We have seen how the union of the small independent lands of the north, Asturia and Cantabria, grew into the kingdom, first of Oviedo and then of Leon. Gallicia, on the one side, representing in some sort the old Suevian kingdom, Bardulia or the oldest Castile, the land of Burgos, on the other side, were lands which were early inclined to fall away. ♦Christian advance.♦ The growth of the Christian powers on this side was favoured by internal events among the Mussulmans, by famines and revolts which left a desert border between the hostile powers. ♦The Ommiad emirate. 755.♦ The Ommiad emirate, afterwards caliphate, was established almost at the moment of the Saracen loss of Septimania. ♦The Spanish March. 778-801.♦ Then came the Spanish March of Charles the Great, which brought part of northern Spain once more within the bounds of the new Western Empire, as the conquests of Justinian had brought back part of southern Spain within the bounds of the undivided Empire. ♦Its extent.♦ This march, at its greatest extent, took in Pampeluna at one end and Barcelona at the other, with the intermediate lands of Aragon, Ripacurcia, and Sobrarbe. But the Frankish dominion soon passed away from Aragon, and still sooner from Pampeluna. ♦Its division.♦ The western part of the march, which still acknowledged the superiority of the Kings of Karolingia, split up into a number of practically independent counties, which made hardly any advance against the common enemy.
Meanwhile the land of Pampeluna became, at the beginning of the eleventh century, an independent and powerful kingdom. ♦Navarre under Sancho the Great. 1000-1035.♦ The Navarre of Sancho the Great stretched some way beyond the Ebro; to the west it took in the ocean lands of Biscay and Guipuzcoa, with the original Castile; to the east it took in Aragon, Ripacurcia, and Sobrarbe. The two Christian kingdoms of Navarre and Leon took in all north-eastern Spain. The Douro was reached and crossed; the Tagus itself was not far from the Christian boundary; but the states which owned the superiority of the power which we may now call France were still far from the lower Ebro.
♦Break-up of the kingdom of Navarre (1035), and of the Ommiad caliphate (1028).♦
At the death of Sancho the Great his momentary dominion broke up. Seven years earlier the dominion of the Ommiad caliphs had broken up also. These two events, so near together, form the turning-point in the history of the peninsula. Instead of the one Ommiad caliphate, there arose a crowd of separate Mussulman kingdoms, which had to call for help to their Mussulman brethren in Africa. ♦Invasion of the Almoravides. 1086-1110.♦ This led to what was really a new African conquest of Mussulman Spain. The new deliverers or conquerors spread their dominion over all the Mussulman powers, save only Zaragoza. ♦Use of the name Moors.♦ This settlement, with other later ones of the same kind, gives a specially African look to the later history of Mahometan Spain, and has doubtless helped to give the Spanish Mussulmans the common name of Moors. But their language and culture remained Arabic, and the revolution caused by the African settlers among the ruins of the Western caliphate was far from being so great as the revolution caused by the Turkish settlers among the ruins of the Eastern caliphate.
♦New kingdoms, Castile, Aragon, and Sobrarbe 1035.♦
Out of the break-up of the dominion of Sancho came out the separate kingdom of Navarre, and the new kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Sobrarbe. ♦Union of Aragon and Sobrarbe. 1040.♦ Of these the two last were presently united, thus beginning the advance of Aragon. Thus we come to four of the five historic kingdoms of Spain—Navarre, Castile, Aragon, and Leon, whose unions and divisions are endless. ♦Shiftings of Castile and Leon. 1037.
1065-1073.♦ The first king Ferdinand of Castile united Castile and Leon; Castile, Leon, and Gallicia were again for a moment separated under his son. ♦1076-1134.♦ Aragon and Navarre were united for nearly sixty years. ♦The Emperor Alfonso 1135.♦ Presently Spain has an Emperor in Alfonso of Castile, Leon, and Gallicia. ♦1157.♦ But Empire and kingdom were split asunder. Leon and Castile became separate kingdoms under the sons of Alfonso, and they remained separate for more than sixty years. ♦Final union of Castile and Leon. 1230.♦ Their final union created the great Christian power of Spain.
♦Decline of Navarre.♦
Navarre meanwhile, cut short by the advance of Castile, shorn of its lands on the Ocean and beyond the Ebro, lost all hope of any commanding position in the peninsula. ♦1234.♦ It passed to a succession of French kings, and for a long time it had no share in the geographical history of Spain. ♦Growth of Aragon.♦ But the power of Aragon grew, partly by conquests from the Mussulmans, partly by union with the French fiefs to the east. ♦Union with Barcelona. 1131.♦ The first union between the crown of Aragon and the county of Barcelona led to the great growth of the power of Aragon on both sides of the Pyrenees and even beyond the Rhone.[83] ♦1213.♦ This power was broken by the overthrow of King Pedro at Muret. ♦Settlement with France. 1258.♦ But by the final arrangement which freed Barcelona, Roussillon, and Cerdagne, from all homage to France, all trace of foreign superiority passed away from Christian Spain. The independent kingdom of Aragon stretched on both sides of the Pyrenees, a faint reminder of the days of the West-Gothic kings.
On the other side of the peninsula the lands between Douro and Minho began to form a separate state. ♦County of Portugal. 1094.♦ The county of Portugal was held by princes of the royal house of France, as a fief of the crown of Castile and Leon. ♦Kingdom, 1139.♦ The county became a kingdom, and its growth cut off Leon, as distinguished from Castile, from any advance against the Mussulmans. Navarre was cut off already. But the three kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal were all ready for the work. A restored Western Christendom was growing up to balance the falling away in the East. ♦Beginning of the great Christian advance.♦ The first great advance of the Christians in Spain began about the time of the Seljuk conquests from the Eastern Empire. The work of deliverance was not ended till the Ottoman had been for forty years established in the New Rome.