ABSTRACT
The Iberian Peninsula experienced more intense political upheaval before the sixteenth century than almost any other part of Europe. Until the fifth century AD the region was the province of Hispania within the Roman Empire; it was then conquered by invading Germanic tribes and became the independent Visigothic kingdom between 466 and 711. The last King of the Visigoths, Roderic, was defeated by the Moors, who, inspired by the new and militant faith of Islam, had crossed over from North Africa with the intention of conquering Western Europe. By the eighth century the Moors were actually advancing across the Pyrenees, but their progress was arrested and reversed by their defeat at the hands of the Franks at the Battle of Tours (732). The Moors retreated into Spain and, for the next seven centuries, struggled to hold their conquests. Gradually, however, a series of Christian states emerged, initially in the north and then spreading their influence into central Spain. The main ambition of rulers like Ferdinand the Great (1035–65) of Castile and Alfonso the Warrior (1102–34) of Aragon, and of military commanders like Rodrigo Diaz (El Cid), was to drive the Moors out of the entire Peninsula.
