Andalusia (Spanish: Andalucía) is an autonomous community of Spain. Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest, in terms of its land area, of the seventeen autonomous communities of the Kingdom of Spain. Its capital is Seville.
Andalusia is bounded on the north by the autonomous communities of Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha; on the east by the autonomous community of Murcia and the Mediterranean Sea; on the west by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean; on the south by the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar, which separates Spain from Morocco, and the Atlantic Ocean. The British colony of Gibraltar shares a three-quarter-mile land border with the Andalusian province of Cádiz at the eastern end of the Strait of Gibraltar.
The Umayyad Caliphate invasion of the Iberian peninsula in 711-718 marked the collapse of Visigothic rule. Andalucian culture was deeply influenced by half a millennium of Muslim rule during the Middle Ages. Córdoba became the largest and richest city in Western Europe and one of the largest in the world. The Moors established universities in Andalucia, and cultivated scholarship, bringing together the greatest achievements of all of the civilisations they had encountered. During that period Moorish and Jewish scholars played a major part in reviving and contributing to Western astronomy, medicine, philosophy and mathematics.
With the fall of Seville in 1248 most of Andalucia came under Castilian control, leaving only the emirate of Granada under Muslim rule until it too was conquered by the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. The largest Arabic speaking population was in Andalucia, which also received Moors from other regions who were driven south by the Reconquista, and although many either converted or left later, they gave the region its distinctive character till this day.
Andalucia is known for its Moorish and Moorish influenced architecture. Notable examples include the Alhambra in Granada, the Mezquita in Córdoba, the Torre del Oro and Giralda towers and the Reales Alcázares in Seville, and the Alcazaba in Málaga. Archaeological ruins include Medina Azahara, near Córdoba, and Itálica, near Seville, and at Huelva, the Andalusian port from which Columbus's expedition of discovery was launched.
The Spanish language spoken in the Americas is largely descended from the Andalusian dialect of Spanish. This is due to the role played by Seville as the gateway to Spain's American territories during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Al-Andalus (Arabic: الأندلس al-andalus) was the Arabic name given to those parts of the Iberian Peninsula governed by Muslims, or Moors, at various times in the period between 711 and 1492.[1] It refers to the Umayyad Caliphate province (711-750), Emirate of Córdoba (c. 750-929) and Caliphate of Córdoba (929-1031) and its "taifa" ("successor") kingdoms.
As the Iberian Peninsula was eventually regained by Christians re-expanding southward in the process known as the Reconquista, the name Al-Andalus came to refer to the Muslim-dominated lands of the former Visigothic Hispania.
In 1236 the Reconquista progressed to the last remaining Islamic stronghold, Granada, achieved by the forces of Ferdinand III of Castile. Granada was a vassal state to Castile for the next 256 years, until January 2, 1492 when Boabdil surrendered complete control of Granada to Ferdinand and Isabella, Los Reyes Católicos ("The Catholic Monarchs"). The Portuguese Reconquista culminated in 1249 with the conquest of Algarve by Afonso III.
C.W. Previte-Orton writes in his Cambridge medieval history,
"The brilliant Saracenic civilization of Moslem Spain rendered the Moors, even during their declines under the Reyes de Taifas, the most cultured people of the West."
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