| Battle of Valencia (1130) | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Reconquista | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 Almoravids |  Kingdom of Aragon | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Yintan bin al-Lamtuni | Gaston of Béarn † Stephen of Huesca † | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| Unknown | Unknown | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| Unknown | Heavy | ||||||
The Battle of Valencia in 1130 was a military engagement between the Almoravids and the Aragonese near Valencia. The Almoravids were victorious.
The city of Valencia has been a major target for the Aragonese king, Alfonso the Battler. The Aragonese sent raids to the vicinity of Valencia to establish an Aragonese influence there. In 1129, the Almoravids suffered a major defeat at Cullera by the Aragonese, who were besieging Valencia. Despite their victory, they failed to capture the city for unknown reasons. [1]
In early May 1130, the Aragonese launched another raid into the vicinity of Valencia, a sizeable army led by Gaston of Béarn and the Bishop Stephen of Huesca. News of this raid soon reached the city, and the governor of Valencia, Yintan bin al-Lamtuni, a rather energetic governor, left with his army to meet them. Both sides clashed with each other near the city, and the Almoravids successfully defeated the invading army. Both Gaston and Stephen met their ends on the battlefield. Gaston's body was found, and his head was cut. It was sent to the city of Granada to be paraded on a spear through the streets and later sent to Marrakesh. [2] [3] [4]
After this victory, Yintan was rewarded with the governorship of Seville. [5] Later, the Aragonese king had to make a peace treaty with the Almoravids, which they accepted. [6]
Alfonso I, called the Battler or the Warrior, was King of Aragon and Navarre from 1104 until his death in 1134. He was the second son of King Sancho Ramírez and successor of his brother Peter I. With his marriage to Urraca, queen regnant of Castile, León and Galicia, in 1109, he began to use, with some justification, the grandiose title Emperor of Spain, formerly employed by his father-in-law, Alfonso VI. Alfonso the Battler earned his sobriquet in the Reconquista. He won his greatest military successes in the middle Ebro, where he conquered Zaragoza in 1118 and took Ejea, Tudela, Calatayud, Borja, Tarazona, Daroca, and Monreal del Campo. He died in September 1134 after an unsuccessful battle with the Muslims at the Battle of Fraga.
Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar was a Castilian knight and ruler in medieval Spain. Fighting both with Christian and Muslim armies during his lifetime, he earned the Arabic honorific as-Sayyid, which would evolve into El Çid, and the Spanish honorific El Campeador. He was born in Vivar, a village near the city of Burgos. As the head of his loyal knights, he came to dominate the Levante of the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 11th century. He reclaimed the Taifa of Valencia from Muslim control for a brief period during the Reconquista, ruling the principality as its lord from 17 June 1094 until his death in 1099. His wife, Jimena Díaz, inherited the city and maintained it until 1102 when it was reconquered by the Moors.
Alfonso VI, nicknamed the Brave or the Valiant, was king of León (1065–1109), Galicia (1071–1109), and Castile (1072–1109).
Alfonso VII, called the Emperor, became the King of Galicia in 1111 and King of León and Castile in 1126. Alfonso, born Alfonso Raimúndez, first used the title Emperor of All Spain, alongside his mother Urraca, once she vested him with the direct rule of Toledo in 1116. Alfonso later held another investiture in 1135 in a grand ceremony reasserting his claims to the imperial title. He was the son of Urraca of León and Raymond of Burgundy, the first of the House of Ivrea to rule in the Iberian peninsula.
Sancho Ramírez was King of Aragon from 1063 until 1094 and King of Pamplona from 1076 under the name of Sancho V. He was the eldest son of Ramiro I and Ermesinda of Bigorre. His father was the first king of Aragon and an illegitimate son of Sancho III of Pamplona. He inherited the Aragonese crown from his father in 1063. Sancho Ramírez was chosen king of Pamplona by Navarrese noblemen after Sancho IV was murdered by his siblings.
Peter I was King of Aragon and also Pamplona from 1094 until his death in 1104. Peter was the eldest son of Sancho Ramírez, from whom he inherited the crowns of Aragon and Pamplona, and Isabella of Urgell. He was named in honour of Saint Peter, because of his father's special devotion to the Holy See, to which he had made his kingdom a vassal. Peter continued his father's close alliance with the Church and pursued his military thrust south against bordering Al-Andalus taifas with great success, allying with Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, known as El Cid, the ruler of Valencia, against the Almoravids. According to the medieval Annales Compostellani Peter was "expert in war and daring in initiative", and one modern historian has remarked that "his grasp of the possibilities inherent in the age seems to have been faultless."
