Ferdinand III and the Fall of Córdoba and Seville

I. Ferdinand's Accession

Ferdinand III was born around 1199 or 1201, the son of Alfonso IX of León and Berenguela of Castile, the eldest daughter of Alfonso VIII. His parents were second cousins, and Innocent III dissolved their marriage on grounds of consanguinity in 1204, although their children were treated as legitimate. Ferdinand was brought up at the Leonese court, and he would normally have succeeded his father in León.

In 1214 Alfonso VIII died, followed weeks later by his queen, Eleanor, and the Castilian throne passed to their young son Henry I. Henry's minority was dominated by the regent Álvaro Núñez de Lara, and in 1217 the boy king was killed by a tile falling from a roof in the episcopal palace of Palencia. The crown passed to his sister Berenguela, who renounced it immediately in favour of her son Ferdinand. Ferdinand was proclaimed king of Castile at Valladolid in July 1217, at the age of about sixteen or eighteen. His mother remained his principal adviser for the rest of her life.

Alfonso IX of León did not accept the arrangement and invaded Castile, but Berenguela and Ferdinand defeated the Laras and secured the kingdom. Relations between father and son remained difficult, and when Alfonso IX died in 1230 he left León to his daughters by his first marriage, Sancha and Dulce. Berenguela negotiated with their mother, Teresa of Portugal, and the princesses renounced their rights in return for generous pensions in the Treaty of Benavente. Ferdinand thus became king of León as well as Castile. The two crowns were never again separated, and the union gave Castile-León the resources for the conquest of Andalusia.

II. The Breakup of Almohad al-Andalus

The defeat at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 had weakened the Almohad caliphate, but it was the succession crisis of 1224 that opened al-Andalus to conquest. On the death of the caliph Yusuf II without children, his great-uncle Abd al-Wahid was proclaimed in Marrakesh, but the governors in al-Andalus, sons of the caliph Ya'qub al-Mansur, refused to accept him. One of them, Abd Allah, governor of Murcia, proclaimed himself caliph with the title al-Adil. His brother, Abd Allah al-Bayyasi, the lord of Baeza, rebelled against him and turned to Ferdinand for help.

The arrangement between al-Bayyasi and Ferdinand, concluded at Las Navas in 1225, was typical of the early stages of Ferdinand's campaigns. Al-Bayyasi became Ferdinand's vassal, paid tribute and surrendered fortresses as a pledge, and the Castilian armies raided the territories of his rivals around Jaén, Priego and Loja. In 1226 al-Bayyasi was murdered by his own subjects at Almodóvar, and Baeza passed to Ferdinand in 1226 or 1227. The Castilian king thus acquired a foothold in the upper Guadalquivir valley.

In 1228 al-Ma'mun, another son of al-Mansur, crossed to Morocco with Castilian mercenaries provided by Ferdinand to seize the caliphate, and in Marrakesh he publicly renounced the doctrines of Ibn Tumart. In his absence al-Andalus fell into the hands of Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn Hud, a member of the old Zaragoza dynasty, who rose at Murcia in 1228 and won control of most of the Muslim territory, acknowledging the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad rather than the Almohads. Ibn Hud's authority was challenged by Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn Nasr, known as Ibn al-Ahmar, who proclaimed himself ruler at Arjona in 1232 and who would found the Nasrid dynasty of Granada.

III. The First Campaigns in the Upper Guadalquivir

Between 1224 and 1230 Ferdinand conducted annual campaigns in the upper Guadalquivir valley. He besieged Jaén in 1225, 1228 and 1230 without success, but he took Andújar, Martos and Priego. The campaigns were costly and the gains were modest, but they established a network of fortresses and forced the Muslim rulers to pay tribute.

After the union of León and Castile in 1230 Ferdinand was able to concentrate greater resources on the south. In 1233 he took Úbeda after a long siege, and Iznatoraf and Santisteban del Puerto followed. In the same years the Leonese army under his brother Alfonso of Molina advanced in Extremadura, where Alfonso IX had taken Cáceres in 1227 and Mérida and Badajoz in 1230. Alfonso of Molina won a victory over Ibn Hud at Jerez in 1231. The Portuguese and the military orders advanced in the Alentejo and Algarve.

