Until the advent of materialism and 19th c. dogma, Western Civilisation was superior to anything Islam had developed. Islam has not aided in the development of the modern world; in fact civilisation has only been created in spite of Islam. Proof of this resides in the 'modern' world and the unending political-economic and spiritual poverty of Muslim states and regions. Squatting on richer civilisations is not 'progress'. Islam is pagan, totalitarian, and irrational.
St Ferdinand III of Castile (1200-1252) is largely unknown. El Cid (1045-1099) who did far less to eject the Musulmans from Spain, has far greater renown than Ferdinand. Yet it was the latter who decimated the Muhammadans in the early-to-mid-13th century, ensuring that the Jihad and Sharia, which had destroyed Spain, was erased barring the statelet of Granada which after repeated raids into adjoining Christian territory and endless horrors and murders was finally effaced in 1492 by Isabella and Ferdinand. During his time, San Fernando was named the ‘terror of the Saracens’. His lineage as noble, chivalrous Christian knight was impeccable, being the maternal grandson of Alfonso VIII the hero of Las Navas de Tolosa, and related to Alfonso VI the conqueror of Toledo and the mighty El Cid, with Richard the Lionheart a grand-uncle by marriage.
San Fernando was raised in part by his grand-father the famous Alfonso VIII, who impressed upon the boy the need to eject the Musulmans from Spain, reclaim the peninsula for Christ and end the endless persecutions, destruction, murders, rapes and sex enslavement enacted by the cult of Muhammad upon Christians. From an early age Fernando practiced the arts of war, and observed the political skills of his grandfather. His mother and entire family were pious Catholics and love of God and Christ was central to Fernando’s character and education. He was convinced that Christ was calling on him to spread the Holy Cross and ensure the safety of Christians from the Musulman menace.
Alfonso VIII died just 2 years after his famous victory at Tolosa, in 1214, during an engagement with the Almohads. His son Enrique inherited the crown but died 3 years later. The burden of government fell to his eldest sister who passed it on willingly to Ferdinand in 1217. For reasons of land and power, his own father Alfonso IX, the King of Leon, declared war on his son and Castile. The son did not react and wrote to his father that he would not strike against his own ‘lord’ and father, and would wait until Alfonso regained his senses. The father relented and a treaty was made.
Ferdinand married Beatrice of Swabia in 1219, who between 1221 and 1234 bequeathed him seven sons and two daughters. In the same year as his marriage Ferdinand knighted himself with the ‘sword of war’ an ancient weapon which symbolised knighthood. As he consolidated his power, Ferdinand read the history of the Musulman Jihad in Spain, planning and contemplating his own actions and campaigns. He was greatly influenced by Archbishop Rodrigo of Toledo who provided advice, books, material and guidance, and had been a friend of Alfonso VIII and a combatant at Las Navas de Tolosa. Rodrigo translated the Koran and spent time and energy educating people as to what the book actually meant and what it said about Christians. He also wrote a ‘History of the Arabs’ outlining the history of Muhammad and his cult dedicated to world domination and the fusion of the church and state in the form of a pagan celestialism and totalitarianism.
By 1224 Ferdinand was ready. The Musulman state in the south of Spain was in disarray and disunity. The hardened warrior Christian monks of Spain, from the battle-ready military orders including Santiago, Calatrava, Montesa and the Temple and Hospital were told to take the cross for the great Crusade. The Castilian army and nobles were enjoined to take the crusading oath along with mercenaries from beyond Castile. Near the end of 1224 Ferdinand personally led the army against the important Musulman fortress of Quesada, formerly a Christian fort, not far from Toledo. He was the first over the wall and the first to scale the town’s mosque, planting a Cross on top of the minaret. It was the first of many victories.
By the end of 1228 much of the frontier had been reclaimed for Christianity. Many Muslim emirs or Lords paid tribute and confirmed vassalage to Ferdinand. On campaigns through Jaen and Granada, thousands of Christian prisoners were freed, many near death from starvation. Mosques were converted into churches and religious triumphalism was everywhere apparent. This was payback for the Musulmand destruction of thousands of churches, monasteries and abbeys. In 1230 his father died, leaving Ferdinand as King of Leon as well as Castile. The consolidation of the 2 realms occupied his time for a few years and obstructed his Holy Crusade which was reduced in intensity and volume for a time.
