Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa
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Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa | |||||||
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Part of the Reconquista | |||||||
Portrayal of the battle by Francisco de Paula Van Halen (1864) | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
| Almohad Caliphate | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Centre: Vanguard:
Right wing: Left wing: |
Muhammad al-Nasir | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
12,000–14,000[4] | 22,000–30,000[4][5] | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
~2,000[6] | ~20,000[8] |
The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, known in Islamic history as the Battle of Al-Uqab (
Background
In 1195, the Almohads defeated Alfonso VIII of Castile in the
Previous movements
There were some disagreements among the members of the Christian coalition; notably, French and other European knights did not agree with Alfonso's merciful treatment of Jews and Muslims who had been defeated in the conquest of Malagón and Calatrava la Vieja. Previously, they had caused problems in Toledo (where the different armies of the Crusade gathered), with assaults and murders in the Jewish Quarter.[citation needed]
Battle
Alfonso crossed the mountain range that defended the Almohad camp, sneaking through the Despeñaperros Pass, led by Martín Alhaja, a local shepherd who knew the area. On 16 July 1212,[11] the Christian coalition caught the encamped Moorish army by surprise, and Alhaja was granted the hereditary title Cabeza de Vaca for his assistance to Alfonso VIII.
The battle was fought at relatively close range, so that neither the Almohads nor the Spaniards could use archers in the melee-dominated fight. Spanish knights became locked in close-quarter combat, in which they were superior to the Almohads.
"They attacked, fighting against one another, hand-to-hand, with lances, swords, and battle-axes; there was no room for archers. The Christians pressed on." – (The Latin Chronicle of The Kings of Castile)
Some of the Spanish knights, namely the Order of Santiago, eventually broke the Almohad line of defense decisively as they inflicted heavy casualties on the Almohads and established a breakthrough with gaps appearing in the enemy lines. This led to a possible spearhead. King Sancho VII then led his mounted knights through the gaps, exploiting them, and charged at the Caliph's tent.[12]
The Caliph had surrounded his tent with a bodyguard of black slave-warriors. Though it was once claimed that these men were chained together to prevent flight, it is considered more likely that this results from a mistranslation of the word "serried", meaning a densely packed formation. The Navarrese force led by their king Sancho VII broke through this bodyguard. The Caliph escaped, but the Moors were routed, leaving heavy casualties on the battlefield.[13] The victorious Christians seized several prizes of war; Muhammad al-Nasir's tent and standard were delivered to Pope Innocent III.[14]
Christian losses were far fewer, only about 2,000 men (though not so few as legend had it).[6] The losses were particularly notable among the Orders: those killed included Pedro Gómez de Acevedo (bannerman of the Order of Calatrava), Alvaro Fernández de Valladares (comendator of the Order of Santiago), Pedro Arias (master of the Order of Santiago, died of wounds on 3 August), and Gomes Ramires (Portuguese master of the Knights Templar and simultaneously master of Leon, Castile, and Portugal); Ruy Díaz (master of the Order of Calatrava) was so grievously wounded that he had to resign his command.
Muhammad al-Nasir died in
Aftermath
The crushing defeat of the Almohads significantly hastened their decline both in the Iberian Peninsula and in the
Thereafter, Alfonso VIII's grandson
By 1252 the Almohad empire was almost finished, at the mercy of another emerging Berber power. In 1269 a new association of Berber tribes, the
Moorish Granada
In 1292 Sancho IV took
In fiction
Harry Harrison's 1972 alternate history/science fiction novel Tunnel Through the Deeps depicts a history where the Moors won at Las Navas de Tolosa and retained part of Spain into the 20th century.
S.J.A Turney describes the battle in his historic novel The Crescent and the Cross.
References
- ISBN 978-1800857742– via Google Books.
- ^ Gitlitz, David Martin and Linda Kay Davidson, The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago, (St.Martin's Press, 2000), 60.
- ^ Setton, Kenneth Meyer, A History of the Crusades, (University of Wisconsin Press, 1975), 423.
