim tyranny and crushing taxation of Jeziya, welcomed their liberation. But the Christian advance was to evoke one last Muslim backlash from the Almoravids of Morocco.
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The spirit of the Reconquista wiped out memories of those eight dark centuries when Spain had its identity subsumed by being a colony of the Muslims. The grandeur of Christian Spain was reborn with renewed vigor after the Reconquista
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The Almoravids of Morocco invaded Spain to roll back the Reconquista
The Almoravids originated in the Atlas mountains of North Africa, and were rigidly fanatical in their interpretation of Islam. They arrived to fight off the Christians in 1086. At the Battle of Sagrajas they routed Alfonso’s forces, and created a new unified Muslim state in Andalusia. Alfonso still held Toledo though, by establishing fortified towns.
To attract settlers, the Christian kingdoms of North Spain, offered people amenities like a house, some land, and local self-government, even criminals were offered amnesties, and were granted freedom if they settled in the mesta – the frontier lands bordering Muslim domains.
The Christian sagacity of using the raw power of Europe’s young and adventurous to combat Islam
What emerged, then was a Wild West-like environment, the chief means of subsistence being sheep-raising and inter-confessional warfare. Towns developed civil militias for both defensive and offensive purposes, so that raiding, animal husbandry, and trading were the natural occupations of people living on the mesta. Tremendous social mobility developed. The aristocracy was very small, and peasants maintained their freedom.
Initially the sole purpose was to win booty and more land, but increasingly the combat on both sides was surrounded by religious symbols. By the time of Gregory VII, it was referred to as a holy campaign against infidels, and during the Crusading period of Urban II and after, Spanish knights were exempted from taking up the Cross for Jerusalem, as they were said to be fighting their own Crusade in Iberia.
The fanatical Almohads invade Spain from Morocco
During the time of Alfonso VII (1126-1157), he saw that mere raiding for booty was going well enough so as to facilitate conquest of surrounding Muslim towns. He launched a second incursion to liberate Muslim held towns. By this time, however, Christian control had extended to the center of the Peninsula. But in 1145, the Almoravids were overthrown by another Islamic and more rabidly fanatical and cruel revivalist group from North Africa, the Almohads.
With an even more literalist interpretation of Islam, the Almohads declared an everlasting Jihad against the Christians. In 1148 after they arrived in Central Spain and shored up the Muslim defenses, retaking towns lost to the Christians and re-imposing their tyrannical rule. In 1157, Alfonso VII died while fleeing through the Pyrenees passes from Almohad forces.
So in the thirteenth century the Almohads could stop the Reconquista, but this was mostly due to the lack of Christian political unity. Upon Alfonso’s death, the Castilian lands were divided between Leon and Castile, while Portugal had already emerged and Navarre and Aragon had split in 1134. Thus the Christian nations in the Iberian Peninsula were divided, while the invaders (Muslims) were united under the Almohads
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The success of the Reconquista led to a new self-confidence among the Spanish who led the voyages to the New World, opening up a completely new horizon for Europe.
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The Crusades instill a new sense of confidence and purpose in the Spanish Reconquista
But the beginning of the thirteenth century again saw a Christian Spanish refinement corresponding in its vigor to the Almoravids and Almohads. Warrior Crusader-monks began to arrive from Palestine. There were two chief orders, those of Santiago, and Calatrava. These were knights who took all the monastic vows once more to fight the Muslim infidels.
In 1211, after the Calatravans had lost their headquarters in one of the continuing back and forth raids between them and the Almohads, Alfonso VIII of Castile (1158-1214) decided to try an offensive. He met the Almohads in battle at Las Navas de Tolosa, where the Muslims were defeated. As he died two years later, Castile could not immediately exploit the victory.
Almohads were ultra-orthodox and unbending in their interpretation of Islam, and they alienated even the Muslim urban elites. Thus, they were not able to maintain political ascendancy in Muslim Andalusia, and were eventually forced out. In the 1220s, then, Muslim Spain began to politically fragment all over again, at the same time as Ferdinand III of Castile was reaching majority, and James of Aragon was coming into his own.
