Khosroid
Iberia (Caucasus) · 580 – 786
11 figures
Dynasties of Iberia
Dynasties of the Iberian Peninsula — Spain, Portugal, Andalusi Moorish realms.
3 dynasties
Umayyad Caliphate
Syria / Damascus / Spain · 661 – 750
The first hereditary Islamic dynasty, responsible for the rapid expansion of Arab rule from Spain to India.
2 figures
Spanish Habsburgs
Spain / Holy Roman Empire · 1516 – 1700
The Spanish Habsburg dynasty inherited, at a single moment in 1516, the largest territorial state in the world. Charles V was simultaneously king of Castile and Aragon through his mother Joanna; king of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia through his Aragonese inheritance; ruler of Spanish America through the same; Duke of Burgundy and Lord of the Netherlands through his grandmother Mary of Burgundy; and from 1519 Holy Roman Emperor, archduke of Austria, and king of the Romans through his Habsburg patrimony. He was nineteen years old. Charles abdicated forty years later in stages between 1554 and 1556, exhausted by four decades of universal war and convinced no successor could manage the whole inheritance. His son Philip II received Spain, the Indies, the Italian possessions, and the Low Countries; his brother Ferdinand received the Austrian lands and ultimately the imperial title. The Spanish branch would reign in Madrid for the next century and a half, defending a global empire against the rising powers of England, France, the Netherlands, and the Ottomans. The reign of Philip II (1556–1598) is the apex of Spanish Habsburg power. The Spanish silver fleets brought back the wealth of the Americas; the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 broke Ottoman naval supremacy in the Mediterranean; in 1580 Philip inherited the throne of Portugal, briefly uniting the two Iberian empires. The reign also saw the catastrophic Dutch Revolt, the failed Armada against Elizabethan England (1588), and the religious wars of the French Reformation in which Philip backed the losing Catholic League. The dynasty entered visible decline under his successors. Repeated cousin marriages — designed to keep the inheritance within the Habsburg family — produced increasingly inbred offspring; the last Spanish Habsburg, Carlos II, was so disabled by genetic damage that he could not chew solid food, walk unaided, or father an heir. His death in 1700 without issue triggered the War of the Spanish Succession, which ended the dynasty and brought the French Bourbons to the Spanish throne under the Treaty of Utrecht.
5 figures