begun in 1076, is the most monumental example of
this phenomenon. Most larger towns, even Toledo in
the extreme south, would come to have their barrio
(quarter) of French artisans and merchants as a side
effect of the pilgrimage but there was no signifi cant
immigration of French nobles such as would shortly
take place in Aragón.
In that respect, the most signifi cant development
was the marriage by Alfonso VI to a succession of
foreign brides for his queens as he sought both a male
heir and the prestige of an international match for its
effect in the peninsula. Inés of Aquitaine (1074–1077),
Constance of Burgundy (1078–1093), Berta of Lom-
bardy (1095–1100), Elizabeth of France (1100–1106),
and Béatrice of France (1108–1109) were such brides.
On the other hand, Alfonso’s only known son, Sancho
Alfónsez (1094?–1108), was the son of the Muslim
concubine Zaida, who became his wife in 1106 and
died shortly thereafter.
The Burgundian alliance was also to be refl ected
in the marriage of Alfonso’s daughter by Constance,
Urraca, to Count Raymond of Burgundy who became
Count of Galicia-Portugal and probably heir apparent
in 1088. That match was followed by a similar mar-
riage of a daughter by the Asturian noblewoman
Jimena Muñoz, Teresa, to Raymond’s cousin, Count
Henri of Burgundy in 1096. Henri thus became Count
of Portugal. The son of Raymond and Urraca was to
become Alfonso VII of León-Castile (1126–1157).
The son of Henri and Teresa was to become Afonso I
of Portugal (1128–1185). In the lifetime of Alfonso VI
the two counts were to become chief fi gures at his court
and administrators and defenders of the west during the
campaigning season. Another daughter, Elvira, born
of Jimena Muñoz, was married to Count Raymond of
Toulouse by 1094 and subsequently bore him a son in the
Holy Land, Alfonso Jordán, who himself later became
count of Toulouse.
In the spring of 1108 Alfonso VI was still engrossed
in defending his realm from the attacks of the Murā bit
emirs of Morocco. On 29 May 1108 at the fortress of
Uclés, about thirty kilometers south of the Tajo, one
of his armies was routed by the enemy and his only
son, Sancho Alfónsez, was killed. To solve the suc-
cession crisis the king turned to his daughter, Urraca
(1109–1126), whose husband Raymond of Burgundy
had died in November 1107. But he also provided for
her future marriage to her cousin, Alfonso I, el Batal-
lador, of Aragón (1104–1134), so as to provide for the
military safety of the kingdom. Alfonso VI himself was
seeing to those defenses at Toledo when he died on 1
July 1109, at the age of seventy-two. He was buried at
the royal monastery of Sahagún on 21 July 1109.
See also Díaz de Vivar, Rodrigo
Further Reading
Fletcher, R. A. The Quest for El Cid. New York, 1990.
González, J. Repoblación de Castilla la Nueva. 2 vols. Madrid,
1975–76.
Lomax, D. W. The Reconquest of Spain. New York, 1978.
Reilly, B. F. The Kingdom of León-Castilla under King Alfonso
VI, 1065-1109. Princeton, N.J., 1988.
Bernard F. ReillyALFONSO X, EL SABIO, KING OF
CASTILE AND LEÓN (1221–1284)
Alfonso X, king of León-Castile (1252–1284), the son
of Fernando III and Beatrice of Swabia, was born on
23 November 1221 in Toledo and is known as El Sabio,
the wise or the learned. His fi rst task was to complete
the colonization of Seville and the recently reconquered
territory in Andalusia. An ambitious ruler, he also tried
to assert his supremacy over neighboring Christian ter-
ritories. He quarreled with Afonso III of Portugal over
lands east of the Guadiana River and the Algarve, but
reached a preliminary settlement in 1253 by arranging
the marriage of his illegitimate daughter, Beatriz, to
the Portuguese ruler. When Alfonso X demanded that
Thibault II, the new king of Navarre, become his vassal,
the Navarrese appealed for help to Jaime I of Aragón. As
a consequence, Alfonso X had to give up his attempt to
subjugate Navarre in 1256. He also had alleged rights to
Gascony, but yielded them in 1254 to his sister Leonor
and her husband Edward, the son and heir of Henry III
of England.
Advancing claims to the Holy Roman Empire derived
from his mother Beatrice, daughter of Emperor Philip
of Swabia, Alfonso X was elected in 1257 in opposition
to Richard of Cornwall. He incurred great expenses in
a vain effort to win recognition, but he was unable to
persuade the majority of the Germans and several popes
to acknowledge him.
Alfonso X also planned an invasion of Morocco to
deprive the Moors of easy access to the peninsula, but
his African crusade accomplished nothing more than
the plundering of Sale, a town on the Atlantic coast, in- In order to broaden Castilian access to the sea, he
developed Cádiz and the nearby Puerto de Santa María
and conquered Niebla in 1262. When he demanded
the surrender of Gibraltar and Tarifa, his vassal, Ibn
al-Ahmar, King of Granada, refused, because he real-.
ized that this would make it diffi cult for Morocco to aid
Granada against Castile.
Threatened by Castilian expansion, Ibn al-A.hmar in
the spring of 1264 stirred up rebellion among the Mude-
jars or Muslims subject to Castilian rule in Andalusia
and Murcia. Alfonso X took steps to contain the revolt in
Andalusia, while appealing for help to his father-in-law,
Jaime I of Aragón, who subdued Murcia by early 1266.
ALFONSO X, EL SABIO, KING OF CASTILE AND LEÓN