Fernando I the kingdom was divided between Alfonso
and his two brothers. Sancho, the eldest, received the
kingdom of Castile and the overlordship of the tributary
Christian kingdom of Navarre as well as that of the
Muslim tā’ifa (party kingdom) of Zaragoza. García,
the youngest, was awarded Galicia-Portugal and the
tributary Muslim kingdom of Badajoz. To Alfonso
went Asturias, León, parts of the Bierzo and the Sorian
highlands, and the tributary tā’ifa of Toledo. The divi-
sion did not last long. In 1071 Alfonso took control of
the lands of García and in 1072 was himself defeated
in battle and dispossessed briefl y by his brother Sancho
in 1072. After a short term of exile in Toledo, Alfonso
returned after the assassination of Sancho, outside the
walls of Zamora in September 1072, and now became
the ruler of the reconstituted kingdom of his father.
When García returned from exile in Badajoz in 1073,
Alfonso had him imprisoned until the former’s death
in March 1090.
The kingdom of León-Castile grew under Alfonso VI
to be the greatest realm of the peninsula, Christian or
Muslim. The major step in this process was the conquest
of the tā’ifa of Toledo, which formally surrendered on
25 May 1085. With that success, the southern bound-
ary of the kingdom was carried from the north bank of
the Duero River to the north bank of the Tajo River. It
enabled Alfonso to carry out the repopulation of the
northern meseta (plateau) between the Duero and the
Guadarrama Mountains unhindered and to begin that of
the southern meseta between the Guadarrama and the
Tajo. For a brief time the kingdom even included the old
Toledan lands south of the Tajo and north of the Sierra
Morena. Moreover, on the assassination of the king of
Navarre, his cousin Sancho García IV (1054–1076),
Alfonso participated with the King of Aragón, his
cousin Sancho Ramírez I (1063–1094), in the partition
of Navarre. León-Castile’ s share was most of the upper
Rioja along the Ebro River.
The surrender of Toledo to Alfonso VI in 1085 was
followed by his installation of the former Muslim ruler
there, Al-Q ādir, in the tā’ifa of Valencia in the east as his
tributary. Since the other Muslim kings in Iberia, from
Zaragoza through Granada, Seville, and Badajoz, were
also his tributaries, the Leonese was virtually master
of the entire peninsula. Under the circumstances, the
Muslim rulers of the south appealed to the Mur ābit
emir, Yū suf Ibn T āshfī n of Morocco, for protection. The
Murā bit were a Berber fundamentalist sect who from
midcentury had been gradually overrunning Morocco
and by this date controlled an empire stretching from
the southern Sahara to the Mediterranean with its capital
at the newly built Marrakesh.
In 1086 in response to the appeal of the Muslims of
Andalusia, the Murā bit crossed the Strait of Gibraltar.
They advanced to the neighborhood of Badajoz where,with their Andalusian allies, they defeated the army of
Alfonso VI at Zall āqah on 23 October 1086. Although
Alfonso and much of his army escaped, he was to spend
the remainder of his life battling to defend his realm
against the Murā bit.
In the aftermath of Zall āqah, the fundamentalist
Murā bit were to depose, one by one, the rulers of the
Iberian t ā’ifas whom they considered unfaithful to the
Qur’ān because of their imposition of illegal taxes on
the faithful; their use of alcohol, music, and poetry; and
their payment of tribute to Alfonso VI, an infi del, above
all. Gradually Muslim Iberia became the province of a
North African empire. Yū suf annexed Granada in 1090,
Seville in 1091, and Badajoz in 1094. Valencia eluded
him until 1102 when it was conquered by the Castil-
ian adventurer Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, usually called
El Cid, who held it until his death in 1099. Zaragoza
remained independent until 1110, by which time both
Alfonso VI and Yū suf Ibn Tā shfī n were dead. The
Leonese monarch was the major Mur ābit opponent in
all of this and defended the independence of the tā’ifas
as best he could. Yet by his death in 1109, he had been
forced back to the line of the Tajo and it was unclear if
even the north bank of that river and the city of Toledo
itself could be held.
At the same time, León-Castile was entering into a
much closer relationship with Europe north of the Pyre-
nees. Fernando I had sealed a pact of friendship with
the great Burgundian monastery of Cluny and agreed to
subsidize that house in the amount of 1,000 gold dinars
per annum. Alfonso VI would double that census and, in
addition, begin the process of granting possession and
authority over Leonese royal monasteries to the French
house. By the end of his reign the Cluniac province in his
kingdom counted better than a half-dozen houses. This
cooperation with Cluny was joined to a similar policy
of close ties with the Roman church. At the urging of
Pope Gregory VII, Alfonso agreed to see that the Roman
liturgical ritual replaced the Mozarabic one. In return he
received the support of Rome for the restoration of the
metropolitan sees of Braga and Toledo, the bishoprics
of Salamanca, Segovia, Osma, Burgos, and Coimbra,
and the recognition of the older royal creation at Oviedo.
The former Cluniac monk Bernard was recognized by
Pope Urban II as archbishop of Toledo in 1088, and
that archbishop and his king and patron would fi ll up
most of the new sees created with reforming French
Cluniac monks.
These processes were accompanied by a rapid growth
of the pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James at Santiago
de Compostela by the peoples of western Europe. This
also meant the infusion of the new Romanesque art, the
Carolingian script, a more rigorous Latin, and a variety
of other French manners into León-Castile. The great
Romanesque cathedral at Santiago de Compostela,ALFONSO VI, KING OF LEÓN-CASTILE