In 1236 a small party of Christians and Muslims who had renounced their cult, took over an area of Cordoba, the Musulman capital. Word was sent to Ferdinand to help. Cordoba was a large Muslim majority city, containing perhaps some 50.000 people, not the apocryphal 1 million of Musulman and modern day atheist propaganda (If the city had 1 million Musulmans there was little chance that Ferdinand’s comparatively small force would have taken it and the city's ancient medieval walls now excavated, reveal a place of some 40-50.000 or the same as under the Visigoths). The few Christians and Musulman collaborators could not hope to hold out for long. Some 30.000 Musulmans were encamped near the city. Ferdinand suddenly appeared before the city with a much smaller Christian force but his name and his well-known ferocity impressed the Musulman army to retire to Sevilla to the north east. Ferdinand invested the city and after 5 months took it, dealing a shattering blow to Musulman prestige.
Unlike the Musulman conquests of the previous 500 years, Ferdinand always granted generous terms to the defeated, allowing Musulmans to leave unmolested, or remain and practice their cult as long as they were good citizens under the Castilian regime. Under Ferdinand and his leadership, there was never wanton destruction, rape or pillaging of Musulmans, their assets or their cities once they were defeated. Yet curiously this chivalric example is little commented upon by Western historians. The reason is simply the Catholicity of Ferdinand and his deep Christian piety, which offends the modern ‘secularist’ and ‘academic’.
The great mosque of Cordoba was rightly converted into a Church, and given that it was built from the destroyed Christian basilica of St. Vincent, this represented simply a return to what existed before the Mahometan Jihad. The great bells of Santiago de Compostela, taken some 250 years earlier by the Muslim Jihadist Almanzor, transported to Cordoba from Santiago on the backs of Christian slaves, was sent back to its cathedral of origin, on the backs quite rightly, of Musulman slaves.
With Cordoba secured Ferdinand took the almost impregnable fortress of Jaen to the east of Cordoba in 1245 and forced the emir of Granada to accept the suzerainty of Ferdinand in 1246. The only unconquered Mahometan kingdom left was that of Sevilla, the most opulent and prosperous of Musulman cities and statelets. Its position on the Guadaliqivir river and its access to the Mediterranean and North Africa made it an important strategic asset and trading entrepot. Its ringed set of walls possessed some 166 towers, staffed by a large fanatical Musulman army. Ferdinand attacked Sevilla in 1246, assaulting the area around the town, taking one by one, the ring of fortresses near to the city, and devastating the surrounding countryside.
Sevilla was put into a tight and effective siege. A single bridge, well defended by men and chains, protected the main supply route from the surrounding countryside. Christian ships on the river were unsuccessful in cutting off this supply and communications channel. Fasting, praying, sleeping and eating with his men, doing the same work as they did, Ferdinand fell ill. The siege affected both the besieged and the besiegers. By the summer of 1248 disease was rife. The siege was entering its second year. Incredibly Ferdinand decided to turn his camp into a Christian city complete with hospitals, stores, churches, artisans and civilians. He built a city around Sevilla. Eventually the Christian ships were able to break the heavy chain across the river and decimate the Musulman ships. The end was nigh, the Musulmans now had no recourse to food, supplies or communications.
On November 23 1248 Sevilla surrendered to Ferdinand. It was a monumental victory and signalled the collapse of Mahometan pretensions in Spain. Only Granada, a statelet paying Castile a yearly ransom had escaped the Christian Reconquista. Musulmans in Sevilla and elsewhere, were permitted to sell their properties and leave with their movable goods. No Musulmans were raped or murdered. Their property and goods were unmolested. Thousands of Mahometans left Sevilla and the surrounding areas. Ferdinand replaced them with Christians who flocked to the liberated city and its environs. As with Cordoba, the golden age of Sevilla was to begin with both cities leading the way to Spanish hegemony over large parts of the globe during the 16th century.