Starting from 1229 and lasting to 1250, the majority of Spain was retaken by the Christians. This was highlighted by the fall of Cordoba in 1235, which was once the Umayyad capital. The Christian conquest of Seville by Ferdinand in 1248 was the next high watermark of the Reconquista.
Only the Muslim kingdom of Grenada persisted in the southern coast of Spain. Leon and Castile took the central regions, while Aragon took the east coast. The whole era was characterized by sieges and negotiations with Muslim inhabitants whereby surrender allowed indigenous Hispano-Arabs to keep their property if they re-converted to their ancestral religion – Christinity.
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The legendary hero of the Re-conquista – El Cid
El Cid (1045-1099), also called El Cid Campeador, is the name commonly used for the important Castilian knight and hero, Rodrigo (or Ruy) DÃÂÂaz de Vivar, who was born in Bivar (Vivar), Burgos, Castile, and died in Valencia.
Rodrigo became known throughout Spain as El Cid Campeador (English: My lord, the champion). The words El Cid come from a word from a Spanish dialect of Arabic, sidi(Arabic:Sayyid), meaning sir or lord, a title of respect.
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Thus, in the thirteenth century, the Christian kingdoms in Spain had mostly Muslim populations. To attract Christians, kings had recourse to the same preferential policies as were used from Alfonso on, including land and legal freedoms better than feudal arrangements elsewhere. A Christian rush into Iberia emerged in the 1240s- 1260s, providing the d
emographic backbone and elites for the expanding Christian states into the fourteenth century.
The re-conquista against Moors had another impact. It kept the Christian kingdoms from battling among themselves or allying with Islamic kings. For example, the earlier kings of Navarre were forced to give their princesses away as brides to the Moorish kings. Many Moorish kings often had wives or mothers born Christians. Also Christian champions like El Cid were contracted by Moorish kings to fight against their neighbours.
The legendary hero of the Re-conquista – El Cid
El Cid (1045-1099), also called El Cid Campeador, is the name commonly used for the important Castilian knight and hero, Rodrigo (or Ruy) DÃÂÂaz de Vivar, who was born in Bivar (Vivar), Burgos, Castile, and died in Valencia.
Rodrigo became known throughout Spain as El Cid Campeador (English: My lord, the champion). The words El Cid come from a word from a Spanish dialect of Arabic, Sidi(Arabic:Sayyid), meaning sir or lord, a title of respect. The title campeador was granted by his Spanish admirers:
El Campeador, the name by which Rodrigo is also distinguished, means in Spanish something more special than ‘champion.’ A campeador was a man who had fought and beaten the select fighting-man of the opposite side, in the presence of the two armies. (Watts). A Campeador was similar to the Hazar Mard of the pre-Islamic Persian Sassanid armies.
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In the 8th to the 12th centuries, the fight against the Moors in Iberia was linked to the fight of the whole of Christendom’s Military orders like the order of Santiago and the Templar Knights were founded and called to fight in Iberia. The Popes called the knights of Europe for the Crusades in the peninsula. These Knights were French, Navarrese, Castilian and Aragonese armies united in the massive battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. It was these knights who slowed the Muslim advance in to Christian lands and ultimately pushed the Muslim invaders out from Spain.
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Cid’s father was called Diego LaÃÂÂnez, and was part of the minor gentry, or infanzones of Castile, fighting in several battles. One well-known legend about El Cid describes how he acquired his famous war-horse, the white Babieca. According to this story, Rodrigo’s godfather, Pedro El Grande, was a monk at a Carthusian monastery. Pedro’s coming-of-age gift to El Cid was his pick of a horse from an Andalusian herd. El Cid picked a horse that his godfather thought was a weak, poor choice causing the monk to exclaim "Babieca!" (stupid!) Hence, it became the name of El Cid’s horse. Today, Babieca appears in multiple works about the Cid.
The young Cid was educated by the Castilian royal family out of gratitude to his father. Rodrigo was brought up in the court of Ferdinand I ("the Great"), serving the latter’s son, and future king Sancho II. When Ferdinand died in 1065, he had, in the steps of his father, significantly enlarged his territory, conquering the Christian and the Moorish cities of Zaragoza (Saragossa), Badajoz, Seville, and Toledo. By this time, the Cid was a full adult.
