Conquest, Reconquista, and the world of the Conquistadors: From Rome and Arabs to the Americas
The kingdom of Spain has had one of the greatest impacts on world history and civilization. 500 years ago the Conquistadors had just conquered the Aztec Empire of Mexico and were about to start their conquest of the Maya kingdoms. Within a decade they would conquer the Inca of Peru and the wealth in gold and silver that they seized would help make 16th century Spain the richest kingdom and most powerful empire on earth. Who were these conquistadors who took on indigenous American empires many times larger than their own kingdom and, in the face of enormous odds, conquered them for “gold, god, and glory” and ended up creating the first empire in history “on which the sun never set”?
The Spanish were not always conquistadors and, eight hundred years before they created their American and world empire in the 16th century, it was they who were the conquered. In 711, Arab and Berber Muslim forces crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and quickly defeated and took over almost the entire kingdom of the Visigoths, a Germanic group that had themselves conquered the Iberian peninsula from the Romans, Byzantines, and other invading Germanic groups. The culture and mindset of the Spanish conquistadors was born over the long period of the Reconquista of the next eight centuries, during which Spain was contested between the Islamic Moors of fabled al-Andalus and the Christians of the north, whose kingdoms of Asturias, Leon, Castile, and Aragon would eventually merge to become the powerful Spanish kingdom and empire of the 16th century.
One cannot understand the Conquistadors without understanding the Reconquista. It is poignant that Christopher Columbus was finally granted official permission and funding from the Spanish crown to sail west across the Atlantic, the voyage on which he would discover the Americas for what would forever after be known as the “Old World”, in January of 1492 in Granada, immediately after that last capital of the Moors on Spanish soil was captured and ending the era of the Reconquista. On this trip we will visit the famed lands of Castile and its many castle-topped hills, lands over which proto-conquistadors contended with Moorish armies over many centuries, and where Don Quixote would chase their ghosts as he tilted at windmills. We will also visit Extremadura, the parched land of western Castile where Cortes and Pizzaro and so many of the other fearsome conquistadors came from. Toledo is located in the very center of Spain and was the capital of the Visigothic kingdom and its archbishop is still the head of the Catholic church in all of Spain. Toledo is a wonderfully preserved medieval city and its major sites include churches, mosques, and synagogues, attesting to the remarkable religious tolerance of the Moorish emirs and caliphs of al-Andalus.
Our trip will take us to the heartland of the fabled al-Andalus, including its capitals Córdoba and Granada. Both are World Heritage Centers and the mosque-cathedral of Córdoba and the Alhambra fortress palace of Granada are two of the most beautiful and stunning works of architecture of the medieval world. We will also visit Seville, the port in southern Spain from which the Spanish ships of discovery and conquest would set sail for the Americas. Here Christopher Columbus is buried in the gigantic cathedral, whose bell tower is actually a soaring Moorish minaret, known as the “Giralda”. Merida is an ancient Roman city in western Spain whose ruins so impressed the Conquistadors that they renamed the Maya capital of Yucatan, famous for its own extensive ruins, in its honor. Our trip will conclude with visits to the wonderfully preserved medieval cities of Salamanca and Avila and a special tour of the castle of Zorita de los Canes, where Dr. Guenter has worked and which perfectly exemplifies the diverse ethnic history of medieval Spain and where the terrifying war dogs the Conquistadors would unleash on the Americas were first bred.
