[161] The reconquest of the taifa kingdom of Toledo by Alfonso VI was to alter fundamentally the political balance of the Iberian peninsula as it had existed for better than two hundred years. Since the reign of Ordoño I (850-866) the kingdom of León-Castilla had been the major Christian kingdom of the north with its territories lying essentially north of the Duero and west of the Sierra de la Demanda. To its east lay a gaggle of struggling, Pyreneean Christian principalities and the great taifa of Zaragoza. South lay the dangerous wastes of the trans-Duero and beyond it the thriving world of Spanish Islam. Now in a single bound León-Castilla would demarcate as its own both the whole of the trans-Duero and the basin of the Tajo as well. To the northern meseta was added the southern meseta, and the entire interior tabkland of the peninsula passed irrevocably under the sway of that kingdom.

Even if Alfonso VI did not visualize the change he was beginning to will in precisely these terms, that monarch certainly realized that his success would create a behemoth which the other kingdoms of the peninsula could not but regard with dismay and apprehension. Simple prudence dictated that he should take those steps possible to secure what allies he could, to provide against reaction in advance, and to give such assurances as might be believed. lo important respccts, fortunately, the new initiative required not new policies but a mere continuation and intensification of those already adopted to allow the advance into the trans-Duero.

That the Leonese monarch had been courting the king of Aragón ever since the partition of the Rioja in 1076 had given them common frontiers seems probable. We cannot follow the process directly but it had certainly begun to take tangible form by 1078 when Duke Hugh I of Burgundy campaigned in Aragón with Sancho Ramírez.⁽¹⁾ Alfonso VI would have been at least consulted previously by the house of Abbot Hugh of Cluny if he did not suggest the initiative himself. In the following year, the Aragonese monarch was able to arrange his son's betrothal [162] to a daughter of the ducal house of Aquitaine. Again the network of relationships among Burgundy, Aquitaine, and León-Castilla make it altogether probable that Alfonso VIs support and encouragement was involved.⁽²⁾

The security obtained by such a series of understandings with Alfonso is reflected in the new energy with which Sancho Ramírez began to pursue his own Reconquista from early 1078. While most of the Aragonese efforts were concentrated well to the east, by 1081 they had begun to impinge more directly on the western territories of Zaragoza.⁽³⁾ The growing enthusiasm of his neighbor may well be a part of the reasons for Alfonsos establishing the satrapies of Lop Jiménez in the Basque country and of García Ordóñez in the Rioja in 1080 and 1081. Alfonso after all had interests in the eastern taifa himself at the same time and, as I suggested before, the exile of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar at the very end of 1080 or in the spring of 1081 was wonderfully convenient for that monarchs purposes too.

When the Cid went into exile is not information provided by the literary sources which are entirely unconcerned with strict chronology. The year 1081, however, has been accepted by all historians concerned as the most probable. Sometime in the spring the exile moved south from Burgos, crossed the Duero, and took and sacked a small Muslim town on the upper Río Henares.⁽⁴⁾ His party then moved past Medinaceli aud generally down the upper reaches of the Río Jalón into territories on the ill-defined border between the taifas of Zaragoza and Valencia. About fifteen kilometers west of Calatayud they captured the castle of Alcocer on the tiny huerta of Ateca. For almost four months they lay encamped on that little plain until they had provoked Abu Bakr of Valencia into an attack which ended with the latter's defeat.

Huici Miranda accepted as historical the literary tale of the Cids attempt to purchase an end to his exile with the booty of this victory.⁽⁵⁾ If there were some tacit understanding between monarch and noble, a division of the spoils and a consideration of subsequent strategy in the light of this victory would have been in order. In any event the exiles moved south along the Río Jiloca as far as Monreal del Campo in the territory proper now of Valencia. Nevertheless the campaigning season [163] in this rough country must have been approaching its close, and perhaps the taifa king of Valencia had been sufficiently chastened. In the fall of 1081 or the spring of 1082, the Cid and his band entered the service of al-Muqtadir of Zaragoza.⁽⁶⁾

For the events of the year of 1082, the historian must make do with the most unsatisfactory sort of notices. Documentary evidence for the whereabouts of Alfonso is missing until the fall. There may have been a general curia at Pentecost on June 12 for not too long after we have our first reliable notices of new bishops in the crucial sees of Astorga and Burgos.⁽⁷⁾ The time would have been propitious for such a selection and the assemblage could also have taken steps to deal with yet anothcr crisis at Toledo. Ibn Bassam, who was contemporary with the events, relates that a revolt there against al-Qadir on May 12, 1082, failed but the rebels fled north to Madrid. There they were besieged by the king of Toledo and forced to surrender. Those who escaped al-Qadir's vengeance fled to Zaragoza.⁽⁸⁾ How long all this took we are not told but it seems likely that the situation would not have been resolved before Pentecost.

At the same time, and perhaps at such a meeting, the selection of an embassy to the court of al-Mutamid of Sevilla may well have been part of the agenda. The seventeenth-century Muslim historian, al-Maqqarí, tells the story of that embassy from a now lost source. It was led, he says, by a Jewish counsellor named Ibn Shalib who demanded not tribute but rather the entire wealth of the taifa for his master, Alfonso. Incensed, al-Mutamid had him executed and imprisoned the knights of his escort. At the demand of Alfonso VI, these knights were subsequently released and the taifa king decided to seek assistance against possible retaliation by the former. Al-Mutamid crossed into North Africa and sought out the leader of the new Muslim Murábit power, Yusuf ibn-Tashufin. That emir was then besieging the port of Ceuta and apparently declined to make promises of help before its fall.⁽⁹⁾ All of this activity is dated to the period between June 1, 1082, and May 20, 1083.

The Christian chroniclers have no real knowledge of these events or those that resulted from them. Dozy recounts the story of the embassy a little differently, from another source, and says that to secure the release of his knights Alfonso had to surrender the city of Almodóvar.⁽¹⁰⁾ [164] The reference must be to Almodóvar del Campo some forty kilometers southwest of Ciudad Real. Thus it would indicate that, by late 1082 at least, Alfonso VI had established outposts south of the Guadiana River, certainly the far reaches of the taifa of Toledo. If he had decided to proceed to the outright annexation of Toledo, such outposts could have been useful for impeding assistance from Andalucía.

Events were to demonstrate that al-Mutamid had chosen the worst of times to provoke León-Castilla. During this very time period the king of Zaragoza, al-Muqtadir, was first to sicken and then to die. By the late spring of 1083 his reign had been divided between his two sons. Al-Mutamin held the western portion and Zaragoza itself; Mundir appropriated Lérida and Tortosa in the east.⁽¹¹⁾ The increasing weakness of Islam in the east of the peninsula would free Alfonso for a major campaign of reprisal in Andalucía by 1083.

The Christian principalities of the northeast could also see their own advantage in the new division of the realm of Zaragoza and were drawn into conflict there with al-Mutamin and the Cid. Again there are no historical sources but only the hterary ones for the episode so that the precise chronology of events is simply unknown. Nevertheless it appears that in the latter part of 1082 Rodrigo Díaz was campaigning vigorously against Mundir and that the Muslim was able to rally to his side not only Sancho Ramírez of Aragón but also Count Berenguer Ramón II of Barcelona as well as many of the lesser notables of the region. The allies concentrated their efforts on a siege of the castle of Almenar some twenty kilometers north of the city of Huesca. The Cid, reinforced by al-Mutamin himself, first attempted a negotiated settlement but on rejection of it attacked and routed the allies. The count of Barcelona himself was captured but freed shortly after on condition of withdrawing from further hostilities.⁽¹²⁾ Despite the victory the division of the taifa continued, and that stalemate served the purposes of all of the Christian princes and Alfonso of León not the least.

