Tortosa

Who holds it

Name

Divided: Queen Sancha (dower), the Templars (by the 1182 grant) and the Montcada (one third)

Title

Lord

Since

1148-1182

Confidence

medium

Catalunya Romànica: Santa Maria de la comanda del Temple

Lord in 1200

Divided and disputed. The Montcada of the Tortosa line hold one third from the 1148 conquest; the Templars hold a fifth from 1148 and were given 'the two thirds of the city' by Alfonso II in March 1182 (with Ascó and Riba-roja); but in 1174 Alfonso had given Tortosa to his wife Sancha of Castile as dower, and the queen mother still keeps her rights there for life. The Genoese third of 1148 was bought back in 1153.

How things stand that morning

Queen Sancha's dower rights and the Templars' 1182 grant overlap; the Montcada hold their third.

Wealth

The Ebro trade, the delta's fish and salt, shipbuilding timber, the frontier market.

Military

The Suda castle over the river; the walls; frontier knights and the military orders nearby (Templars at Miravet and Horta, Hospitallers at Amposta).

Threats

• Raids from Peñíscola and Morella
• Conflict among the co-lords

Fuero

Settlement charter (carta de població) of Ramon Berenguer IV, 1149, with generous franchises; the written Customs of Tortosa come only in the 1270s.

Council

The good men of the city; no consulate is pinned for 1200.

Communities

Jews with their own quarter since the settlement; Muslims allowed to stay under the 1148 surrender terms, in their own suburb; Genoese merchants.

Fairs and markets

River and sea port at the head of the Ebro delta; shipbuilding; no fair pinned.

Militia

A frontier city whose men ride against the Muslim castles to the south; no figure.

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.

In 1200

1. 1200, date not pinnedAgreement between the Templars and the queen mother, who keeps her rights for life; ratified in 1202.Depends on: Both sides willing to settle Stopped by: The queen or the king refusing

Later, on the likely course

1. 1208On Sancha's death Peter II gives the city to Guillem de Cervera rather than the Templars; Cervera cedes his rights in 1215, leaving Templars and Montcada as co-lords until 1294.Depends on: Sancha dying on her date Stopped by: The king honouring the 1182 grant

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: The sequence of grants is from Catalunya Romànica; the 1149 charter and 1153 Genoese sale are standard.

On the map: The city's wide territory on both banks of the lower Ebro; the Hospitallers' Amposta is left out.

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.