Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Within the Iberian Peninsula, the tumultuous period of the independent Muslim cities of al-Andalus came to an end with an event characteristic of the times. Alfonso VI of Castile, a politically astute and highly ambitious Christian monarch and longtime protector of the critically important Islamic taifa of Toledo, consolidated his power and took overt and official control of that ancient city in 1085. Victor over Christian and Muslim adversaries alike in his bid for leadership over broad territories, Alfonso made Toledo his new capital. . . . Toledo was made over as the European capital of translations and thus of intellectual, especially scientific and philosophical, excitement." [Menocal: Ornament of the World, p. 42-3] "In the long aftermath of 1085, and under the line of Alfonsos and other descendants of Alfonso VI, Toledo became the radiant intellectual capital of Europe, a Christian city where Arabic remained a language of culture and learning. . . . It was by way of Toledo that the rest of Europe--Latin Christendom--finally had full access to the vast body of philosophical and scientific materials translated from Greek into Arabic in the Abbasid capital of Baghdad during the previous several hundred years." [Menocal: Ornament of the World, p. 145-6]