The Almohads recapture Beha in 1175. Situated…
1175 CE
The Almohads recapture Beha in 1175.
Situated on a hill (two hundred and seventy-seven meters high), commanding a strategic position over the vast plains of the Baixo Alentejo, Beja was already an important place in antiquity.
Inhabited in Celtic times, the town was later named Pax Julia by Julius Caesar in 48 BCE, when he made peace with the Lusitanians.
He raised the town to be the capital of the southernmost province of Lusitania (Santarém and Braga were the other capitals of the conventi).
During the reign of emperor Augustus the thriving town became "Pax Augusta".
It was already then a strategic road junction.
When the Visigoths took over the region, the town, then called Paca, became the seat of a bishopric.
Saint Aprígio (died in 530) became the first Visigothic bishop of Paca.
The town fell to the invading Umayyad army in 713.
Starting in 910, there had been successive attempts of conquest and reconquest by the Christian kings.
With the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba in 1031, Beja had become a taifa, an independent Muslim-ruled principality.
In 1144, the governor of Beja, Sidray ibn Wazir, had helped the rebellion of the Muridun (disciples) led by Abul-Qasim Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Quasi in the Algarve against the power of Seville.
In 1150, the town had been captured by an army of the Almohads, who then annexed it to their North-African empire.
It had been retaken in 1162 by Fernão Gonçalves, leading the army of the Portuguese king Afonso I.