To: blam
When foreigners invade your country, kill most of the inhabitants, enslave many of the rest, and drive the last survivors into the mountains where you control only a few square miles of territory, you are entitled to fight back.
The Spanish fought back against the Muslim invaders for almost 900 years. They finally won, after undergoing incredible hardships and sufferings.
It's the only known instance in history of a people reconquering their land after a Muslim invasion. Europe would not exist if they had failed.
7 posted on
11/14/2003 5:17:15 PM PST by
Cicero
(Marcus Tullius)
To: Cicero
Once Baghdad fell to the Mongols, Spain was the remaining Muslim center. The Muslims were much weakened by losing the East, and they could not hold on in Spain. 1492 was a big year for Spain, got the hat trick and remained a world power until 1588. The end.
9 posted on
11/14/2003 5:24:46 PM PST by
RightWhale
(Close your tag lines)
To: Cicero
It's the only known instance in history of a people reconquering their land after a Muslim invasionPerhaps with the qualification of no major outside assistance, otherwise you'd have to include the Hungarians, Serbs, Bulgarians, Romanians and Greeks.
To: Cicero
Sorry to disappoint you, but the "native Spaniards" did not drive invading North Africans out of their country - not in 100 years, not in 900 years!
Galicia in the NW served as a launchpad for an invading Cornish army to begin an entirely different Conquest.
Substantial numbers of French knights adhered to the cause of Carvajal, Castile and Leone over the several centuries it took to achieve dominance, but the "native" people in the South did nothing other than become good Moslems!
Then, as the Reconquista was wrapped up, most of the Moslems and most of the Jews then in Spain who had not already become Christians, did so.
There really wasn't any mass explulsion of any kind. People were given a choice and took it.
13 posted on
11/14/2003 5:32:40 PM PST by
muawiyah
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