This unsettled and confused succession in the taifa of Zaragoza tempted the Leonese monarch to overreach himself in late 1082 and the very beginning of 1083. On September 5, 1082, Count Gonzalo Salvadórez of Lara made a donation to the Castilian monastery of Oña on the eve of a campaign against the Muslim in the service of Alfonso VI.⁽¹³⁾ [165] Much earlier in the year the king may have been in the Rioja and on the northern border of Zaragoza looking for opportunities when he issued a charter to the monastery of San Millán which is dated only by the year and which Count Gonzalo confirmed.⁽¹⁴⁾ When he becomes visible in the fall, however, he is in western Castilla at Castrojeriz.⁽¹⁵⁾ From all of this and what was to follow we must presume that he was and had been campaigning on the western and southwestern approaches to Zaragoza.

Such a presumption then makes intelligible the fact that sometime in December 1082 Alfonso received a plea for support from the Muslim castellan of Rueda de Jalón. That commander had been the jailer of the brother of al-Muqtadir of Zaragoza, al-Muzaffar. Now that the king of Zaragoza was either dead or dying, the castellan had decided to hazard his own fortunes on raising the standard of the brother against the dead king's sons. But the castle was only thirty-five kilometers west of the city of Zaragoza itself, and by the time Alfonso VI was able to arrive before it the situation had completely changed. Al-Muzaffar had died in turn and the castellan had returned to the party of al-Mutamin and now decided to consolidate his position with the latter by laying a trap for Alfonso VI. The Leonese monarch was invited to enter the castle and receive its surrender, but he chose instead to send his cousin the Infante Ramiro of Navarra and Count Gonzalo Salvadórez. These latter and their escort were set upon and slain once they had entered the castle. The date of the massacre was January 6, 1083.⁽¹⁶⁾

[166] Whatever gain Alfonso of León had envisioned for himself as a result of this incursion into the lands of Zaragoza was thus lost. But the reverse did not seriously affect the major aims of that king who apparently had resources to spare at this time. Aragonese pressure was to continue to immobilize al-Mutamin for during 1083 Sancho Ramírez successfully took Agüero and Ayerbe followed by Graus.⁽¹⁷⁾ These positions lay respectively on the western and the eastern approaches to the town of Huesca, which remained a prime objective of the Aragonese king down to his death.

For the activities of Alfonso VI in the remainder of 1083 we are totally dependent on the Muslim sources. Not a single reliable document testifies to his whereabouts.⁽¹⁸⁾ Only his enemies tell us of a massive campaign in Andalucía. Two columns invaded the taifa of Sevilla and Alfonso sat before the capital city of al-Mutamid for three days before going on to Tarifa at the extreme south of the peninsula and there riding his horse into the surf.⁽¹⁹⁾ Doubtless the entire expedition had two purposes. One of them was to demonstrate to the Muslim rulers that he was able to campaign anywhere in Spain with impunity. The very tone in which the Muslim chroniclers reported the episode shows that they understood that lesson very well. The second purpose was to devastate the territories of al-Mutamid in retribution for the withholding of the parias, for the slaying of the ambassador, and for encouraging the opponents of al-Qadir in Toledo.

In retrospect it is clear that Alfonso VI employed excessive force and so generated a reaction that almost wrecked his plans for the absorption of Toledo. Al-Mutamid could not oppose him in the field but he could and did despatch a naval force to help in the Murâbit attack on Ceuta. In late August or early September 1083 that seaport fell to Yusuf ibn-Tashufin and an African invasion across the straits of Gibraltar became feasible.⁽²⁰⁾ The king of León was undoubtedly aware of al-Mutamids repeated appeals for assistance from that quarter, but he may also have been quite properly skeptical of the ability of the Andalucian to persuade his rough Berber coreligionists to intervene in peninsular affairs. [167] Just as reasonably, Alfonso may also have believed that the Moroccans could not successfully mount a formidable campaign at such a distance from home even if they did decide to intervene. He could scarcely have been very familiar with that fundamentalist Islamic revival whose origins were not yet a half-century old. From the western Sahara, the cult and empire had only passed over the Atlas Mountains into Morocco within the past twenty-five years. Their new center at Marrakech had been begun in 1070 and they had reached as far north as Fez only in 1075. The Leonese monarch could well have decided that Yusuf would be occupied in consolidating and extending his empire in Africa for years to come. Even now one can still wonder at the explosive energies of the early Murâbits.

The whereabouts of Alfonso VI after the completion of the campaign of 1083 are unknown. Perhaps he returned to winter in Sahagún for that is where we find him on April 30, 1084.⁽²¹⁾ A month later, on May 27, 1084, he had probably moved south to Palencia.⁽²²⁾ Although the document that indicates his presence there is a later forgery it is probably based on an original since it gives Bernard of Palencia as an archbishop. A pure invention at a later date would simply have rendered him as bishop. The king was accompanied by Queen Constance, his majordomo and his alférez, the bishops of León, Burgos, and Astorga, and three counts. We may fairly assume that he was moving south to campaign in and around Toledo.

The pace of the royal advance was leisurely, however, for on June 17, 1084, he was still only as far south as Valladolid.⁽²³⁾ There "Archbishop" Bernard of Palencia, the bishops of León and Astorga, Count Martín Alfónsez, and some Castilian magnates confirmed the sale of some property to Count Pedro Ansúrez. From Valladolid the king moved south across the trans-Duero and through the Cordillera Central into the territories of Toledo to inspire such terror and do such damage as was useful. Ibn Bassam informs us that in the autumn Alfonso set up camp to the south of Toledo itself in preparation for the final stages of its reduction.⁽²⁴⁾

[168] Although this camp was to be a permanent one from which the harassment of the City was to be carried out until its capitulation less than a year later, the king himself did not spend a great deal of time there. On December 5, 1084, he and the court were either at León or at Astorga where the king made a major grant of immunity to the latter see.⁽²⁵⁾ This was a great curia for not only the queen and the two infantas were present, along with the majordomo and the alférez, but so were "Archbishop" Bernard of Palencia and the bishops of Burgos, León, Oviedo, Santiago de Compostela, and Mondoñedo. By December 13, 1084, the court was certainly at León and its deliberations continued, for a charter of foundation of a hospital there by Bishop Pelayo was also confirmed by the bishops of Oviedo and Astorga.⁽²⁶⁾ The major concerns of king and curia must have revolved about the support of that camp outside of Toledo with food, funds, and men through the winter and the raising of a great army to overfill it in the spring. A fossataria, or tax in lieu of military service, would also have been decreed for collection during the winter.

In this same year when Alfonso VI was perfecting his dispositions for the final appropriation of Toledo, the taifa of Zaragoza continued to be immobilized by the attacks of Aragón. On April 5, Sancho Ramírez captured Arguedas only fifteen kilometers north of Tudela, although on the other side of the Ebro from it, and may have gone on to attack that forward bastion of Zaragoza itself. Then he transferred his activity to the east and captured Secastilla on June 22, 1084. This latter success strengthened his position about Graus, which had been taken only the year before.⁽²⁷⁾ It is possible though that the Aragonese monarch experienced a reverse in mid-August at the hands of al-Mutamins general, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar. The sources for the battle of Morelia are either late or literary and confused about the date. The story relates the Cids harassment of Mundir of Lérida and the decision of Sancho Ramírez to aid the latter, which resulted in an Aragonese defeat at Morelia, fifty-five kilometers southwest of Tortosa. Menéndez Pidal accepted the battle as of this date and Turk cautiously followed suit. Ubieto Arteta [169] opted for 1088.⁽²⁸⁾ I incline to accept the summer of 1084 as the date of a serious defeat of the Aragonese because that hypothesis best explains the events of the ensuing year.

