Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/662

 564 Outlines of European History Granada and Castile The Mohammedan conquest served to make the history of Spain very different from that of the other states of Europe. One of its first and most important results was the conversion of a great part of the inhabitants to Mohammedanism. During the tenth century, which was so dark a period in the rest of Europe, the Arab civilization in Spain reached its highest de- velopment. The various elements in the population, Roman, Gothic, Arab, and Berber, appear to have been thoroughly amalgamated. Agriculture, industry, commerce, art, and the sciences made rapid progress. Cordova, with its half million of inhabitants, its stately palaces, its university, its three thou- sand mosques and three hundred public baths, was perhaps unrivaled at that period in the whole world. There were thou- sands of students at the University of Cordova at a time when, in the North, only clergymen had mastered even the simple arts of reading and writing. This brilliant civilization lasted, however, for hardly more than a hundred years. By the middle of the eleventh century the caliphate of Cordova had fallen to pieces, and shortly afterwards the country was overrun by new invaders from Africa. But the Christians were destined to reconquer the peninsula. As early as the year looo^ several small Christian kingdoms — Castile, Aragon, and Navarre — had come into existence in the northern part of Spain. Castile, in particular, began to push back the Mohammedans and, in 1085, reconquered Toledo from them. Aragon also widened its bounds by incorporating Barce- lona and conquering the territory watered by the Ebro. By 1250, the long war of the Christians against the Mohammedans, which fills the medieval annals of Spain, had been so success- fully prosecuted that Castile extended to the south coast and included the great towns of Cordova and Seville. The Christian kingdom of Portugal was already as large as it is to-day. The Moors, as the Spanish Mohammedans were called, main- tained themselves for two centuries more in the mountainous 1 See map above, p. 440.