Introduction

Abstract

The present study discusses Spanish travel literature between the early thirteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The first three centuries of this period saw the completion of what has come to be called the Christian reconquest of Islamic Iberia; the last century or so witnessed the exploration and conquest of much of the new World and the establishment of the overseas Spanish Empire. In its earlier phases, the reconquest played out as an intermittent succession of encounters, skirmishes, and occasional battles, amid long intervals of uneasy but more or less peaceful coexistence. After the once-powerful Cordoban caliphate collapsed and fragmented in the early eleventh century, resulting in the formation of a number of so-called taifa kingdoms, Iberian Christian kingdoms increasingly took advantage of Muslim vulnerability. For some time, Muslim Spain held its own against the increasingly powerful and gradually uniting Iberian Christian kingdoms. The resounding Christian victory at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 was followed by a series of Muslim defeats by Christian forces, especially those of Castile. Throughout the middle decades of the thirteenth century, Moorish cities and kingdoms were occupied one by one, including Córdoba in 1236, Seville in 1248, and Cádiz in 1262. By the end of that century, only the Emirate of Granada retained a nominal independence, remaining tributary to Castile until its outright conquest by the Catholic Kings in 1492.