In Crusading lore, St. Ferdinand III of Castile and Leon, is accounted as the foremost warrior. A pious man, dedicated to Christ, an ascetic, a governor of moderation, a law giver and honest broker, a warrior and a father, a husband and a leader, Ferdinand III is simply an icon of what a man can be and can do. Without doubt Ferdinand was both a Crusader and a Saint.
The third vicious and rapacious Mahometan assault on Spain occurred in the mid 12th century. The second Muslim Jihad, perpetrated largely by Black Muslims named Almoravids, had originated in 1089 and by 1147 had been comprehensively defeated by the Christian kingdoms in the north of Spain. The borders of Christianity had expanded, the Muslim occupied ‘south’, in which wide-spread persecution, and destruction of Christians and their property and lives had been barbarically implemented, was now contracting its failures blamed on impiety, and a lack of Jihadic fanaticism. Concerned Muslims and those wishing the eradication of the Christian north, asked the Almohads, fanatical Mahometans who believed in the ‘oneness of the Al Lah’, or more plainly rejected and persecuted anyone, but especially Christians who professed a ‘joining to Al Lah’ including Christ and the Holy Spirit. The Trinity in the Qu’ran is loathed and hated (3-367, 4-448 and elsewhere). There is no compassion or tolerance for the Trinity believers for orthodox Mahometans.
The Almohad cult, dedicated to the completeness and unity of the Al-Lah (the moon deity of Mecca and Muhammad’s family idol whose shrine they were the caretakers of), was formed by one Ibn Tumart in the early 12th century in Morocco. It is thus a Berber cult and again, for the racialists today so devoted to white-racism, a non-white cult. The Berbers are not ‘white’. Again as with the Almoravids, we have a non-white invasion of once Romano-Visigothic and entirely white Christian territory. But nary a dissenting voice, word, or blog in the modern world about this Muslim imperialism and attendant slaughter and rapine of white Christian territory.
For some reason Tumart presented himself not just as a divinely inspired leader, but the reincarnation of Muhammad. Given that Muhammad was a criminal war leader, paedophile, brigand, thief and murderer who performed no miracles, an imitation was unlikely to prove difficult to realise and even offer benefits to its claimant. Why anyone would believe Tumart is left to the imagination but plunder, booty and power are reasons which come to mind and fit in with the Muslim cult’s ‘ethos’. In 1123 Tumart raised a vast force, with the intention of reconquering and reimposing strict Sharia on first Almoravid North Africa, and then Spain. He exhorted his followers by declaring that the weak and failing Almoravids were perverts of Mahometism and they must be reconciled to the one Mahdi (or final Imam of Muhammad’s cult), namely himself. The Almohads invaded North Africa and attacked far and wide, killing, plundering and destroying the ‘impious’ Muslims and Almoravids. By 1145 the Almohads and destroyed the Almoravids in North Africa and were imposing totalitarian Sharia on the conquered subjects. In 1146 Tumart led his hordes into Spain and directly attacked the Christian states in the north. The Christian advances were stopped the borders once again solidified and the remaining Christians in the Muslim south were again persecuted, imprisoned, killed, or exiled. By 1064 no Christians were left in the kingdom of Granada for example.
The latest Jihad prompted the north Christian states to build monkish military orders to defend the borders and build forts and castles at key points. These warrior monks proved the ablest and most courageous of the Christian defenders and were essential in an era where there was Christian disunity, with the various kingdoms at odds over land, trade and borders and often making separate peace treaties or deals with the Almohads.
By the late 12th century Christian disorganisation was partially ended by King Alfonso VIII of Castile, who was able to assemble a crusade from the bickering Christian states. However, Alfonso’s army was inferior in size and might to that of the Almohads and it lacked the cohesion and unity of the Almohad forces. On July 18 1195 the Musulmans defeated Alfonso’s men at the battle of Alarcos just south of Toledo which is not that far from Madrid. It was a colossal defeat for the Christians, one of the worst ever suffered at the hands of the Musulmans. The Muslim emir and general Abu Yusuf could not follow up this signal victory due to rebellions in North Africa. This was fortunate for the Christians and bought them time to regroup.
