Consuegra

Who holds it

Title

Prior of the Hospital in Castile and León

Confidence

low

The prior on 1 January 1200 is not named in the sources checked.

What it holds

• Consuegra: castle, town and district, head of the Hospital's priory in La Mancha (granted 1183)
• Madridejos and the villages of Consuegra's district (bounds in 1200 not pinned)

How it was acquired

Donation of Alfonso VIII in 1183.

How things stand that morning

Held, as a frontier fortress. The country to the south is raided and empty.

Wealth

Grazing on the plains; mills on the Amarguillo; rents of a thin population; the order's European revenues.

Threats

• Almohad attack if the 1197 truce breaks
• Depopulation of the raided plain

Advocates and rivals

No advocate: the prior answers to the master in Acre and the pope. Neighbours: the Order of Santiago at Mora and Uclés, the archbishop of Toledo, and the Almohads beyond the Guadiana.

Places of note

• Castle of Consuegra: Hospitaller castle on the Cerro Calderico, head of the priory

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: The 1183 grant is well attested; the extent of the district and the state of the castle in 1195-1200 are not pinned in the sources checked.

On the map: Only the castle district is drawn. The later Campo de San Juan is a thirteenth-century creation and is not drawn as held in 1200.

Primary sources for Castile

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• Annals of Toledo and other short Iberian annals (12th and 13th centuries; Anales Toledanos I to 1219). Florez's volume 23 gathers the short annals of the peninsula. Read online
• Chronicle of the World (Lucas of Tuy), Lucas de Tuy (1236, for Queen Berenguela). The Leonese counterpart to Rodrigo, written at San Isidoro for Berenguela. Read online
• Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, Anonymous, probably Juan of Osma, chancellor of Castile (about 1223 to 1239). The chancellor's chronicle of Alfonso VIII's reign, detailed from the 1190s. Read online
• Chronicle of Roger of Howden, Roger of Howden (about 1192 to 1201). The fullest single narrative for the year. Read online
• The Complete History: the passages on the Maghreb and al-Andalus, Ibn al-Athir (about 1220 to 1231, at Mosul). The year entries for 595 to 597 of the Hijra (late 1198 to 1201) record the death of Yaqub al-Mansur, the accession of al-Nasir and the opening of Yahya ibn Ghaniya's war in Ifriqiya; the following years follow Yahya and the Ghuzz captain Qaraqush through Tripoli, Gabès and Mahdia to al-Nasir's reconquest in 1206, with the best eastern account of Qaraqush's career. Read online
• The Garden of Pages: a History of the Kings of the Maghreb and of the City of Fez, Ibn Abi Zar al-Fasi (completed in 1326 at Fez, for the Marinid sultan Abu Said Uthman). The Almohad chapters give a brisk dated narrative of al-Mansur's death and burial, al-Nasir's accession and the Banu Ghaniya troubles, with the kind of detail (coinage, public works at Fez and Rabat, prices, plagues) that a Fez compiler cared about, and the annals of Fez supply the city's governors and markets. Read online
• The Wondrous Account of the History of al-Andalus and the Maghreb, Ibn Idhari al-Marrakushi (about 1312, at Marrakesh). The Almohad section is the fullest year-by-year narrative of the caliphate around 1200: the last campaigns and the death of Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur in January 1199, the accession of his son Muhammad al-Nasir, the renewed war of the Banu Ghaniya in Ifriqiya under Yahya ibn Ishaq and his ally Qaraqush, the Almohad losses of Mahdia and Tunis a few years later, and al-Nasir's reconquest of Ifriqiya in 1205 to 1206 followed by the appointment of Abd al-Wahid ibn Abi Hafs as governor. Read online
• Deeds of Philip Augustus, Rigord (about 1186 to 1206, in stages). The French court's own chronicle for the year, from the monk of Saint-Denis who called himself the king's chronographer. Read online

13 more in the sources library for France and Iberia.