The campaigns were directed by the king in person, often accompanied by the archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, and by the masters of the military orders. The orders played an increasing role, receiving large domains in the conquered territories in return for their defence. The Order of Calatrava received Martos and its district, which became one of the bases for the war against Granada, and the Order of Santiago took Segura de la Sierra and much of the region between Andalusia and Murcia.

IV. The Fall of Cordoba

The capture of Córdoba, the former capital of the caliphate, came unexpectedly. In late 1235 a group of frontier soldiers from Andújar, the almogávares, who specialised in raids into enemy territory, learned from Muslim informants or captives that the eastern suburb of Córdoba, the Ajarquía, was poorly guarded. On the night of 8 January 1236, during a winter storm, they scaled the walls of the Ajarquía with ladders, killed the guards and took possession of a gate and several towers. They then sent messengers to the frontier commanders and to the king, who was at Benavente in León.

Ferdinand hurried south with a small escort, gathering troops on the way, and arrived before Córdoba in February. The Christians occupied the Ajarquía and besieged the inner city, the madina. Ibn Hud, who was at Écija with an army, did not attempt to relieve the city, apparently because he was misled about the size of the Christian force, and he turned instead towards Valencia, which was threatened by James I of Aragon. Ibn Hud was murdered at Almería in 1238.

The inhabitants of Córdoba negotiated a surrender, and on 29 June 1236, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the city was handed over. The terms allowed the Muslim population to leave with their movable property, and most of them departed for Granada, Seville and North Africa. Ferdinand entered the city, and the great mosque, built by Abd al-Rahman I and enlarged by his successors, was purified and consecrated as the cathedral of Santa María. The cross was raised on the minaret.

In an act of symbolic reversal, Ferdinand ordered that the bells of the church of Santiago de Compostela, which al-Mansur had carried to Córdoba on the shoulders of Christian captives in 997 and hung as lamps in the mosque, should be returned to Compostela on the shoulders of Muslim captives. The episode, recorded by Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and Lucas of Túy, recalled the history described in From Covadonga to the Douro.

V. The Repopulation of Cordoba

The departure of the Muslim population left Córdoba largely empty, and Ferdinand had to attract Christian settlers to fill it. He issued a charter for the city in 1241, based on the Fuero Juzgo, the Castilian translation of the Visigothic code, and divided its land and houses among the nobles, the military orders, the church and the settlers who came from León, Castile and Galicia. The countryside around Córdoba, the campiña, was distributed in large estates, laying the foundations of the latifundia of later Andalusia.

The great mosque was preserved as the cathedral with few alterations for nearly three centuries. In 1523, with the support of Charles V, the chapter built a Renaissance cathedral nave in the centre of the mosque, an intervention that the emperor is said to have regretted when he saw it, remarking that they had destroyed something unique to build something that could be found anywhere. The building remains one of the great monuments of Islamic architecture.

The Jewish community of Córdoba, which had been driven out under the Almohads, revived under Castilian rule. A small synagogue, built in 1314 or 1315 in Mudéjar style with Hebrew inscriptions, survives in the old Jewish quarter near the cathedral. The history of the community is described in Jews of Córdoba.

VI. The Pact of Jaen and the Nasrids

After the fall of Córdoba the Christian advance continued in the lower Guadalquivir valley. Écija, Estepa and other towns submitted by agreement, often keeping their Muslim populations under Castilian lordship. In 1244 the Castilians took Arjona, the original base of Ibn al-Ahmar. In 1245 Ferdinand laid siege to Jaén, which Ibn al-Ahmar, now ruler of Granada, held.

The siege of Jaén lasted through the winter of 1245 and 1246. In the spring of 1246 Ibn al-Ahmar came to Ferdinand's camp and offered terms. By the agreement known as the Pact of Jaén, he surrendered the city, became Ferdinand's vassal, agreed to pay an annual tribute of one hundred and fifty thousand gold maravedís, which was half his revenues according to some sources, and promised to serve in the Castilian army and attend the Castilian Cortes when summoned. In return Ferdinand recognised him as king of Granada.

The pact secured the existence of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, which would survive for another two and a half centuries until the war of 1482 to 1492 described in The Granada War. The arrangement suited both rulers. Ferdinand gained a valuable tribute and freed his forces for the conquest of Seville, while Ibn al-Ahmar obtained security against Castile and the means to consolidate his rule over a territory stretching from Almería to Gibraltar.

