Empúries (Ponç III)

Who he is

Name

Ponç III (Ponç Hug)

Title

Count of Empúries

Since

1173

Born

not pinned

Family

Son of Count Hug III and Jussiana d'Entença. First wife Adelaida, probably a daughter of the great seneschal Guillem Ramon de Montcada; second wife Ermessenda de Peratallada. Son and heir Hug (IV), who marries Maria de Vilademuls, heiress of the Vilademuls barony and of La Roca near Perpignan.

Confidence

medium

GEC (Ponç III; Hug IV). Ponç dies in 1200, day not given; on 1 January he is taken as living.

Overlord

Peter II in a loose sense; the counts of Empúries are not royal officers and rule their county as their own

What it holds

• Castelló d'Empúries, seat, market and lagoon port
• The bay of Roses and the Cap de Creus coast
• Castles of the Alt Empordà north of the Fluvià, among them Quermançó
• Through his mother, the Entença barony of Alcolea de Cinca in Aragon was in the family's hands in the 1170s; its state in 1200 is not pinned

How it was acquired

Hereditary county.

Allies and rivals

Rivals: the bishop of Girona (debts and the excommunication); the Rocabertí, a cadet branch of the house whose lands the main line covets; the royal grantees at Peralada. Ally: the king, at least in 1197.

How things stand that morning

Holds the county, deeply in debt; his succession falls within the year.

Wealth

Castelló's market, salt and fish of the lagoons and of Roses bay, grain and wine of the Empordà plain; heavily mortgaged.

Military

Comital castles (Castelló, Quermançó, Roses); the county's knights; small coastal shipping.

Threats

• Debt and the creditors of the Girona church
• The bishop's sentences
• Heresy questions under his son

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. 1200, day not pinnedPonç III dies and his son Hug IV succeeds.Depends on: His natural death on its date Stopped by: Nothing likely; an earlier death would only move the date
2. after 1200Hug IV shelters persecuted Albigensians, seizes Church lands and is excommunicated; he does homage to Peter II in 1210 and fights at Las Navas in 1212.Depends on: The Albigensian crisis Stopped by: Royal or papal pressure

Places of note

• Castelló d'Empúries: Comital seat
• Quermançó castle: Comital castle
• Sant Pere de Rodes: Abbey endowed by the counts

Where the sources disagree

• The GEC's article on the Entença names a Ponç Hug, son of Jussiana d'Entença, lord of Alcolea de Cinca, who with his mother gave Siscar to the Hospitallers in 1175-1176; this is very probably Ponç III.

Evidence: The count's reign and troubles are from the GEC; the day of his death in 1200 is not pinned.

On the map: The county drawn from the core places; its inland edge near Figueres and Peralada is approximate.

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.