In the late fall the final preparations were made for the marriage of al-Mutamin's son to the daughter of Abu Bakr, taifa king of Valencia. The marriage itself was celebrated in Zaragoza on January 26-27, 1085, in the presence of a large assemblage of the notables of Andalucía.⁽²⁹⁾ There can be no doubt that the nuptials cloaked the coordination of an alliance of Spanish Islam against Alfonso VI. Abu Bakr had become independent by revolt against al-Qadir in 1075, and the former was directly threatened by the Leonese designs on Toledo which implied designs on Valencia as well. Zaragoza had been and would remain a key for the successful containment of León-Castilla. The marriage must have meant the suspension of parias by al-Mutamin to Alfonso and the dismissal of the Cid from the formers service. Rodrigo had performed rather too brilliantly as general and had temporarily freed his patron from all restraints.

Despite so unwelcome a development, Alfonso of León had gone so far with his plans for Toledo that no delay was possible for him. His court was at Sahagún on January 1, 1085.⁽³⁰⁾ This occasion marks the last reliable appearance of Bishop Bernard of Palencia who may have died shortly thereafter. Not long thereafter a general curia was held during the course of which Alfonso VI issued a charter in February confirming the possessions of the church of Astorga.⁽³¹⁾ The document demonstrates the presence of the queen, the two infantas, the alférez, the bishops of Santiago de Compostela, Lugo, Mondoñedo, León, Palencia, and Burgos, and eight counts. The bishop of Palencia who confirmed was Raymond, so that part of the work of the curia was the selection of the king's nominee for that major see. That curia still continued on February 22, 1085, when the king issued a charter to the hospital at Burgos confirmed by most of the same people but also by a great number of Castilian abbots and magnates as well.⁽³²⁾

Despite the charters to Astorga and to Burgos I believe that this curia [170] probably met at Sahagún. That would have been a customary place to assemble the royal host, which is also what the documents reflect. Certainly a journey from Astorga to Burgos in four days would have been out of the question for a group of this size as would have even a journey from Sahagún to Burgos. In addition to all of these other matters what was being concerted surely was the descent on the royal camp outside Toledo for the climactic events of that taifa's surrender.

On the premise that the army of León-Castilla left Sahagún for Toledo in the last week of February, its earliest arrival there can be placed at roughly the middle of March. This estimate presumes that they would have taken the easiest and safest direct route. Such an itinerary would have led from Sahagún, through Palencia and Valladolid, to Arévalo as the southern-most point in the western trans-Duero in Christian hands. The path would then have run through the deserted city of Avila and then over the Guadarramas by the long pass of Arrebatacapas, which at not quite 1,100 meters was the lowest in the whole chain. From the pass the way was down to Maqueda and thence on to Toledo. This last stage of the journey, through what was nominally at least enemy territory, would have been shielded by the long-established Christian garrisons at Canturias and Canales from attack or harassment. The journey so sketched is well over 350 kilometers and would have taken more than fifteen days to accomplish even at a very disciplined pace.

The major problem faced by Alfonso VI in the roughly two months that his army and court lay before Toledo prior to his formal entry into the city on May 25, 1085, was that of supply. The army and the court would have to have been large enough and sufficiently splendid to allow the defenders of the city to surrender without losing face completely before their coreligionists. The very size of the supply train that had accompanied them was thus a significant counter in the negotiations that would result in the capitulation of the city.

Indeed the surrender, when it came, had something about it of a charade and an anticlimax. No serious fighting is reported although there must have been some skirmishing through the winter as the city and the camp vied for increasingly short supplies in what was a relatively severe winter. But Muslim chroniclers report that al-Qadir was negotiating the surrender even before Alfonso appeared on the scene and so there would be no real defense so long as the former remained in control in his own capital. Doubtless the magnitude of the besieging force with which Alfonso appeared in March allowed al-Qadir to plead the inevitability of submission with his own fellows. Even so, it was necessary to allow the usual, formal requests for assistance to the other taifas [171] with both parties understanding that surrender would follow if there was no response. It seems likely that such requests were made about the beginning of April.

There was no response to the plea. Despite such plans as had been made at Zaragoza the previous January, Spanish Islam was again disorganized by the death on June 4, 1085, of Abu Bakr of Valencia. He may already have been mortally ill when the climax of Alfonso's negotiations was reached. Shortly following the death of the king of Valencia his new ally, al-Mutamin of Zaragoza, also died.⁽³³⁾ He too may already have been ill in the spring. The taifas of the south proved either unable or unready to respond themselves. The Christian and Muslim sources differ on the exact date of the surrender, but the suggestion that the terms were accepted on May 6 and Alfonso VI made his formal entry on May 25, 1085, is a likely solution to their discrepancy.⁽³⁴⁾

The Christian sources do little more than register the fall of the city. Most of the actual terms of the surrender are reported by the Muslim. Of primary importance, Alfonso agreed to help al-Qadir become the master of the taifa of Valencia, which had formerly been part of his father's kingdom. For the remaining followers of Islam, those who wished to accept the rule of the Leonese monarch were to be allowed to stay in the realm, secure in their freedom, lives, the possession of their property, and the free exercise of their religion. Those who wished to leave were to be allowed to do so and to take their moveables with them. Those who might leave and subsequently desire to return might do so without hindrance. The chief mosque of the city was to continue in Muslim hands. Alfonso was, by implication, to receive the free disposition of all other mosques of the city and of their endowment, the property of al-Qadir became his possession including the royal palaces-fortresses of the city and realm, and all Muslim inhabitants were to pay him the annual head tax customarily due from those of another faith.⁽³⁵⁾ Separate agreements were reached as well with the considerable Jewish population of the city and kingdom and likely mirrored in most respects the accords reached with the Muslim population. Certainly their lives, property, freedom, and the exercise of their religion was guaranteed. Their freedom to leave was also probably granted as well and they too, if they stayed, would be subject to the annual head tax. Whether they possessed more than one synagogue and whether they remained secure in the possession of all of them cannot be asserted definitely. [172] Jewish population of the city has recently been estimated at 4,000, which would be almost 15 percent of the total if Russell's estimate of 28,000 is accepted.⁽³⁶⁾

Finally the Christian Mozarabic population of the city and realm had to be guaranteed at least the free exercise of their liturgy according to the Toledan rite, which was being progressively displaced elsewhere in the realm of Alfonso VI. If they had preserved their bishop through the trying events of the previous twenty years, they were nevertheless to find him shortly replaced by a Frenchman and an adherent of the Roman liturgy.⁽³⁷⁾ Since the prelate of Toledo had been a client of the kings of León-Castilla from the days of Fernando I, such an innovation would have to have been a matter for negotiation.⁽³⁸⁾ The Mozarabs had long maintained no fewer than six churches in the city dedicated to the use of their own liturgy so that they had been an important part of the population in Muslim times. An estimate that they constituted somewhere between 15 and 25 percent of the population does not seem unreasonable.⁽³⁹⁾

When these agreements with the Jewish and Mozarabic elements of the city were reached is impossible to specify exactly. Certainly, unless he were very enlightened indeed or almost totally dependent on their support, al-Qadir would not have cared to have them complicate his own negotiations with Alfonso on behalf of himself and of the Muslim majority. At the very least the concerns of Jew and Mozarab must have been taken up immediately after May 25, for the Leonese monarch was seriously concerned about the stability of the city population.

