Medieval Spain: Al-Andalus, the Christian kingdoms and the Crown of Castile-León
What the exam tests
The passage from the Muslim conquest to a peninsula of competing Christian crowns, with the Crown of Castile-León at the centre: its repoblación methods, legal instruments, pastoral economy and late-medieval crisis.
Al-Andalus
- 711 Guadalete; 714–756 walis dependent on Damascus; 756 independent emirate (Abd al-Rahman I); 929 Caliphate (Abd al-Rahman III); 1031 fitna and taifa kingdoms.
- North African interventions: Almoravids (1086, Zallaqa/Sagrajas), Almohads (from 1147). After Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) only the Nasrid kingdom of Granada remained (1238–1492).
- Society: Arabs, Berbers, muladíes, mozárabes, Jews; irrigated agriculture and Mediterranean trade; Córdoba, Averroes, Maimonides, the Toledo translation movement.
The Christian kingdoms
- Covadonga (722) and the Asturian nucleus; Leonese expansion into the Duero valley (9th–10th c.) through presura/aprisio; Castile as a county, raised to a kingdom in 1065.
- Cortes de León, 1188 (Alfonso IX): town representatives sit with nobles and clergy - the standard reference for European parliamentary origins.
- Fernando III unites Castile and León definitively (1230) and takes Córdoba (1236) and Seville (1248); Alfonso X codifies law (Fuero Real, Siete Partidas) and institutionalises the wool interest (Mesta, 1273).
- Repoblación types: presura (Duero), concejil/fuero (Extremadura, the Meseta frontier), repartimiento (Andalusia and Murcia, 13th c.).
- Late Middle Ages: Trastámara accession in 1369 (Enrique II, Montiel), Black Death 1348, pogroms of 1391, civil wars; the Becerro de las Behetrías (1352) is a fiscal survey of Castilian lordships.
Worked example
Asked to "analyse repoblación in the Duero valley", do not just define it. Start from the demographic vacuum after 711 and the Asturian-Leonese push, define presura as private occupation of land recognised by royal charter, link it to the free peasantry and to concejos with their fueros, then contrast it with the 13th-century repartimiento, where land was granted to nobles and military orders in already-populated Andalusia. Conclude that different frontier conditions produced different social structures: small freeholders in the north, great estates in the south.
Mark-losing traps
- 1085 (Toledo) and 1212 (Las Navas) are not interchangeable.
- Keep the order taifas → Almoravids → Almohads → Granada.
- 1230 is the definitive Castile-León union; 1065 and 1157 are partitions, not unions.
- Do not describe the Crown of Castile around 1250 as a modern state: it was a composite of señoríos with weak fiscal reach.