In 732 A.D. a Frankish army led by Charles Martel defeated an Umayyad (Arab) army at the Battle of Tours near Poitiers in modern day France,
In 732 A.D. a Frankish army led by Charles Martel defeated an Umayyad (Arab) army at the Battle of Tours near Poitiers in modern day France, halting the Islamic conquest that had swept across northern Africa and into Europe. Had the Muslim army prevailed that day, the history of Europe and the rest of the western world might have turned out much differently. As a result of Martel’s victory, Gaul did not fall under Islamic rule, but the Muslim invaders retained control of the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal). Over 700 years would pass before they were finally defeated and driven out. This period of Spanish and Portuguese history is remembered (sometimes controversially) as the “Reconquista” (reconquest). For centuries the small Christian kingdoms in the mountainous north of modern-day Spain held on, engaged in more or less constant warfare with the Muslim dynasties in the south (remembered collectively as “the Moors”). The full history of the Reconquista is long and comple...