Spanish Christian-Muslim War of 1172-1212

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.

After Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur, upon reaching Seville on August 10 with the body of his father, killed in Portugal on July 29, 1184, had immediately been proclaimed the new caliph.

Al-Mansur had vowed revenge for his father's death, but fighting with the Almoravids, who had been ousted from the throne, had delayed him in Africa.

After inflicting a new defeat on the Almoravids, he had set off for the Iberian Peninsula to avenge his father's death.

His siege of Tomar, center of the Portuguese Templars, on July 13, 1190, had failed to capture the fortress.

However, further south he in 1191 recaptures a major fortress, Paderne Castle and the surrounding territory near Albufeira, in the Algarve—which has been controlled by the Portuguese army of King Sancho I since 1182.

Having inflicted other defeats on the Christians and captured major cities, he returns to Morocco with three thousand Christian captives.

Abu Yaqub Yusuf assembles an army in the spring of 1184, crosses the straits of Gibraltar and marches to Seville.

From here, he marches towards Badajoz.

The Almohad Counteroffensive and the Siege of Lisbon (1184)

In 1184, launching an offensive from Badajoz,...

...they advanced toward Lisbon, laying siege to the city by land and deploying their naval fleet to blockade its port.

A Daring Act of Heroism

During the siege, a Portuguese soldier carried out a bold and decisive act, swimming to the Almohad fleet’s largest ship and successfully sinking it. This vessel, towering over the harbor, posed a serious threat to Lisbon’s defenses, as it would have allowed the besieging forces to easily scale the city walls.

The Almohad Retreat

With the loss of their most critical naval asset, the Almohads found themselves at a disadvantage. By the next day, they were forced to abandon the siege, though they withdrew with a number of Portuguese civilian captives taken during their retreat.

This failed siege marked an important moment in the ongoing struggle between Christian Portugal and Muslim Al-Andalus, reaffirming Lisbon’s strategic resilience and the growing strength of Afonso I’s kingdom.

The Siege of Santarém and the Death of Abu Yusuf (1184)

In 1184, upon hearing of Abu Yusuf Yaqub ibn Abd al-Mu’min’s invasion, Ferdinand II of León swiftly marched his forces to Santarém to aid his father-in-law, Afonso I of Portugal, in repelling the Almohad offensive. The Almohads, having already failed to capture Lisbon, now turned their focus on Santarém, a key stronghold in central Portugal.

Strategic Miscommunication and Almohad Retreat

Confident in his numerical superiority, Abu Yusuf ordered a portion of his army to advance toward Lisbon while maintaining the siege of Santarém. However, the orders were misinterpreted, leading to confusion among the Almohad ranks. As large contingents of men began withdrawing from the battlefield, the rest of the army mistook this for a general retreat and lost cohesion, prompting a disorderly withdrawal.

The Death of Abu Yusuf (July 29, 1184)

In a desperate attempt to rally his forces, Abu Yusuf personally took to the battlefield. Amid the chaos, he was struck by a crossbow bolt and fatally wounded, dying on July 29, 1184. His death marked a major blow to the Almohad campaign, forcing the Muslim forces to abandon the siege and retreat southward.

This victory further solidified Portuguese resilience against the Almohads and reinforced Santarém’s strategic importance in the kingdom’s defense.

Sancho I had become the second king of Portugal at the death of Afonso I in 1185.

Coimbra is the center of his kingdom; Sancho has terminated the exhausting and generally pointless wars against his neighbors for control of the Galician borderlands.

Instead, he turns all his attentions to the south, towards the Moorish small kingdoms (called taifas) that still thrive.

With help from Northern European Crusaders in 1189, he takes Silves, an important city of the south, an administrative and commercial town with a population estimated to be around twenty thousand people.

Sancho orders the fortification of the city and builds a castle that is today an important monument of Portuguese heritage.

However, military attention soon has to be turned again to the North, where León and Castile again threaten the Portuguese borders.

Silves will in 1191 again be lost to Almohad control.

Periodic raiding expeditions are sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms and return with booty and slaves.

The Almohads, after having failed in their endeavor the year before, reconquer the city of Silves when the governor of Córdoba attacks the city in 1191 and takes three thousand Christian slaves.

The city, again under Muslim rule, will soon prosper to the point of being called the Baghdad of the West.

In the same campaign, the Almohads take also Alcácer so Sal, while Palmela and Almada are sacked.

King Alfonso VIII of Castile has from 1172 engaged in resistance to the Almohads.

The Almohad caliph Abu Yusuf Ya'qub had in 1190 forced an armistice on the Christian kings of Castile and Leon, after repulsing their attacks on Muslim possessions in Spain.

At the expiration of the truce in 1194, Alfonso invades the province of Sevilla (Seville) with the largest army of this age, over three hundred thousand men, to defeat Abu Yusuf, prompting him to leave his North African capital, Marrakech, with an expedition against the Christians.