The Reconquista (a Spanish and Portuguese word for "Reconquest"; Arabic: الاسترداد, "Recapturing") was a period of 800 years in the Middle Ages during which the several Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula expanded themselves (grew) by conquering the Muslim states of Al-Andalus (Arabic الأندلس), the Muslim states on the Iberian Peninsula, and pushing them out of the peninsula.
The Reconquista began shortly after the Islamic conquest. Much of the ideology of the Reconquista was common to most Crusading: soldiers from all Christendom travelled to Iberia to fight the Muslims as an act of Christian repentance.
Watt, W. Montgomery: A History of Islamic Spain. University Press of Edinburgh (1992).
Watt, W. Montgomery: The Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe. (Edinburgh 1972).
Timothy Reuter, Christopher Allmand, David Luscombe, Rosamond McKitterick (eds.), " The New Cambridge Medieval History", Cambridge University Press, Sep 14, 1995, ISBN0-521-36291-1.
Bishko, Charles Julian, 1975. The Spanish and Portuguese Reconquest, 1095–1492 in A History of the Crusades, vol. 3: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, edited by Harry W. Hazard, (University of Wisconsin Press)
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