X-Nico

3 unusual facts about Reconquista


Castro Verde

The Reconquista placed the region on the historical map; historical tradition holds that it was in São Pedro das Cabeças that the famous Battle of Ourique was waged by forces of Portuguese nobleman Afonso Henriques, who presumably decapitated five Moorish kings during the battle.

Comunidad de Calatayud

The county was first established as a community of villages founded by Alfonso I after the Reconquista.

When the Moors Ruled in Europe

The era ended with the Reconquista during which the Cathoic authorities burnt over 1,000,000 Arabic texts.


Abu al-Salt

Upon completing his mathematical education in Seville, and because of the continuing conflicts during the reconquista, he set out with his family to Alexandria and then Cairo in 1096.

Castle of Santa Maria da Feira

Emblematic of Portuguese medieval military architecture, the Castle of Santa Maria da Feira is one of the monuments that best reflects the diversity of defenses used during the Middle Ages, having been instrumental in the process of Reconquista and autonomy of the County of Portugal.

Ermengol IV, Count of Urgell

In 1076, having brought the nobles to submission, he began a Reconquista of his own, taking the basin of the river Sió with the villages of Agramunt and Almenara that year and Linyola and Belcaire in 1091.

Gilbert Horal

In Spain, the Templars took an active part in the Reconquista, and in 1196 were given the fortress of Alfambra by Alfonso II of Aragon as a reward for their efforts in the battle.

Historia Caroli Magni

The text is considered by critics, in part, as a work of propaganda promoting the Way of St. James (many of the sites mentioned in the text are on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela) and Reconquista.

Ibn Hamdis

"Abd, al-Jabbar Ibn Hamdis left his native Sicily in 1078 at the age of twenty-four, and for the rest of his long life wandered in al-Andalus and North Africa as a court poet, singing the praises of his Arab hosts and lamenting the loss of his home and the demise of Muslim culture in the wake of the Norman invasion of Sicily and the Reconquista in Spain." (Gabriel Levin, To These Dark Steps, 2012, p.77)

Islamic pottery

The first centre was Malaga, producing wares in traditional Islamic styles, but from the 13th century Muslim potters migrated to the reconquered Christian city of Valencia, outlying suburbs of which such as Manises and Paterna became the most important centres, manufacturing mainly for Christian markets in styles increasingly influenced by European decoration, though retaining a distinct character.

La Convivencia

La Convivencia ("the Coexistence") is the period of Spanish history from the Muslim Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the early eighth century until the completion of the Christian Reconquista in the late fifteenth century.

Luis Vélez de Guevara

The play Más pesa el rey que la sangre, which translates into "The King weighs more than blood (kinship)" is based on the episode of the Reconquista in which the nobleman Alonso Pérez de Guzmán allows his son to be sacrificed, rather than surrender his King's possession of Tarifa.

Pedro de Vivar

On October 31, 1812, he was elected the first President of the Consultive Senate of Chile, and remained as such until the closing of the sessions on January, 1814, when the Spanish "reconquista" dissolved the domestic institutions.

Pelayo

Pelagius of Asturias, founder of the Kingdom of Asturias and beginner of the Reconquista

Rancagua

The city is famous in Chilean history as the scene of the Disaster of Rancagua of 1814, when Chilean forces fighting for independence from Spain were defeated, marking the beginning of the period known as the Reconquista (Reconquest, an attempt by Spain to regain control of Chile).

Zafra

During the Reconquista, Zafra was captured twice by Christian forces, first in 1229 by Alfonso IX, and then definitely by Ferdinand III, in a campaign through present-day Extremadura described in Alfonso X's Crónica General de España (General History of Spain).


see also