VII. The Kingdom of Murcia

In the east, the Muslim ruler of Murcia, Ibn Hud al-Dawla, a relative of Ibn Hud, offered to become a vassal of Castile in 1243 to protect himself against Aragon and Granada. The Treaty of Alcaraz placed Murcia under Castilian protection, and Ferdinand's son Alfonso, the future Alfonso X, led an army into the kingdom and occupied its main fortresses. Several towns, such as Cartagena, Lorca and Mula, resisted and were conquered over the next two years.

The arrangement in Murcia was a protectorate rather than a full conquest. The Muslim ruler retained authority over his people, while Castilian garrisons held the fortresses and Castile received half the revenues. In 1244 the Treaty of Almizra between James I of Aragon and the infante Alfonso fixed the boundary between the Aragonese and Castilian zones of conquest at a line running south of Alicante, assigning Murcia to Castile. The Mudéjars of Murcia rose in rebellion in 1264, with support from Granada, and the revolt was suppressed by James I acting on behalf of his son-in-law Alfonso X.

VIII. The Siege of Seville

Seville was the largest city of al-Andalus and the Almohad capital in the peninsula. It stood on the left bank of the Guadalquivir, which was navigable from the sea, and was connected by a bridge of boats to the suburb of Triana on the right bank, where a fortress guarded the crossing. The city was protected by strong walls and by the citadel, the Alcázar, and it was supplied from the rich agricultural region of the Aljarafe to the west and from the river.

Ferdinand began the campaign in 1246 with a series of raids that devastated the countryside around the city and took the surrounding towns, such as Carmona, which submitted by treaty, Alcalá de Guadaíra and Constantina. In 1247 the siege proper began. Ferdinand understood that the city could not be taken without control of the river. He commissioned a Burgos merchant, Ramón Bonifaz, to organise a fleet in the ports of the Bay of Biscay. Bonifaz assembled thirteen ships and some galleys and sailed them round the peninsula and up the Guadalquivir, defeating a Muslim fleet at the mouth of the river.

The siege lasted fifteen months. The Christian army camped at Tablada and other positions east and south of the city, and the forces of Granada, under Ibn al-Ahmar, served in the Castilian camp as required by the Pact of Jaén. The defenders made frequent sallies, and the fighting in the Aljarafe was continuous. The Muslims of Seville appealed to North Africa for help, but the Hafsids of Tunis and the Marinids were unable or unwilling to send significant forces.

On 3 May 1248 Bonifaz's two largest ships, loaded with stone and driven by a strong wind and the tide, rammed and broke the bridge of boats, cutting the connection between Seville and Triana. The event, commemorated in the arms of the city of Santander, which supplied one of the ships, isolated the city from the Aljarafe. The blockade tightened, and by the autumn the city was suffering from famine.

IX. The Surrender of Seville

On 23 November 1248 the governor of Seville, Abu'l-Hasan Ali ibn Shu'ayb, known as Axataf, surrendered the city. The terms allowed the inhabitants a month to leave with their movable property, and Ferdinand provided ships to carry them to North Africa and beasts of burden to take them to Jerez and Granada. The Castilian Estoria de España gives a figure of four hundred thousand emigrants, three hundred thousand by land to Jerez and a hundred thousand by sea to Ceuta, a figure which modern historians regard as greatly exaggerated, though the emigration was certainly massive. Axataf himself crossed to Ceuta. According to legend, when he looked back at the city from a hill he wept and said that only a saint could have taken it.

Ferdinand entered Seville on 22 December 1248, the feast of the translation of Isidore of Seville, with his army and his court. The great mosque was consecrated as the cathedral. It continued to be used as such until 1401, when the chapter resolved to build a new cathedral, which was completed in 1506. The minaret of the mosque, built in the 1180s and 1190s, survived as the bell tower, and its Renaissance belfry was added in 1568. The court of the orange trees, the ablution court of the mosque, also survives.

Ferdinand made Seville his principal residence for the remaining years of his life. He died there on 30 May 1252, while preparing a campaign against North Africa. He was buried in the cathedral, and his tomb bears inscriptions in Latin, Castilian, Arabic and Hebrew, composed under his son Alfonso X. The Hebrew inscription, like the others, praises the king who took Seville, and its presence on the royal tomb is a sign of the place of the Jewish community in Alfonso's Castile.

