Andalusian (Civ6)/Civilopedia

In April 711 AD, the Berber commander Tariq ibn-Zivad, on the orders of the Umayyad Caliph al-Wadi I, landed a small force at Gibraltar across the straits from the Muslim lands. After decisively defeating the Visigoth king Roderic, the Moors would overrun most of Iberia. Thus began al-Andalus, initially part of the expanding Umayyad empire. But in 756 the exiled Umayyad prince Abd al-Rahman I ousted the governor of al-Andalus and installed himself as the emir of the realm, with his capital at Cordoba.
After some decades of decline, the great Abd al-Rahman III, who took power in 912, not only rapidly restored the kingdom’s fortunes and prestige, but extended it through conquest. In 929 he proclaimed himself “caliph,” elevating al-Andalus to among the greatest kingdoms of Islam. His son al-Hakam II elevated it even further. Dominating the trade routes into the Mediterranean, the kingdom entered a golden age of cultural and scientific advances, as well as expanding into North Africa with the capture of Tangier.
But the Cordoba caliphate collapsed during a ruinous civil war that raged from 1009 through 1013. Although it stumbled along until 1031, al-Andalus devolved into a welter of small kingdoms and cities. Thus giving impetus to the efforts of those Christian kingdoms to drive the Moors out – the Reconquista.