Joint Portuguese and Spanish forces defeated by Spanish Muslim Emirate of Granada

Compiled By: Syed Ali Shahbaz
On October 30, 1340 AD, Portuguese and Spanish Castilian forces halted the Muslims in the Battle of Río Salado, but failed to subjugate the Emirate of Granada.
Two months earlier in August, Sultan Abu al-Hassan Ali, the Marinid ruler of Morocco, who had crossed over to Spain to help the Spanish Muslims against Christian marauders from the north, had inflicted a shattering defeat on the Portuguese-Castilian alliance, destroying the Christian fleet in the Strait of Gibraltar, and ensuring that the island of Gibraltar (corruption of the Arabic term Jabal at-Tareq or Rock of Tareq, the Muslim conqueror of Spain), remains under the suzerainty of Emir Yusuf of Granada.
In 1492 with the fall of Granada, the last Spanish Muslim stronghold, to the Christian aggressors, almost eight glorious centuries of Muslim rule in Spain that produced scholars and scientists at a time when Europe was immersed in the dark ages, came to its end, because of Muslim disunity and the failure of the two strong Muslim regional Empires of the Mamluks of Egypt-Syria and the Ottomans of Anatolia and southwestern Europe, to respond to the pleas for help of their co-religionists in Spain.