In the 11th cent. B.C., the Phoenicians settled there and founded several coastal colonies, notably Gadir (now Cádiz and, supposedly, the inland town of Tartessus, which became the capital of a flourishing kingdom (sometimes identified with the biblical Tarshish). Greeks and Carthaginians came in the 6th cent. B.C.; the Carthaginians were expelled (3d cent. B.C.) by the Romans, who included S Spain in the province of Baetica. The emperors Trajan, Hadrian, and Theodosius were born in the region.
Visigoths ended Roman rule in the 5th cent. A.D., and in 711 the Moors, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, established there the center of their western emirate (see Córdoba). Andalusia remained under Moorish rule until most of it was conquered in the 13th cent. by the kings of Castile; the Moorish kingdom of Granada survived; it, too, fell to the Catholic kings in 1492. The Moorish period was the golden age of Andalusia. Agriculture, mining, trade, and industries (textiles, pottery, and leather working) were fostered and brought tremendous prosperity; the Andalusian cities of Córdoba, Seville, and Granada, embellished by the greatest Moorish monuments in Spain, were celebrated as centers of culture, science, and the arts.