Reconquista

The Reconquista (a Portuguese and Spanish word for "Reconquest"; Arabic: الاسترداد‎ al-ʼIstirdād, "Recapturing") was a period of about 700 years (539 years in Portugal) in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula succeeded in retaking (and repopulating) the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslim Al-Andalus Province. The Islamic conquest of the Christian Visigothic Kingdom in the 8th century (begun 710–12) extended over almost the entire peninsula (except major parts of Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Marca Hispanica (Aragon and Catalonia) and the Vasconia). After 500 years, in the 13th century, the last remaining Moors ruling were the Nasrid dynasty in the Kingdom of Granada. With their defeat in 1492, the entire Iberian Peninsula had been brought back under Christian rule, thus completing the Reconquista.