The Iberian Peninsula, also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in Southwestern Europe, defining the westernmost edge of Eurasia. It is divided between Peninsular Spain and Continental Portugal, comprising most of the region, as well as Andorra, Gibraltar and a small part of Southern France. With an area of approximately 583,254 square kilometres (225,196 sq mi), and a population of roughly 53 million, it is the second-largest European peninsula by area, after the Scandinavian Peninsula.
The Reconquista or the reconquest of al-Andalus was the series of military campaigns that Christian kingdoms waged against the Muslim kingdoms following the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. The beginning of the Reconquista is traditionally dated to the Battle of Covadonga, in which an Asturian army achieved the first Christian victory over the forces of the Umayyad Caliphate since the beginning of the military invasion. Its culmination came in 1492 with the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs.
Castile or Castille is a territory of imprecise limits located in Spain. The use of the concept of Castile relies on the assimilation of a 19th-century determinist geographical notion, that of Castile as Spain's centro mesetario with a long-gone historical entity of diachronically variable territorial extension.
Peter, called Peterthe Cruel or the Just, was King of Castile and León from 1350 to 1369. Peter was the last ruler of the main branch of the House of Ivrea. He was excommunicated by Pope Urban V for his persecutions and cruelties committed against the clergy.
The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, known in Islamic history as the Battle of Al-Uqab, took place on 16 July 1212 and was an important turning point in the Reconquista and the medieval history of Spain. The Christian forces of King Alfonso VIII of Castile, were joined by the armies of his rivals, Sancho VII of Navarre and Peter II of Aragon, in battle against the Almohad Muslim rulers of the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. The caliph al-Nasir led the Almohad army, made up of people from all over the Almohad Caliphate.
Moriscos were former Muslims and their descendants whom the Roman Catholic Church and the Spanish Crown commanded to convert to Christianity or face compulsory exile after Spain outlawed the open practice of Islam by its sizeable Muslim population in the early 16th century.
The Kingdom of Aragon was a medieval and early modern kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula, corresponding to the modern-day autonomous community of Aragon, in Spain. It should not be confused with the larger Crown of Aragon, which also included other territories—the Principality of Catalonia, the Kingdom of Valencia, the Kingdom of Majorca, and other possessions that are now part of France, Italy, and Greece—that were also under the rule of the King of Aragon, but were administered separately from the Kingdom of Aragon.
The Kingdom of Navarre, originally the Kingdom of Pamplona, was a former kingdom that occupied lands on both sides of the western Pyrenees, with its northernmost areas originally reaching the Atlantic Ocean, between present-day Spain and France.
The Iberian Union was the dynastic union of Spain and Portugal, and of their respective colonial empires, that existed between 1580 and 1640 and brought the entire Iberian Peninsula except Andorra, as well as Portuguese and Spanish overseas possessions, under the Spanish Habsburg monarchs Philip II, Philip III, and Philip IV. The union began after the Portuguese crisis of succession and the ensuing War of the Portuguese Succession, and lasted until the Portuguese Restoration War, during which the House of Braganza was established as Portugal's new ruling dynasty with the acclamation of John IV as the new King of Portugal.
Eleanor of Portugal, was a Portuguese infanta by birth and Queen of Aragon from 1347 to 1348 as the second wife of King Peter IV.
The House of Trastámara was a royal dynasty which first ruled in the Crown of Castile and then expanded to the Crown of Aragon in the late middle ages to the early modern period.
The Crown of Castile was a medieval polity in the Iberian Peninsula that formed in 1230 as a result of the third and definitive union of the crowns and, some decades later, the parliaments of the kingdoms of Castile and León upon the accession of the then Castilian king, Ferdinand III, to the vacant Leonese throne. It continued to exist as a separate entity after the personal union in 1469 of the crowns of Castile and Aragon with the marriage of the Catholic Monarchs up to the promulgation of the Nueva Planta decrees by Philip V in 1715.
Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Ismail, known as Muhammad IV, was the ruler of the Emirate of Granada on the Iberian Peninsula from 1325 to 1333. He was the sixth sultan of the Nasrid dynasty, succeeding to the throne at ten years old when his father, Ismail I, was assassinated.
Ferdinand II was King of Aragon from 1479 until his death in 1516. As the husband of Queen Isabella I of Castile, he was also King of Castile from 1475 to 1504. He reigned jointly with Isabella over a dynastically unified Spain; together they are known as the Catholic Monarchs. Ferdinand is considered the de facto first king of Spain, and was described as such during his reign, even though, legally, Castile and Aragon remained two separate kingdoms until they were formally united by the Nueva Planta decrees issued between 1707 and 1716.
The Emirate of Granada, also known as the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, was an Islamic realm in the southern Iberian Peninsula during the Late Middle Ages, ruled by the Nasrid dynasty. It was the last independent Muslim state in Western Europe.
Muhammad VII, reigned 3 October 1392 – 13 May 1408, was the twelfth Nasrid ruler of the Muslim Emirate of Granada in Al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula. He was the son of Yusuf II and grandson of Muhammad V. He came to the throne upon the death of his father. In 1394, he defeated an invasion by the Order of Alcántara. This nearly escalated to a wider war, but Muhammad VII and Henry III of Castile were able to restore peace.
The siege of Algeciras was a battle of the Spanish Reconquista that occurred between July 1309 and January 1310. The battle was fought between the forces of the Kingdom of Castile, commanded by King Ferdinand IV of Castile and his vassals, and the Emirate of Granada commanded by Sultan Abu'l-Juyush Nasr. The battle resulted in a humiliating defeat for the Kingdom of Castile whose army was obliged to lift the siege due to the atrocious conditions of life in the Castilian camp and the desertion of Infante John of Castile. The battle marked one of the many battles fought at Algeciras where the Christian forces would try to take the city unsuccessfully from the Muslims.
The first siege of Gibraltar was a battle of the Spanish Reconquista that took place in 1309. The battle pitted the forces of the Crown of Castile under the command of Juan Núñez II de Lara and Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, against the forces of the Emirate of Granada who were under the command of Sultan Muhammed III and his brother, Abu'l-Juyush Nasr.
María Díaz II de Haro was a Spanish noble of the House of Haro. She was the daughter of Juan de Castilla y Haro and his wife, Isabel of Portugal and was Lady of Biscay from 1334 until her death in 1348.
The forced conversions of Muslims in Spain were enacted through a series of edicts outlawing Islam in the lands of the Spanish Monarchy. This persecution was pursued by three Spanish kingdoms during the early 16th century: the Crown of Castile in 1500–1502, followed by Navarre in 1515–1516, and lastly the Crown of Aragon in 1523–1526.