A new Caliph, one al Nasir, arrived in Spain from North Africa in 1211 resolved to utterly annihilate Alfonso VIII and follow up the victory at Alarcos. Pope Innocent III proclaimed a Crusade in Spain, adjuring the Christian states within Spain to focus on the Muslim Jihad and put aside their temporal and material complaints. Innocent reiterated the public declarations by al Nasir that his intent was to extirpate all Christianity and Christians in Spain. The time for unity and a new Crusade was necessary. The Muslims referred to the Christians as white swine, and the Christians re-joined with cries to evict the black dogs from across the sea.
In mid May 1212 thousands of Christian warriors gathered in Toledo, with many more thousands of pilgrims and penitents making barefoot processions around the basilica and offering up prayers for salvation and protection from the Mahometan menace. This vast army under Alfonso VIII left on June 20 1212 to attack Musulman fortifications along the border. They took many strongholds and were led by a mysterious shepherd through a hidden pass some 100 miles south of Toledo onto the plain of Las Navas de Tolosa, which is where the Caliph al-Nasir was encamped. Al-Nasir’s army was a mix of black slaves, Berbers, Arabs, Turks and Mujahidin mercenaries. The 20.000 or so Christian host was heavily armoured with the latest technology and weaponry. Much of al Nasir’s African force were half-naked fighting on smaller horses using speed and alacrity as their main offensive tactics.
Alfonso VIII humiliated at Alarcos 20 years previously and suffering ignominy and minor defeats since, initiated the battle on July 16 1212. The Christian heavy infantry and horse crashed into the Musulman front lines and were met with stout resistance and fanatical energy. The terrain favoured the Almohads who fought on an incline facing down to the Christian attack. Archers were of limited use in the close hand to hand combat. The Christians cut down many lines of Musulmans but the Muslim host, some 40.000 men, was twice that of the Christian and the lines were replaced.
Somehow miraculously, inspired by the Holy Cross carried aloft, the Christians under the giant King Sancho of Navarre and his heavy calvary broke through the Almohad centre and carrying the cross it appeared to the rest of the Christian forces, some of whom had started to flee certain that the large Muslim host was going to be victorious, that the Holy Cross was behind enemy lines indicating a Christian victory. When defeat seemed certain, this minor miracle reversed the affair, and the entire Christian army plunged back into the fray, slicing and killing their way through the Muslim lines to the Caliph’s tent, itself protected by chained black slaves. Al Nasir fled on a horse, but his army was not so fortunate. Most of it was pursued and ruthlessly slaughtered. The Muslims suffered their worst defeat in ages, an entire Almohad army put to the sword and the way now open for the Christians to reconquer the Muslim south.
Las Navas de Tolosa was the beginning of the end for any Musulman rule in Spain. The Almohads quickly declined. The military power and prestige of the Mahometans forever effaced. One by one the Muslim territories and statelets were conquered by the Christians. The great victory by Alfonso at Tolosa would be followed up by one of the great Christian leaders and Crusaders no one has much heard of – St. Ferdinand III of Aragon and Castile.
The Muslim Jihad and annihilation of Romano-Christian civilisation in Spain, had ‘phases’ of activity and ‘waves’ of Jihadic war. The first invasion occurred in 711 AD by Arab and Berber armies, more numerous, motivated and faster than the Visigothic forces who were betrayed, as so often was the case in the medieval era when Muslim forces faced Christian, by corrupt generals and faint-hearted troops. From the time of Don Pelayo’s seminal victory at Covadonga in 722 AD, to 1085 when Christians had reconquered Toledo, the ancient Visigothic capital of Christian Spain, the Muslim tide of war and destruction had slowly waned, the purity of Jihad watered down by the luxuries of the conquered and superior Christian civilisation, effeminate tastes displacing the allure of booty and the hard work of participating in raids to obtain sex-slaves, the delights of the harem and the material replacing the intensity of the spiritual and immaterial. By the end of the 11th century the laxity of the ruling Muslims in Spain elicited a ferocious response from their co-cult members in Africa.
