<!–

–>

October 21, 2022

Today in history, on October 21, 1094, a small force of Christian knights destroyed a massive Muslim horde in Spain, where the Jihad and Reconquista had been raging.

‘); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609268089992-0’); }); }

Some years earlier, the Almoravids, a North African group committed to jihadist teaching and led by the emir Yusuf bin Tashfin, began to pour into Spain to aid their Islamic counterparts, the Moors, who had suffered several significant defeats to the Christians in recent years.  

In 1086, the Muslims and Christians clashed at Sagrajas. The Christians were annihilated; their king barely managed to escape with a dagger stuck in his thigh.  Afterwards, in a typical gesture of Islamic supremacy, Yusuf had some 2,400 Christian heads decapitated and assembled into a pyramid, atop which the muezzin called the faithful to prayers.

Following the disaster at Sagrajas, one by one, Muslim kingdoms that had been liberated during the Reconquista — even a few Christian strongholds — fell back under Islamic control. 

‘); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609270365559-0’); }); }

When, however, the Muslims overran Valencia in 1093, its lord, Roderick (or Rodrigo) Díaz of Vivar — better known to posterity as “the Cid” — who had been elsewhere, returned and laid siege to Valencia for nearly 19 months, finally reconquering it.

As a result, the pride and prestige of the glorious jihadist victor of Sagrajas, who had subsequently unified virtually all of Muslim Spain under his authority, was shaken to its core: “He has forcibly invaded my territory and he attributes all his success to Jesus Christ!” blurted Yusuf, who, on hearing of the fall of Valencia, “was powerfully moved to anger and bitterness.” 

He was, accordingly, “determined to recover the city at all costs,” writes the contemporary Muslim, Ibn Bassam, before adding that “the news of the fall of Valencia filled every Moor in Spain with grief and humiliation.” 

A showdown was inevitable: “Islam and the Occident were now each represented by an outstanding personality,” writes historian Ramón Menéndez Pidal: “Yusuf the Saharan and the Castilian Cid stood face-to-face in the struggle between the two civilizations.”

The emir responded by sending the supreme Almoravid general of Spain, his nephew, Muhammad, “with an infinite number of barbarians and Moabites [Almoravids] and Ishmaelites [Moors] drawn from all over Hispania to besiege Valencia and to bring Roderick to him captive and in chains,” one contemporary explained. Reportedly consisting of some 50,000 fighters, the Almoravids dwarfed the Cid’s Valencian garrison of 4,000 men.  By late 1094, “the infidel hordes” had arrived and “pitched their tents and encamped” at Cuarte, three miles from Valencia.

The final showdown between the Cid and his African adversaries had come and is recorded in both song and chronicle.  According to the Historia Roderici,