El Cid had in 1067, fought with Sancho against the Moorish stronghold of Zaragoza (Saragossa), making Zaragoza’s emir a prisoner who later served as an official under Sancho. He had also, in the spring of 1063, fought in the Battle of Graus, where Ferdinand’s half-brother, Ramiro I of Aragon, had laid siege to the Moorish town of Graus which was in Zaragozan lands.
Al-Muqtadir fought against the Aragonese, accompanied by a Castillian unit, which included El Cid. One legend has said that during the conflict the Cid killed an Aragonese knight in single combat, giving him the honorific title of "El Cid Campeador."
As a resident of Castile, El Cid was now a vassal of Sancho. Sancho believed that he, as the King’s eldest son, was entitled to inherit all of his father’s lands. Once he conquered Leon and Garcia, he began making war on his brothers and sisters.
At this time some say that El Cid, having proved himself a loyal and brave knight against the Aragonese, was appointed as the armiger regisor (standard-bearer). This position entailed commanding the armies of Castile.
Much speculation abounds about Sancho’s death. In any case, since Sancho died unmarried and childless, all of his power passed to his brother, Alfonso; the very person he had fought against.
Almost immediately, Alfonso was recalled from exile in Toledo and took his seat as king of Leon and Castile. While Alfonso was suspected in Castile (probably correctly) for being involved in Sancho’s murder, a legend states that the Castillian nobility, led by El Cid and a dozen "oath-helpers," forced Alfonso to swear publicly in front of St. Galea’s Church in Burgos that he did not participate in the plot to kill his brother. This underscores El Cid’s bravery, for none of the other nobles would dare do this for fear of offending their new king.
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El Cid’s army had a novel approach to planning strategy as well, holding what might be called brainstorming sessions before each battle to discuss tactics. They frequently used unexpected strategies, engaging in what modern generals would call psychological warfare; waiting for the enemy to be paralyzed with terror and then attacking them suddenly, distracting the enemy with a small group of soldiers
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This oath did little in settling the Castillian suspicions, and much animosity existed between Castile (and El Cid) and Leon (and Alfonso). El Cid’s position as armiger Regis (standard bearer) was taken away as well; it was given to El Cid’s enemy, Count GarcÃÂÂa Orduñez. Later in the year, Alfonso’s younger brother, GarcÃÂÂa, returned to Galicia under the false pretenses of a conference, where he was imprisoned for 18 years until his death.
During his campaigns, El Cid often ordered that books by classic Roman and Greek authors on military themes be read in loud voices to him and his troops, both for entertainment and inspiration during battle. El Cid’s army had a novel approach to planning strategy as well, holding what might be called brainstorming sessions before each battle to discuss tactics. They frequently used unexpected strategies, engaging in what modern generals would call psychological warfare; waiting for the enemy to be paralyzed with terror and then attacking them suddenly, distracting the enemy with a small group of soldiers, etc.
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Reconquistadors sacrificing their lives to liberate the fortress of Granada.
Spain is one example where the Muslims were able to sink their claws in for eight hundred years before they were thrown out by the heroic fighters of the Spanish re-conquista. The last sigh of the Moros (Moriscos or Moors) still makes the Muslim aggressors breathless, and they pine for the re-occupation of Spain.
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El Cid had a humble personality and frequently accepted or included suggestions from his troops. He remained open to input from his soldiers and to the possibility that he himself was capable of error. The man who served him as his closest adviser was Minaya Alvar Fánez, a close relative.
In the Battle of Cabra
in 1079 El Cid rallied his troops and turned the battle into a rout of Emir Abd Allah of Granada and his ally GarcÃÂÂa OrdÃÂÂñez.
In 1086 the great Almoravid invasion of Spain through and around began. The Almoravids, Berber residents of present-day Morocco and Algeria, led by Yusef I, also called Yusef ibn Tushafin, were asked to help defend the Moors from Alfonso. A great battle took place on Friday, October 23 1086 at Sagrajas (in Arabic, Zallaqa). The Moorish Andalusians, including the armies of Badajoz Malaga Granada and Seville, fought against a combined army of Leon, Aragon, and Castile. The Andalusians had encamped separately from the Murabitun.
