Even long before the Crusades, on April 30 in 711, at the invitation of the sons of the late Visigoth King Wittiza, the Umayyad General Tarikh ibn Ziyad (el Moro) led 7000 troops into what was to became Spain and Portugal. His troops consisted of 300 Arabs and 6,700 native Africans. Ibn Husayn (ca. 950) recorded that these troops were "Sudanese", the Arabic word for Black people. The banner of the Maure, the negro head blindfolded on a white background became associated with Tarik's African armies.
Tarik's flag was the white flag of the Umayyad Dynasty (661-750). The Umayyads took white as their symbolic color as a reminder of the Prophet's first battle at Badr, and to distinguish themselves from the Abbasids, by using white, rather than black, as their color of mourning. The Visigoth usurper, Roderic, was defeated by the Africans on 19th July 711 at the battle of Guadalete, near Medina Sidonia. Roderic's fall ended Visigoth rule over what the Africans then called Spania (from the Amazigh word for Rabbits), or Al Andalus, and began 800 years of African and Arab control over much of southern and western Europe, but especially over Grenada in Southern Spain
Al Hambra, Granada's citadel in the Sierra Nevada, Andalucia - Spain
After the fall of the Umayyads in Damascas, the Africans in Spain, known as the Moro were cut off and came under threat from successive invasions. However, the Moro retained the white flag and it came to be associated with negro troops specifically, whereas the Saracen Arab invaders who followed them into Spain used the red flag of the Khawarij Republican followers of Caliph Uthman III. As pressure from the Reyes Cat?licos (the Christian Reconquistadors) increased over the centuries, African states in Spain mutated and fell and rose many times. The most stable and longest lived African state in Spain was Grenada, with the magnificent Nasridin dynasty citadel of Al Hambra as its capitol. Al Hambra surrendered to the Reyes Cat?licos at dawn on January 2, 1492. Spain and Portugal followed this action with the conquest of parts of Africa, the destruction of African communities in Europe and the invasion of the Americas. Lisbon's black population, that out-numbered Europeans in 1550, was devasted by the plagues of the times. The last free blacks in Spain were expelled on April 6, 1609.
The last African flag of Grenada consisted of heraldic "Argent, a pomegranate gules leafed vert" (ie., an all-white flag, with a centred red pomegranate flower with green petals). It is unclear what the symbolic significance of the pomegranate bloom was to blacks in Spain. What is notable, however, is that the Pomegranate gave its name to Granada, as well as to the Hand Grenade which came into use in the 15th century. Moreover, the bloom has the colors Green, Yellow, Red, which coincidentally are the Pan-African colors. Perhaps most cryptic of all is the ancient saying "There is nothing in the world like the pain of being blind in Granada," probably less a reference to the blindfolded Maure and more about the beauty of perhaps the most beautiful place in Europe. Al Hambra is still only second to the Vatican in tourist visitors.
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