al-Ándalus

Al-Andalus (Arabic: الأَنْدَلُس, romanised: al-ʾAndalus) was the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula. The name refers to the different Muslim states that controlled these territories at various times between 711 and 1492. At its greatest geographical extent, it occupied most of the peninsula as well as Septimania under Umayyad rule. These boundaries changed through a series of conquests that Western historiography has traditionally characterised as the Reconquista, eventually shrinking to the south and finally to the Emirate of Granada. As a political domain, it successively constituted a province of the Umayyad Caliphate, initiated by the Caliph al-Walid I (711–750); the Emirate of Córdoba (c. 750–929); the Caliphate of Córdoba (929–1031); the first taifa kingdoms (1009–1110); the Almoravid Empire (1085–1145); the second taifa period (1140–1203); the Almohad Caliphate (1147–1238); the third taifa period (1232–1287); and ultimately the Nasrid Emirate of Granada (1238–1492). Under the Caliphate of Córdoba, the city of Córdoba became one of the leading cultural and economic centres throughout the Mediterranean Basin, Europe, and the Islamic world. Achievements that advanced Islamic and Western science came from al-Andalus, including major advances in trigonometry (Jabir ibn Aflah), astronomy (al-Zarqali), surgery (al-Zahrawi), pharmacology (Ibn Zuhr), and agronomy (Ibn Bassal and Abu'l-Khayr al-Ishbili). Al-Andalus became a conduit for cultural and scientific exchange between the Islamic and Christian worlds. For much of its history, al-Andalus existed in conflict with Christian kingdoms to the north. After the fall of the Umayyad caliphate, al-Andalus was fragmented into taifa states and principalities, some of which (such as the Taifa of Toledo, the Taifa of Zaragoza, the Taifa of Seville and the Taifa of Badajoz) reached considerable territorial extent. After the Christian capture of Toledo in 1085, the Almoravid empire intervened and repelled attacks on the region, then brought al-Andalus under direct Almoravid rule. For the next century and a half, al-Andalus became a province of the Muslim empires of the Almoravids and their successors, the Almohads, both based in Marrakesh. Ultimately, the northern Christian kingdoms overpowered the Muslim states to the south. In the 13th century, most of the south quickly fell under Christian rule, with Gharb al-Andalus, the Guadalquivir Valley and Eastern al-Andalus falling to Portuguese, Castilian, and Aragonese conquests. This left the Emirate of Granada as the remaining Muslim state on the Iberian Peninsula, which became a tributary state of the Crown of Castile, before surrendering in 1492 to the Catholic Monarchs.