The Christian vanguard (Alvar Fañez) surprised the Andalusian camp before dawn; the men of Seville (Al-Mutamid) held firm but the remaining Andalusians were chased off by the Aragonese cavalry. The Christian main body then attacked the Murabitun,and routed the Moors. To consolidate this victory, Alfonso recalled the best Christian general from exile El Cid. It has been shown that the Cid was at court on July 1087.
Conquest of Valencia
Around this time, El Cid began maneuvering in order to create his own fiefdom in the Mediterranean coastal city of Valencia. Several obstacles lay in his way. First was Ramón Berenguer II, who ruled nearby Barcelona and was in league with the Moors. In May 1090, El Cid defeated and captured Berenguer in the Battle of Tébar.
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Reconquistadors storming the fortress of Granada. The Spanish could liberate Spain, as they learnt to speak the only language that the Muslims understood, that of incessant war with the enemy.
Through the eight centuries of warfare, the re-conquistadors liberated Spain and destroyed all mosques, and reconverted them into Churches, they also forcibly re-converted the Muslims who stayed back into Christians, and burnt at the stake all those who refused to embrace the true faith. Thus they wiped out all traces of the eight hundred year long Muslim tyranny in Spain. Muslim rule in Spain became a faint memory, that was overshadowed by the grandeur of Catholic Spain that came later. The Century of Gold that followed with the opening up of the New World and the legendary El Dorado, with the Colonization of the Americas and of the East Indies, all contributed to the Muslim occupation of Spain being forgotten even as an aberration, or a nightmare.
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After this victory, El Cid began the siege of Valencia. The siege lasted for several years. In December 1093 an attempt to break it failed. In May 1094, the siege ended, and El Cid had carved out his own kingdom on the coast of the Mediterranean. Officially El Cid ruled in the name of Alfonso; in reality, he was fully independent. In 1096, Valencia’s nine mosques were "Christianized"; Jérôme, a French bishop, was appointed as the Bishop of the City to oversee the re-conversion of the Moors to Christianity.
In the 8th to the 12th centuries, the fight against the Moors in Iberia was linked to the fight of the whole of Christendom’s Military orders like the order of Santiago and the Templar Knights were founded and called to fight in Iberia. The Popes called the knights of Europe for the Crusades in the peninsula. These Knights were French, Navarrese, Castilian and Aragonese armies united in the massive battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. It was these knights who slowed the Muslim advance in to Christian lands and ultimately pushed the Muslim invaders out from Spain.
Social Consequences of the Reconquista
Many of the descendants of Visigothic or Romanic dwellers who did not convert to Islam were forced to migrate to the North due to Muslim persecution. There were also some who were forced to become Muslims yet they continued to practice Christianity secretly. But there were also some Christian individuals who embraced Islam and often fought against their former compatriots. Christians who converted to Islam after the invasion were referred to as Renegades.
The Spanish Inquisition was a reaction to Muslim Tyranny
One spin-off of the Re-conquista was the hardening of attitude of the Christians of the Iberian Peninsula towards those who gave up the Christian faith or deviated from the official position of the Church – the Inquisition. By today’s standards the Inquisition would be termed as religious fanaticism. But even at its height with the occasional burning of alleged witches and the torture chambers for non-Christians, the Inquisition would still be not as pervasive as the rule of the Islam has been, not would it be as extreme as that of the Taliban, the Ayatollahs of Iran or the Jihadis who briefly ruled Fallujah.
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The Christians called Saint James their protector saint (today he is still the patron of Spain) under the rubric of Santiago Matamoros (St. James the Moor-killer)
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Unfortunately all those Muslims who reconverted to Christianity but whose re-conversion was suspect in the eyes of the Spanish rulers were targeted during the Spanish Inquisition and were forced to leave Spain along with all other Moriscos (Moors) in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella. These converts belonged to neither world and were looked upon by their Muslim compatriots as Munafiqun (hypocrites) who were declared to be Murtads (apostates) and were punishable by death to be reduced to the status of corpses (Murdah).It is from the word Murtad for apostate, is derived the Arabic word Murdah for corpse, signifying how close was the association of an apostate with death in Muslim eyes.
While Muslims dwelling in land re-conquered by the Christians were called Moros or Moriscos Even today, along the Mediterranean coast, the festivals of Carnival the floats of Moros y Cristianos ("Moors and Christians") recreate the fights as colorful parades with elaborate garments and lots of fireworks.
