The eleventh century, the most critical and significant of the Spanish middle ages, witnessed a change of sign in the peninsular balance of power. After the death of al-Mansûr, the Caliphate of Córdoba, still the strongest power in Europe, collapsed in ruins in a matter of years. After a period of struggle and shifting power relations (the fitna or anarchy of 1008-1031) the unitary Islamic state was replaced by a shifting constellation of two dozen or so small states, ruled by the so-called Party Kings (mulúk al- tawâ’if).

The Christian countries were then able to take quick advantage of the fragmentation of Islamic power, by first establishing their suzerainty over the Party Kings by exacting tribute and then by renewing the conquest of Islamic territory. In the central and eastern regions the movement began in 1045, when García de Nájera, king of Navarre, captured Calahorra, starting a penetration of the Ebro Valley, and ended with the capture of Tortosa (1148) and Lérida (1149) by the count of Barcelona, Ramón Berenguer. In the west, significant advances were made by Alfonso VI of Castile, beginning with the seizure of Coria in I079 and culminating in the capture of Toledo, the first major Islamic town to fall, in 1085. Here the Castilians were halted by the Almoravid invasion, but movement on the western coast continued, culminating in the capture of Santarem and Lisbon by Alfonso Henriques of Portugal in 1147.

 

The Taifa kings found themselves forced, in desperation, to call for help from the major power in the Magrib, the Almoravids, Berber camel nomads of the Sanhâja confederation who had extended their control over most of what is now Morocco during the 1080’s. After the fall of Toledo, al-Mu’tamid of Seville in concert with other Taifa rulers invited Yûsuf ibn Tâshufin to cross the straits and save them from the Christian peril. In the late summer of 1086 the Almoravids met Alfonso VI’s army at Sagrajas, near Badajoz, and inflicted a stunning defeat upon the Christians. Yûsuf returned to North Africa, but when the Andalusis were unable to follow up on their victory, he returned in force, determined to remove from power the elites that had been unable to mobilize Islamic forces. Between 1090 and 1102,when Valencia, which Rodrigo Diaz “El Cid” had ruled as an autonomous principality, was captured, the Almoravids established control of all al-Andalus, converting it into a province of their Magribi empire.

 

El Cid

 

Spanish EL CID, also called EL CAMPEADOR (”the Champion”), byname of RODRIGO, or RUY, DIAZ DE VIVAR (b. c. 1043, Vivar, near Burgos, Castile [Spain]–d. July 10, 1099, Valencia), Castilian military leader and national hero. His popular name, El Cid (from Spanish Arabic as-sid, “lord”), dates from his lifetime.

 

Early life

 

Rodrigo Díaz’ father, Diego Laínez, was a member of the minor nobility (infanzones) of Castile. But the Cid’s social background was less unprivileged than later popular tradition liked to suppose, for he was directly connected on his mother’s side with the great landed aristocracy, and he was brought up at the court of Ferdinand I in the household of that king’s eldest son, the future Sancho II of Castile. When Sancho succeeded to the Castilian throne (1065), he nominated the 22-year-old Cid as his standard-bearer (armiger regis), or commander of the royal troops. This early promotion to important office suggests that the young Cid had already won a reputation for military prowess. In 1067 he accompanied Sancho on a campaign against the important Moorish kingdom of Saragossa (Zaragoza) and played a leading role in the negotiations that made its king, al-Muqtadir, a tributary of the Castilian crown.

 

Ferdinand I, on his death, had partitioned his kingdoms among his various children, leaving Leon to his second son, Alfonso VI. Sancho began (1067) to make war on the latter with the aim of annexing Leon. Later legend was to make the Cid a reluctant supporter of Sancho’s aggression, but it is unlikely the real Cid had any such scruples. He played a prominent part in Sancho’s successful campaigns against Alfonso and so found himself in an awkward situation in 1072, when the childless Sancho was killed while besieging Zamora, leaving the dethroned Alfonso as his only possible heir. The new king appears to have done his best to win the allegiance of Sancho’s most powerful supporter. Though the Cid now lost his post as armiger regis to a great magnate, Count García Ordóñez (whose bitter enemy he became), and his former influence at court naturally declined, he was allowed to remain there; and, in July 1074, probably at Alfonso’s instigation, he married the king’s niece Jimena, daughter of the Count de Oviedo. He thus became allied by marriage to the ancient royal dynasty of Leon. Very little is known about Jimena. The couple had one son and two daughters. The son, Diego Rodríguez, was killed in battle against the Muslim Almoravid invaders from North Africa, at Consuegra (1097).

 

The Cid’s position at court was, despite his marriage, precarious. He seems to have been thought of as the natural leader of those Castilians who were unreconciled to being ruled by a king of Leon. He certainly resented the influence exercised by the great landed nobles over Alfonso VI. Though his heroic biographers would later present the Cid as the blameless victim of unscrupulous noble enemies and of Alfonso’s willingness to listen to unfounded slanders, it seems likely that the Cid’s penchant for publicly humiliating powerful men may have largely contributed to his downfall. Though he was later to show himself astute and calculating as both a soldier and a politician, his conduct vis-á-vis the court suggests that resentment at his loss of influence as a result of Sancho’s death may temporarily have undermined his capacity for self-control. In 1079, while on a mission to the Moorish king of Seville, he became embroiled with García Ordóñez, who was aiding the king of Granada in an invasion of the kingdom of Seville. The Cid defeated the markedly superior Granadine army at Cabra, near Seville, capturing Garíca Ordóñez. This victory prepared the way for his downfall; and when, in 1081, he led an unauthorized military raid into the Moorish kingdom of Toledo, which was under Alfonso’s protection, the king exiled the Cid from his kingdoms. Several subsequent attempts at reconciliation produced no lasting results, and after 1081 the Cid never again was able to live for long in Alfonso VI’s dominions.

