El Cid: The Making of a Legend, page 14
Like many fanatics who came out of the African desert over the centuries,6 Ibn Teshufin was probably unstable. He was certainly extraordinarily single-minded, an uncouth semi-literate who spoke poor Arabic and smelt of camels. He drank only milk and ate only barley bread, but he was a fine general and invaded Morocco, establishing his headquarters at Marrakesh at an uncertain date in the 1060s. While Rodrigo Diaz was earning a name for himself in the armies of King Sancho of Castile many miles to the north, Ibn Teshufin embarked on a relentless military campaign that saw him take Fez in 1075, Tlemcen the next year and Tangier in 1079. Fez had been established in 789 by Idris I as his capital and in the century before the Cid, it was a constant battleground between the Fatimid and Ummayad dynasties of Spain. From 980 until 1012, it was effectively ruled by the Ummayad caliphate of Cordoba, and after that clan’s collapse, Berber tribes fought over it for years. Under the Almoravids, Fez became a famous centre of textile manufacture and leather work. In all these cities, those Berbers who rejected the Almoravid austerity or had not been slaughtered by Ibn Teshufin fled to the mountains, so that the area became far more orthodox than it had been for nearly three centuries and there was, at least on paper, a rapprochement with the caliphate of Baghdad. Tlemcen in particular became an important centre of pilgrimage for Muslims, its beautiful mosques attracting travellers from all over Islam before its sudden decline in the fourteenth century.
The Almoravid invasion of the Maghrib was very similar to that of the middle east at the same time by the Seljuk Turks7 whose conquest of the Christian Holy Land sparked the First Crusade in the year of the Cid’s death. It was partly explained by the fanaticism of the Almoravid warriors and partly by Ibn Teshufin’s almost animal magnetism. And, far more than al-Andalus or Christian Spain, the Almoravids were a whole people geared to war. Marrakesh had a single stone-built fortress with double walls and an external perimeter of viciously thorned hedges made from the local plant zizyphus lotus. We have seen already, from the Cid’s victories, that Christian nobility were all too ready to throw down their swords on the battlefield and submit to captivity. The Almoravids did not do that. Like the Zulu of the nineteenth century and the Samurai of any century, their code and mystic beliefs obliged them to die where they stood. As long as there were fanatical replacements for these losses, they were virtually unstoppable.
Despite the military ardour of the Almoravids, who were all too eager to embrace the Islamic concept of holy war – jihad – because it suited their mass temperament, there is no evidence that Yusuf Ibn Teshufin would ever have crossed the Straits of Gibraltar unless he was invited to. And just such an invitation arrived from the amir al-Mutamid of Seville, probably in the autumn of 1079. Another messenger sailed south at about the same time, bearing letters from al-Mutawahkil of Badajoz. Even so, it would be an astonishing six years before Yusuf did anything concrete. Why the delay? He certainly owed al-Mutamid a favour, because the Andalusian had lent the Almoravid a fleet to blockade Cueta which Ibn Teshufin was besieging. Perhaps the prospect of galvanizing the soft, alcohol-drinking amirs who dealt with Jews and allowed Christians to worship in their taifa states did not appeal. He had spent twenty years subduing Morocco and cannot, by this time, have been a young man. Some accounts say that he was seventy in 1086. He must also have realized that invasion of Spain would bring him into headlong confrontation with the kings of the Christian north, not least the slippery Alfonso of Castile. And then, there was a brilliant general who fought for the amir of Zaragoza, a man known to the Arabs as al-sayyid, the lord.
But Alfonso was pushy. The weak al-Qadir was the king’s puppet in Valencia and a Castilian army laid siege to Zaragoza. Alfonso wrote belligerent, threatening letters to al-Mutamid at Seville and perhaps to Ibn Teshufin across the straits in Tangier. Then he marched on Toledo. This was now the largest city in al-Andalus with a population of perhaps 28,000. Its pleasure-loving amir, the poet al-Mutawakkil – precisely the soft traitor to a religious cause that Ibn Teshufin despised – had been sent packing by Alfonso in 1080, and al-Qadir installed in his place. There had been rumblings of discontent here for years and Alfonso had half-heartedly besieged the city on and off before. On 25 May 1085, however, and with minimal violence, he entered the city which would forever remain in the Christian ambit of Spain.
