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ALFONSO KING 1. Alfonso and the Conquest of Murcia and Seville in A

ALFONSO KING 1. Alfonso and the Conquest of Murcia and Seville in A

CHAPTER THREE

ALFONSO KING

1. Alfonso and the Conquest of and

In a warring society, such as medieval , an important part of a nobleman’s education, especially of one who aspired to the throne, was mastering the use of weapons, war strategies, and conquest. Alfonso had the chance to put his knowledge into practice dur- ing the campaigns of the –40s, when during his father’s illness (1243), he headed an army into a new campaign in (PCG, II, chaps. 1060–1065). At this time, Alfonso practically inherited not so much Fernando III’s war strategy as his cultural policy. Th e policy was based on four main directives geared towards unifying the Peninsu- lar territories still under Islamic domination: Christianizing the lands, repopulating them with Christians brought from the north; unifying them under the , including spreading its language and customs; Romanizing them, that is, uniformly imposing civil law and a central administration; and “mudejarización” or melding the two cultures, Islamic and Christian. Th ese directives also dictated the fun- damental attitudes towards reconquered and repopulated lands during Alfonso’s reign.1 Th e conquest of Murcia and surroundings did not happen over- night or though a single military campaign. Th e fi rst military inter- ventions took place towards 1214 with the annexation of de la Sierra, which was fi nally incorporated into the Crown of Castile between 1220 and 1230. Th e fi rst land and town grant documents issued by Fernando III to the Order of Santiago as reward for their

1 On the various aspects of Alfonso’s cultural policy, cf. R. MacDonald, “Law and Politics: Alfonso’s Program of Political Reform,” in R.I. Burns, ed., Th e Worlds of Alfonso the Learned and James the Conqueror. Intellect and Force in the , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985. pp. 150–202; F. Márquez Villanueva, El concepto cultural alfonsí, : Editorial Mapfre, 1994; J.F. O’Callaghan, Th e Learned King, pp. 189–195; and “Th e Ideology of Government in the Reign of ,” EH, 1 (1991–1992), pp. 1–17. alfonso king 89 military aid are dated 1235 and 1239.2 In 1241 Fernando III asked the Great Master of Santiago, Rodrigo Yáñez, to create a strategic division between the kingdoms of Murcia and in order to avoid col- laboration between them; in a privilege granted to the Order on July 5, 1243, Fernando III mentioned practically all the towns along the limits of Segura.3 Th e conquest of the , as was the case with many others, was achieved thanks to two main factors: the territory’s frag- mentation into small independent emirates and the internal crisis of these minor kings, which allowed the Christian kings the possibility to profi t from their political and social instability and weakness to seal mutually favorable agreements among these emirs, independently from the emir of Murcia, Muhammad ibn Yûsuf . Ibn Hud acknowledged that many of these leaders were in confl ict with him and that he was unable to control them. Th is, according to Torres Fontes, led him to send his son Ahmed towards the end of 1243 to Toledo in order to interview the prince don Alfonso to explore ways to subject his own kingdom to the protection of Castile.4 Alfonso found himself in Toledo, preparing a new expedition against Andalusia. Th e truce his father signed with the King of Granada had expired and Christians were in danger of losing control of Al-Andalus once more. Don Fernando entrusted the new expedition to his son, providing a fi rst-rate army and the support of the royal chamberlain, don Ruy González Girón. Th e troops were gathering in Toledo and the final preparations were being carried out just as the messengers of the King of Murcia arrived (March 1243). Ibn Hud’s messengers proposed to Alfonso (since his father was still ill at ) the surrender of “the city of Murcia and all the from all the way to Lorca

2 Cf. D.W. Lomax, La Orden de Santiago, (MCLXX–MCCXXV), Madrid: CSIC, 1965, p. 118; and C. de Ayala Martínez, “La Monarquía y las Ordenes Militares durante el reinado de Alfonso X,” , LI, n. 178 (1991), pp. 409–465; and La Orden de Santiago en la evolución política del reinado de Alfonso X (1252–1284), Madrid: Uni- versidad Autónoma, 1983. 3 Cf. M. Rodríguez Llopis, “La evolución del poblamiento en la Sierra de la Segura (provincias de y Jaén) durante la Baja Edad Media,” Al-basit, vol. 19 (Albacete, 1986), pp. 5–32; and “Repercusiones de la política alfonsí en el desarrollo histórico de la Región de Murcia, in Alfonso X: aportaciones de un rey castellano a la construcción de Europa, Murcia: Región de Murcia, Consejería de Cultura y Educación, 1997, pp. 178–199. 4 Cf. J. Torres Fontes, Incorporación del reino de Murcia a la Corona de Castilla, Murcia: Academia de Alfonso X, 1973, pp. 36–48.

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