Crusade of Alfonso I of Aragon in Andalusia

It has been suggested that this article be merged into Granada campaign (1125–1126). (Discuss) Proposed since March 2024.

The Crusade of Alfonso I of Aragon in Andalusia was a campaign carried out for nine months (between September 2, 1125, and June 1126) by Alfonso I the Battler in the interior of al-Andalus, where he camped for a long time near Granada, he plundered fields and riches, he defeated the Almoravid army in pitched battle in Arnisol Anzur, near Puente Genil, south of the current province of Córdoba) and rescued a contingent of Mozarabs with which he repopulated the lands of the Ebro Valley recently conquered by the kingdom of Aragon. The initial objective was to establish a Christian principality in Granada, relying on the Mozarabic population that had insistently requested help from the king of Aragon, as it was subject to the religious fanaticism of the Almoravid period. The Mozarabs of Granada proposed to Alfonso the Battler an internal rebellion against the ruling authority with the support of the Aragonese host; The conjunction was necessary, since Alfonso I, unlike the strategy used in the conquest of Zaragoza in 1118, did not bring assault machinery to Granada, a transport that was in any case extremely impracticable given the long distance that the expedition would travel and the logistical difficulties involved in penetrating so deeply into enemy territory.

Alfonso I's combat morale was high, and the expedition set out in a spirit of great warrior exaltation. Documents from the years 1124 and 1125 referred to the Battler with the terms "reigning in Spain" or "in all the land of Christians and Saracens of Spain", which gives an idea of the triumphalism that was experienced in the environment of the Aragonese king at this time. dates. The contemporary leaders were not having the best of days: Ramón Berenguer III of Barcelona had just been defeated in the battle of Corbins and Urraca of León and Castile, ex-wife of the Aragonese, would die shortly later, on March 8, 1126, without being able to see the end of the civil war that devastated their kingdoms. In this context Alfonso I undertook one of the most daring campaigns of the Reconquista.^[1] The raid has gone down in historiography under the name of the "Host of Spain."