‘After this,’ wrote the author of the Historia Roderici, ‘divine clemency granted a great victory to the Emperor Alfonso … He incorporated [Toledo] into his empire with its dependent settlements and territories.’8
There can be little doubt that Alfonso was squaring up for some sort of final showdown with Islam. Difficult though it is to discern an overall game plan, it is clear that he saw himself as an integral part of the Reconquista, certainly as his father’s successor and perhaps even with a divine mission. In another letter to Ibn Teshufin, which has survived, he contemptuously offered him a fleet to bring his forces across the Straits. And still he did not come.
In Toledo, the tolerant government of Sisnando Davidez, a friend of the Cid and a man who, like him, had seen service in a Muslim state, was usurped within months by the rabid Christianity of Bernard, Archbishop of Toledo. This man was intent on restoring to his See the great prestige it had had under the Visigothic kings before the original Muslim conquest had swept it aside. He was also a monk from Cluny, in the Cid’s day the most powerful and influential monastery in Western Europe. It is no coincidence that his friend and fellow monk Odo of Châtillon would emerge in the next decade as Pope Urban II to demand that Christians descend on Jerusalem to free it from the Seljuks and spark the First Crusade. Bernard and Odo between them were his proof that it was not only the Sahara that produced fanatical bigots. The great mosque at Toledo became a Christian cathedral just before Christmas 1086. Its charter carried the words, ‘the abode of demons [has become] a tabernacle of celestial virtue for all Christian people.’9
The taifa rulers were now between a rock and a hard place. Should they tolerate the increasing arrogance and territorial aggrandisement of Alfonso of Castile-Léon or invite Ibn Teshufin and his veiled ones from over the sea? Al-Mutamid summed it up brilliantly: ‘I would rather be a camel-driver in Morocco than a swineherd in Castile.’ 10
The Chronicon Regum Legionensum lists Alfonso’s territories by this time. Twenty five towns fell to him after the taking of Toledo and three in today’s Portugal – Coria [actually conquered in 1079], Cintra and Santarem [these not until 1093]. A further nine cities – ‘all of Extramadura’ – were his by the turn of the century. ‘This Alfonso,’ wrote Bishop Pelayo, ‘was the father and defender of all the Spanish churches, and he did this because he was a Catholic in all respects. He was so terrifying to evil doers that they never dared to show themselves in his sight.’11 But there was one who did; Yusuf Ibn Teshufin.
The long awaited clash between them came on 23 October 1086, at Sagrajas, near Badajoz. This was the most serious defeat inflicted on a Christian army for years and it seems in part to have been caused by Alfonso’s complacency. Christian sources are remarkably reticent about it. Pelayo’s Chronicon merely says ‘In the Era 1124 [1086] was a battle on the field of Sagrajas with King Yusuf.’12 Stanley Lane-Poole does not quote his sources when he wrote: ‘Alfonso, as he looked upon his own splendid army, exclaimed “With men like these I would fight devils, angels and ghosts!” Nevertheless, he resorted to a ruse to score a surprise over the joint forces of the Berbers and the Andalusians.’13
We do not have accurate numbers on either side. Some sources talk of 20,000 Almoravids stiffening the Andalusian army, which surely could have doubled that. Alfonso’s troops, according to Muslim sources, numbered between 50,000 and 60,000 men, many of them mercenaries from France and Italy. It is likely that these figures are exaggerated, but Sagrajas was no skirmish in the valleys of the Cordillera Cantabrica and Ibn Teshufin, at least, had literally had years to prepare for it.
Alfonso’s centre would have been composed of his knights, caballeros, ricoshombres, hidalgos and infanzones from Castile, Léon and Asturias. We know he had a strong Aragonese contingent too and all the great and good of Christian Spain would have been there, save one – Rodrigo, the Cid. The Campeador was still persona non grata in exile in Zaragoza and Alfonso was to regret his absence bitterly. The king’s infantry, with their spears, billhooks, shields and swords, waited for the signal to attack just before dawn on the Muslim Sabbath – the ruse to which Lane-Poole refers. Most of Alfonso’s archers carried crossbows, the weapons the church would try to ban sixty years later because of the appalling wounds they made. But the fact was that a crossbow was heavy and slow to reload. Even a skilled man could probably not get off more than two bolts (arrows) a minute, and this was woefully slower than the firing rate of the Almoravid short bows.