The story that he distributed 100,000 dinars to the poor farmers of the taifa to help them recoup the damages of the siege may be regarded as a gross exaggeration even if a Muslim source reports it.⁽⁴⁰⁾ A sum of l0,000 dinars would have been both princely and sufficient. Still, as the surrender terms illustrate, Alfonso was prepared to be conciliatory and even generous. It appears from Muslim sources that his first choice to [173] govern the city was a Christian Mozarab, Sisnando Davídez of Coimbra, who was made to advise the retention of al-Qadir as governor of Toledo to Alfonso by the chronicler.⁽⁴¹⁾ Such advice would have been fatuous given al-Qadir's inability to rule even as king. But Alfonso's choice of a Mozarab was doubtless intended to reassure all segments of the conquered population. Notwithstanding the king's own preferences in regulating his new conquest, he had to satisfy the expectations of those who had participated in the campaigns that had secured that result. Throughout the twelfth century Toledo would remain an exotic city compared to the others of León-Castilla not merely because of its very size but also by reason of the preponderant influence in it of Mozarabs and Jews. Still, from 1085 an irruption of Castilians, Leonese, Asturians, and Galicians into it and the surrounding territories generally required regulation and adjudication.

Documents that would permit a description of this latter process are quite scarce, and almost everything must be reconstructed painstakingly from evidence of the middle and latter twelfth century. The charter that Alfonso VI granted on May 29, 1085, to the men of Coimbra confirming their fueros or customs is a rare exception.⁽⁴²⁾ Doubtless issued at Toledo, it evidences the presence of a contingent from Coimbra in the final weeks of the siege, and the presence also of the bishops of Santiago de Compostela, Orense, Burgos, and Palencia testifies to the character of other contingents. These warriors and adventurers from all over the realm would have to be satisfied too.

Some of those desires and claims could be settled outside the city for an entire kingdom had fallen in May 1085. As its history during the whole of the preceding Muslim period had amply demonstrated, the taifa of Toledo stretched south from the Cordillera Central in ways that were determined not so much by the givens of geography as by the accidents of politics. To the east, the Sierra de Albarracín was perhaps frs most clearly marked boundary of all. But to the west the Tajo river valley ran, gradually narrowing between the mountains of Toledo to the south and the Cordillera Central to the north, past Talavera de la Reina, and then broadened out into an Extremadura where only the power of the taifa of Badajoz delineated where Toledan territories ceased. In the southwest the meseta stretched out from the city for 135 kilometers to [174] Valdepeñas and 200 to Albacete before the Sierra Morena offered a significant natural obstacle. And from those flat lands around the upper reaches of the Rio Guadiana, easy routes lay east into the taifa of Valencia or west past modern Ciudad Real and Almodóvar del Campo toward Mérida and the taifa of Badajoz again.

As we have already seen, Alfonso VI held Canales, Canturias, and Zorita well before the fall of the city of Toledo itself. He seems as well to have possessed for a time before 1082 Almodóvar del Campo and perhaps some other strong points south of the mountains of Toledo. At the time of the capitulation of the capital, all of the other towns of the Tajo basin seem to have surrendered as well.⁽⁴³⁾ Visits to regulate their affairs and to tally the spoils would have been in order in June and July of 1085. Qn the plains to the southwest something more like military expeditions would have been necessary, perhaps into August. Alfonso's effective power came to reach, according to the Muslim sources, as far as Albacete, but west of Valdepeñas the castle of Calatrava and the lands about it remained in the hands of al-Mutamid of Sevilla. The lands of the present province of Cuenca seem to have been left to al-Qadir, who took up his residence in the city of the same name in preparation for his descent on Valencia.⁽⁴⁴⁾

Now this entire mixture of procession, ceremony, threats, bluster, marching, countermarching, negotiation, expropriation, compromise, and concessions could hardly have been completed in less than an entire summer even if Alfonso delegated some of the burden to his bishops and magnates as he doubtless did. The area was sufficiently large and the details of the settlement sufficiently complicated so that out of it a new propertied and therefore a ruling class emerged in the former taifa. The departure of substantial numbers of Muslim from the most mobile classes, the property owners, who preferred not to live under Christian rule or who simply did not trust the guarantees made by Alfonso, was augmented surely by those who were quietly intimidated into leaving by the conquerors who coveted their holdings. Inevitably the glut of property for sale allowed not only the victors but the liberated Mozarabs of some means to become men of substance on the cheap. Alfonso VI would have been busy trying to control this pro cess but we should not be sanguine about his ability to do so, especially outside the city itself. Even vastly more sophisticated modern governments have failed to regulate such processes effectively.

It is hardly likely then that the king returned to León much before [175] the end of September when a private charter of the monastery of Eslonza puts the court there.⁽⁴⁵⁾ The royal charter to Sahagún of November 25, 1085, which puts the court there is surely a forgery but may have been based on an authentic charter of that date.⁽⁴⁶⁾

Certainly a great curia was held, probably in León, in early February of the following year. The donation made by Bishop Osmundo of Astorga to Bishop Gomez of Burgos on February 15, 1086, is unquestionably an original despite the multitude of problems it occasions. The document was confirmed by an Archbishop-elect Bernard of Toledo, a Bishop-elect Sebastian of León, by Bishop Raymond of Palencia, by counts Pedro Ansúrez and Martin Adefonso, and it was written by the royal notary, Juan Baldemírez.⁽⁴⁷⁾ It was thus a court document in the larger sense which testifies to a great meeting in which a new bishop was chosen for the see of León and an archbishop for the newly liberated former Visigothic capital and primatial see.⁽⁴⁸⁾ Rivera Recio tentatively suggested that the Bernard of this document was in fact Bernard of Palencia.⁽⁴⁹⁾ The hypothesis is possible and even attractive, but it fails to explain Bernard's absence from the royal documents of February and May 1085 in both of which his successor already appears. Another private document dated only to 1086 but confirmed by all of the bishops above as well as those of Nájera and Alava and most of the major abbots of Castilla may date from the same occasion and further enlarge our knowledge of attendance at that curia.⁽⁵⁰⁾

In addition to the ecclesiastical business this curia transacted, it also doubtless saw the coordination of plans for a series of moves designed to realize the possibilities afforded by the fall of Toledo. Since these were military initiatives the conversations would have been of men, of money, and of munitions.

[176] One of these was entrusted to Alvar Fáñez, now beginning a long, successful career. In February al-Qadir would leave Cuenca under his protection and proceed to Valencia to claim that taifa for himself. After the death of Abu Bakr in June 1085, the Valencians had at first recognized his son Uthmn as their king. Soon, however, parties formed advocating the acceptance of al-Qadir and Leonese overlordship or the reception of the new king of Zaragoza, al-Mustain, to avert just that. Aware of these divisions, al-Qadir and Alvar Fáñez had only to present themselves before the city to secure its surrender, probably in early March 1086.⁽⁵¹⁾ But despite the ease with which he secured the capital, al-Qadir was not able to obtain the submission of the governor of the important town of Játiva sixty kilometers to the south. He had spent four months besieging it unsuccessfully when its governor appealed to Mundir, king of Lérida and Tortosa. Mundir intervened with the aid of Catalan mercenaries, forced the raising of the siege, and then went on briefly to besiege al-Qadir in Valencia in turn. The reentry of Alvar Fáñez in these affairs obliged Mundir to retreat on Tortosa, and the Christian forces devastated his southern territories around Burriana.

