Zaragoza

Who holds it

Name

Peter II; the senior of Zaragoza on 1 January 1200 is not pinned

Title

Lord: the king; honor of the city

Confidence

medium

Lord in 1200

The king. Alfonso I gave the lordship of the city as an honor to Viscount Gaston IV of Béarn, and English Wikipedia says the city remained a lordship until the early thirteenth century. Who held that honor on 1 January 1200 is not pinned in the sources read (a Béarn interest, through Gaston VI, is possible but not attested here).

Overlord

Peter II of Aragon

How things stand that morning

Royal city.

Wealth

The irrigated huerta of the Ebro, Gállego and Huerva; Ebro river trade; crafts; royal tolls and rents.

Military

Roman and Muslim walls; the Aljafería.

Threats

• None external

Fuero

Royal privileges granted to the settlers after Alfonso I took the city on 18 December 1118 (texts and dates not checked here).

Council

A royal judge (zalmedina) and the council of citizens; the officers of 1200 are not pinned.

Communities

Christian settlers, among them Franks; a large Muslim population living outside the old walls after the conquest; a Jewish community (later evidence speaks of seven synagogues).

Militia

The citizens serve in the royal host; no record for 1199 in the sources read.

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. February 1200The king holds court at Zaragoza.Depends on: The itinerary. Stopped by: Nothing known.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: The city's twelfth-century government is well studied but was not checked in detail here.

On the map: The huerta villages around the city; the true extent of the city's término in 1200 is not pinned.

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.