Episode 5: Reconquista and the Birth of the Crusades

Reconquista is a little known period(There was a TON I had to learn!) that lasted from 718 until 1492, almost 800 years!  What complicates this period is learning all of the players.  There were revolts and suppression in the Roman period, Celtic waves(at least 2), Muslim Caliphates, a plethora of Catholic kingdoms and during all this the Jews play a large part in both the Catholic and Muslim controlled regions.  Reconquista was a push to remove Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula(modern day Spain and Portugal) and return it to European Papal control. The Iberian was a Carthaginian colony and later taken over as a frontier region of Rome.  Much of what you will hear about the region in contemporary archaeology is how the evil Europeans kicked out the nice Arabs and about how the nice Arabs brought culture to the region.  It is all bogus.  Much of the infrastructure was there from Roman times, the architecture was evolved from the Visogoths and Muslims were notorious for allowing locals to continue to run things for them because they lacked the ability to properly administer states. What was that word I said? Where did I source that info from? Check the site for a timeline of events. https://historicaltimelines.blogspot.com/2020/07/reconquista-and-birth-of-crusades.html