France and Iberia in 1200: every realm and ruler

On the morning of 1 January 1200 the Atlas records 25 realms and principalities in France and Iberia, with 353 lords and officers, 745 towns, ports and sites, 109 church lands and religious houses and 22 provinces, peoples and free lands.

The realms

Crown of AragonPeter II 'the Catholic'Crown of kingdoms and counties
Peter II, about 21 and unmarried, rules a union of crowns: the Kingdom of Aragon, the County of Barcelona with the other Catalan counties, and Roussillon and Cerdanya, with a web of vassals and allies across Occitania.
Lordship of AlbarracínPedro Fernández de AzagraLordship held of no king
Albarracín is a mountain lordship between Aragon, Castile and Muslim Valencia that owes homage to neither king.
Kingdom of CastileAlfonso VIIIKingdom
The strongest Christian kingdom of the peninsula, recovering from the rout at Alarcos (1195).
Kingdom of LeónAlfonso IXKingdom
León on 1 January 1200 is a kingdom of Galician and Asturian lordships, pilgrim-road towns and frontier councils, ruled by a 28-year-old king who has just come through a disastrous war.
Kingdom of NavarreSancho VII the StrongKingdom
Navarre on the first morning of 1200 is a kingdom without its king, in the middle of losing a third of its land.
Kingdom of PortugalSancho I, called the PopulatorKingdom
Portugal on 1 January 1200 is a kingdom of fifteen years under its second king, Sancho I, a widower of 45 whose queen died sixteen months ago.
Contested groundDisputedContested ground
Ground the sources leave in genuine dispute on the morning of 1 January 1200: castles under siege, districts changing hands, and land the researchers assign to different sides.
Royal demesne of Philip IIPhilip II AugustusKingdom
Philip Augustus, 34, rules a kingdom in which he directly holds less ground than his greatest vassal, John.
Lands of John and EleanorJohnPrincipality
On the morning of 1 January 1200 John holds the greater part of western France but is still fighting for it.
Duchy of BrittanyArthur I, with Constance
Brittany on 1 January 1200 is a duchy without its duke.
Blois, Chartres, ChâteaudunLouisCounty
The senior house of Blois holds three counties strung along the Loire and the Beauce, between the royal Orléanais and John's Touraine and Vendômois, and through Catherine of Clermont a county in the Beauvaisis.
County of ToulouseRaymond VI
Raymond VI is the greatest lord of the south: count of Toulouse and of Quercy, overlord of the Rouergue and the Albigeois, lord of Nimes, Beaucaire, Saint-Gilles and the land of Argence on the lower Rhone, count of Melgueil with its mint, marquis of Provence b
Trencavel viscountiesRaymond Roger Trencavel
The Trencavel are the second power of Languedoc: viscounts of Beziers, Carcassonne, Albi and the Razes, lords of the Via Domitia from the Orb to the Aude and of the hill country of the Minervois, Cabardes, Termenes and Lauragais.
Duchy of BurgundyOdo IIIDuchy
The duchy of Burgundy is a Capetian principality held of the king by Odo III, the king's cousin and a loyal ally, but it is not royal demesne.
Nevers, Auxerre, TonnerreMahautCounty
The house of Nevers held three counties: Nevers on the Loire, Auxerre on the Yonne, and Tonnerre on the Armancon.
County of ChampagneTheobald IIICounty
Champagne is the richest principality held of the French crown that is not ruled by a king.
Flanders and HainautBaldwin IX of Flanders, VI of HainautPrincipality
The richest principality of the north.
Duchy of LorraineSimon IIDuchy
The duchy of Upper Lorraine on the Moselle and Meurthe, held since 1176 by the ageing and childless Simon II.
County of Bar and LuxembourgTheobald ICounty
A Meuse and Moselle county of castles and abbey advocacies (Bar, Saint-Mihiel, Pont-a-Mousson and Mousson, Briey, Stenay, Gondrecourt), held since 1190 by Theobald I, a veteran of the Third Crusade.
County palatine of BurgundyOtto I of HohenstaufenCounty palatine
The imperial county between the Saone and the Jura, Beatrice of Burgundy's inheritance, held by her violent Staufen son Otto I.
County of ProvenceAlfonso IICounty
The county of Provence between the Rhone, the Durance, the Alps and the sea, held by the younger branch of the house of Barcelona under a young count.
County of ForcalquierWilliam IVCounty
An imperial county north and west of the Durance: Forcalquier, Sisteron and Manosque, the Gapencais and Embrunais in the Alps and the Ubaye valley, bounded west of Apt and east of Carpentras and Vaison.
Dauphiné of ViennoisBeatrice of Albon, with her son AndrewPrincipality
The lands of the counts of Albon, a mother and a teenage son: the Valloire, Grenoble and the Gresivaudan, Vizille and the Oisans, the Brianconnais across the Montgenevre, and the overlordship of Viennois barons.
County of SavoyThomas ICounty
The Humbertine county astride the Mont Cenis and the Great Saint Bernard, ruled by a young count of about 21 with a Genevan wife and an heir.
Held directly of the kingPhilip II Augustus, king of FranceLands held of the king
Counties and baronies whose lords hold directly of Philip II and answer to no duke or great count between them and the king: the Channel counts of Ponthieu, Boulogne and Saint-Pol, the counts and barons of the Paris basin (Dreux, Clermont, Soissons, Coucy, Mon

