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II 
CONFLICT IN 
THE MEDITERRANEAN BEFORE 
THE FIRST CRUSADE 
A. The Recon quest of Spain before 1095 
 Before the northward advance of the Moslem forces had run its full course
at least one center of Christian resistance had made its appearance at the
northern edge of the Hispanic peninsula. By the middle of the ninth century
the princes of Asturias-Leon had extended their holdings southward across
the Cantabrian mountains for a distance of some sixty miles from the coast
of the Bay of Biscay. On the eastern coast of the peninsula, to the immediate
south of the eastern Pyrenees, lay the Catalan counties of the Spanish March,
Barcelona chief among them. In the western Pyrenees Navarre and immediately
to her east Aragon were in a rudimentary stage of development. Within a century
after the completion of the Moslem conquest, the centers of resistance from
which the Christian reconquest of the peninsula was to emanate had all made
their beginnings, but it was to be another two centuries before any semblance
of concerted and continuing Christian aggression against the Moslem conquerors
would be discernible. 
 Excellent guides to source materials and the modern literature are: P. Aguado
Bleye, Manual de historia de Espana (9th ed., 3 vols., Madrid, 1963—),
I, chapters 25—35, and L. G. de Valdeavellano, Historia de Espana (3rd
ed., Madrid, 1963—), I, i (pp. 359— 509) and ii (pp. 9—3
86). A. Ballesteros y Beretta, Historia de España (and ed., rev.,
11 vols., Barcelona, 1943—1956), I-II, is helpful but dated. The long
standard work of A. Herculano, Histdria de Portugal (9th ed., Lisbon, n.
d.), I, should be supplemented by L. Gonzaga de Azevedo, História
de Portugal (6 vols., Lisbon, 1935—1944), II-III. Cf. also D. Peres,
Como nasceu Portugal (5th ed., Porto, 1959); E. Levi-Provençal, Histoire
de l'Espagne musulmane (3 vols., Paris, 1950—1953); J. Perez de Urbel,
Sancho el Mayor de Navarra (Madrid, 1950); R. Menéndez Pidal, La España
del Cid (4th ed., 2 vols., Madrid, 1947), and English translation by H. Sunderland
from 1st ed., The Cid and His Spain (London, 1934). H. Livermore's History
of Spain (London and New York, 1958) and History of Portugal (Cambridge,
England, 1947) provide introductory surveys. 
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