León

Who holds it

Name

The king. Bishop Manrique de Lara (exempt see) has his own men and courts. The city's towers belong to Queen Berenguela's arras (8 December 1199); Count Froila Ramírez had the honorary tenancy of the towers from 1191.

Title

Lord or royal tenant

Confidence

medium

Lord in 1200

The king. Bishop Manrique de Lara (exempt see) has his own men and courts. The city's towers belong to Queen Berenguela's arras (8 December 1199); Count Froila Ramírez had the honorary tenancy of the towers from 1191.

Overlord

Alfonso IX

How things stand that morning

On 1 January 1200 a royal city at peace; its towers are now the queen's.

Wealth

Pilgrim traffic, tolls, market, the court's spending.

Military

Roman walls; the towers of León (the queen's).

Threats

• A renewed Castilian war
• The interdict silencing the churches

Fuero

Fuero de León of Alfonso V (1017 or 1020; the date is argued), the oldest general town law of the kingdom.

Council

A concejo with elected men, present at the curia of 1188 held in the cloister of San Isidoro.

Communities

Franks along the pilgrim road; Jews, whose fortified quarter at Puente Castro (Castro de los Judíos) south of the city was stormed by Alfonso VIII in July 1196 and its synagogue burned; the survivors are thought to have moved inside the walls (not pinned).

Fairs and markets

A weekly market (day not pinned); no fair charter before 1200 pinned.

Militia

Not pinned for 1196-1200. The city held out when Alfonso VIII and Peter II besieged it from 23 to 25 July 1196.

Where the sources disagree

• The English war article places the 'Castro de los Judíos' stormed on 25 July 1196 at Mayorga; the Spanish life of Alfonso IX names Puente Castro (León). We follow León.

Evidence: Siege dates from the war article; the fuero date is the usual one.

On the map: The tierra is shared out between neighbouring towns' seeds; limits are approximate.

Primary sources for León

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
• Historical Monuments of Portugal: Writers (Annals of King Afonso, Chronicon Conimbricense, Chronica Gothorum and others) (12th to 15th centuries). The Portuguese annals in one volume. 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 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
• 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 Gift of the Imamate, Ibn Sahib al-Sala (Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad al-Baji) (late twelfth century; the surviving part covers 1159 to 1173). The only Almohad court chronicle written from inside the administration, by a chancery secretary who travelled with the caliphs Abd al-Mu'min and Abu Yaqub Yusuf.

5 more in the sources library for France and Iberia.