Europe's Balkan Muslims

The presence of Muslims in Europe is not a new phenomenon. Starting in 711 CE, Muslims conquered large swathes of the northern Mediterranean shores and set up Caliphates and Emirates particularly in the Iberian Peninsula for more than seven centuries. The fall of the last Emirate of Granada, in 1492, marked the end of Muslim political rule in Spain. Later, the Inquisition led to the very expulsion of Muslims, Sephardi Jews and converted Spaniards. Almost concomitantly, in the Eastern Mediterranean, Islamised Ottomans defeated the Greeks, ejected them from Anatolia, took Constantinople in 1453, which later became Istanbul, and conquered the Balkan region.