The Iberian Peninsula had slowly slipped from Christendom control due to numerous invasions by the Moslems, and by the eighth century, an Islamic state existed well inland, with its main city of Cordoba becoming the largest western European city by the tenth century. As the Frankish empire began to lose its power and influence in the middle ninth century, the 'flood-gates' to the Spanish west were opened for Moorish attacks, and following the sack of …showed first 75 words of 1143 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1143 total…rm the Muslims retreated...." Jim Bradbury. The Medieval Siege (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1992), 102. John Beeler. Warfare in Feudal Europe 730-1200 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971), 160. Bradbury, 102. Beeler, 152-156. Phillipe Contamine. War in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1986), 55 - information obtained from a footnote. Beeler, 156. Beeler, 153 & 167. Beeler, 166. Beeler, 58. Nicholas Hooper and Matthew Bennett. Warfare: The Middle Ages 768-1487 (Illustrated Atlas) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 95. Beeler, 177. Contamine, 57. Beeler, 174-175. Beeler, 175-178 Beeler, 178. Contamine, 57.