The Christian ‘swine’ or pigs as the Muslims called them, ranging from the ‘north’ were proving by 1085 to be a real threat. The woes enacted by Christian arms, and the success of the Christian Reconquista, evoked lamentations from Muslims, who identified the causation of this impossible state of affairs to be impiety, a lack of devotion to the Al Lah and his mad profiteer Muhammad, and the surrendering of once intolerant Muslim orthodoxy to the sensual pleasures of amoral living and luxury. The Muslim Emirs or ‘Taifa Kings’ therefore asked their militant African brethren for help in rolling back the Christian forces. These Muslim adherents were called the ‘Almoravids’, fanatical zealots, who dedicated their lives to waging Jihad, and were active in the Niger and Senegal river basins, slaughtering, enslaving and converting. The civilised attractions of Spain versus the infertility of West Africa must have been incredibly enticing to the Almoravids.
In 1086 the Black, non-White Almoravid Muslims were in Spain and a large host defeated Alfonso of Castile, the victor at Toledo, crushing his forces at Sagrajas. The Black Almoravids built a pyramid with Christian skulls to celebrate their victory. Alfonso barely escaped with his life, and most of his army was either killed, taken prisoner or fled to safety. Fortunately for Spanish Christians a rebellion in North Africa recalled the Almoravid leader Tashufin, who spent 3 years putting down the rebels, returning to Spain in 1089. Pope Urban II understood that this new Jihad was a threat to southern France and beyond. In 1089 he exhorted all Christians to conduct a Crusade in Spain to throw back the latest Muslim wave. Presaging his colossal speech at Clermont in 1095, which initiated the Holy Land Crusades, Urban promised a full remission of sins for any Christian who fought against the Mahometan in Spain.
The existing Muslim ‘Taifa Kings’, viewed the Almoravids with almost as much horror as they did the Christians. For the Taifa rulers, the North Africans were too devout, too pious and fanatically deranged and focused on war. They were unresponsive and indifferent to Tashufin’s call for war. Ignoring the weak Taifa King’s, Tashufin attacked the strongly held Christian capital at Toledo without them, failing to take the city. He blamed this defeat on the immoderate weakness of the existing Muslim aristocracy who were insufficiently war-happy. For the next 10 years or so Tashufin conquered and absorbed these Muslim statelets, enforcing a strict and binding Sharia. Christian Dhimmis or second class citizens within Muslim domains were persecuted, some killed and many of their churches pulled down.
The borders between Christian and Almoravid Spain had not changed much since 1089. In 1118 another King Alfonso of Aragon restarted the Reconquista. He attacked the Ebro valley, retaking Saragossa in 1118. Tens of thousands of Christian Dhimmis were repatriated and saved. They became indispensable in re-populating the border lands between Christian and Muslim held territory. In reprisal the Muslims did the usual, increasing the persecution of Christians and the demolition of churches. Many Christian Dhimmis lost their property, scores were imprisoned and put to death. There were mass deportations of Christians to North Africa, with many tens of thousands expulsed. Entire areas of cities in Spain, once populated by Christians, were now emptied.
In 1138, the Christians were still in the ascendant. Alfonso VII of Leon, ravaged the norther parts of Muslim held territory, burning down mosques and setting fire to any copy of the Koran which was found. Muftis or any ‘learned’ men of the Mahometan cult were put to death. In 1139 in Portugal, Afonso Henriques and his mixed army of Spanish and Portuguese, destroyed a large Muslim force at Ourique, one of the most devastating defeats suffered by Muslims in Spain. This created the nation of Portugal. In 1146 for the first time since 711, the Christians retook Cordoba. In 1147 with the help of the 2nd Crusade, Lisbon, Tortosa and Almeria were liberated. By 1150 it was clear that the second ‘great wave’ of Muslim war mongering and Jihad had failed in Spain. The Christians were on the path to reconquering the peninsula. This elicited a third rabid response from Muslims in Africa, leading to the invasion by the Mahometan Almohads, as vicious, blood thirsty and rapacious as the Almoravids had been in 1086.
