Alfeizerão
| Alfeizerão | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Basic data | |||||
| Region : | Centro | ||||
| Sub-region : | Oeste | ||||
| District : | Leiria | ||||
| Concelho : | Alcobaça | ||||
| Coordinates : | 39 ° 30 ′ N , 9 ° 6 ′ W | ||||
| Residents: | 3854 (as of June 30, 2011) | ||||
| Surface: | 27.99 km² (as of January 1, 2010) | ||||
| Population density : | 138 inhabitants per km² | ||||
| Postal code : | 2460 | ||||
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Alfeizerão is a Portuguese city (Vila) in the southern part of the Alcobaça district , in the Leiria district and in the historic Estremadura province . It borders on the Nazaré and Caldas da Rainha districts . It has 3854 inhabitants (as of June 30, 2011) and extends over an area of 28 km. It goes back directly to a Moorish foundation in 717, but its roots go back to Roman and Celtic times. Your current name comes with high probability from Arabic and was derived from al-ḫayzurān (خَيْزُرَان), which means roughly 'bamboo', 'reed', 'reed thicket'. Alfeizerão is now inland about four kilometers from the sea, but until the 17th century it was a port on a large lagoon named after it. It had a castle, probably built by the Moors , which was destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake in 1755. Alfeizerão was one of the 13 cities of the Coutos de Alcobaça , the territory of the Abbey of Alcobaça , which the first Portuguese king, Afonso Henriques , had donated to the abbot of the French Abbey of Clairvaux Bernhard von Clairvaux in 1153 .
Up to the Moors
The lagoon of Alfeizerão extended from the 900 m by 1400 m large lagoon still existing today at São Martinho do Porto about 3 km to Alfeizerão and laterally (running parallel to the coast) to the south about 10 km to before Caldas da Rainha . This lagoon was first mentioned in writing by the Roman writer and poet Rufio Festo Avieno in his work Orla Maritima around 350 AD.For a long time it has been assumed that the originally Gallic-Celtic city of Eburobriga , which the Romans then called Eburobritium , on the lagoon of Alfeizerão until it was clarified in 1995 that this city must have been located about 20 km south of Alfeizerão near Óbidos . Want from the region Lusitanian Viriato originate, which the inhabitants of Lusitania in the initially victorious verlaufenen, then ultimately lost Lusitanian War 155-138 v. Against the Romans. The figure of Viriatus also appears in the legends of other Lusitanian regions. Newer theories now assume that the Roman city of Araducta was near Alfeizerão . Of the Visigoths , probably since the second half of the 6th century in this area, there are traces in the form of in the neighboring village of Famalicão lying church of São Gião . The theory that the Alfeizerão fort was built by the Visigoths is also occasionally put forward.
Time of the Moors
The Moors took possession of the lagoon immediately after their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 711 and built the castle of Alfeizerão from 717, which is also the date the city was founded. From there and the neighboring forts in Alcobaça and Óbidos , the Moorish Alcaids ruled the area. Alfeizerão was a district and court town under the Moors and owned a mosque, probably in the area of today's parish church. During his liberation struggles from north to south, King Afonso Henriques defeated the Moors in Alfeizerão in 1147 and took the castle. According to a legend, on the morning of the capture of the castle, its owner, the Emir Aben Hassan, threw himself off the walls with his daughter Zaira; according to another story, Zaira got involved with a Christian knight at night and was therefore from her father knocked off the walls the next morning before her father followed her. The castle was later used by various Portuguese kings when visiting this area.
Port of the Abbey of Alcobaça
In 1153 the area between Leiria and Óbidos was donated by King Afonso Henriques to the Cistercian order in Clairvaux, who founded the abbey of the same name in Alcobaça . Part of the lagoon of Alfeizerão and thus also Alfeizerão, which was used by the monks as a port, also belonged to the abbey. In 1332 Alfeizerão received charter from the abbey. In 1514 King Manuel I expanded his independence and gave Alfeirezão like the other cities of the Coutos de Alcobaça a new city statute . a. granted its own lower jurisdiction. At that time, all cities received stakes ( Pelourinhos ), which bore the coat of arms of the abbey and symbolized its continued jurisdiction. The Pelourinho of Alfeizerão was stolen after the abbey came to an end as a result of the state closure of the monasteries in Portugal (1834), as in some other Coutos cities. However, it was rediscovered in 1966 during construction work on the parish church, reassembled, restored and re-erected in its old location in front of the Igreja de São Jão Baptista church. The church in its current form dates from 1663. On the old road to Pederneira, today's Nazaré , which in the Middle Ages led over a narrow land bridge that separated the lagoon of Alfeizerão from the lagoon of Pederneira, the 15th century is located. / 16. Chapel of St. Amaro from the 18th century.
The city's prosperity and decline
In the 16th and 17th centuries, Alfeizerão experienced a new boom when on the shores of the lagoon as well as in the other city of São Martinho do Porto, which is also part of the Coutos de Alcobaça, at the shores of the lagoon and also belongs to the Coutos de Alcobaça, ocean-going ships for the Portuguese voyages of discovery in large shipyards and were also built for the royal navy. As late as 1600 it was reported that 80 ships could anchor in the port of Alfeizerão alone. At that time the appearance of Alfeizerão was shaped by the castle overlooking the lagoon as well as by a tower, the Torre de Dom Framando . The tower is only known from descriptions. The fort was so badly damaged in the earthquake of 1755 that today only ruins that are almost level with the ground are left. The plot of land that contains these remains is privately owned. After the fish population in the lagoon had declined sharply from the end of the 15th century, it fell in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the 19th century the lagoon became dry, the port disappeared and with it all the shipyards. In geologically rapid times, the lagoon was transformed into an agricultural area, with the exception of the almost circular bay near S. Martinho do Porto.
present
With the end of the rule of the Abbey of Alcobaça, Alfeizerão became an independent district for a few years, then changed the district membership several times and finally stayed with Alcobaça from 1895. Today the city lives from agriculture and animal husbandry, the processing of their products and their trade; there is also the wood processing and ceramic industries. Nothing reminds of Alfeizerão's maritime past, only the name of the Arab times.
literature
- Maria Zulmira Albuquerque Furtado Marques: Por Terra dos Antigos Coutos de Alcobaça, Alcobaça 1994
Web links
- Map of the Freguesia Alfeizerão at the Instituto Geográfico do Exército
Individual evidence
- ↑ www.ine.pt - indicator resident population by place of residence and sex; Decennial in the database of the Instituto Nacional de Estatística
- ↑ Overview of code assignments from Freguesias on epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu
- ↑ Rufus Festus Avienus, Ora Maritima, José Ribeiro Ferreira: Rufio Festo Avieno, Orla Marítima , 2nd edition Coimbra 1992 , ISBN 972-667-195-7
- ↑ História de Portugal, Ed .: José Mattoso, Vol. I: Antes de Portugal , 1993, Editorial Estampa, ISBN 972-33-0920-3 , pp. 212-218
- ↑ Maria Zulmira Albuquerque Furtado Marques: Por Terra dos Antigos Coutos de Alcobaça, Alcobaça 1994, p. 63
- ↑ Pelourinho de Alfeizerão. In: Pesquisa Geral - Pesquisa do Patrimonio. Direção Geral do Património Cultural , accessed March 23, 2018 (Portuguese).