 

Service to the Muslims

 

The exile offered his services to the Muslim dynasty that ruled Saragossa and with which he had first made contact in 1065. The king of Saragossa, in northeastern Spain, al-Mu’tamin, welcomed the chance of having his vulnerable kingdom defended by so prestigious a Christian warrior. The Cid now loyally served al-Mu’tamin and his successor, al-Musta’in II, for nearly a decade. As a result of his experience he gained that understanding of the complexities of Hispano-Arabic politics and of Islamic law and custom that would later help him to conquer and hold Valencia. Meanwhile, he steadily added to his reputation as a general who had never been defeated in battle. In 1082, on behalf of al-Mu’tamin, he inflicted a decisive defeat on the Moorish king of Lérida and the latter’s Christian allies, among them the count of Barcelona. In 1084 he defeated a large Christian army under King Sancho Ramírez of Aragon. He was richly rewarded for these victories by his grateful Muslim masters.

 

In 1086 there began the great Almoravid invasion of Spain from North Africa. Alfonso VI, crushingly defeated by the invaders at Sagrajas (Oct. 23, 1086) suppressed his antagonism to the Cid and recalled from exile the Christians’ best general. The Cid’s presence at Alfonso’s court in July 1087 is documented. But shortly afterward, he was back in Saragossa, and he was not a participant in the subsequent desperate battles against the Almoravids in the strategic regions where their attacks threatened the whole existence of Christian Spain. The Cid, for his part, now embarked on the lengthy and immensely complicated political maneuvering that was aimed at making him master of the rich Moorish kingdom of Valencia.

 

Conquest of Valencia

 

His first step was to eliminate the influence of the counts of Barcelona in that area. This was done when Berenguer Ramón II was humiliatingly defeated at Lébar, near Teruel (May 1090). During the next years the Cid gradually tightened his control over Valencia and its ruler, al-Qadir, now his tributary. His moment of destiny came in October 1092 when the qadi (chief magistrate), Ibn Jahhaf, with Almoravid political support rebelled and killed al-Qadir. The Cid responded by closely besieging the rebel city. The siege lasted for many months; an Almoravid attempt to break it failed miserably (December 1093). In May 1094 Ibn Jahhaf at last surrendered, and the Cid finally entered Valencia as its conqueror. To facilitate his takeover he characteristically first made a pact with Ibn Jahhaf that led the latter to believe that his acts of rebellion and regicide were forgiven; but when the pact had served its purpose, the Cid arrested the former qadi and ordered him to be burnt alive. The Cid now ruled Valencia directly, himself acting as chief magistrate of the Muslims as well as the Christians. G. Menéndez Pidal takes the description in the Poem of the Cid of Doña Jimena’s journey from the monastery of Cardeña in Castile, into Islamic territory at Medinaceli, through the domain of Abengalbón, to reach The Cid in Valencia, as indicative of the permeability of the political frontier. On this trip she was accompanied by armed knights who were known to the Muslim lords of the domains traversed.Nominally he held Valencia for Alfonso VI, but in fact he was its independent ruler in all but name. The city’s chief mosque was Christianized in 1096; a French bishop, Jerome, was appointed to the new see; and there was a considerable influx of Christian colonists. The Cid’s princely status was emphasized when his daughter Cristina married a prince of Aragon, Ramiro, lord of Monzón, and his other daughter, María, married Ramón Berenguer III, count of Barcelona.

 

Musilm-Christian Lords

 

Almoravid and Almohad invasions, which featured the implantation of Berber armies, fighting in tribal units. The devolution of fighting capability was a concomitant of urbanization, detribalization, and the domination of society by converts who had never formed part of a tribal structure. This was a common pattern in the states of the Islamic East, none of which, however, had to face the peril of permanent conquest by a non-Muslim enemy.

 

There were enough points of contact between Christian and Muslim nobility to suggest that both the values and the social structure of the two groups were similar enough to make each at least recognizable to the other. Throughout the high middle ages Christian desnaturados and exiles sought refuge and were warmly received in al-Andalus by their noble counterparts in whose houses they resided and in whose armies they did battle. The stays of Alfonso VI in Toledo, his brother García in Seville, and the Cid in Zaragoza were typical. “To live among Moors was the ineluctable destiny of every exile,” Menendez Pidal has observed.

 

Such alliances seemed normal to Christians, but scandalized the Muslim masses, especially after 1085, when Christian pressure upon Islamic territory seemed relentless. When, as a result of conquest, Muslim nobles ended up under Christian rule these aristocrats seem to have had fewer problems of assimilation than did their correlegionaries of lower status. Thus Christian knighthood was conferred upon loyal Muslim allies, according to chivalric ideals shared by both groups.

 

The Almoravids Conquer Valencia

The great enterprise to which the Cid had devoted so much of his energies was to prove totally ephemeral. The Cid died in Valencia of natural causes on July 10, 1099. Though his wife Jimena would continue to rule for two more years, an Almoravid siege forced Jimena to seek help from Alfonso. They could not hold the city but both managed to escape. Alfonso ordered the city burned to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Moors. On May 5, 1102, the Almoravids occupied Valencia, which was to remain in Muslim hands until 1238. The Cid’s body was taken to Castile and reburied in the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, near Burgos, where it became the centre of a lively tomb cult.