Since the invaders respected the religion and customs of the conquered, the war of the Christian kingdom of Asturias against them did not at first have a religious or even a racial character. It was a war of the nobles and clergy for the reconquest of their landed estates and of the king for the restoration of his royal authority over the peninsula. The little Asturian kingdom was like the old Visigothic state in miniature; for example, there were the struggles between the nobility and the crown for precisely the same objects as formerly. For a century the history of Asturias reduced itself primarily to these quarrels. Nevertheless, the Moslem frontier tended to withdraw from the far northwest, not that the Moslems were forced out by the Christians, but possibly because their own civil wars drew them together in the centre and south, or because their numbers were not great enough to make them seek the less desirable lands in the northwest. The frontier became fixed south of the Douro along a line running through Coimbra, Coria, Talavera, Toledo, Guadalajara, and Pamplona, although the last-named place was not long retained. It cannot be said that the Christians took a conscious offensive until the eleventh century. In this period, despite the internal dissension of the Moslem state, the Christian frontier did not pass the Guadarrama Mountains even at the most favorable moments, leaving Aragon and central and southern Spain in the enemy’s hands. The line of the Douro was far from being held consistently,--as witness the conquests of Abd-er-Rahman III and Almansor. [Sidenote: Alfonso I and Alfonso II.] [Sidenote: Santiago de Compostela.]