The Great Replacement. The Great Suicide. Turks on April 10th 2023 took over one of England's great icons, Albert Hall, issuing a call to war, and the eradication of the Infidel.
The event at the Royal Albert Hall was not just an innocent celebration of Ramadan but rather a show of force by the Turkish government to further Islamize and control Europe.
The Royal Albert Hall is an iconic symbol of British culture and heritage, known for hosting some of the most prestigious events in the world. However, on the evening of April 7, its famous steps were overtaken by 500 British Muslims for an Iftar during the Islamic month of Ramadan. This seemingly innocent event is just one more victory in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s plan to Islamize and control Europe.
The event was organized by the Ramadan Tent Project, a controversial Islamic-led organization that proudly boasts of their conquest of non-Muslim locations across Britain. Their founder, Omar Salha, who is of Lebanese-Turkish heritage, is an Erdoğan loyalist and a faculty member for the “Islamophobia” Research and Documentation Project (IRDP) at UC Berkeley, founded by terror-tied Islamic radical Hatem Bazian. Adding to the disturbing nature of the event was the controversial call to prayer, or adhan, which was shouted by Abdullatif Aydin, a Turkish migrant working in London. Former imam Tomas Samuel states that the adhan represents “shows power and control over the country” according to Islamic texts. Meanwhile, ex-Muslim Ridvan Aydemir likens it to a “warlike declaration” and implores European and North American cities to ban it.
During the Muslim slaughter, rape and desecration of Spain, during the 8th and 9th centuries, with millions of Christians out of the total population of some 5 million, being forcibly converted to Muhammadanism, enslaved, raped, or reduced to second-class Dhimmi status, the conflict was viewed by both sides as existential and final. The remnants of Christian Spain, occupying the mountainous regions in the north-west rightly viewed the ‘Moorish’ onslaught as evil, a darkness, and its ‘prophet’ a demon, one who established a ‘carnal’ paganism, a malignant heresy whose main purpose was to destroy Christianity. As one Christian writer at the time commented, ‘Muslims were ordered to rob, to make prisoner, and to kill the adversaries of God (Allah) and their prophet, and to persecute and destroy them in every way.’ It was not just a Jihad for Muslims, to win control over land or wealth. The objective was to annihilate all vestiges of Christianity.
In Muslim pagan theology, Christians are contemptible infidels who associated a mere mortal named Jesus with God. The enemies of the Muslim Allah or Baal (the Meccan moon deity caretaken by Muhammad’s family), must fight such ‘blasphemy’ until the ‘idolators’ are liquidated. Whereas the Muslims facing the Byzantine empire named the Christian Byzantine Emperor the ‘dog of the Romans’, in Spain, the Muslims declared Christian Kings to be the ‘pigs’ of the Romans. Both dogs and pigs are unclean in Muhammadanism. The former to be killed. The latter to be avoided.
Don Pelayo’s heroic defence of Christendom, eventually resulted in the creation of a many somewhat small Christian kingdoms covering the north, the east and the centre of Hispania including Galicia, Leon, Castile, Navarre and Aragon. For more than 3 centuries these kingdoms were beset by an endless and almost yearly Jihad, often coming close to eradication. In 793 for example, 100.000 Jihadis, some from Arabia, attacked the smaller Christian kingdoms, raping women, pulling down churches and cities, and burning the countryside. The booty and number of slaves attained was immeasurable. In the 10th century the celebrated Muslim Jihadi Caliph, ‘al-Mansur’ (the victorious, 938-1002 A.D.) led 57 Jihad expeditions against the northern Christians. Tens of thousands were slaughtered and enslaved, hundreds if not thousands of churches destroyed, and cities and villages torched and annihilated. Al-Mansur was famous for his piety, always carrying a Koran and engaging in ritual prayer and ablution. In 997 he sacked Santiago de Compostello and took the large Church bells back to Cordoba to adorn the Grand Mosque as lights – on the backs of Christian slaves. This pilgrimage site which contained the relics of Saint James the Apostle, was razed to the earth. The monks who defended the cathedral and sanctuary were slaughtered or tortured to death. In spite of this carnage and ruination, al Mansoor predicted before his death that the Christian states would strike back and that not completely destroying them would result in the eventual demise of Muslim Spain. This may be apocryphal, but if it is true, it was prophetic.
