Tarragona

Who holds it

Name

Ramon de Rocabertí

Title

Archbishop of Tarragona

Since

1199

Confidence

high

Of the house of the viscounts of Rocabertí in the Empordà. Archbishop from 1199 to 1215, so newly in office on 1 January 1200. His immediate predecessor was Ramon Xetmar de Castellterçol (1194-1198), and before him Berenguer de Vilademuls (1174-1194), murdered in 1194 by Guillem Ramon de Montcada (campaign notes).

What it holds

• Tarragona: city lordship shared with the king
• The Camp de Tarragona: lordship of many villages held by the archbishop or his chapter, others by the king (village by village division in 1200 not pinned)
• Metropolitan rights over the sees of Catalonia, Aragon and Navarre (Barcelona, Girona, Vic, Urgell, Lleida, Tortosa, Huesca, Zaragoza, Tarazona, Pamplona, Calahorra)

How it was acquired

Grant of Ramon Berenguer III to Oleguer in 1117-1118; the Norman principality of Robert Bordet over much of the city; the Bordets' expulsion after the murder of 1171 and the condominium with the crown.

How things stand that morning

Held jointly with the crown. A new archbishop in a see that has lost two archbishops to violence within thirty years.

Wealth

Grain, wine, olives and nuts of the Camp; the port of Tarragona; tithes and dues across the province.

Threats

• Feud with the Montcada after the 1194 murder
• Royal encroachment on the shared lordship
• Saracen raids by sea from the Balearics and Valencia

Advocates and rivals

The king, Peter II, as co-lord; the Montcada, whose head killed Archbishop Berenguer in 1194; the abbeys of Poblet and Santes Creus and the Templars, who hold land on the Camp's edges; the cathedral chapter.

Places of note

• Tarragona cathedral: Cathedral under construction on the upper city

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: The 1118 grant, the Bordet episode and the condominium are standard history; the village by village split of the Camp in 1200 is not pinned in the sources checked.

On the map: The Camp is drawn as one block because the lordship was shared; on the ground the archbishop, his chapter and the king each held particular villages.

Primary sources for Aragon

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
• 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
• 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 the Counts of Barcelona, Anonymous (monks of Santa Maria de Ripoll) (first version 1162 to 1184; continued in the later 13th century; final version 1303 to 1314). The house chronicle of the counts of Barcelona.
• History of the Affairs of Spain, Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada (completed 1243). The archbishop's history of the peninsula, written forty years on by a Navarrese who served Castile. Read online
• The Book of Examples: the History of the Berbers and of the Muslim Dynasties of North Africa, Ibn Khaldun (1375 to 1379 at Qal'at Ibn Salama and Tunis, revised until 1406). Ibn Khaldun's tribal histories are the standard account of the powers that Almohad chronicles treat as background: the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym in Ifriqiya and Tripolitania and their alliances with the Banu Ghaniya and Qaraqush; the Zenata of the central Maghreb (Banu Marin, Banu Abd al-Wad, Tujin, Maghrawa) before their rise; the Sanhaja and the veiled peoples of the Sahara; the Masmuda and the Almohad tribes. Read online
• The Pleasant Book: a Summary of the History of the Maghreb, Abd al-Wahid al-Marrakushi (completed in 1224, in the East, after the author left the Maghreb in 1217). Abd al-Wahid was a boy of fifteen at Fez and Marrakesh in 1200 and later moved in Almohad court circles, so his account of Yaqub al-Mansur (died January 1199) and of the first years of Muhammad al-Nasir is partly from memory and from men he knew: the character of the new caliph, the weakness that let the Banu Ghaniya overrun Ifriqiya, the Majorca expedition of 1203 and the Ifriqiya campaign of 1205 to 1206. Read online
• Official Letters of the Almohad Chancery (1140s to 1260s; the letters nearest 1200 are of the reigns of al-Mansur and al-Nasir). Circular letters from the caliphs to governors, tribes and towns announcing victories, appointments and policy, preserved in later manuscript collections.

7 more in the sources library for France and Iberia.