Self-governing peoples and other lands

Records of this region that belong to no single realm page.

Primary sources for France and Iberia

The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, Ibn Jubayr (Abu'l-Husayn Muhammad ibn Ahmad) (1185, from a diary kept 1183 to 1185). The best eyewitness of the Mediterranean world fifteen years before 1200, by a secretary of the Almohad governor of Granada: the Almohad port of Ceuta and its Genoese ships, Alexandria and Cairo under Saladin with their customs houses, the pilgrim traffic from the Maghreb, Mecca under its emir and Medina, Baghdad under the caliph al-Nasir, Damascus and Mosul, the Frankish ports of Acre and Tyre with Muslims living under Frankish rule, and Sicily under William II with its Muslim subjects and Arabic-speaking court.
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.
Chronicle of Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, Alberic of Trois-Fontaines (about 1227 to 1241, at the Cistercian abbey of Trois-Fontaines in Champagne). The widest net of any Latin chronicle for 1200, compiled from dozens of sources, many now lost.
Chronicle of Andres, William of Andres (about 1220 to 1234). The chronicle and cartulary of a small abbey between Guines and Ardres, near the border of Flanders and Boulogne.
Chronicle of Hainaut, Gislebert of Mons (about 1195 to 1196). Ends in 1195, so it has no 1200 entries, but it is the indispensable background for Flanders and Hainaut: the career of Count Baldwin V of Hainaut (VIII of Flanders), his union of the two counties, the settlement with Philip over Artois, the rights, castles, fiefs and vassals of Hainaut listed by a man who ran its chancery, and the youth of Baldwin IX, who held both counties in 1200.
Chronicle of Robert of Auxerre, Robert of Auxerre (Robert of Saint-Marien) (about 1190 to 1211; continued at Saint-Marien to 1227). A universal chronicle whose last twenty years are contemporary and well informed from Burgundy and the Auxerrois.
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.
Chronicles of Saint-Martial of Limoges, Bernard Itier and other monks of Saint-Martial; Geoffrey of Vigeois for the earlier chronicle (Geoffrey's chronicle to 1184; Bernard Itier's notes about 1195 to 1225). Bernard Itier, librarian of Saint-Martial, kept dated notes through 1200 of what reached Limoges: Richard's death at Chalus in 1199, the viscounts of Limoges and the lords of the Limousin, John's passage through Aquitaine in 1200 and the affairs of Angouleme and the Lusignans, and the abbey's own elections and prices.
Chronicles of the Churches of Anjou (Saint-Aubin, Saint-Serge, Saint-Florent and others), Various (monks of Angers and the Loire) (11th to 13th centuries; the Saint-Aubin annals run to the 1220s). The Angevin houses' own annals of the succession crisis in their city: Arthur received at Angers in 1199 with Constance and the Breton and Angevin barons, John's counter-moves, the defection of William des Roches and the Angevin lords to John, and the peace of 1200 that left Arthur John's vassal.
Deeds of Philip Augustus, Rigord (about 1186 to 1206, in stages). The French court's own chronicle for the year, from the monk of Saint-Denis who called himself the king's chronographer.
Deeds of Philip Augustus; The Philippide, William the Breton (Guillaume le Breton) (Gesta about 1214 to 1220; Philippide 1214 to 1224). William abridged Rigord for the years before 1207 and then continued him, so for 1200 the Gesta is a shortened Rigord with a few added touches: the Le Goulet settlement, Blanche's marriage, and the interdict.
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.
Documents of the French Royal Treasury of Charters, vol. 1 (755 to 1223) (755 to 1223; the archive was organised from the 1190s). The treaties and bonds the French crown kept in its own archive, printed in date order.
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.
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.
History of the Counts of Guines, Lambert of Ardres (about 1196 to 1203, unfinished). A house history of the counts of Guines and lords of Ardres, written while Count Baldwin II and his son Arnold were alive and finishing in 1203.
History of the Dukes of Normandy and the Kings of England, Anonymous of Bethune (a clerk in the household of Robert VII of Bethune) (about 1220). A Flemish lord's clerk writing twenty years on, with a soldier's interest in who fought whom.
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.
