When Musa left al-Andalus for Syria his armies had already
occupied virtually all the Iberian peninsula except for a few remote areas in
the far north, including the mountains of Asturias. It was here in about 722
that a Christian force led by a certain Pelayo won a small victory against the
Muslims at a place called Covadonga. Possibly, as the late ninth century
‘Chronicle of Alfonso III’ claims, Pelayo was King Rodrigo’s noble sword-bearer
and stood for the old Visigothic order; but more probably he was a local leader
of the mountain peoples who traditionally resisted all invaders. Whatever the
truth, after Covadonga the Muslim authorities made no serious attempt to subdue
Pelayo, who was duly proclaimed king by his following, and whose small remote
kingdom became a nucleus of Christian resistance and future reconquest. Within
a century, Covadonga had been transformed by Christian imagination into a
miraculous happening in which Muslim missiles were turned back by the intervention
of the Virgin Mary.
In Portugal, the Reconquest – the long, drawn-out process whereby
al-Andalus was gradually recovered from Islam by Christian forces advancing
from the north – took over five centuries to complete from the time of
Covadonga to the surrender of the last Muslim enclave in 1249. Religious
differences always underlay the Reconquest; but the early Christian rhetoric was
nevertheless as much political as credal. In the Asturian chronicles of the
ninth and tenth centuries, the struggle was presented as ‘just’ because it was
waged to reclaim a stolen Visigothic inheritance. But in practice more mundane
motives were often foremost, including the desire for booty and protection
money.
These basic drives, and the fact that cultural interaction
with the Muslim world was considerable, not infrequently led to deals and
understandings that blurred the lines of faith. There were long interludes of
relative peace, broken by periods of heightened conflict. As Fernández-Armesto
has shown, the sense of a long, continuing struggle between good and evil –
Christianity and Islam – was strong at the Leonese court around the year
1000. But it was not until the late eleventh century that religious
fanaticism might be considered the dominant driving force of the Reconquest –
and even then, it was far from being the only spur. The territorial ambitions
of Christian leaders, sometimes involving intense competition, was another
factor of growing importance.
The emergence of the kingdom of Portugal was a long-term
by-product of Christian expansion that had its roots in Asturias. After
Covadonga the eighth century Asturian kings consolidated their realm,
incorporating neighbouring Galicia and the Basque country. Pelayo’s successor,
Alfonso I (739–57), declared his descent from Leovigild, effectively laying
claim to the Visigothic inheritance. Soon Asturian raiders were penetrating as
far south as the Douro valley, laying waste the countryside and plundering
Muslim-held towns, including Portucale, Braga, Chaves and Viseu. Unable to hold
these places, Alfonso is said to have forced their Christian inhabitants to
move north, leaving a deserted buffer zone separating Christian and Muslim
territory known as the ermamento. The extent of the ermamento, whether it arose
more from forced or spontaneous depopulation, and indeed whether it existed at
all, are contested issues among historians. However, it seems that while many
people did migrate from the region to safer areas, others remained, and in the
late eighth century the ermamento was a virtually autonomous no-man’s land
outside the control of either side.40 But in the ninth century, when the emirate
in Cordoba was weak and troubled by internal revolts, the Asturian kings were
able to move in and establish a presence in the area.
Parts of northern Portugal, notably Minho and Trás-os-Montes,
began to be incorporated into the kingdom of Asturias from about the 850s.
Subsequently, Alfonso III (866–911) extended his control over most territory
north of the Douro – and even into some areas between the Douro and Mondego,
regions in which Cordoba apparently showed little interest. The processes of
settling these lands and establishing an administrative framework were then
pressed forward in the late ninth century. Two important landmark achievements
were the seizure of the towns of Portucale in 868 and Coimbra in 879. Vímara
Peres, the captor of Portucale, was appointed its count with responsibility for
most of Entre Douro e Minho, the area between the Minho and Douro rivers. He
was granted generous benefices, and his family remained pre-eminent in the
region until 1071.
Under the Peres family, Portucale became a flourishing town
and already had its own bishop by the end of the ninth century. Braga, the old
capital of Gallaecia, was much decayed; but efforts were now made to restore
it, though it was over a century before its bishop returned. A monastery and
fortress were also now constructed at the villa of Guimarães,
which developed into the spiritual shrine and principal military stronghold of
the Peres family. The counts of Portucale worked hard to repopulate Entre Douro
e Minho by attracting to it Christian settlers from the north as well as
Mozarabs from the south. Meanwhile, counts were also appointed to other
important centres in the re-occupied territories, including Chaves and Coimbra.