The Almoravid army, whose black tents were pitched away to the rear of those of al-Mutamid, looked very different. We do not know where Ibn Teshufin was positioned, but it would probably have been, like Alfonso, in the centre, where he could direct operations. Ibn Yasim’s original men of the rabat had fought on tribal lines, but Yusuf, like the original he was, had reorganised the Almoravids to create a well-oiled military machine. His own bodyguard – the Black Guard – surrounded him on the field, so that any Christian knight intent on galloping out, as Rodrigo Diaz was wont to do, roaring defiance and offering individual combat, would get short shrift and an early death. The Guard was composed of 500 cavalry, Arabs, Turks and even Europeans, with an extra 2,000 black African cavalry. The horses they rode were Arabs, faster and lighter than Alfonso’s destriers and their speed and manoeuvrability were to prove decisive in the hours that followed.
In the psychological battle at Sagrajas, the element of surprise was with the Almoravids. Alfonso’s troops had faced Andalusian armies before. They were used to the light horses, the light-armed troops, the short stirrups and low saddles of the cavalry and the short, curved composite bows of the archers. They had never seen before were the black-skinned, black veiled, black-coated Almoravids, whose banners danced everywhere, woven with verses from the Koran to boost their courage. They advanced in endless waves, three-ranks deep, dark men behind huge oryx-skin or hippopotamus-hide shields. And the Christians were terrified by two tactics unknown in all Spain – the use of camels and the terrible, relentless thunder of the drums. Camels had been seen in southern Spain for about a century by this point, but only as beasts of burden. True, the dromedaries were better suited, with their flat feet and prodigious lack of thirst, for desert warfare, but their speed, noise and smell threw Alfonso’s cavalry into total confusion. Drums to act as battle signals became commonplace in the centuries ahead, but Europe had never seen them before 1086. Mule-riding drummers, their drums across their animals’ necks, black turbans swathed around their heads, sounded the death roll for thousands that day.
‘Drums, only drums,’ wrote novelist Robert Krepps as part of the Cid legend nine hundred years later, ‘but drums that shook the adversary’s courage as they shook the ground… Only drums – drums that would now decide the fortunes of war … The drums launched the Moors into attack, the drums called them to retreat. The drums paced their horses and their pumping legs. The drums directed, commanded, cajoled, heartened, led, fought.’14
Still at prayer and kneeling on their mats in the direction of Mecca, the Andalusian camp was quickly routed by a charge of Aragonese knights who drove them from the field. According to the modern version of the tale
‘The camp erupted men, tugging on pieces of armour and clapping on light headpieces as they ran, slamming the short Arabian saddles on the bare backs of chargers that snorted and reared in surprise. Messengers galloped at full speed … Boys still naked from the sleeping rugs dashed about carrying scimitars and spears and screeching for their unarmed masters. Concubines rolled out of bed and knelt in feverish prayer that the infidel would not reach the encampment.’15
Alfonso himself probably led his main army against the second fortifications, the black-skinned tents of the Almoravid encampment. Here he met stouter resistance, but even so the day seemed to be going well, after the initial visual and aural shock was over. Then, the Christians found themselves struck in the flank by the sledgehammer blow of Ibn Teshufin’s cavalry, camels and all, which forced Alfonso to pull back to a line of defence in front of his own camp. Everywhere, the bare-footed Berber archers darted in and out of the Castilian cavalry, while Ibn Teshufin’s infantry hurled their bamboo spears and cut the Christians’ throats with their murderous curved daggers.
‘The plain of Sagrajas resounds with the pealing of weapons on shields, the raging of oaths and prayers, the loudness of hate and brutality hurled together in the beginning of the bloodiest combat that Spain has ever seen … The squad of Turkish archers, front rank kneeling, second rank shooting over their heads and third rank standing quietly with nocked arrows to take the place of those who fell …’16
The Aragonese cavalry trotted back – how far they had pursued al-Mutamid we do not know – and now their horses were blown. They held off, perhaps waiting for the horses to recover, or perhaps uncertain as to what to do and withdrew when fresh Almoravid forces – almost certainly a well-hidden reserve – appeared on the scene. Al-Mutamid may have been able to rally his men too, although checking running soldiers is a difficult task, and the attack on the Christians became merciless. Beaten back from their camp, which the Almoravids tore to pieces, Alfonso’s knights took up position on a nearby hill, forming a ring of steel around their king until nightfall gave them a chance to escape.
