Editing Mesta (section)

===Before 1085===
It has been claimed that, during the medieval [[Reconquista|Reconquest]], the frontier lands between Christian and Muslim areas were sparsely populated, largely uncultivated and used mainly for animal grazing, and that the periodic movement of this frontier zone encouraged [[transhumance]].<ref>Bishko (1963), p. 49</ref><ref name="Bishko 1980, pp.496-7"/> However, the Christian advance into the [[Douro|Duero]] valley was undertaken by peasant mixed-farmers, who densely settled it, combining cereal crops with small livestock holdings.<ref name="reilly 90-2">Reilly, pp.90-2</ref> Only when the Reconquest progressed beyond Old Castile and entered areas of poor soils where it was difficult to grow cereals or to maintain high livestock densities did the poor quality of the land and the limited availability of grazing favour sheep [[transhumance]] over sedentary mixed farming.<ref>Simpson, p.37</ref> Transhumance existed in other Mediterranean countries with climates and grazing that favoured transhumance which were similar to central Spain, but which were not unsettled as Spain was during  the Reconquest.<ref>Klein, p.8</ref>
   
In the Christian lands north of the [[Sierra de Guadarrama]], the usual livestock until the end of eleventh century were plough oxen, milk cows and pigs as well as sheep There is no evidence for large flocks of sheep before the early 1100s,<ref>Butzer, p. 38</ref><ref>Pastor de Togneri, p.366</ref> and no clear evidence for any large scale transhumance of sheep flocks before the late Mediaeval period.<ref name="gt 181" /> The long-distance transhumance described from southern France, Italy and Spain was connected with the commercial exploitation of sheep, mainly for wool, and its taxation by the local states, and was not connected with subsistence farming.<ref>Braudel, pp.94, 99</ref>
 
Sheep were relatively unimportant in the Islamic [[Caliphate of Córdoba]] and there is no known record of long-distance transhumance before its fall in the 1030s.<ref>Walker, p. 38</ref> The Marinids, a [[Zenata]] Berber group which held extensive sheep flocks in Morocco, intervened in Andalusia several times in the late 13th and early 14th centuries in support of the [[Emirate of Granada]],<ref>Reilly, pp. 162-3</ref> and they may have brought new breeds of sheep and the practice of long-distance transhumance, including the use of Berber and Arabic terms, into Spain.<ref>Butzer, pp. 39-40</ref><ref>Klein, p. 5</ref> However, there is no definite evidence that the Marinids did bring their flocks to Spain and they arrived as a fighting force, conducting frequent raids against the Castilians, and were hardly in a position to protect any flocks they might have brought.<ref>Lopez (1996), p.124</ref> It is more probable that Moroccan rams were imported, to [[crossbreed]] with the native stock.<ref>Braudel, p.94</ref><ref>Rahn Phillips and Philips, p.41</ref>