Europe in 1300

Muslim Spain

map
The Iberian peninsula in the 14th century

The 13th century was a time of great victories for the Christian kingdoms of Iberia over the Islamic states to their south. One by one the Almohad states had fallen to Christian armies until only Granada was left, and that in a weakened condition. In fact, Granada was technically a tributary state of Seville, paying an annual fee in gold to maintain its independence.

There was a bit of movement in the 14th century when a new Muslim dynasty, the Marinids, based in Morocco, took over rule of Granada. This sparked a response from Castile and its king Alfonso XI. He achieved some victories in the 1340s and was laying siege to Gibraltar when his army was struck by the Black Death. The king himself died of the plague, the Christian armies returned home, and there matters stood for another hundred years, until the final push of the Reconquista from 1469 to 1492.

Despite the sporadic wars, you should not think of these two cultures as separate and hostile. Rather, they had frequent and steady contact with one another, though the real golden age of Moorish culture was in earlier centuries. Moreover, Moorish Spain was not a single cultural entity. A basic divide was between Arabs and North Africans, but also significant were Mozarabs (Christians who had lived under Muslim rule for generations) and a large Jewish population. Likewise, on the Christians side were many Muslims as well as many Jews. In short, Iberia was culturally diverse and politically fragmented.