‘Christendom broke and fled the field,’ wrote Krepps, ‘while the storm of Islam followed on behind, whooping at the heels of the rout.’17 Lane-Poole has a similarly chilling signing-off: ‘Alfonso barely escaped with some five hundred horsemen. Many thousands of the best sword-arms in Castile lay stiff and nerveless on that fatal field.’18
We must always be wary of extraordinary numbers. One Muslim source claims 300,000 Christian dead and even conservative ones quote between 10,000 and 24,000, with only 3,000 Muslim casualties. Such figures invariably were compiled years later by men who were not there and, as always, history is written by the victors. The heads of the slaughtered were lopped off by the Almoravids and piled high enough that a muezzin could climb to the top of one such pile in the redeeming dawn of another day to call the faithful to prayer.
But while Alfonso licked his wounds and tried to grasp the enormity of what had happened, not only did Ibn Teshufin not pursue the shattered Castilians and Leonese, but actually went home to the Maghrib. Robert Krepps has the neat excuse that Ibn Teshufin’s son had died and he went home to bury him, but there is no mention of this in any contemporary source. The only death recorded is that of his cousin, Abu Bakr, but perhaps this would have caused instability at home and, all in all, Ibn Teshufin does seem a rather reluctant conqueror. The point to remember is that he was an old man, brought up in the early days of the Almoravid when strategy, like tactics, was immobile and solid. The whole of the Almoravid invasion of al-Andalus could be seen as a defensive measure, designed to save Moorish Spain from the Christian onslaught from the north. In that sense, Ibn Teshufin had saved Badajoz, cut, at least temporarily, the paria (funds that were to be diverted to Baghdad from now on) and generally drawn a line in the sand. The chronicler Abd Allah’s words, put into Ibn Teshufin’s mouth, have a curiously modern, devolutionary ring to them: ‘“We have not come here for this kind of thing. The princes [amirs] know best what to do in their own territories.”’19
Ibn Teshufin retained the vital port of the old Roman town of Algeciras which he had taken on his march north and probably left a token force behind at the disposal of the amirs. But in fact he was no friend of theirs either. If they despised him for his uncouth manners and lack of sophistication, he loathed them for their softness and lack of faith.
‘After this,’ wrote the author of the Historia Roderici chirpily, ‘he [the Cid] returned to his native land of Castile,’20 – as though he was coming back from a holiday. In fact, a panicky Alfonso sent for him, as he sent for others too and this reconciliation speaks volumes both for the nature of exile in the eleventh century and for the seriousness of the body-blow that was Sagrajas. ‘King Alfonso received him honourably and gladly’ but the reception cost him dear. It was a seller’s market and both men knew it. We do not know enough about the personalities of either the Cid or his king to know how the encounter went. But out of it, Rodrigo got the castles of Gormaz (one of the most powerful in Spain),21 Ibio, Campoo, Iguna, Briviesca, Langa and Duañez. The castle of Gormaz today receives few visitors, partially because of the steep rocky climb to its huge walls. It was built by the Moors in the middle of the tenth century and is one of the largest castles still standing in Europe. Its walls are nearly a mile in circumference. The Caliph’s Gate still stands as a horseshoe reminder of its origins. This list is so astonishing (presumably Rodrigo’s former estates, including Vivar, were returned to him too) that some historians have doubted the Historia Roderici. A glance at the map, however, shows Alfonso’s craftiness. He gave the fortresses to Rodrigo rather as his contemporary William I of England gave counties to his barons. They were to ‘hold’ these lands in the name of the king, and in the infant feudal system of northern Spain, that was precisely how Rodrigo held his castles. They were mostly built along the Duero, the river that fringed the tierras desplobadas and offered the most likely direction of attack either from Yusuf ibn Teshufin’s veiled ones or perhaps even a renewed and invigorated al-Andalus. But, for Rodrigo, it just got better: ‘Furthermore, Alfonso pardoned him and gave him this privilege in his kingdom, written and confirmed under seal, stipulating that all the land and castles which he might acquire from the Saracens in the land of the Saracens, should be absolutely his in full ownership, not only his but also his sons’ and his daughters’ and all his descendants.’22