The Acts of Philip Augustus, with Delisle's Calendar, Various (the French royal chancery) (1179 to 1223). The king's own charters and treaties for the year: the peace of Peronne with Baldwin IX in January 1200, the treaty of Le Goulet with John on 22 May 1200, the marriage settlement for Louis and Blanche, the privilege for the scholars of Paris, grants to towns, abbeys and Norman lords, and the first acts of the king's new acquisitions in the Vexin, Evreux and Berry.
The Breath of Perfume from the Green Branch of al-Andalus, al-Maqqari (Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Maqqari al-Tilimsani) (1628 to 1630, at Cairo). A late compilation, but one that quotes at length from Andalusi historians now lost or fragmentary, with material on the Almohad caliphs, their governors in Seville and Cordoba, the frontier with Castile and León after Alarcos, and the Almohad-period men of letters.
The Conquest of Constantinople (Villehardouin), Geoffrey of Villehardouin (about 1207 to 1213). Opens with the preaching of Fulk of Neuilly and the tournament at Ecry (28 November 1199) where Theobald III of Champagne and Louis of Blois took the cross, then the taking of the cross by Baldwin of Flanders, Hugh of Saint-Pol, Geoffrey of Perche and others through early 1200, the assemblies at Soissons and Compiegne in 1200, and the six envoys sent to Venice in the winter of 1200 to 1201.
The Deeds of Innocent III, Anonymous (a curial official, perhaps Peter of Benevento) (about 1208 to 1209). The curia's own account of the pontificate's first decade, with letters copied in.
The Great Book of Fiefs, Various; compiled by Ramon de Caldes for Alfonso II of Aragon (compiled 1192 to 1194). The register of the count-king's feudal rights, finished a few years before 1200 and in use at Peter II's court: some 900 charters of homage, convention, oath, sale and marriage arranged by county and lineage, covering Catalonia, Roussillon, Cerdanya, Pallars, Urgell, the Carcassonne and Beziers lands of the Trencavels, Provence and Aragon.
The Great Chronicle of Tours, Anonymous (a canon of Saint-Martin of Tours) (about 1227). The Loire valley's view of the Angevin succession.
The Ingeborg Letters and the French Interdict of 1200, Innocent III and the papal chancery (1198 to 1213; the interdict letters December 1199 to September 1200). The first event of 1200.
The Law Code of Cuenca, Anonymous, granted by Alfonso VIII of Castile (about 1189 to 1193). The law of a frontier town as it stood in 1200: the council and its judges, the obligations of mounted and foot townsmen for the summer raid and the king's host, the division of booty and ransoms, the treatment of Muslim captives and resident Muslims and Jews, markets, irrigation, women and inheritance, and the tariff of crimes.
The Poem of the Cid (about 1200; the copyist Per Abbat's exemplar is dated 1207; the manuscript is 14th century). Not a record of events but a witness to how a Castilian audience of about 1200 imagined lordship, honour, exile, booty, the king's court and the frontier with the Moors.
The Usages of Barcelona, Anonymous, ascribed to Ramon Berenguer I (mid 12th century, with additions to about 1200). The customary law the count-king's court applied in Catalonia in 1200: the peace and truce, the rights of the count over castles, roads and coinage, the fines for injury by rank, judicial combat and the position of knights, townsmen and Jews.
Universal Chronicle of the Anonymous of Laon, Anonymous (an English-born canon of Laon) (about 1219). A Picard chronicle whose author had lived in England and keeps an eye on both kingdoms.
The Danish diplomatarium: charters and letters concerning Denmark, with Danish translation (documents of 789 to 1448; the online edition is continuing). Twenty-seven documents are dated to 1200: Innocent III's letters of February and March 1200 to Philip Augustus and Queen Ingeborg and his order for the interdict on France, Otto IV's letter to the pope expecting King Knud VI to move into Saxony, the reports of the legate Octavian and the French bishops on the lifting of the interdict in September, the pope's letters to Knud VI asking him to send advocates for his sister, Knud VI's ordinance on manslaughter for Skåne of 28 December 1200, and private gifts to Roskilde and Næstved.
The Book of Census of the Roman Church, Cencius Camerarius (Cencio Savelli, later Pope Honorius III) (1192, with later additions). The papal rent roll: every church, monastery, town and kingdom that owed a census to Rome in 1192, diocese by diocese, with the sums, followed by lists of papal lands and castles, the ceremonial Ordo and copies of charters.
