From Tariq to the caliphs of Cordoba
Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed from Morocco in 711 and defeated King Roderic at Guadalete. Within a few years almost all of Spain was under Muslim rule. Abd al-Rahman I, the Umayyad prince who escaped the Abbasids, founded the emirate of Cordoba in 756, and Abd al-Rahman III declared it a caliphate in 929.
Cordoba became one of the great cities of Europe, and al-Andalus later produced thinkers such as Ibn Rushd, Ibn Hazm and the surgeon al-Zahrawi.
Taifas, Almoravids and Almohads
The caliphate of Cordoba broke up into small rival kingdoms, the taifas, in 1031. They fought each other and paid tribute to Christian kings. When Toledo fell in 1085 they called in the Almoravids from Morocco, who won at Zallaqa in 1086. The Almohads followed, but their defeat at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 opened the south: Cordoba fell in 1236 and Seville in 1248.
Granada, the last emirate
The Nasrid emirate of Granada survived for 250 more years, partly by paying tribute to Castile, and built the Alhambra. On 2 January 1492 its last ruler, Muhammad XII, surrendered the city to Ferdinand and Isabella. Muslims who stayed were forced to convert, and their descendants, the Moriscos, were expelled between 1609 and 1614.
Islam reaches the subcontinent
Muhammad bin Qasim took Sindh and Multan for the Umayyads in 712 and 713. Three centuries later Mahmud of Ghazni raided India seventeen times, and Punjab became part of his empire.
Muhammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan at Tarain in 1192, and in 1206 his general Qutb al-Din Aibak founded the Delhi Sultanate. Five dynasties ruled it: the Mamluks, Khaljis, Tughluqs, Sayyids and Lodis. Ala al-Din Khalji turned back repeated Mongol invasions.
The Mughals
Babur, a descendant of both Timur and Genghis Khan, won at Panipat in 1526. His son Humayun lost the throne to Sher Shah Suri and won it back with Persian help. Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan ruled one of the richest states in the world, and Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal.
Aurangzeb (1658 to 1707), who built Lahore's Badshahi Mosque, pushed the empire to its largest size but left it worn out by decades of war in the Deccan.
Sher Shah Suri and Akbar's system
Sher Shah Suri, an Afghan who drove Humayun out in 1540, ruled only five years but rebuilt the Grand Trunk Road and introduced a silver coin, the rupiya, that outlived him.
Akbar, who came to the throne at 13, built the Mughal system of ranked officers, the mansabdars, reformed land revenue, and brought Rajput kings into the empire through alliance and marriage. The system he built kept the empire running for a century after his death.
Why both frontiers were lost
Al-Andalus fell because its Muslim rulers fought each other and paid Christian kings against their rivals while the Christian north united. The Mughal decline came after Aurangzeb: provinces broke away, Nadir Shah sacked Delhi in 1739, and the East India Company won Bengal at Plassey in 1757. After the uprising of 1857 the British exiled Bahadur Shah Zafar to Rangoon and ended the dynasty.
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