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

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

Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. Image credit: SuspirodelMoro - CC BY 3.0

Legend has it that they gathered about 100.000 men, which met an army of more than 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 resulted from 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 entered the valley across a pass called Puerto del Rey and took the Muslim army by surprise.

More than 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 Marrakech, Morocco.

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

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

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

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