- ^ a b c Martín Alvira Cabrer: Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212: idea, liturgia y memoria de la batalla. Madrid 2012, p. 332
- ^ Martín Alvira Cabrer: Guerra e ideología en la España medieval: cultura y actitudes históricas ante el giro de principios del siglo XIII: batallas de las Navas de Tolosa (1212) y Muret (1213). Universidad Complutense, Madrid 2000/2003. p. 196
- ^ a b Gomez, Miguel Dolan (1 August 2011). "The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa: The Culture and Practice of Crusading in Medieval Iberia". Doctoral Dissertations.
- ^ Nafziger, 87.
- ^ Prof. Nick, National Museum of Las Navas de Tolosa, Spain. (2015). Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa Museum, Andalusia. https://www.visit-andalucia.com/battle-of-navas-tolosa-museum-jaen
- ^ Lynn Hunt describes the battle as a "major turning point in the reconquista..." See Lynn Hunt, R. Po-chia Hsia, Thomas R. Martin, Barbara H. Rosenwein, and Bonnie Smith, The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures: A Concise History: Volume I: To 1740, Second Edition (New York: Bedford/St. Martin's 2007), 391.
- ^ Guggenberger, Anthony, A General History of the Christian Era: The Papacy and the Empire, Vol.1, (B. Herder, 1913), 372.
- ^ Setton, Kenneth M., ed. (1975). A History of the Crusades. Vol. III: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. The Wisconsin University Press. p. 669.
- ^ deremilitari.org. (2014, November 20). Three sources on the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. De re Militari. Retrieved from https://deremilitari.org/2014/11/three-sources-on-the-battle-of-las-novas-de-tolosa-in-1212/
- ^ According to the king of Castile, "On their side 100,000 armed men fell in battle..." See Lynn Hunt, R. Po-chia Hsia, Thomas R. Martin, Barbara H. Rosenwein, and Bonnie Smith, The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures: A Concise History: Volume I: To 1740, 2nd ed., (New York: Bedford/St. Martin's 2007), 391.
- ^ Riga and Rome: Henry of Livonia and the Papal Curia, Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt, Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier, ed. Marek Tamm, Linda Kaljundi, Carsten Selch Jensen, (Ashgate Publishing, 2011), 224.
- ^ "Three sources on the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 » De Re Militari". deremilitari.org. Retrieved 9 December 2017.
Sources
- Alvira Cabrer, Martín, Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212: idea, liturgia y memoria de la batalla, Sílex Ediciones, Madrid 2012 (Spanish).
- García Fitz, Francisco, Las Navas de Tolosa, Ariel, Barcelona 2005 (Spanish).
- García Fitz, Francisco, Was Las Navas a decisive battle?, in: Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies (JMIS), vol. 4, no. 1, 5–9.
- Nafziger, George F. and Mark W. Walton, Islam at War: a history, Greenwood Publishing Company, 2003.
- O’Callaghan, Joseph F., Reconquest and crusade in medieval Spain, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia PA 2004.
- Setton, Kenneth Meyer, A History of the Crusades, University of Wisconsin Press, 1975.
- Vara Thorbeck, Carlos, El lunes de las Navas, Universidad de Jaén, 1999. Re-edited with another title: Las Navas de Tolosa: 1212, la batalla que decidió la Reconquista, Edhasa, Barcelona 2012 (Spanish).
- Xenealoxía.org – Genealogía de Galicia – Valladares, Marquesado de.
- Gomez, Miguel Dolan, "The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa: The Culture and Practice of Crusading in Medieval Iberia." PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2011.
- La Casa de Valladares, del siglo XVII, está en riesgo de desaparición.
- [Prof. Nick, National Museum of Las Navas de Tolosa, Spain. (2015). Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa Museum, Andalusia. https://www.visit-andalucia.com/battle-of-navas-tolosa-museum-jaen]
Further reading
- "Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa". Reader's Companion to Military History. Archived from the original on 26 February 2006. Retrieved 9 February 2006.
- (in Spanish) Martín Alvira-Cabrer, Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212. Idea, liturgia y memoria de la batalla, Sílex, Madrid, 2012. ISBN 978-8477377214