X. The Repartimiento of Seville

The resettlement of Seville and its territory was recorded in the Repartimiento, a register of the distribution of houses and land compiled under Alfonso X between 1253 and 1263. The register shows that the king allocated great estates, the donadíos mayores, to members of the royal family, the nobles, the archbishop and cathedral, and the military orders, and smaller grants, the donadíos menores, to knights and settlers. The settlers came from all parts of Castile and León, as well as from Catalonia, Genoa and France. Genoese merchants received a quarter in the city and privileges that made Seville a centre of Mediterranean and Atlantic trade.

The Jewish community received three mosques for use as synagogues and a quarter near the Alcázar. The Jews of Seville became one of the largest and wealthiest communities of Castile, and some of its members served Alfonso X as translators, astronomers and financiers. The community would suffer the catastrophic riots of 1391, which began in Seville and spread throughout the peninsula. Its history is told in Jews of Seville.

Some Muslims remained in the territory of Seville, especially in the countryside and in towns such as Jerez, Arcos and Medina Sidonia, which had submitted by treaty and kept their populations. The great Mudéjar revolt of 1264, supported by Granada and the Marinids, changed the situation. After its suppression Alfonso X expelled the Muslims from many towns of the lower Guadalquivir and resettled them with Christians, and Andalusia became overwhelmingly Christian in population, unlike Valencia and Aragon, where large Mudéjar communities survived.

XI. The Mudejars under Castilian Rule

The Muslims who remained under Christian rule were known in Castilian as mudéjares, from the Arabic mudajjan, meaning those permitted to stay or, in another interpretation, those who had been subjugated. Their status was regulated by the surrender treaties and by royal charters. In general they were allowed to keep their religion, their mosques, their judges and their law, in return for the payment of taxes and submission to the king. In practice their position depended on the circumstances of each town and on the policy of each ruler.

The Mudéjars of Castile were concentrated in the towns of the old frontier, such as Toledo, Ávila, Segovia and Guadalajara, and in Murcia and parts of Andalusia. Many were craftsmen, especially builders, carpenters, potters and tile-makers, and the Mudéjar style of architecture, which combined Islamic decorative techniques with Christian buildings, flourished in Castile and Aragon from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. The churches of Toledo, the synagogues of Toledo and Córdoba, and the palace of Peter I in the Alcázar of Seville are among its finest examples.

The Mudéjars lived in separate quarters, the morerías, and from the thirteenth century church councils and royal legislation imposed distinctive dress and restrictions on contact with Christians. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which met under Innocent III three years after Las Navas, required Jews and Muslims in Christian lands to wear distinctive clothing. Its decrees were applied only partially in Castile, where Ferdinand III asked the papacy for exemptions on the grounds that the Jews would otherwise leave for Muslim lands.

XII. Ferdinand and the Jews

Ferdinand III's policy towards the Jews was protective in practical terms. He relied on Jewish officials, and he resisted papal demands for the strict enforcement of the Lateran decrees. In 1219 Honorius III, at the request of the king and the archbishop of Toledo, suspended the requirement of a distinctive badge in Castile. In 1250, however, Innocent IV complained that Castilian Jews were building synagogues higher than churches and employing Christian servants, and he urged the king to enforce canon law.

A frequently quoted inscription attributed to Ferdinand describes him as king of the three religions. The attribution is late and probably refers to the quadrilingual inscriptions of his tomb rather than to a title he used. It reflects, nonetheless, the reality of a kingdom in which Christians, Muslims and Jews lived under one crown, each with its own law and institutions, but in an unequal relationship in which the Christian majority and its church held authority over the others.

The situation of Jews in Ferdinand's Castile contrasted with their situation under the Almohads, who had expelled or forcibly converted the Jews and Christians of their territories in the mid-twelfth century. The family of Maimonides had left Córdoba as a result of that persecution, which is described in Almohad Persecution. Many Jews from al-Andalus had taken refuge in Toledo and other Christian cities, and the conquests of Ferdinand allowed some of them to return to the south.

