The Battle of Covadonga was the first victory by a Christian military force in Iberia following the Islamic conquest of Visigothic Hispania in 711–718. It was fought at  Covadonga, most likely in the summer of 722. The battle was followed by the creation of an independent Christian principality in the mountains of Asturias that grew into a powerful kingdom in the north west of the Iberian Peninsula and became a bastion of Christian resistance to the expansion of Muslim rule. It was from there that the return of Christian rule to the entire Iberian peninsula began, so that the small battle at Covadonga is in retrospect regarded by historians as the beginning of the Reconquista.