The narration of these matters by Huici Miranda treats Alvar Fáñez as though he were an independent mercenary captain.⁽⁵²⁾ The Muslim source, however, transmitted only in translation by the Primera crónica general, makes it clear that the Castilian was under the direction of Alfonso VI though doubtless some of his troupe were mercenaries indeed.⁽⁵³⁾ The refusal of al-Qadir in the late spring and summer of 1086 to pay for the maintenance of the Christian forces was not just a dismissal of a mercenary captain but an abortive attempt at a policy independent of his overlord. Ultimately, since al-Qadir proved unequal to his ambitions, that effort was not significant, but it did move Alfonso to take the deposed son of the late Abu Bakr under his protection as insurance against possible repetition of such an attempt.⁽⁵⁴⁾

While Alvar Fáñez and al-Qadir were thus driving a wedge between Muslim Andalucía and Muslim Zaragoza, Alfonso was also striving to bind more closely his old kingdom and his new domain. The second document of 1086 mentioned above implies a developing connection between the Riojan monastery of San Millán and Ribarredonda fifteen kilometers southeast of Muslim Sigüenza on the headwaters of the Rio Tajo. The same monastery was also being drawn into the continuing [177] repopulation of Sepúlveda in 1086.⁽⁵⁵⁾ There may also have been more activity in this regard farther west in the trans-Duero around Fuente el Olmo de Iscar.⁽⁵⁶⁾

The activities of the Leonese monarch on the meseta of Castilla la Nueva are not easy to date. We are apprized of them by Muslim sources, which usually place them chronologically simply between the fall of Toledo and the battle of Zalaca. Thus we have the highly suspect story in al-Maqqarí that, after the fall of Toledo, Alfonso VI demanded the surrender of fortresses and the city of Córdoba from al-Mutamid. Again there is a tale of the murder of the Alfonsine ambassador and his escort of 500 men; the outraged king turns back from the road to Córdoba to collect siege materials at Toledo.⁽⁵⁷⁾ The story irresistibly suggests a retelling of the embassy of 1083 but also reflects operations of Alfonso on the southern borders of his new kingdom in 1085-86. The same sort of initiatives are also reflected in the report of al-Kardabus that a force of sixty Christian knights drove to within sight of the Mediterranean seaport of Almeria itself and defeated a large force sent against them before retiring.⁽⁵⁸⁾ The first of these incidents certainly dates to 1085 but the second may well belong to 1086. According to Abd Allah he had to defeat a Christian force at Nívar just nine kilometers from Granada in mid-1086 although Alfonso VI apologized for the incident.⁽⁵⁹⁾ Finally the "Anales Toledanos" of the mid-twelfth century place the capture of the fortress of Aledo, only forty-five kilometers southwest of Murcia and fifty-five kilometers northeast of Cartagena, in 1086 as well.⁽⁶⁰⁾ The results of some of these efforts and the responsibility for effecting the others would also have been matters for consideration at the great curia of February 1086.

The most pressing of all secular business at that meeting, however, was the organization of the siege of Zaragoza. In January 1085 al-Mutamin had allied his realm with Alfonso's enemies in Valencia and even more generally with those foes in Andalucía. Then in the fall of the year he had died and left his kingdom to the son whom he had just married [178] to the daughter of Abu Bakr of Valencia.⁽⁶¹⁾ After the latter's death al-Mustain, the new king of Zaragoza, had partisans in Valencia and a possible claim to that taifa as well. Such defiance was probably associated with the refusal of al-Mustain to pay parias to León-Castilla for 1085 and would have to be chastised. But the city on the Ebro was a great and strong fortress presiding over a rich and extensive alluvial plain whose resources it had long organized. A campaign against it was not to be taken lightly.

Nor was it undertaken, in all probability, earlier than the beginning of March. Again the documents fail us for none is currently known that would help to date events in the late winter, spring, and summer of this critical year beyond those already discussed above. In fact Menéndez Pidal believed that Alfonso had begun the siege of Zaragoza in 1085 and before the fall of Toledo. That opinion is simply unrealistic, and he can support it only on the basis of the notoriously inaccurate chronology of the Primera crónica general. Nothing in the history of the period would lead to the conclusion that Alfonso VI could simultaneously support major campaigns against two cities, each of them more than five times larger than any city in his own domain, separated by roughly 400 kilometers and the worst kind of physical obstacles. Nor could the king have kept a siege army, as distinct from a castle garrison, in the field over an entre winter. The most recent historian of the realm of Zaragoza agrees that the siege probably began in the spring of 1086.

The purpose of Alfonso's action as well as the timing of it is at issue. The Muslim sources agree that conquest was the aim, but that seems incredible nonetheless. The Leonese monarch was already draining every resource to repopulate the trans-Duero, to pacify his new acquisition of Toledo, and to support al-Qadir at Valencia. That he was seeking as well yet another entire kingdom to absorb and to govern strains the imagination. I believe that he was making the most serious sort of demonstration both to teach his client a lesson and to force the payment of the parias which were so crucial to the support of his widespread operations. It is true, of course, that the Muslim sources have him explicitly refuse the parias when al-Mustain offers them during the siege. What needs to be understood here is precisely the literary character of those sources. For their purposes the entire siege of Zaragoza is but an episode and a prelude. Their description of it is designed to demonstrate the insatiable pride and avarice of Alfonso, whose proper chastisement is the narrative sequel of these events. At Zalaca he will be humbled dramatically by the Murâbit power whose intervention his [179] own actions have provoked. The account of the Primera crónica general lacks that kind of dramatic structure but it docilely follows its Muslim source.⁽⁶²⁾ In reality, all of Alfonso's actions must have been at least tempered by the fear of that intervention.

Intervention in Zaragoza would concern fellow Christian rulers as well as Muslim ones, and the most directly affected of the former was Sancho Ramírez of Aragón. The ambitions of the Aragonese king were growing apace in 1086 as signaled by the marriage of his son, Pedro, in January of that year to the daughter of the Duke of Aquitaine.⁽⁶³⁾ About this time a very fruitful marriage alliance for his granddaughter or grandniece was also arranged with the house of the viscounts of Béarn.⁽⁶⁴⁾ Finally, Sancho was to take advantage of al-Mustain's preoccupation with the threat from Alfonso to begin raising the castle of Montearagón scarcely five kilometers from the vital fortress of Huesca.⁽⁶⁵⁾

