Reconquista

​Crusaders fought against Muslims in Europe and North Africa, as well as in the Middle East. One important series of wars was called the Reconquista (ree-con-KEE-stah), which means “reconquest” in Spanish. For several decades, Christian kingdoms launched these wars to retake the Iberian Peninsula from Muslims. The Iberian Peninsula is a region in southwestern Europe that contains Spain and Portugal.

​The Umayyads had established a Muslim dynasty in Spain in the 8th century, where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together. However, non-Muslims were treated differently, including having to pay a special tax.

​Over time, Christian rulers in northern Iberia chipped away at Muslim lands. The pace of reconquest quickened after the Umayyad caliphate in Cordoba broke up into rival kingdoms around 1002. In 1085, Christians gained a key victory by capturing Toledo, in central Spain.

​Muslims gradually gave up more and more territory. In 1039, Portugal became an independent Christian kingdom. By 1248, only the kingdom of Granada, in southern Spain, remained in Muslim hands.

​Many Jews and Muslims remained in areas ruled by Christians. In the late 1400s, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand wanted to unite Spain as a Catholic country. They used the Inquisition, a Roman Catholic court, against Muslims and Jews, as well as those who claimed to have converted to Christianity. Judges, called inquisitors, sometimes used torture to find out whether supposed converts were practicing their old religion. Thousands of people were burned at the stake.

​In 1492, Granada fell to Ferdinand and Isabella, ending Muslim rule in Spain. In the same year, Jews were ordered to become Catholics or leave the country. Roughly 170,000 Jews left their homes forever. Many found refuge in Muslim lands, including in Constantinople, now called Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Muslims remained in Spain, but many were forced to become Catholics. Spain expelled remaining Muslims beginning in 1609, ending any cooperation among these groups and Christians in Spain.