The
July 16,
1212 battle of
Las Navas de Tolosa is considered a major turning point in the history of
Medieval Spain. The forces of
King Alfonso VIII[?] of
Castille were joined by the armies of his peninsular rivals,
Peter II[?] of
Aragon and
Alfonso II of Portugal in battle against the
Muslim Almohad rulers of the southern half of the
Iberian Peninsula.
Caliph al-Nasir[?] led the
Almohad army.
The defeat of the Almohads signaled the beginning of a long decline in the power of the Moors in Spain, and gave futher inertia to the Christian Reconquest begun by the kingdoms of northern Iberia in the century before.
