Moorish Castle started from Gibraltar in 711 and, through to its final recapture by Spaniards in 1462, Moorish rule was gradually undermined until, with the fall of Granada in 1492, Moorish occupation of parts of western Europe came to an end after 781 years. The Moorish conquest of Spain was led by Tarik ibn Ziyad and Musa ibn Nusayr, who may have landed in Europe at or near Gibraltar. Gibraltar thus became the stepping-stone to the Moorish conquests of most of Spain and part of France. This spectacular feat of arms took a mere twenty-one years, no mean task considering the distances
Tales of the Alhambra inspired Vladimir Belsky's libretto for the opera "The Golden Cockerel" by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. The book serves as the basis of the 1950 Spanish film "Tales of the Alhambra". Villa Zorayda, a museum in St. Augustine, Florida based on a wing of the Alhambra, takes its name from a character in Irving's book (specifically from "Legend of the Three Beautiful Princesses"). The city of Alhambra, California is named after the book. In 1874, the daughter of Benjamin Wilson was reading the book and encouraged him to use the name for his new Los Angeles suburban development. In 2017, Spanish animation producer