In addition two somewhat contradictory sources suggest a direct Aragonese involvement with the siege of Zaragoza itself. A charter of Sancho Ramírez dated July 6, 1086, "in illa ortariza de Zaracoza" led Ubieto Arteta to assert that the Aragonese was himself laying siege to the city, only to have to withdraw at Alfonso's approach, and Huici Miranda to state that Sancho assisted at Alfonso's siege. The fact is that the charter is at least badly dated and the Aragonese king or his son may have been attacking Tortosa by mid-summer.⁽⁶⁶⁾ The other source is an account of a quarrel between Sancho Ramírez, his brother García, bishop of Jaca, and Raymond Dalmatius, bishop of Roda, written in the early twelfth century. According to it the king and his brother had been estranged earlier and Sancho deprived García of some of the churches of his diocese and bestowed them on the bishop of Roda. Subsequently García was accused of wishing to convey to Alfonso VI the castle of Alquézar and to betray the realm of Aragón to him. After two or three years, says the source, García complained to Alfonso VI when the latter was besieging Zaragoza. The Leonese monarch then promised to make García archbishop of Toledo with such possessions as [180] would support a thousand knights.⁽⁶⁷⁾ Menéndez Pidal believed implicitly in this document and in a reconciliation of Alfonso VI, Sancho Ramírez, and Bishop García during the siege of Zaragoza.⁽⁶⁸⁾ One thinks that there must be some historical fundament to the account, but it remains hard to square with the facts. The endowment for a thousand knights is clearly a hyperbolic touch. The fortress of the Alquézar is so far east in Aragón that its strategic value to Alfonso VI would seem to have been slight. Finally while some now forgotten diplomatic necessity may have inspired an earlier promise of Toledo to García, by February 1086 Alfonso already had an archbishop-elect of Toledo. Only if the archbishop-elect who appears in the charter of February 15, 1086, was indeed the former Bernard of Palencia, who then died before the summer of 1086, can this curious account be accepted as written.

All the major sources agree that Alfonso VI was still engaged before Zaragoza when the Murâbits landed at Algeciras on July 30, 1086.⁽⁶⁹⁾ How long the Leonese host had been there is not clear, but it would shortly become obvious that al-Mustain, who must have been playing for time and awaiting just such an eventuality, would keep both his taifa and its parias. No reliable documents permit us to trace Alfonso's subsequent movements in August and September.⁽⁷⁰⁾ We can estimate fairly certainly that, even if Alfonso had spies in Algeciras ready to report just such an eventuality, word of the landing could not have reached him before September at the earliest.⁽⁷¹⁾ When it did reach him, the king had to carry out the difficult maneuver of disengaging, breaking camp, and retiring before an unbeaten enemy. Those elements of the host that needed replacement would have been despatched home, but the king made for Toledo with the remainder. Even a good rate of speed for an army of about twenty-five kilometers a day would have meant that it was September 20, 1086, before he arrived in that city.

There Alfonso awaited the reinforcements and supplies which he had doubtless summoned before departing from Zaragoza. The extent of [181] the reinforcements that reached him are exaggerated by the sources, Muslim and Christian alike.⁽⁷²⁾ Help from beyond the Pyrenees, even if Alfonso had felt its need, was out of the question simply for lack of time for it to reach him. Some small, light units from Castilla and León could have reached Toledo almost as soon as did the king himself. But with the best will in the world, and considerable luck, fully equipped forces would have begun coming in from those areas about October 1. Forces summoned from Asturias, Galicia, and Portugal could hardly have begun to arrive before mid-October and may, for that reason, have been directed to rendezvous at Coria rather that Toledo. The Leonese king could not have known the Murâbit plan of advance in early September, but Alfonso seems almost at once to have seized the initiative himself It seems clear that Alvar Fáñez's troop had been recalled from Valencia and that an Aragonese contingent, perhaps led by the Infante Pedro himself, participated.⁽⁷³⁾

We may dismiss the formal defiances between the antagonists, the overbearing letters the Muslim chroniclers fabricated for Alfonso, and the portentous dreams.⁽⁷⁴⁾ It does seem, nevertheless, tht Alfonso took one dramatic step while at Toledo. After consultation wit his bishops and magnates gathered around him in Toledo, he decided to convert [182] the great mosque of the town into a Christian cathedral. Following Menéndez Pidal, most historians have placed this event in 1085, but here as elsewhere the chronology of the former is askew.⁽⁷⁵⁾

The oldest source we have for the incident dates it precisely, if erroneously, to October 14, 1102, and makes Alfonso VI responsible for the act.⁽⁷⁶⁾ The oldest Christian source does not date the action but makes it the responsibility of Queen Constance and the archbishop-elect of Toledo, Bernard of Sahagún. Alfonso VI, we are told, having returned in haste to Toledo would have burned his queen and primate alive for so compromising him if it had not been for the intercession of the Muslim community which realized tat it would suffer in the long run from such an action.⁽⁷⁷⁾ Even if both of these literary accounts are obviously partisan, they supply useful information that allows us to date the event when the former is placed in a wider context.

Doubtless Alfonso's action of allowing the Muslim community of Toledo to retain its mosque was unpopular from the beginning in Christian circles. Nevertheless, in May 1085 the king regarded it as a necessary part of a policy designed at once to retain as large a part as possible of the Muslim population in Toledo and it demonstrate to the taifa kings of the peninsula that his aims were limited and moderate rater tan the beginning of a crusade against them and their fait. In such a context, to have broken part of the treaty terms already by July 1085, as Menéndez Pidal believes, would have been a major diplomatic gaffe. Not all of the territories of the taifa of Toledo itself were yet in the king's grasp and his ally, al-Qadir, had not been installed in Valencia. Moreover, if the archbishop-elect were involved in some degree, as doubtless he must have been, no evidence allows us to place his election before February 1086.

By October 1086, on the other hand, there clearly was such a primate-elect. In addition, the entire policy of conciliation had failed. A [183] substantial portion of the Muslim population of Toledo had abandoned the city seeking refuge with the taifa kings of Andalucía and hoping to return on the heels of a Murâbit victory. Those same Spanish Muslim princes had rejected Alfonso's attempts to reassure tem and turned to the North African Berber empire to restore their fortunes. Finally, Yusuf ibn-Tashufin had responded to their pleas and had landed in Spain.

The spies of the Leonese king would have informed him by the beginning of October of the formidable character of the army of the coalition. To rally his own forces and to provide them with some visible symbol of the transcendent importance of the effort they were to be called upon to make, the transformation of mosque into cathedral was sure to suggest itself. Also, while the king was entirely capable of withstanding his own clergy, it remains quite likely that he himself would have regarded such an action as most pleasing to Christ and well calculated to secure divine assistance in the fortcoming struggle. The action itself may have been carried out by the queen and the primate-elect after the king had left the city. Such a course would have technically relieved Alfonso of responsibility but it could hardly have been done in defiance of his wishes. An army leaving Toledo for an advance on the enemy around Badajoz would have to have departed by October 8 in order to have covered the 370 kilometers by October 22. The king, himself traveling wit a small mounted force after the departure of the main host, could conceivably have left as late as October 15 and still have overtaken the army by October 22, but that would have been a risky business indeed.⁽⁷⁸⁾

In either eventuality it is likely tat Alfonso departed Toledo in the fall of 1086 with the "benediction for a king and his army going forth to battle" of the old Mozarabic liturgy ringing in his ears.⁽⁷⁹⁾ He did not know tat he was going out to defeat. Nor could he have imagined that he was taking up a struggle that would go on without end past even his own death in the summer of 1109. The intervention of the Murâbits in the peninsula was to alter drastically the condition of Spanish Islam, reducing it to a province of a North African empire. By so doing, it also restored the effective balance of power in Spain between Christian and Muslim. For better than thirty years the battle would sway back and forth, and not until the Aragonese capture of Zaragoza in 1118 would another great center of Islam pass permanently into Christian hands.

[184] But the Murâbit intervention was to lead as well to a rapid proliferation of the ties already extant between the North Spanish Christian kingdoms and the feudal principalities of the south of France. To maintain those gains already made against a more puissant Islam, the Christian kings would seek military aid and yet closer political ties with their neighbors across the Pyrenees. A Burgundian noble would sire a future king of León-Castilla in Alfonso VII, his cousin a king of Portugal in Alfonso Enríquez, and a Bearnese noble would help to complete the conquest of the taifa of Zaragoza.