Ramon Berenguer IIIthe Great was the count of Barcelona, Girona, and Ausona from 1086, Besalú from 1111, Cerdanya from 1117, and count of Provence in the Holy Roman Empire, from 1112, all until his death in Barcelona in 1131. As Ramon Berenguer I, he was Count of Provence in right of his wife.
William VIII, born Guy-Geoffrey (Gui-Geoffroi), was duke of Gascony (1052–1086), and then duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitiers between 1058 and 1086, succeeding his brother William VII (Pierre-Guillaume).
This is a timeline of notable events during the period of Muslim presence in Iberia, starting with the Umayyad conquest in the 8th century.
The Battle of Sagrajas, also called Zalaca or Zallaqah, was a battle between the Almoravid army led by their King Yusuf ibn Tashfin and an army led by the Castilian King Alfonso VI. The Almoravids responded to the call of Jihad by the taifas which commonly fought amongst themselves however they had united to battle the powerful Christian states to the north. The Taifas aided the Almoravids during the battle with troops, favoring the battle for the Muslim side. The battleground was later called az-Zallaqah because of the poor footing caused by the tremendous amount of bloodshed that day, which gave rise to its name in Arabic.
Guy de Lons, also known as Gui or Guido de Loth, was the Bishop of Lescar from 1115 to 1141. He made extensive travels in Spain on four occasions, three as Papal legate. He began construction on the extant Lescar Cathedral in 1120.
Fortún Garcés Cajal was a Navarro-Aragonese nobleman and statesman, perhaps "the greatest noble of Alfonso the Battler's reign". He was very wealthy in both land and money, and could raise two to three hundred knights for his retinue, funded both out of his treasury and enfeoffed on his lands.
The Battle of Fraga was a battle of the Spanish Reconquista that took place on 17 July 1134 at Fraga, Aragon, Spain. The battle was fought between the forces of the Kingdom of Aragon, commanded by Alfonso the Battler and a variety of Almoravid forces that had come to the aid of the town of Fraga which was being besieged by King Alfonso I. The battle resulted in an Almoravid victory. The Aragonese monarch Alfonso I died shortly after the battle.
The siege of Tudela was the main action of the French military campaign in Spain in 1087 in conjunction with Kings Alfonso VI of León and Castile and Sancho V of Navarre and Aragon. The arrival of a French army under Odo I, Duke of Burgundy, and William, Viscount of Melun, early in the spring of 1087 was a response to Alfonso's plea for military aid, which was generated by the offensive of the Almoravids on Iberia. After defeating Alfonso at the Battle of Sagrajas on 23 October 1086, the Almoravids retreated before the French could arrive. Alfonso then convinced his allies to direct their energies at Tudela, the northernmost fortress of the taifa of Zaragoza. The issue of the siege is unclear: Reilly considers it to have been a failure, while Petit reports that the city was captured, if only temporarily, as it would have been definitely reconquered by Alfonso I of Aragon in 1119. At any rate, several important negotiations took place there among the besieging parties.
Jerome of Périgord, in Spanish Jerónimo, was a French monk who became the bishop of several dioceses in Spain. He was a companion of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, and in 1097 or 1098 became the bishop of Valencia after Rodrigo's conquest of the city. Forced to abandon it following Rodrigo's death, Jerome entered the service of Duke Raymond of Galicia in 1102 and became bishop over the churches in Salamanca, Ávila and Zamora.
The siege of Tortosa was a military action of the Second Crusade (1147–49) in Spain. A multinational force under the command of Count Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona besieged the city of Tortosa, then a part of the Almoravid Emirate, for six months before the garrison surrendered.
The Taifa of Lérida was a factional kingdom (ṭāʾifa) in Muslim Iberia between 1039/1046 and 1102/1110. Based on the city of Lérida, the ṭāʾifa was not an independent state throughout this period but was sometimes a part of the larger ṭāʾifa of Zaragoza ruled by a governor (wālī).
Fernando Pérez de Lara, also called Fernando Furtado or Hurtado, was the illegitimate son of Urraca, queen regnant of León and Castile, and her lover, Count Pedro González de Lara.
The siege of Almería by the Kingdom of León and Castile and its allies lasted from July until October 1147. The siege was successful and the Almoravid garrison surrendered. The besieging force was under the overall command of King Alfonso VII. He was supported by forces from Navarre under their king, Catalonia under the count of Barcelona and Genoa, which provided most of the naval force.
The Granada campaign was a military expedition launched by the Aragonese king, Alfonso the Battler, against the Almoravids to capture the city of Granada. The expedition failed to achieve its objectives.