Introduction

Between 1157 and 1504, the Iberian Peninsula evolved from a state of fragmentation, with an important Islamic political presence and a multi-religious and multicultural society, to a new panorama that, dominated by the Castilian-Aragonese block, would lay the foundations at the end of the Middle Ages for the Catholic Hispanic Monarchy in conjunction with the expulsion of religious minorities from the Peninsula. Acknowledgement of the presence of Judaism and particularly of Islam, offering alternative social, political and religious systems, is fundamental to our understanding of the evolution of the Iberian Peninsula in the High and Late Middle Ages.

In this study, in order to define a guiding theme, we have adopted the perspective of the Christian kingdoms, in consideration of the demographic and territorial influence of these kingdoms during the period analysed. We make this decision notwithstanding the importance in the evolution of al-Andalus and Western Islam of the different Islamic formations that arose in the Peninsula between the 12th and 15th centuries.

The Territorial Framework from A Christian and Islamic Perspective: Hispania/España and Al-Andalus

The history of the Peninsula in the High (11th to 13th centuries) and Late Middle Ages (14th to 15th centuries) is characterized by the existence of two parallel cultural identities, shaped by the Christian and Muslim perception of the Iberian Peninsula, materialized in the entity of Hispania/España and al-Andalus respectively. Hispania/España – a territory that during the medieval period was identified geographically with the Roman Hispania, but was also a cultural and historical community that traced its origins to Roman, Visigothic, and even pre-Roman, times – gave the different medieval Christian kingdoms a common awareness capable of articulating some feelings of identity. Far from being uniform, this awareness, according to Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, took on different manifestations, depending on the era, an individual’s social position and, above all, on the different perceptions of territory established during the historical genesis of each area.

Furthermore, it is important to bear in mind that this awareness of forming part of a common cultural and historical community was compatible with the political diversity of the Peninsula – an awareness of diversity that would eventually lead to the expression las Españas (‘the Spains’), that sometimes also evoked the old administrative divisions of Roman Hispania – and with the subjective identity of belonging to the different Christian kingdoms.