XIII. Ferdinand and the Church

Ferdinand was a patron of the church and of the new mendicant orders. He supported the Dominicans and Franciscans, who arrived in Castile in the 1210s and 1220s, and founded convents for them in the conquered cities. He also supported the building of the Gothic cathedrals of Burgos and Toledo, begun in 1221 and 1226 respectively under the bishops Maurice of Burgos and Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. These cathedrals, built in the French Gothic style, reflected the integration of Castile into the culture of the Latin West.

The king's campaigns were financed in part by the church. The papacy granted crusading indulgences for the war in Andalusia and allowed the king to collect a share of the tithes, the tercias reales, and contributions from the clergy. In 1246 Innocent IV authorised the collection of a portion of the church revenues for the siege of Seville. The tercias became a permanent part of royal revenue in Castile.

Ferdinand's piety was emphasised in the chronicles and in later tradition. The chronicles describe him praying and fasting, and his devotion to the Virgin, whose image he carried with him on campaign. The image known as the Virgen de los Reyes, preserved in Seville cathedral, is associated with him by tradition. The process of his canonisation began in the seventeenth century, and he was canonised by Clement X in 1671. His feast day is 30 May.

XIV. Scholarship and Translation

The reign of Ferdinand laid the foundations for the cultural achievements of his son Alfonso X, called the Learned. Ferdinand ordered the translation of the Fuero Juzgo into Castilian, and under his patronage the Castilian language began to replace Latin in royal documents. The chronicles of Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and Lucas of Túy, written in Latin in the 1230s and 1240s, gave Castile-León a history that linked the Visigothic kingdom to the conquests of the thirteenth century.

Toledo continued to be a centre of translation from Arabic. In the twelfth century scholars such as Gerard of Cremona had translated Arabic works of philosophy, medicine and astronomy into Latin. Under Alfonso X the translations were made into Castilian, often by teams of Jewish and Christian scholars. The king also sponsored a general history of the world, the General Estoria, which drew heavily on the Bible and incorporated translations of large portions of the Latin Vulgate into Castilian.

The Alfonsine Bible translations are among the earliest renderings of large parts of the Bible into a vernacular language of the peninsula. They form part of the history described in Spain and Bible Scholarship. The General Estoria followed the order of the Biblical narrative, beginning with the account of creation in Genesis 1:1, and interwove it with the histories of the Greeks, Romans and other peoples. It shows how the conquests of Ferdinand and the learning of Toledo combined to produce a new vernacular culture.

XV. The Siete Partidas and the Law of Religious Minorities

The legal code known as the Siete Partidas, compiled under Alfonso X in the 1250s and 1260s, set out the legal position of Jews and Muslims in Castile. The seventh Partida, which deals with crimes and punishments, contains titles on the Jews and on the Moors. It allowed Jews to live among Christians and to keep their synagogues, but forbade them to build new ones without royal permission, to proselytise, to hold office over Christians or to employ Christian servants. It also repeated the accusation that Jews crucified Christian children on Good Friday, while forbidding anyone to harm Jews on the basis of rumour without proof.

The title on the Moors allowed them to live in Christian territory under their own law, provided they did not have mosques in Christian towns, did not make sacrifices before Christians, and did not try to convert Christians. It encouraged the peaceful conversion of Jews and Muslims by persuasion rather than by force, citing the principle that God does not wish service given under compulsion. The Partidas were not formally promulgated until 1348, but they shaped Castilian law for centuries and were also applied in Spanish America.

XVI. Portugal and the Algarve

While Ferdinand conquered Andalusia, the Portuguese completed the conquest of their southern territories. Sancho II of Portugal, who reigned from 1223 to 1248, advanced in the Alentejo, taking Elvas, Moura, Serpa and Mértola with the help of the Order of Santiago, whose master, Paio Peres Correia, was the leading commander of the campaign. Paio Peres Correia took Tavira in 1242 and other towns in the eastern Algarve.

Afonso III, who replaced his brother Sancho II after a civil war, completed the conquest of the Algarve with the capture of Faro in 1249. A dispute with Castile over the Algarve was resolved by the Treaty of Badajoz in 1267, which fixed the frontier along the Guadiana. The Portuguese Reconquista was thus completed nearly two and a half centuries before the Castilian, and Portugal turned towards the sea. The earlier stages of Portuguese expansion are described in Lisbon 1147 and the Portuguese Reconquista.