The Registers of Pope Innocent III for 1199 to 1201, Innocent III and the papal chancery (22 February 1199 to 21 February 1201). The pope's outgoing letters for the year, in his chancery's own copy, touching nearly every realm in the atlas.
The Conquest of Constantinople, Robert de Clari, knight of Picardy (about 1205 to 1216). A rank-and-file crusader's account that begins with the preaching of the crusade and the taking of the cross in 1199 to 1200 by the counts of Flanders, Blois and Champagne and by the Picard lords, among them Peter of Amiens, Robert's own lord, then the negotiations with Venice.
The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, Benjamin of Tudela (about 1173). A generation before 1200 but the only survey of its kind: the Jewish communities and their heads from Navarre through Provence, Italy, Constantinople and the Aegean, Antioch, Tyre, Jerusalem, Damascus, Mosul and Baghdad to the Persian Gulf, with notes on rulers, trades, the exilarch at Baghdad, the Assassins of Syria and Persia, and hearsay on India, Ceylon and China.
The Registers of Pope Innocent III (pontifical years 1 to 3, 1198 to 1201), Innocent III (Lotario dei Conti di Segni) and the papal chancery (1198 onwards, year by year). The register for the second and third pontifical years (February 1199 to February 1201) holds the letters that set the eastern stage for 1200: the exchange with Kaloyan of Bulgaria opened in December 1199 and continued through 1200 over union with Rome and a crown, letters to Vukan of Zeta and to Stefan of Serbia, letters to Alexios III and the patriarch John Kamateros pressing for church union and help for the crusade, the preaching commissions and the legation of Peter Capuano, the Antioch succession quarrel between Bohemond and Leo of Armenia, letters to Aimery of Cyprus and Jerusalem, and the French interdict over Ingeborg.
Chronicle of Roger of Howden, Roger of Howden (about 1192 to 1201). The fullest single narrative for the year.
Flowers of History, Roger of Wendover (about 1220 to 1235 at St Albans). For 1200 Wendover is mostly Howden rewritten, so he is a second witness only where he adds St Albans material: a long account of Hugh of Lincoln's last months, death and funeral, and anecdotes about John's conduct toward the Cistercians and his new queen.
The Charter Rolls of King John (1199 to 1216, at the royal chancery). The enrolled charters of John's first years, beginning with his accession in 1199: confirmations to towns, bishoprics and abbeys, grants of land and office, and the great grants to men like William Marshal and the king's new allies in Poitou.
The History of William Marshal, Anonymous (a poet called John, writing for the Marshal family) (about 1224 to 1226). A knight's view of the Angevin succession: the council at Vaudreuil in April 1199 where the Marshal and Hubert Walter argued for John over Arthur, the Marshal's crossing to secure England, John's coronation, and the Marshal's part in Normandy in 1199 and 1200 as holder of Longueville and Orbec and a go-between with Philip.
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.
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.
The Complete History: the passages on the Maghreb and al-Andalus, Ibn al-Athir (about 1220 to 1231, at Mosul). The year entries for 595 to 597 of the Hijra (late 1198 to 1201) record the death of Yaqub al-Mansur, the accession of al-Nasir and the opening of Yahya ibn Ghaniya's war in Ifriqiya; the following years follow Yahya and the Ghuzz captain Qaraqush through Tripoli, Gabès and Mahdia to al-Nasir's reconquest in 1206, with the best eastern account of Qaraqush's career.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Deeds of the archbishops of Trier, continuations (continuations written in the 13th century). The Trier house history for Archbishop John I (1190 to 1212), who held the Moselle between the two kings.
The Book of Geography, Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr al-Zuhri (about 1140 to 1150, at Granada). A short Andalusi geography fifty years before 1200 with notices on the Sahara and the Sudan that are independent of al-Bakri: the Lamtuna and the veiled Sanhaja, Sijilmasa and the gold road, and Ghana, which al-Zuhri says accepted Islam at the time of the Almoravid movement (he gives the year 469 of the Hijra, 1076 to 1077), the only source for that statement.

The whole sources library

How these entries are made

Every entry describes one morning, 1 January 1200, and keeps later events in a dated "what the year holds" list with the conditions each depended on. Each entry names its sources, rates its confidence and says where the sources disagree. Published 4 November 2026. Corrections are welcome.