Iberian peninsula in the context of "Peninsular Spain"

A military order (Latin: Ordo militaris) is a Latin Catholic religious order of knights. The original military orders were the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller, the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, the Order of Saint James, the Order of Calatrava, and the Teutonic Knights. They arose in the Middle Ages in association with the Crusades – the Crusader states (mainly the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Holy Land), the Baltics, and the Iberian peninsula; their members being initially dedicated to the protection of Christian pilgrims, and eventually to the defence of the Crusader states and the conquest of non-Christian or even non-Catholic lands. They are the predecessors of chivalric orders.

Most members of military orders were laymen who took religious vows, such as of poverty, chastity, and obedience, according to monastic ideals. The orders owned houses called commanderies all across Europe and had a hierarchical structure of leadership with the grand master at the top.

The Nuragic civilization, also known as the Nuragic culture, formed in the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, Italy in the Bronze Age. According to the traditional theory put forward by Giovanni Lilliu in 1966, it developed after multiple migrations from the West of people related to the Beaker culture who conquered and disrupted the local Copper Age cultures; other scholars instead hypothesize an autochthonous origin. It lasted from the 18th century BC (Middle Bronze Age), up to the Iron Age or until the Roman colonization in 238 BC. Others date the culture as lasting at least until the 2nd century AD, and in some areas, namely the Barbagia, to the 6th century AD, or possibly even to the 11th century AD.Although it must be remarked that the construction of new nuraghi had already stopped by the 12th-11th century BC, during the Final Bronze Age.

It was contemporary with, among others, the Mycenaean civilization in Greece, the Apennine and Terramare cultures of the Italian peninsula, the Thapsos culture of Sicily, and the final phase of the El Argar culture in the Iberian peninsula.

Umar ibn Hafs ibn Shuayb ibn Isa al-Balluti (died 855) was the leader of a group of Andalusi refugees who seized control of Alexandria and, after being expelled from the city by the Abbasids, conquered the Byzantine island of Crete, becoming the first Emir of Crete.