On This Day In History: Battle Of Las Navas De Tolosa Was Fought – On July 16, 1212

MessageToEagle.com – On July 16, 1212, Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa was fought between the Christian forces of King Alfonso VIII of Castile, the kings of Narvarre, Aragon and Portugal.

Legend has it that they gathered about 100.000 men, which met an army of more than a 120.000 soldiers led by the caliph, Muhammad Al-Nasir.

The battle was fought about 40 miles (64 km) north of Jaén, in Andalusia, southern Spain.

The Christian army, which was the result of a vivid call for a crusade against the Almohads, who had crossed with a Berber army from Northern Africa.

Moving north, they had camped in the valley at Navas de Tolosa northwest of the city of Jaén. The valley had been closed off, but the crusaders succeeded in entering the valley across a pass called Puerto del Rey and take the Muslim army by surprise.

At the end of the following day more than a 100.000 Muslim soldiers had perished on the battlefield or been taken as prisoners, while the Caliph only barely succeeded in fleeing.

He died a few days later in Marakech, Morocco.

The battle became renowned all over Europe not only for its decisive character as well as for the huge bounty, but because the war had been designated a crusade.

This battle became the symbol for the future collapse of the Almohad Empire as well as the so-called Reconquista.

Reconquista was an important period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula, spanning about 770 years, between the initial Islamic conquest of the peninsula in the 710s and the fall of the Emirate of Granada, the last Islamic state on the peninsula, to expanding Christian kingdoms in 1492.

The battle of Las Navas de Tolosa symbolizes the final triumph of the Castilian kingdom aka Spain and the Catholic Church over the Muslim South and what has often been termed the “fanatical” Almohad regime.

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