Adalid

Last updated March 06, 2019

Adalid ("champion"; Arabic, dalíl (دليل), means "guide") was a military officer rank in Castile. The position, second to the commander, was akin to that of captain.^[1]

An officer is a member of an armed forces or uniformed service who holds a position of authority.

The Crown of Castile was a medieval state in the Iberian Peninsula that formed in 1230 as a result of the third and definitive union of the crowns and, some decades later, the parliaments of the kingdoms of Castile and León upon the accession of the then Castilian king, Ferdinand III, to the vacant Leonese throne. It continued to exist as a separate entity after the personal union in 1469 of the crowns of Castile and Aragon with the marriage of the Catholic Monarchs up to the promulgation of the Nueva Planta decrees by Philip V in 1715.

History

It is not clear when the rank or term was established. It is mentioned in a ballad at the time of King Ramiro of León (900–951). By the time of John II of Castile (1405–1454), the rank of adalid was gone, but the term was in use as an honorary title.^[2]

Ramiro II, son of Ordoño II, was a King of León from 931 until his death. Initially titular king only of a lesser part of the kingdom, he gained the crown of León after supplanting his brother Alfonso IV and cousin Alfonso Fróilaz in 931. The scant Anales castellanos primeros are a primary source for his reign.

John II of Castile was King of Castile and León from 1406 to 1454.

Requirements

An adalid had to be wise, courageous, loyal, and possess common sense.^[3] Another prerequisite for holding the privileged post of adalid was that the candidate must have achieved the status of "almogavar de caballo" (Almogavar knight), in accordance with the Fuero sobre elfecho de las cavalgadas.^[4] When a king or a lord wanted to create an adalid, he brought together twelve adalides who made the selection. If twelve adalides could not be found, then a tales de circumstantibus was established, adding men who had proved themselves in war. According to King Alonso (1221–1284), "It was advised in ancient times that they were to have the qualities before mentioned... in order to be able to guide the troops and armies in time of war, ... therefore they were called Adalides, which is equivalent to guides."^[5]

Alfonso X, called the Wise, was the King of Castile, León and Galicia from 30 May 1252 until his death in 1284. During the imperial election of 1257, a dissident faction chose him to be King of the Romans on 1 April. He renounced his imperial claim in 1275, and in creating an alliance with England in 1254, his claim on Gascony as well.

Responsibilities

Adalides were required to know their men, the regional terrain, and military tactics.^[4] They had to be skilled in provisioning, establishing camps, foraging for wood and food, exercising authority, and developing military intelligence.^[1] They served both in the Castilian guard and in the Aragon geneta; they were personal guards within royal households, and fourteenth century leaders of the Almogavars. Similar to knights, they held the same social status, and incurred the same right and punishments.^[4] Adalides were horsemen, and they selected Almocadenes, who were non-officer leaders of the infantry.^[6]^[7] It was the duty of the adalides and almocadenes to defend the faith, the king, and the land.^[8]

The Crown of Aragon was a composite monarchy, also nowadays referred to as a confederation of individual polities or kingdoms ruled by one king, with a personal and dynastic union of the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona. At the height of its power in the 14th and 15th centuries, the Crown of Aragon was a thalassocracy controlling a large portion of present-day eastern Spain, parts of what is now southern France, and a Mediterranean "empire" which included the Balearic Islands, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, Southern Italy and parts of Greece. The component realms of the Crown were not united politically except at the level of the king, who ruled over each autonomous polity according to its own laws, raising funds under each tax structure, dealing separately with each Corts or Cortes. Put in contemporary terms, it has sometimes been considered that the different lands of the Crown of Aragon functioned more as a confederation than as a single kingdom. In this sense, the larger Crown of Aragon must not be confused with one of its constituent parts, the Kingdom of Aragon, from which it takes its name.

Almogavars is the name of a class of soldier from many Christian Iberian kingdoms in the later phases of the Reconquista, during the 13th and 14th centuries. Almogavars were lightly clad, quick-moving frontiersmen and foot-soldiers. They hailed from the Kingdom of Aragon, the Principality of Catalonia, the Kingdom of Valencia, the Crown of Castile and the Kingdom of Portugal. At first these troops were formed by farmers and shepherds originating from the countryside, woods and frontier mountain areas. Later, they were employed as mercenaries in Italy, Latin Greece and the Levant.