By 1031 the Muslim Caliphate at Cordoba splintered due to the usual infighting and civil dissensions. Ferdinand I of Castile in 1050, had forced the Muslims into payments to guarantee their existence, exacting tribute and land, and bleeding them financially. His son Alfonso VI followed the same policy. Having bled them for 30 odd years, Castile under Alfonso VI invaded and took over Toledo the ancient Christian-Visigothic capital, in 1085. This is the formal start of the Reconquista. It was a highly symbolic victory and caused much consternation and lamentation within the Muslims of Hispania. Alfonso VI explained the importance of his victory:
“The city (Toledo), by the hidden judgement of God, for there hundred and seventy-six years had been held by the Moors who commonly blasphemed the name of Christ…in the place where our holy fathers adored the God of faith, the name of the cursed Muhammad was invoked…I took up arms against the barbarous peoples…if I, Alfonso, the emperor, under the leadership of Christ, were able to restore to the devotees of his faith, the city which wicked people under the evil guidance of their leader Muhammad had taken from the Christians.”
The Christian duty to reclaim Hispania, was far more important than war for war’s sake, or to acquire land, booty or power. It was a Holy War to expel the demonic forces of Muhammad’s cult and to stop the extirpation of civilisation. The yearly ‘razzia’, Jihad, the annual plunder, rapes, and desecrations, the massive numbers of enslaved and killed, compelled a Christian response. The Christian counter-attack in Spain was a religious duty, a necessity to reclaim once Christian lands and mandatory for survival.
“I will not associate with the Arabs in friendship nor will I submit to their authority. Christ is our hope that through this little mountain, which you see, the well-being of Spain and the army of the Gothic people will be restored.”
Don Pelayo, c. 717 in the Asturias northern Spain, the last Christian area in Spain, conquered by the Muslims 710-717 A.D.
Don Pelayo and his small army of some 300 men, thwarted the complete Muslim takeover of Spain, by setting up a miniature Christian redoubt in the Pyrenes. Today, Pelayo would be labelled a racist, Islamophobe, Nazi, and White Christian supremacist. In the 8th century he was simply a realist who well knew the insufferable slavery, rape and destruction that the Muslim Jihad would bestow on the Iberian peninsula and all Christians who were conquered, or who had submitted to the paganism of the Muhammadan cult. The ‘Chronicles of 754’ provide the depictions and laments of a Spain pulverised, crushed, ruined and plundered by the Muhammadan forces. Today this is called enrichment.
Musa bin Nusayr, after the 710-11 invasion, led Muslim armies north, with the Chronicles of 754 weeping, “He ruined beautiful cities, burning them with fire; condemned lords and powerful men to the cross; and butchered youths and infants with the sword…He terrorised everyone.” This unholy terror is now deemed to be a ‘Golden Age’, one of light, brightness and endless Muslim ingenuity and invention. The Chronicles asked, exuding pain and suffering from their very words, “Who can relate such perils? Who can enumerate such grievous disasters?...it would be beyond human nature to express the ruin of Spain and its many and great evils.” Today this mass rapine, slaughter and devastation is lauded as a necessary antidote to the ‘dark ages’ of Christian superstition and stupidity, where the ‘noble’ Muslims were educating, teaching and imploring the ‘dark age savages’ to affix their miserable society to ‘civilisation’.
Pelayo ruled the small kingdom of the Asturias, until his death in 737. In 722 at Covadonga a momentous clash took place, which provided the germination for the Christian Reconquista. Pelayo entrapped a huge Muslim army, with sources varying and as usual with medieval assessments, probably exaggerating the size at between 60.000-100.000 men, in a remote mountain pass. The Christians manned the heights and rushed forth from caves and hiding places from above and from the sides of the vast Muslim horde, exacting great carnage with missiles and showers of rocks. The Muslims who fled were pursued and relentlessly slaughtered. This existential struggle with Muhammadanism found expression in the absolute destruction of the Muslims at Covadonga, saving Christian Spain, and probably southern France from Jihadic domination.