Coimbra was the key to the Mondego valley, but was close to the frontier and
therefore vulnerable to Muslim attack. Having been substantially Islamised, it
for long retained a predominantly Mozarab population. To Count Hermenegildo
Guterres of Coimbra, and his descendants, cultural tolerance and good relations
with Cordoba were therefore particularly important.
The counts of Portucale and Coimbra have traditionally been
regarded as playing significant if perhaps unwitting roles as precursors of the
Portuguese kingdom. In particular, the counts of Portucale have attracted
attention because of their association with the place that gave the kingdom its
name. The word ‘Portucale’ (Portugal) is derived from the Latin Portus Cale. In
Roman times, Cale was a settlement on the left bank of the Douro near its
mouth, where the river met the road coming up from the south. There was also a
small port on the right bank, and there the Suevi later built a fortress,
around which the town grew. Located in fertile country and at a major
communications junction, it eventually became Porto, Portugal’s second city;
but in the ninth and tenth centuries it was usually called Portucale. The term
‘Portucale’ was also sometimes applied to the entire region between the Minho
and Mondego rivers – eventually giving its name to the kingdom of Portugal
itself.
Meanwhile, after the death of Alfonso III in 910, the kings
of Asturias had shifted their court down to Leon on the Spanish meseta, and the
kingdom itself had become known as Leon. The move signalled increasing
Christian self-confidence and greater commitment to the permanent occupation of
reconquered land. Coincidently the accession of Abd al-Rahman III in al-Andalus
helped to stabilise for the time being the western border between Christian and
Muslim territory on the line of the Mondego; but when conflict returned in the
era of al-Mansur, it was the Muslim side that took the initiative. The period
of al-Mansur’s supremacy (980–1002) constituted a terrifying interlude for the
Christian north. Repeated raids into Leonese territory wrought widespread
destruction and resulted in the capture and enslavement of large numbers of
Christian prisoners. In 987 al-Mansur retook Coimbra, then captured and
destroyed the city of Leon. King Vermudo II (982–99) was forced to submit and
marry his daughter to al-Mansur. In 997, al-Mansur launched a great raid into
what is now northern Portugal and Galicia where he captured and burned the
pilgrim city of Compostela. Though he spared the shrine of St. James, he
carried off the cathedral’s bells and doors to Cordoba, where they were melted
down to make chandeliers for the great mosque. Large tracts of the Christian
north were ravaged over the next few years, and the border with al-Andalus was
pushed back to the Douro.
However, despite the widespread panic and mayhem caused by
al-Mansur, his campaigns were more predatory and prestige-building than
imperial. Al-Mansur was a master of the razia in the classic Muslim tradition;
but he showed little interest in permanently extending al-Andalus beyond the
Douro or in sponsoring Muslim re-settlement. Consequently the impact of his
campaigns, though momentarily stunning, soon faded. Moreover, after 1008
conflict between Andalusis and the imported Berber soldiery enveloped
al-Andalus, bringing its spectacular military revival to a rapid end. Within a
decade or two of al-Mansur’s death, the nightmare of his career for the
Christians was over, and their advance had resumed.
Leon meanwhile was becoming overshadowed by the growing size
and importance of Christian Castile. In 1035 Castile was transformed from a
semiautonomous county on the eastern frontier of Leon into an independent
kingdom which rapidly assumed leadership within Christian Iberia. Fernando I
‘the Great’ of Castile (1037–65) married the sister and heiress of the king of
Leon, and the latter kingdom was absorbed into its larger neighbour. Fernando
was now the pre-eminent Christian figure in Iberia, and he styled himself
emperor, claiming a general overlordship. A consequence of Fernando’s
ascendancy was a shift in the focus of Christian power from the north of the
peninsula towards Castile.
On the other side of the frontier, al-Andalus in the early
eleventh century had dissolved into a patchwork of taifa principalities with
much reduced capacity to resist military pressure. Consequently, all the
Christian losses sustained in the time of al-Mansur were soon recovered. In
1064, the Christians re-occupied Coimbra and then went on to extend the
frontier to the Tagus. Fernando entrusted reoccupied Coimbra to one of his confidential
aides, the Mozarab Sisnando Davidis. Sisnando had been educated at the taifa
court in Seville and was thoroughly familiar with Islamic culture. A tolerant
broadminded governor, he was respected by the Muslims and Mozarabs under his
charge and ruled Entre Douro e Mondego with considerable sensitivity until his
death in 1091. Nevertheless, the reconquered lands of northern Portugal
remained politically fragmented. The counts of Portucale and Coimbra, whose
domains were separated by the Douro, were rivals often at loggerheads. Like
other counts they focussed on their own territories and interests, and their
careers betray no consciousness of a nascent Portuguese nationhood. As late as
the eleventh century there were still no leaders who identified with
‘Portugal’.
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