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Portugal Muslim Domination
In 711 Iberia was invaded by a Muslim army commanded by
Tariq
ibn Ziyad. The last Visigothic king, Rodrigo, tried to
repel this
invasion but was defeated. The Muslims advanced to Córdoba
and
then to Toledo, the Visigothic capital. The last
resistance of
the Visigoths was made at Mérida, which fell in June 713
after a
long siege. In the spring of 714, a Muslim army commanded
by Musa
ibn Nusair marched to Saragossa and then to León and
Astorga.
Évora, Santarém, and Coimbra fell by 716. Thus, within
five
years, the Muslims had conquered and occupied the entire
peninsula. Only a wedge of wet, mountainous territory in
the
extreme northwest called Astúrias remained under Christian
control.
In Lusitania land was divided among Muslim troops.
However,
bad crops and a dislike for the wet climate put an end to
the
short-lived Muslim colonization along the Douro River.
Muslims
preferred the dry country below the Tagus River because it
was
more familiar, especially the Algarve, an area of
present-day
Portugal where the Muslim imprint remains the strongest.
The
Muslim aristocracy settled in towns and revived urban
life;
others fanned out across the countryside as small farmers.
The
Visigothic peasants readily converted to Islam, having
only been
superficially Christianized. Some Visigothic nobles
continued to
practice Christianity, but most converted to Islam and
were
confirmed by the Muslims as local governors. Jews, who
were
always an important element in the urban population,
continued to
exercise a significant role in commerce and scholarship.
Al Andalus, as Islamic Iberia was known, flourished for
250
years, under the Caliphate of Córdoba. Nothing in Europe
approached Córdoba's wealth, power, culture, or the
brilliance of
its court. The caliphs founded schools and libraries; they
cultivated the sciences, especially mathematics; they
introduced
arabesque decoration into local architecture; they
explored
mines; they developed commerce and industry; and they
built
irrigation systems, which transformed many arid areas into
orchards and gardens. Finally, the Muslim domination
introduced
more than 600 Arabic words into the Portuguese language.
The Golden Age of Muslim domination ended in the
eleventh
century when local nobles, who had become rich and
powerful,
began to carve up the caliphate into independent regional
city-states (taifas), the most important being the
emirates of Badajoz, Mérida, Lisbon, and Évora. These
internecine
struggles provided an opportunity for small groups of
Visigothic
Christians, who had taken refuge in the mountainous
northwest of
the peninsula, to go on the offensive against the Muslims,
thus
beginning the Christian reconquest of Iberia.
Data as of January 1993
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