XVII. Aragon, Majorca and Valencia

At the same time James I of Aragon conquered Majorca in 1229 and Valencia in 1238. The conquest of Majorca followed a seaborne expedition launched from Catalonia, and the city of Madina Mayurqa fell after a siege on 31 December 1229. Much of the Muslim population was killed or enslaved, and the island was resettled with Catalans. Minorca submitted as a tributary in 1231, and Ibiza was taken in 1235.

The conquest of the kingdom of Valencia was a longer process. James took Burriana in 1233 and the city of Valencia, after a siege, on 28 September 1238. The Muslim ruler, Zayyan ibn Mardanish, negotiated a surrender that allowed the inhabitants to leave. In the countryside, however, the Muslim population remained, and the kingdom of Valencia retained a large Mudéjar majority for centuries. The Mudéjars of Valencia rose several times in the thirteenth century under the leadership of al-Azraq. Their descendants, the Moriscos, were expelled only in 1609, as described in The Morisco Revolt and Expulsion.

XVIII. The Biblical Language of the Chronicles

The chroniclers of Ferdinand's reign interpreted his conquests in Biblical terms. Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada compared the king to the judges and kings of Israel, and the anonymous Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, probably written by Juan de Soria, bishop of Osma and chancellor of Castile, described the conquest of Córdoba as the recovery of an inheritance. The chronicle echoed the language of Joshua 1:3, in which every place on which the sole of the foot treads is given to the people.

The Castilian chronicles also drew on the Psalms, especially on passages that described God as the one who trains the hands for war, such as Psalm 144:1. The victories of the king were presented as divine gifts and his defeats as divine chastisements. The same language was used by Muslim writers in reverse: the poet al-Rundi, in his lament for the cities of al-Andalus written after the fall of Seville, described the losses as the result of the sins of the Muslims and asked who would come to their aid.

Modern historians, while recognising the importance of religious motives, emphasise also the role of economic interests, demographic pressure, the ambitions of the nobility and military orders, and the political fragmentation of al-Andalus. Ferdinand's conquests were made possible less by any single great battle than by the collapse of Almohad authority, the rivalries among the Muslim rulers, and the steady pressure of the Castilian frontier.

XIX. The African Project

In the last years of his life Ferdinand planned to carry the war across the Strait of Gibraltar. The chronicles report that he was building ships and gathering supplies for an expedition to North Africa when he died. His son Alfonso X inherited the project and obtained papal crusade bulls for it, and in 1260 a Castilian fleet sacked the Moroccan port of Salé on the Atlantic coast, holding it for a few days before withdrawing. The African crusade was never carried out on a large scale, and the Marinid dynasty, which took Marrakesh in 1269, soon crossed into the peninsula to support Granada.

The struggle for control of the Strait, which O'Callaghan has called the Gibraltar Crusade, occupied Castile for nearly a century after Ferdinand's death. Tarifa was taken in 1292, Gibraltar was taken in 1309 and lost in 1333, and the Marinids were decisively defeated at the battle of the Río Salado in 1340. Algeciras fell in 1344 after a long siege. Only then did the threat of North African intervention recede, leaving Granada isolated.

XX. Legacy

By the time of Ferdinand's death in 1252, the Crown of Castile had more than doubled in size and controlled the entire Guadalquivir valley, with its great cities of Córdoba, Jaén and Seville, as well as the kingdom of Murcia. Of the territories of al-Andalus, only the Nasrid kingdom of Granada remained independent, and it was a vassal of Castile. The conquests transformed the demography, economy and society of the peninsula.

The resettlement of Andalusia created a society dominated by great estates owned by nobles, military orders and the church, worked by a dependent population. The cities, with their Christian settlers, Genoese merchants and Jewish communities, became centres of trade. Seville in particular rose to be the gateway to the Atlantic, and from the end of the fifteenth century the port through which all trade with the Americas passed, as described in The Age of Discovery.

Ferdinand himself became a symbol of the Reconquista. His sword, preserved in the Royal Chapel of Seville cathedral, is carried in procession on the anniversary of the conquest. He is the patron of Seville, and his cult was promoted by the Spanish monarchy as an example of a Christian king. For historians his reign is the turning point at which the balance between Christian and Muslim powers in the peninsula was decisively changed.

XXI. Bibliography

The following studies, editions and reference works underlie this account.