Moors

Moors, a general term for tribes in North Africa descended from Arab and Berber stock; they were Christians for several centuries, but on their conquest by Arabs in 647 embraced Mohammedanism; the town Moors do not hold before European settlers, but the nomad tribes show more vitality; Moorish peoples seized and settled in Spain early in the 8th century, and, introducing a civilisation further advanced than that in Europe generally with respect to science, art, and industry alike, maintained a strong rule till the 11th century; then the Spaniards gradually recovered the peninsula; Toledo was taken in 1085, Saragossa in 1118, Valencia in 1238, Seville in 1248, Murcia in 1260, and Granada in 1492; Turkish successes in the East came too late to save the Moors, and the last were banished from the country in 1609.

Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)