Emirate of Córdoba in the context of "Muslim Spain"

Al-Andalus (Arabic: الأَنْدَلُس, romanized: al-ʾAndalus) was the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula. The name refers to the different Muslim states that controlled these territories at various times between 711 and 1492. At its greatest geographical extent, it occupied most of the peninsula as well as Septimania under Umayyad rule. These boundaries changed through a series of conquests Western historiography has traditionally characterized as the Reconquista, eventually shrinking to the south and finally to the Emirate of Granada.

As a political domain, it successively constituted a province of the Umayyad Caliphate, initiated by the Caliph al-Walid I (711–750); the Emirate of Córdoba (c. 750–929); the Caliphate of Córdoba (929–1031); the first taifa kingdoms (1009–1110); the Almoravid Empire (1085–1145); the second taifa period (1140–1203); the Almohad Caliphate (1147–1238); the third taifa period (1232–1287); and ultimately the Nasrid Emirate of Granada (1238–1492). Under the Caliphate of Córdoba, the city of Córdoba became one of the leading cultural and economic centres throughout the Mediterranean Basin, Europe, and the Islamic world. Achievements that advanced Islamic and Western science came from al-Andalus, including major advances in trigonometry (Jabir ibn Aflah), astronomy (al-Zarqali), surgery (al-Zahrawi), pharmacology (Ibn Zuhr), and agronomy (Ibn Bassal and Abu'l-Khayr al-Ishbili). Al-Andalus became a conduit for cultural and scientific exchange between the Islamic and Christian worlds.

The Paladins, also called the Twelve Peers (French: Douze Pairs), are twelve legendary knights, the foremost members of Charlemagne's court in the 8th century. They first appear in the medieval (12th century) chanson de geste cycle of the Matter of France, where they play a similar role to the Knights of the Round Table in Arthurian romance. In these romantic portrayals, the chivalric paladins represent Christianity against a Saracen (Muslim) invasion of Europe. The names of the paladins vary between sources, but there are always twelve of them (a number with Christian associations) led by Roland (spelled Orlando in later Italian sources). The paladins' most influential appearance is in The Song of Roland, written between 1050 and 1115, which narrates the heroic death of Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass.

The legend is based on the historical Umayyad invasion of Gaul and subsequent conflict in the Marca Hispanica between the Frankish Empire and the Emirate of Córdoba. The term paladin is from Old French, deriving from the Latin comes palatinus (count palatine), a title given to close retainers.

Madrid is the capital and most populous municipality of Spain. Madrid has almost 3.3 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.8 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and its metropolitan area is the second-largest in the EU. The municipality covers 604.3 km (233.3 sq mi) geographical area. Madrid lies on the River Manzanares in the central part of the Iberian Peninsula at about 650 m (2,130 ft) above mean sea level. The capital city of both Spain and the surrounding autonomous community of Madrid, it is the political, economic, and cultural centre of the country.

The primitive core of Madrid, a walled military outpost, dates back to the late 9th century, under the Emirate of Córdoba. Conquered by Christians in 1083 or 1085, it consolidated in the Late Middle Ages as a sizeable town of the Crown of Castile. The development of Madrid as an administrative centre was fostered after 1561, as it became the permanent seat of the court of the Hispanic Monarchy. The following centuries were characterised by the reinforcement of Madrid's status within the framework of a centralised form of state-building.

Septimania is a historical region in modern-day southern France. It referred to the western part of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis that passed to the control of the Visigoths in 462, when Septimania was ceded to their king, Theodoric II. During the Early Middle Ages, the region was variously known as Gallia Narbonensis, Gallia, or Narbonensis. The territory of Septimania roughly corresponds with the modern French former administrative region of Languedoc-Roussillon that merged into the new administrative region of Occitanie. In the Visigothic Kingdom, which became centred on Toledo by the end of the reign of Leovigild, Septimania was both an administrative province of the central royal government and an ecclesiastical province whose metropolitan was the Archbishop of Narbonne. Originally, the Goths may have maintained their hold on the Albigeois, but if so it was conquered by the time of Chilperic I. There is archaeological evidence that some enclaves of Visigothic population remained in Frankish Gaul, near the Septimanian border, after 507.