Related Research Articles

Alfonso XII was King of Spain, reigning from 1874 to 1885. After a revolution deposed his mother Isabella II from the throne in 1868, Alfonso studied in Austria and France. His mother abdicated in his favour in 1870, and he returned to Spain as king in 1874 following a military coup against the First Republic. Alfonso died aged 27 in 1885, and was succeeded by his unborn son, who became Alfonso XIII on his birth the following year.

<i>Reconquista</i> period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula

The Reconquista is a name used in English to describe the period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula of about 780 years between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711 and the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada to the expanding Christian kingdoms in 1491. The completed conquest of Granada was the context of the Spanish voyages of discovery and conquest, and the Americas—the "New World"—ushered in the era of the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires.

Ferdinand IV of Castile called the Summoned, was a King of Castile and León from 1295 until his death.

Alfonso VIII, called the Noble or the one of the Navas, was the King of Castile from 1158 to his death and King of Toledo. He is most remembered for his part in the Reconquista and the downfall of the Almohad Caliphate. After having suffered a great defeat with his own army at Alarcos against the Almohads in 1195, he led the coalition of Christian princes and foreign crusaders who broke the power of the Almohads in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, an event which marked the arrival of a tide of Christian supremacy on the Iberian peninsula.

The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, known in Arab history as the Battle of Al-Uqab, took place on 16 July 1212 and was an important turning point in the Reconquista and in the medieval history of Spain. The Christian forces of King Alfonso VIII of Castile were joined by the armies of his rivals, Sancho VII of Navarre, Peter II of Aragon and Afonso II of Portugal, in battle against the Almohad Muslim rulers of the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. The Caliph al-Nasir led the Almohad army, made up of people from the whole Almohad empire. Most of the men in the Almohad army came from the African side of the empire.

Berengaria was queen regnant of Castile in 1217 and queen consort of León from 1197 to 1204. As the eldest child and heir presumptive of Alfonso VIII of Castile, she was a sought after bride, and was engaged to Conrad, the son of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa. After his death, she married her cousin, Alfonso IX of León, to secure the peace between him and her father. She had five children with him before their marriage was voided by Pope Innocent III.

Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge 14th/15th-century English noble

Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge was the second son of Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York, and Isabella of Castile. He was beheaded for his part in the Southampton Plot, a conspiracy against King Henry V. He was the father of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, and the grandfather of King Edward IV and King Richard III.

Military order (religious society) one of a variety of Christian societies of knights

A military order is a chivalric order with military elements. Western military orders were originally established as Catholic religious societies; the first orders originated during the medieval Crusades with the stated purpose of protecting Christians against violent persecution by Islamic conquests in the Holy Land, which later evolved into serving as a standing army that defended the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The Kingdom of León was an independent kingdom situated in the northwest region of the Iberian Peninsula. It was founded in AD 910 when the Christian princes of Asturias along the northern coast of the peninsula shifted their capital from Oviedo to the city of León. The County of Castile separated in 931, the County of Portugal separated to become the independent Kingdom of Portugal in 1139 and the eastern, inland part of León was joined to the Kingdom of Castile in 1230.

Santa Hermandad was a type of military peacekeeping association of armed individuals, which became characteristic of municipal life in medieval Spain, especially in Castile. Modern hermandades in Spain, some of which evolved from medieval origins, are now for the most part religious confraternities retaining only a military structure and ethos.

Battle of Alarcos, was a battle between the Almohads led by Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur and King Alfonso VIII of Castile. It resulted in the defeat of the Castilian forces and their subsequent retreat to Toledo whereas the Almohads conquered back Trujillo, Montánchez and Talavera.

The Order of Alcántara, also called the Knights of St. Julian, was originally a military order of León, founded in 1166 and confirmed by Pope Alexander III in 1177.

The Siete Partidas or simply Partidas was a Castilian statutory code first compiled during the reign of Alfonso X of Castile (1252–1284), with the intent of establishing a uniform body of normative rules for the kingdom. The codified and compiled text was originally called the Libro de las Leyes. It was not until the 14th century that it was given its present name, referring to the number of sections into which it is divided.

Alfonso de Santa María de Cartagena was a Jewish convert to Christianity, a Roman Catholic bishop, diplomat, historian and writer of pre-Renaissance Spain.