1. See chapter 6, notes 52 and 53.

2. Ibid., note 55.

3. Ubieto Arteta, Historia de Aragón, pp. 83-84.

4. I am following the reconstruction of his movements given by Ambrosio Huici Miranda, Historia musulmana de Valencia, 1:205-14, and drawn from the Cantar. The assertion of the Historia Rodericii that Rodrigo went to Barcelona must be rejected as fabulous although Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid 1:279-81, accepted it.

5. Historia musulmana de Valencia 1:213-14.

6. Ibid., p. 212.

7. See chapter 8, notes 22 and 24.

8. González, Repoblación de Castilla la Nueva 1:74.

9. Al-Maqqarí, History of the Mohamnmedan Dynasties 2:252-53.

10. Reinhart P. Dozy, Historia de los Musulmanes de España, trans. Magdalena Fuentes, vol. 4 (1861; reprint, Madrid, 1982), pp. 156-58.

11. Turk, Reino de Zaragoza, pp. 119-22.

12. Ibid., pp. 124-26, cautiously accepts this traditional chronology of events. Menéndez Pidal. España del Cid 1:285-89, expounded it enthusiastically. Ubieto Artera, Historia de Aragón, virtually ignores the entire episode except for p. 112.

13. AHN, Clero, Carpeta 271, no. 14; pub. Alamo, ed., Colección diplomática de San Salvador de Oña 1:113-14. "Positus in procintu cum Domino meo contra mauros."

14. 1082, Serrano, ed., Cartulario de San Millán, pp. 252-53. The charter is confirmed by Bishop Jimeno of Burgos, who died in mid-March, and by a Bishop Munio of Valpuesta. The latter is assuredly the bishop of the see of Calahorra, which seems to have been far from fixed at this time.

15. October 21, 1082. BN, Manuscritos, 18.387, ff. 297v-298v, and Acad. Hist., Manuscritos, 9-27-2-E-50, Estefanía, "Memorias," pp. 181-84. Pub. Arias, "El monasterio de Samos," pp. 64-66. Dec. 20, 1082. García Larragueta, ed., Colección de Oviedo, p. 251, is the only other document that could place the court at the end of this year, but it is not reliable. See Fernández Conde, Libro de Testamentos, pp. 285-87.

16. The literary account of this event occurs in the "Historia Roderici," in Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid 2:927-28. Its historicity is confirmed by that in Ubieto Arteta, ed., Crónica Najerense, p. 117, which dates the disaster only to 1083. The "Chronicon Iriense," BN, Manuscritos, 1.358, fol. 3r, dated it to 1084 as did the later "Chronicon Burgense" and "Annales Complutenses," Huici Miranda, ed., Las crónicas latinas de la Reconquisto 1:36 and 1:48, respectively. The correct and precise date appears in a document of Sahagún dated January 18, 1083. "In anno quando occiderunt illos comites in Rota et fuit illa occisione in die Aparicionis Domini," pub. Vignau, ed., Documentos de Sahagún, p. 270, from AHN, Códices, 989B, fol. 94v. Moret, Annales del reyno de Navarra 2:140, cites a document of the Infante Ramiro dated May 27, 1083. But as that document at present exists it is dated to 1063 and must be redated with caution. See chapter 8, note 17.

17. Turk, Reino de Zaragoza, p. 129.

18. June 11, 1083. Serrano, ed., Becerro gótico de Cardena, pp. 152-54, which purports to be a sort of triple document involving Alfonso VI, a Countess Sancha, and a priest named Annaia in turn. is without parallel in the diplomatic of the time. Aug. 13, 1083. García Larragueta, ed., Colección de Oviedo, pp. 288-90, would put him in Oviedo but it is a fabrication. See Fernández Conde, Libro de Testamentos, pp. 288-90.

19. I follow the reconstruction of Ambrosio Huici Miranda, Las grandes batallas de la Reconquisto durante las invasiones africanas (Madrid, 1956), pp. 25-26.

20. Ibid., p. 26.

21. AHN, Códices, 989B, ff. 231v-232v; pub. Hinojosa, ed., Documentos de León y de Castilla, pp. 33-34.

22. See chapter 8, note 17. The document purports to be the endowment of the cathedral chapter of Palencia by Bernard, who is dying. The script is late twelfth century. The language is anachronistic in my judgment and nowhere more so that in the attribution of "canons" to Palencia at so early a date.

23. Mañueco Villalobos and Zurita Nieto, eds., Documentos de Valladolid 1:1-6.

24. González, Repoblación de Castilla la Nueva, p. 76. September 14, 1084. AHN, Clero, Carpeta 885, no. 9, would put the court at Sahagún but it is a forgery. The alférez shown is nine years too early and the bishops given for León and Palencia are also anachronistic

25. See chapter 8, note 17.

26. AC León, Códice 11, ff. 54r-55r; pub. ES 36:69-72 append.; and Luis Vázquez de Parga, José María Lacarra, and Juan Uíra Ríu, Las peregrinaciones a Santiago de Compostela, vol. 3 (Madrid, 1948-49), pp. 47-49. A notice of a property dispute between the bishop of Oviedo and a Galician magnate, in the presence of Alfonso VI and the bishop of León, which is dated only to 1084 probably is of this date as well. See Ciriaco Miguel Vigil, Asturias monumental, epigráfica, y diplomática, vol. 2 (Oviedo, 1887), p. 81.

27. Ubieto Arteta, Historia de Aragón, pp. 87-88.

28. España del Cid 1:294-98 and 2:740-44; Reino de Zaragoza, pp. 130-31; Historia de Aragón, p. 109.

29. Turk, Reino de Zaragoza, pp. 138-40.

30. AHN. Códices, 989B, fol. 88r-v.

31. See chapter 8, note 18.

32. A number of copies with variants are published from the archive of the cathedral by Serrano, Obispado de Burgos 3:63-70. Other copies in BN, Manuscritos, 720, ff. 227r- 228v; and 5.790, ff. 51r-52r. Acad. Hist., Colección Salazar, 0-17, ff. 693v-694v, and ff. 711v-713v.

33. Turk, Reino de Zaragoza, pp. 142-43.

34. González, Repoblación de Castilla la Nueva, pp. 77-79. This author has analyzed the events so closely that it is redundant, at present, to repeat his work.

35. Ibid., pp. 75-78.

36. The classic survey on the general subject is Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, trans. Louis Schoffman (1929; reprint, Philadelphia, 1961). More recently a complement has appeared in Eliyahu Ashtor, The Jews of Moslem Spain, trans. Aaron Klein and Jenny Machlowitz Klein, 2 vols. (1966; reprint, Philadelphia, 1979), who makes this estimate, p. 223.

37. Rivera Recio, La Iglesia de Toledo, pp. 62-63, thinks that the last known Mozarabic bishop may have lived until about 1080 but had not been replaced.

38. See chapter 1, note 19.

39. For the fortunes of the Mozarabic rite and population see Gonzálvez, "Persistence of the Mozárabic Liturgy," pp. 157-85. Also, González, Repoblación de Castilla la Nueva 2:90-91.

