Gibraltar houses a Marian shrine that was once a mosque. Gibraltar was under Islamic rule from 711 to 1462, except for the short interval from1309 to1333. The name of the peninsula is an Anglicized version of the Arabic “Jabal [Mount] Tariq,” named for Tariq ibn Ziyad, the Mohammedan who captured the peninsula in 711. On August 20th, 1462, Ponce de Leon captured Gibraltar from the Moslems, and in 1501, Queen Isabella gave to Gibraltar its coat of arms: a castle and a key. After the Reconquista, the Spanish enshrined in the former mosque a two-foot image of Our Lady, crowned, seated on a throne, and holding the Infant King. Our Lady of Europe, as the image became known, was placed there evidently to protect the Continent from future Islamic invasion.
