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Fall of Lordship of Valencia
(1094-1102)
- 1102
- Europe
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(1094-1102)
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
(1094-1102)
Towards the beginning of November 1092, the Campeador besieged the fortress, currently in the municipality of El Puig, fourteen kilometres from Valencia, surrendering it in mid-1093. Using it as a centre of operations, that summer he began to besiege the city. In September 1093, he changed camp and settled in La Roqueta. Valencia, in a situation of extreme danger, requested an Almoravid relief army, which was sent under the command of al-Latmuni and advanced from the south of the capital of the Turia to Almussafes, twenty-three kilometres from Valencia, and then retreated again due to a storm. The tight siege would last for almost a whole year, after which Valencia was forced to surrender on 17 June 1094. El Cid took possession of the city, calling himself "Prince Rodrigo el Campeador" and settling in the city.
The Almoravid pressure did not relent and in mid-September of that same year an army under the command of Muhammad ibn Tashfin, nephew of Emir Yusuf, reached Quart de Poblet, five kilometers from the capital, and besieged it, but was defeated after the Battle of Cuarte, which took place on October 21, 1094 between the towns of Mislata and Quart de Poblet, near the city.
In order to secure the northern routes of the new lordship, Rodrigo managed to ally himself with the new king of Aragon, Peter I, who had been enthroned shortly before the fall of Valencia during the siege of Huesca, and took the Castle of Serra and the Castle of Real, at that time called Alucad in 1095.
In 1097, a new Almoravid incursion led again by Muhammad ibn Tashfin attempted to recover Valencia, but he was defeated again by El Cid with the collaboration of the army of Peter I of Aragon at the battle of Bairén, near Gandia. At the end of that same year he took Almenara, thus closing the routes to the north of Valencia and in 1098 he finally conquered the imposing fortified city of Sagunto, thus consolidating his dominion over what had previously been the Taifa of Valencia. Also in 1098 he consecrated the new Cathedral of Santa María, reforming the one that had been main mosque. He had placed a Frenchman, Jerome of Perigord, at the head of the new episcopal see to the detriment of the old Mozarabic metropolitan or sayyid almaṭran. In the diploma of endowment of the cathedral of the end of 1098 Rodrigo presents himself as «princeps Rodericus Campidoctor», considering himself an autonomous sovereign despite not having royal ancestry, and the Battle of Cuarte is referred to as "a victory achieved quickly and without casualties over an enormous number of Muslims".
Already established in Valencia, he also allied himself with Ramon Berenguer III with the aim of stopping the Almoravid advance. Military alliances were reinforced with marriages. The year of his death (1099) he had married his daughters to high dignitaries: Cristina with the infant Ramiro Sánchez of Pamplona and María with the Count of Barcelona Ramon Berenguer III.
After his death on 10 June 1099, his wife Jimena became Lady of Valencia. The Almoravids started a siege on the city and she managed to defend it with the help of Ramon Berenguer III of Barcelona until May 1102, when Alfonso VI of León and Castile, considering the difficulties of defending Valencia, on 4 May 1102 ordered the evacuation of the city of Christians, subsequently setting it on fire. The next day, on 5 May 1102, Valencia fell into the hands of the Almoravids.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Lordship of Valencia”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.