Moors

The Moors were an Islamic nomadic (Berber) people who brought Islam into North Africa in the Seventh Century. The name is derived from the Roman province of Mauretania which lay in present day Morocco and Western Algeria. The Moors invaded Visigoth Christian Spain in 711AD. Under their leader Tariq ibn-Ziyad they brought most of Spain under Islamic rule in an eight year campaign. They attempted to move NorthEast across the Pyrenees Mountians but were defeated by the Frank Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732.

The Moors ruled Spain, except for a small area in the northwest, and North Africa for several decades. The Moorish state suffered civil conflict in the 750s. The country then broke up into a number of mostly Islamic fiefdoms which were consolidated under the Caliphate of Cordoba. Christian states based in the North and West slowly extended their power over Spain. Galicia, Leon, Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia or Marca Hispanica, and eventually Castile became Christian in the next several centuries. The Moorish Caliphate of Córdoba collapsed in 1031 and the Islamic territory in Spain came to be ruled by North African Moors.

In 1212 a coalition of christian kings under the leadership of Alphonso VIII of Castile drove the Moors from Central Spain. However the Moorish Kingdom of Granada thrived for three more Centuries. In 1492, the armies of a recently united Christian Spain conquered Granada. The remaining Moors were forced to leave Spain or convert to Christianity. These descendants of the moors were named moriscos. They were an important portion of the peasants in some territories of the Aragonese Crown, like the kingdom of Valencia.

The Moorish period is known as period of responsible government and for the tolerant acceptance of Christians and Jews living in Moorish Spain. It is best known in modern time for architectural gems such as the Alhambra. By way of contrast, the Spanish Christians gave the world the Inquisition.

Although this sort of maniqueism seems to be recurrent in Anglosaxon historiography of that period, the Inquisition was invented by the French in the 13th century during the crussade against the Albigesian heressy in the Languedoc. It is true that it was Ferdinand of Aragon, the model of prince used by Machiavelo, who scaled it as the general repressive instrument to control the state dissidents of any kind, and it was perfected by Philip II in the repression of the protestants in the Spanish Netherlands.