The Christian armies which liberated Spain and Portugal, reversed history in full measure using the same brutality used their Muslim tormentors a few centuries before. The re-conquistadors gave three options to the defeated and fugitive Moorish population:
– embrace Christianity,
– leave Spain across the Straits of Gibraltar,
– face death.
Hence there were hardly any Moors left in Spain. The re-conquistadors also destroyed all mosques, and reconverted them into Churches, they forcibly re-converted the Muslims who stayed back to Christianity and burnt at the stake all those who refused to embrace the true faith. Thus they wiped out all traces of the eight hundred year long tyranny of the Muslims in Spain. Muslim rule in Spain became a faint memory, that was overshadowed by the grandeur of Catholic Spain that came later.
The Century of Gold that followed with the opening up of the New World and the legendary El Dorado, with the Colonization of the Americas and of the East Indies, all contributed to the Muslim occupation of Spain being forgotten even as an aberration, or a nightmare. Those eight dark centuries were relegated to the footnotes of history books only to be revived by the March 11 attacks in Madrid and Osama’s boast to re-conquer Spain (Al Andalus) for Islam. A claim bolstered by the increasing Moroccan immigrant population in Spain that is contributing to the criminalization of Spanish society.
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* For those uninitiated, PBUH expands to Perpetual Battle Upon Hagarism (Islam) – founded b
y the mass-murderer and pedophile pretenderprophet Mohammed-ibn-Abdallah (Yimach Shmo – May his name and memory be obliterated).
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Select Bibliography
Samson Blinded: A Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East Conflict, by Obadiah Shoher
Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries (Hardcover) by Paul Fregosi
The Sword of the Prophet: History, Theology, Impact on the World by Srdja Trifkovic
Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith by Robert Spencer
Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam) by David Cook
Why I Am Not a Muslim by Ibn Warraq
Onward Muslim Soldiers by Robert Spencer
Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis by Bat Ye’Or
Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide by Bat Yeor
What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text, and Commentary by Ibn Warraq
Islam and Terrorism: What the Quran Really Teaches About Christianity, Violence and the Goals of the Islamic Jihad by Mark A. Gabriel, Mark A. Gabriel
A Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) by Robert Spencer
The Great Divide: The failure of Islam and the Triumph of the West by Marvin Olasky
The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims by Robert Spencer
Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith by Robert Spencer, David Pryce-Jones
The Koran (Penguin Classics) by N. J. Dawood
Don’t Keep me Silent! One Woman’s Escape from the Chains of Islam by Mina Nevisa
Christianity And Islam: The Final Clash by Robert Livingston
Holiest Wars : Islamic Mahdis, Their Jihads, and Osama bin Laden by Timothy R. Furnish
The Last Trumpet: A Comparative Study in Christian-Islamic Eschatology by Samuel, Ph.D. Shahid
Unleashing the beast: How a fanatical islamic dictator will form a ten-nation coalition and terrorize the world for forty-two months by Perry Stone
Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature (Religion and Politics) by David Cook
Islam and the Jews: The Unfinished Battle by Mark A., Ph.D. Gabriel
The Challenge of Islam to Christians by David Pawson
The Prophetic Fall of the Islamic Regime by Glenn Miller, Roger Loomis
Prophet of Doom : Islam’s Terrorist Dogma in Muhammad’s Own Words by Craig Winn
The False Prophet by Ellis H. Skolfield
The Approach of Armageddon: An Islamic Perspective by Muhammad Hisham Kabbani
The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God by George Weigel
Infiltration : How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington by Paul Sperry
Unholy Alliance : Radical Islam and the American Left by David Horowitz
Unveiling Islam : An Insider’s Look at Muslim Life and Beliefs by Ergun Mehmet Caner
Perfect Soldiers : The Hijackers: Who They Were, Why They Did It by Terry McDermott
Islam Revealed A Christian Arab’s View Of Islam by Anis Shorrosh
Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out by Ibn Warraq
The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book by Ibn Warraq
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This Article used by permission of "History of Jihad.com." Thank You!
© 2009 – 2011, Matt. All rights reserved.