Roger de Flor Italian military adventurer and condottiere

Roger de Flor, also known as Ruggero/Ruggiero da Fiore or Rutger von Blum or Ruggero Flores, was an Italian military adventurer and condottiere active in Aragonese Sicily, Italy, and the Byzantine Empire. He was the commander of the Great Catalan Company and held the title Count of Malta.

During the reconquista, the siege of Córdoba (1236) was a successful investment by the forces of Ferdinand III, king of Castile and León, marking the end of the Islamic rule over the city that had begun in 711.

The Torre de los Adalides was a rectangular medieval look-out tower of Islamic design located in the vicinity of Algeciras, Spain. It was situated roughly 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) from the coast on a hill some 100 metres (330 ft) above sea level in the area which is now covered by the city's northern suburbs. The tower was demolished by the Spaniards during the Spanish–American War as they thought the Americans might use it as a base of their own. The ruins of the tower are within military limits and cannot be approached without a formal permit.

The Admiral of the North and West or Admiral of the North and Western Fleets was a former senior appointment of the English Navy. The post holder was Commander-in-Chief of the English navy's North and Western Fleets operating in the North Sea, the English Channel, the Southern Irish Sea and Atlantic from 1364 to 1414.

References

1 2 Burns, S. J. Robert I. (23 October 2012). Las Siete Partidas, Volume 2: Medieval Government: The World of Kings and Warriors (Partida II). University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 16–. ISBN 978-0-8122-1739-1 . Retrieved 9 February 2013.
↑ The Edinburgh Review, Or Critical Journal (Public domain ed.). Longmans, Green & Company. 1819. pp. 118–. Retrieved 9 February 2013.
↑ Yonge, Charlotte Mary (1893). The Story of the Christians and Moors of Spain. Macmillan Company. pp. 178–. Retrieved 9 February 2013.
1 2 3 Echevarría, Ana; Beagles, Martin (2009). Knights on the Frontier: The Moorish Guard of the Kings of Castile (1410-1467). BRILL. pp. 108–. ISBN 978-90-04-17110-7 . Retrieved 9 February 2013.
↑ Guizot, François M. (1861). History of the origin of representative government in Europe (Public domain ed.). H.G. Bohn. pp. 247–. Retrieved 9 February 2013.
↑ Palgrave, Francis (1832). The rise and progress of the English Commonwealth: Anglo-Saxon period (Public domain ed.). John Murray. pp. 129–. Retrieved 9 February 2013.
↑ Bivar, Rodrigo Diaz de (1808). Chronicle of the Cid, from the Span. by R. Southey (Public domain ed.). pp. 419–. Retrieved 9 February 2013.
↑ Dunham, Samuel Astley (1882). Spain and Portugal (Public domain ed.). Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman. pp. 63–. Retrieved 9 February 2013.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[Burns2012-1] 1 2 Burns, S. J. Robert I. (23 October 2012). Las Siete Partidas, Volume 2: Medieval Government: The World of Kings and Warriors (Partida II). University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 16–. ISBN 978-0-8122-1739-1 . Retrieved 9 February 2013.

[Edinburgh1819-2] The Edinburgh Review, Or Critical Journal (Public domain ed.). Longmans, Green & Company. 1819. pp. 118–. Retrieved 9 February 2013.

[Yonge1893-3] Yonge, Charlotte Mary (1893). The Story of the Christians and Moors of Spain. Macmillan Company. pp. 178–. Retrieved 9 February 2013.

[EchevarríaBeagles2009-4] 1 2 3 Echevarría, Ana; Beagles, Martin (2009). Knights on the Frontier: The Moorish Guard of the Kings of Castile (1410-1467). BRILL. pp. 108–. ISBN 978-90-04-17110-7 . Retrieved 9 February 2013.

[Guizot1861-5] Guizot, François M. (1861). History of the origin of representative government in Europe (Public domain ed.). H.G. Bohn. pp. 247–. Retrieved 9 February 2013.

[Palgrave1832-6] Palgrave, Francis (1832). The rise and progress of the English Commonwealth: Anglo-Saxon period (Public domain ed.). John Murray. pp. 129–. Retrieved 9 February 2013.

[Bivar1808-7] Bivar, Rodrigo Diaz de (1808). Chronicle of the Cid, from the Span. by R. Southey (Public domain ed.). pp. 419–. Retrieved 9 February 2013.

[Dunham1882-8] Dunham, Samuel Astley (1882). Spain and Portugal (Public domain ed.). Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman. pp. 63–. Retrieved 9 February 2013.