The region of Septimania was invaded by the Andalusian Muslims in 719, renamed as Arbūnah and turned into a military base for future operations by the Andalusian military commanders. It passed briefly to the Emirate of Córdoba, which had been expanding from the south during the same century, before its subsequent conquest by the Christian Franks in 759, who by the end of the 9th century renamed it as Gothia or the Gothic March (Marca Gothica). Eventually, the Christian Franks chased the Muslim Arabs and Berbers away from Septimania and conquered Narbonne in 759, and the Carolingian king Pepin the Short came up reinforced. Septimania became a march of the Carolingian Empire and then West Francia down to the 13th century, though it was culturally and politically autonomous from the northern France-based central royal government. The region was under the influence of the people from the count territories of Toulouse, Provence, and ancient County of Barcelona. It was part of the wider cultural and linguistic region comprising the southern third of France known as Occitania. This area was finally brought under effective control of the French kings in the early 13th century as a result of the Albigensian Crusade, after which it was assigned governors. From the end of the thirteenth century Septimania evolved into the royal province of Languedoc.

Louis the Pious (Latin: Hludowicus Pius; French: Louis le Pieux; German: Ludwig der Fromme; 778 – 20 June 840), also called the Fair and the Debonaire, was King of the Franks and co-emperor with his father, Charlemagne, from 813. He was also King of Aquitaine from 781. As the only surviving son of Charlemagne and Hildegard, he became the sole ruler of the Franks after his father's death in 814, a position that he held until his death except from November 833 to March 834, when he was deposed.

During his reign in Aquitaine, Louis was charged with the defence of the empire's southwestern frontier. He conquered Barcelona from the Emirate of Córdoba in 801 and asserted Frankish authority over Pamplona and the Basques south of the Pyrenees in 812. As emperor, he included his adult sons, Lothair, Pepin and Louis, in the government and sought to establish a suitable division of the realm among them. The first decade of his reign was characterised by several tragedies and embarrassments, notably the brutal treatment of his nephew Bernard of Italy for which Louis atoned in a public act of self-debasement.

The Kingdom of Navarre (/nəˈvɑːr/ nə-VAR), originally the Kingdom of Pamplona, occupied lands on both sides of the western Pyrenees, with its northernmost areas originally reaching the Atlantic Ocean (Bay of Biscay), between present-day Spain and France.

The medieval state took form around the city of Pamplona during the first centuries of the Iberian Reconquista. The kingdom had its origins in the conflict in the buffer region between the Carolingian Empire and the Ummayad Emirate of Córdoba that controlled most of the Iberian Peninsula. The city of Pamplona (Latin: Pompaelo; Basque: Iruña), had been the main city of the indigenous Vasconic population and was located in a predominantly Basque-speaking area.

The Catalan counties (Catalan: Comtats Catalans, IPA: [kumˈtats kətəˈlans]) were those surviving counties of the Hispanic March and the southernmost part of the March of Gothia that were later united to form the Principality of Catalonia.

In 778, Charlemagne led the first military Frankish expedition into Hispania to create a military buffer zone between the Frankish Empire and the Emirate of Córdoba, occasionally known as the "Hispanic March". The territory that he subdued would in later centuries become the kernel of Catalonia (not yet known like that since the first written mention of Catalonia is in 1113). In 781, Charlemagne made his 3-year-old son Louis the Pious (778 – 840) king of Aquitaine, who was sent there with regents and a court in order to secure the southern border of his kingdom against the Arabs and Moors and to expand southwards into Muslim territory.

The haras (Arabic: الحرس; "the Guard") was a personal bodyguard unit of the caliphs during the Umayyad and the Abbasid periods. The haras was also instituted in the Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba in modern-day Spain.