Reconquista
The centuries-long (718–1492) campaign by Christian kingdoms to reconquer the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim rule, completing in the year Columbus sailed, establishing Spain and Portugal as the powers that would conquer the Americas.
The Reconquista began when Visigothic nobles fled Muslim conquest (711 CE) to the mountainous north of Iberia and mounted resistance. Over the next 770 years, Christian kingdoms gradually expanded southward, absorbing Muslim territories and, crucially, the intellectual wealth of Islamic civilization, the translations of Greek philosophy, algebra, astronomy, and medicine that Muslim Spain had accumulated.
The intellectual legacy of reconquered Spain was enormous. Toledo's translation schools in the 12th century, staffed by scholars who could read Arabic, Latin, and Hebrew, systematically translated the Islamic scholarly tradition into Latin, giving Christian Europe access to Aristotle, Avicenna, Averroes, and al-Khwarizmi. The European Renaissance was partly built on knowledge absorbed through the Reconquista.
Its completion in 1492 (the fall of Granada) coincided with Columbus's first voyage, not accidentally: the same year Spain expelled its Jews and Moors, it sent Columbus westward. The ideology of the Reconquista, Christian conquest of non-Christian territory as divinely sanctioned, provided the template for the Spanish Conquest of the Americas.
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Why did the Reconquista matter for world history? ＋
It transferred the Islamic world's accumulated knowledge (Greek philosophy, algebra, medicine, astronomy) into Latin-reading Europe via translation schools in Toledo, directly contributing to the European Renaissance. Its ideology also provided the template for Spanish conquest of the Americas.
When did the Reconquista end? ＋
In January 1492, when Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in Iberia. Eight months later, Columbus sailed. The same year, Spain expelled its Jewish population under the Alhambra Decree.