Not too far from my house, in the town of East Alton, Illinois, there is a historic marker to an almost forgotten part of local history. It commemorates a stockyard that only stood for a few years. The East Alton stockyards were an important way and gathering station for horses, being sent on a long and perilous journey to war.
The Reconquista, or Christian reconquest of Iberia, took nearly 800 years. The fighting did not come without great attempts by Muslim powers across the strait trying to reestablish their presence in mainland Europe. The last gasp of that effort came in the 1330s, when the powerful Marinid sultanate of what is modern Morocco invaded in an attempt to reverse Christian gains and secure the perilous position of the Sultanate of Granada.