40. Al-Kardabus, "Kitab al-Iqtifa," p. 24 append. C.

41. Huici Miranda, Historia musulmana de Valencia 1:274-75.

42. AHN, Lisbon. Cabido da Se de Coimbra, Maço 1, Documentos particulares, no. 18; a twelfth-century copy. Pub. PMH 1, Diplomata, pp. 383-84. The document is generally reliable although some portions of it have been interpolated. See Gérard Pradalié, "Les Faux de la cathédrale et la crise à Coïmbre au début du XII^e siécle," Mélanges de la Casa de Valádzquez 10 (1974): 78-80.

43. González, Repoblación de Castilla la Nueva 1:82-83.

44. Ibid.

45. Sept. 30, 1085. AHN, Clero, Carpeta 959, no. 19; pub. Vignau, ed., Cartulario de Eslonza, pp. 77-78. An earlier document dared July 1, 1085, may seem to do the same thing but that is unlikely and Bernard is listed as archbishop of Palencia. Ibid., pp. 362-63.

46. See chapter 8, note 18.

47. See Reilly, "Alfonso VI of León-Castile," pp. 6-8. The document was published by Serrano, Obispado de Burgos 3:72-74.

48. Two private documents of the monastery of Eslonza, both dated December 30, 1085, would place Bishop Sebastian's election back into the previous fall. However, both cite him as bishop rather than as bishop-elect, which final dignity be apparently never attained. They may be in error as to the date also. See AHN, Clero, Carpeta 959, nos. 20 and 21.

49. Iglesia de Toledo, p. 66.

50. Serrano, ed., Cartulario de San Millán, pp. 261-64. A donation of Alfonso VI to Palencía dated similarly only to 1086 may also be of this date. See the notice in Fernández de Madrid, Silva Palentina 3:10.

51. Huici Miranda, Historia musulmana de Valencia 1:259-65.

52. Ibid., pp. 265-69.

53. Menéndez Pidal, ed., 2:547-52.

54. Ibid. 2:552.

55. Serrano, ed., Cartulario de San Millán, p. 266, and García de Cortázar, El dominio de San Millán, p. 187.

56. González, "La Extremadura castellana," p. 293. The author accepts an eighteenth-century account which also associates the site with Alvar Fáñez. That magnate is not otherwise known to have bad interests so far west.

57. Al-Maqqarí, History of the Mohammedan Dynasties, p. 272.

58. "Kitab al-Iqtifa," p. xxxiii append. C.

59. El Siglo XI en primera persona, trans. Evariste Lévi-Provençal and Emilio García Gómez (Madrid, 1980), pp. 232-33, and p. 235 n. 19. I regard the dating of Abd Allah as authoritative.

60. Huici Miranda, ed., Las crónicas latinas de la Reconquista 1:343.

61. Turk, Reino de Zaragoza, pp. 142-45.

62. For the argument, see Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid 1:300-301; Menéndez Pidal, ed., Primera crónica general 1:556-57; Turk, Reino de Zaragoza, pp. 149-54.

63. Ubieto Arteta, ed., Colección diplomática de Pedro I, p. 31.

64. Boissonnade, Du nouveau sur la Chanson de Roland, p. 13.

65. Ubieto Arteta, Historia de Aragón, pp. 89-91.

66. Ubieto Arteta, "Homenaje de Aragón," EEMCA 3 (1947-48): 17. Huici Miranda, Grandes batallas de la Reconquista, p. 37. Ubieto Arteta, "Un ataque Aragonés a Zaragoza en 1089?" EEMCA 10 (1975): 687-88. Ubieto Arteta, Historia de Aragón, pp. 92-94.

67. Durán Gudiol, Colección diplomótica de Huesca 1:141-44. Also ES 46:239-41.

68. España del Cid 1:300-301 and 2:746-47.

69. The classic exposition of the following events is Huici Miranda, Grandes batallas de la Reconquisto, pp. 19-82.

70. There is a badly forged charter of Alfonso which would seem to place him in the vicinity of Castile on Aug. 1, 1086. Manuel Serrano y Sanz, ed., "Cartulario de la Iglesia de Santa María de Puerto (Santoña)," BRAH 74 (1919): 234-35.

71. This estimate presumes that even a mounted spy could not have covered the six hundred some kilometers between Algeciras and Toledo at a speed of more than twenty-five kilometers a day and avoid raising suspicion. For the four hundred some kilometers between Toledo and Zaragoza an average speed of fifty kilometers por day would have been possible with remounts.

72. See Huici Miranda, Grandes batallas de la Reconquista, pp. 38-39.

73. See Ubieto Artera, Historia de Aragón, p. 92, for the Aragonese participation.

74. Huici Miranda. Grandes batallas de la Reconquista, pp. 37-44. While Huici regarded these letters as fabrications of Muslim propaganda, properly it still seems to me, a considerable controversy about them continues. Angus Mackay and Muhammad Benaboud, "The Authenticity of Alfonso VI's Letter to Yusuf b. Tšufn," Al-Andalus 43(1978): 231-37; "Alfonso VI of León and Castile, 'Al-Imbratr-dh-l-Millatayn,'" BHS 56 (1979): 95-102; "Yet again Alfonso VI, 'the Emperor, Lord of [the Adherents of] the Two Faiths, the Most Excellent Ruler': A Rejoinder to Norman Roth," BHS 61 (1984): 171- 81, have argued at some length with Norman Roth, "Again Alfonso VI, 'Imbartr dhu'l-Millatayn,' and Some New Data," BHS 61(1984): 165-69.

Without becoming a party to this dispute between Arabic scholars what it seems to me that Mackay and Benaboud have demonstrated, if their sources prove reliable, is that this propaganda literature was more widely accepted that has heretofore been understood. In judging its ultimate veracity, they arc handicapped by their almost exclusive dependence upon Menéndez Pidals España del Cid for interpreting Leonese-Castilian attitudes. They badly misinterpret remarks of the Granadan Abd Allah, which report Alfonso's intentions quite differently, and are simply unaware of the preoccupation of Alvar Fáñez, who allegedly was to become governor of all Andalucía, with Valencian affairs during the crucial period. Finally, they simply ignore the practicalities of the situation as I have developed them here.

David Wasserstein, The Rise and Fall of the Party Kings (Princeton, 1985), p. 250, has discovered that Muslim sources also attributed such an intransigent attitude to Fernando I as well and unfortunately bas accepted its accuracy and elevated the reported attitude into the policy of the Leonese dynasty.

75. España del Cid 1:307-308.

76. Al-Maqqarí, History of the Mohammedan Dynasties, p. 264. The author is quoting an eleventh-century Muslim source. For a brief consideration of the problem see González, Repoblación de Castilla la Nueva 1:111-12, and n. 9. Thanks to the kindness of Prof. Pieter Sj van Koningsveld of the University of Leiden, I have learned that the major contemporary Muslim source, ibn-Bassam, states that he has received his information on this matter from others and also that ibn-Bassam's treatment of the matter points, like other such sources, toward a dramatic denouement in which Alfonso will reap the divinely appointed reward of his arrogance.

77. Jiménez de Rada, "De rebus Hispaniae," pp. 137-38. As I have argued elsewhere, at this point the author is following a lost epic of Alfonso VI. García Gómez and Menéndez Pidal, "El conde mozárabe Sisnando," pp. 39-40, believed wrongly that it was a Muslim source.

78. Rivera Recio, Iglesia de Toledo, p. 70, no. 18, reports that old cathedral calendars and Jiménez de Rada both date the consecration of the cathedral on October 25, or two days after the battle of Zalaca.

79. Marius Férotin, ed., Le Liber Ordinum (Paris, 1904), cols. 149-53; "Ordo quando rex cum exercitu ad prelium egreditur."