Lisbon

Who holds it

Name

Sancho I (the crown); the alcaide on 1 January 1200 is not pinned (Mendo Gonçalves de Sousa was tenente in 1186)

Title

Royal town under the king's alcaide or tenente

Confidence

medium

Lord in 1200

The crown. The alcaide or tenente on 1 January 1200 is not pinned: Count Mendo Gonçalves de Sousa held Lisbon in 1186 and his son Gonçalo Mendes held it about 1211.

Overlord

Sancho I of Portugal

What the town holds

• The city, castle and harbour
• The termo north of the river (Loures, Odivelas, Oeiras)
• Tolls on the Tagus and on sea trade

How things stand that morning

Royal city; safe behind the estuary but within raiding reach from Alcácer do Sal.

Wealth

Sea and river trade: wine, salt, olive oil, fish and hides out, cloth in; fishing; the tolls of the port.

Military

Moorish walls and the castle; the militia; ships. No figures.

Threats

• Almohad raids from Alcácer do Sal across the estuary
• Almohad fleets from Seville and Silves
• Unruly crusader fleets (riots in 1190)

Fuero

Foral of Afonso Henriques, May 1179, on the same model as Santarém and Coimbra that year. The free Muslims (mouros forros) of Lisbon, Almada, Palmela and Alcácer had their own foral in March 1170.

Council

A concelho of knights and commoners with its own judges under the king's alcaide; the bishop is lord of his own clergy and estates.

Communities

Christians of the 1147 conquest, among them Frankish settlers (English, Flemish, Rhinelanders) given land after the siege; a Mozarab element; the free Muslims under their 1170 foral, living outside the walls; a Jewish community (its organisation in 1200 is thin).

Fairs and markets

No chartered fair pinned for 1200; the port market and the river trade to Santarém.

Militia

Mounted commoner-knights (cavaleiros-vilãos) and foot owing the fossado under the foral; Lisbon's seamen and ships serve the king at sea. No figures.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: The conquest and the 1179 foral are standard; communities in 1200 are lightly documented.

On the map: Termo drawn from the city and three villages near its edges; Sintra, Alenquer and Torres Vedras are separate.

Primary sources for Portugal

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.