261.366 - 2016 project and El Cid - the Moors

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

El Cid - the Moors

Mauritania was the country at the western end of the northern coast of Africa, and may be the source of the term Moors.  I apologize for misinforming you yesterday.  I thought the Moors already existed, converted to Islam, and invaded Spain and Portugal.  no, no, no, no, no.  that would be too simple.  the Moors were some part of the Arab army that broke off and stayed in Mauritania while the rest of the army either distributed itself across the northern coast of Africa or rode back to Arabia for new orders - at least that's what I understand today.  anyway, the Moors took a couple of years to make sure the local inhabitants understood who were the bosses then, and in 711 (yes, just like the store), some small number of them crossed into Spain.  (I read somewhere that 700 originally invaded.)  hunh!  they conquered as much as they could hold, sent back for reinforcements, conquered as much as they could hold, sent back for reinforcements, and so forth for eight years.  yes, eight years it took them to conquer all of Spain and Portugal too.  wow!  but we aren't done.  thirteen years later they felt confident enough of their grasp on Spain and Portugal, that they invaded France.  uh-oh!  Charles Martel (we call him now) was busy assembling the beginning of what would become Charlemagne's empire, so he rushed troops to intercept the Moors and after the famous Battle of Tours, the Moors retreated into Spain and Portugal, which they renamed Al Andalusia, and held it for six hundred to eight hundred years.  to me, it was a weird holding.  the Moors remained a minority in their new holding.  they had a governor, and troops, and potentates in the major cities, and were definitely the top dogs in their new digs, but right beside them, barely under them, they left the existing structure of kings, dukes, lords, barons, and knights who had formerly ruled Spain and Portugal.  maybe it was fun.  I think there was a lot of fighting involved, and both they and the Spanish and Portuguese aristocracy were fighters, were warriors.  in any case, they fought, and the Moors governed for six hundred years.  the Spanish and Portuguese began to take back Spain and Portugal respectively in about 1300, and succeeded in expelling most of the Moors, the governing Moors, in 1492.  they let middle-class Moors and poor Moors stay on until 1680, I think.  and what does all this have to do with anything?  it's the context, the background, in which the story of El Cid happens.  it's also, for me, one of the most perplexing chunks of history that we (Westerners, Europeans) have.