The Muslims sent in many large forces during the 720s and 730s against the small Christian kingdom but were repulsed with much bloodshed on each occasion. By 750 the entire north-western part of the Iberian peninsula was once again Christian. The Jihad was however relentless. Every single year the Mahometans would issue forth and attempt to raid and destroy the Christian cities, villages and farms in the Asturias realm. Perennial war created a no-man’s-land, roughly along the Duero river. This tortured territory was rendered almost a desert by the Muslims. Historian Louis Bertrand states:
“To keep the Christians in their place it did not suffice to surround them with a zone of famine and destruction. It was necessary also to go and sow terror and massacre among them…it was a holy war against infidels…This was one of the capital causes of the deforestation from which the Peninsula still suffers….”
As with all areas of Muslim invasion, Spain was obliterated. Anyone who has travelled around Spain will notice the lack of forest and foliage cover in many areas of the country, especially in those locales which demarcated a border with Christian states in the Middle Ages. The Mahometans desecrated everything including flora and fauna. Terror was their modus operandi, and today the hugely intelligent and well-informed, term this massive, unrequited devastation, a ‘golden age’.
Of especial interest for Muslim desecration was anything connected to Christianity. Buildings with a cross, churches, monasteries, hospitals, libraries, schools, abbeys, and related icons, paintings, statues, crosses, reliquaries, gold and silver plates, anything of any value which was connected to the Christian faith, was seized, violated, melted down or pulled down. The quantity of art, books, scientific and technological treatises, theological and philosophical vellum and parchments, jewellery, fine designs, architectural wonders and even engineering and inventions, destroyed by the Muslim Jihad in Spain, during just the 8th century is incalculable. Quite literally a veritable fortune of civilised production was annihilated by the Mahometans.
The spoilation, ruin, conversion and often the firing of Churches was a yearly event. In Cordoba, always lauded as the ‘cradle’ of the mythical ‘Muslim golden age’, al-Rahman (d 788) pulled down all the Christian churches. He also took all the bodies that the Christians called ‘saints’ and burnt them. Christian churches were targets for destruction under the Umayyad rule Muhammad I (852-886) and al Mansur (d 1002), both of whom encouraged Muslims to wilfully and wantonly burn down Christian buildings. The ‘Great Mosque’ of Cordoba was built from the massive and pulled down Cathedral of St Vincent and the mosque was designed, built, and erected by Christian slaves. The conversion of churches into mosques, or their complete destruction as Muslim policy. So much for the inter-faith myth.
A vital and alluring feature of the Muslim Jihad in Spain was to collect White slaves. The ‘richness and beauty of the young girls’ and the accumulation of sex slaves, to feed the harems of Muslims across North Africa and the Middle East was a distinguishing enticement for the Jihad. During the 8th century it is recorded that the northern Christian areas, to stave off the yearly Jihad raid, bribed the Muslims not with gold, silver or produce, but with nubile young women – hundreds, sometimes thousands of them at a time, given yearly. Cordoba became a White slave entrepot during the 8th and 9th centuries, famous for the beauty of its slave-women, reduced in Muslim literature with contempt to whores, prostitutes and harlots, where White women are depicted as nothing more than lascivious machines, desiring only copulation with their Muslim masters.
Muslim Spain in the 8th and 9th centuries was a sordid and ruinated mess. In the northern lands clung the last of the Christian kingdoms. The rest of the peninsula was Mahometan, with Sharia Dhimmitude imposed, with Christians and non-Muslims enjoying only slave and chattel status. Thousands of White slaves were taken in raids and in ransom each year by the Muslims to fill the sexual appetites of their cult and its orgies. Entire cities, villages, countryside’s and forested areas were destroyed. Churches and any building associated with Christianity effaced, converted to a mosque or set to fire. The rich, Romano-Visigothic-Christian empire was desolated and ripped apart. Yet today this mammoth dislocation, effacement and eradication is greeted with clapping, joy and amazement and pronounced as a ‘golden age’.