County of Aragon

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The county of Aragón ( Spanish Condado de Aragón , Aragonese Condato d'Aragón ) was a historic administrative district in the Spanish march of the Frankish Empire in the 9th and 10th centuries in what is now Spain .

The counties of the Spanish mark in the 9th century

The historical county of Aragón was not congruent in its territorial scope with the much larger autonomous community of Aragón today , although this had developed out of the county as a kingdom in the course of a territorial expansion process during the Reconquista . The area of ​​the county of Aragón corresponded in its scope more to that of today's Comarca Jacetania with the capital Jaca , after which it is often referred to as "County Jaca". In the Middle Ages, however, the county was named after the Río Aragón that flows through it .

The county of Aragón was created in the early 9th century as part of the expansion of the Frankish Empire into the area south of the Pyrenees during the reign of Charlemagne and his son Louis the Pious . Administratively, the area between the Pyrenees and the Ebro was combined as a border mark directed against the Muslim Al-Andalus , the so-called Spanish mark (Marca Hispanica) , which in turn was subdivided into several counties. The county of Aragón ultimately formed the western end of the Spanish march, on which the area of ​​the largely independent mountain peoples of the Basques around Pamplona leaned.

The area around Jaca itself was inhabited by Basque ethnic groups and the count house, descended from Aznar I. Galíndez , was evidently of Basque origin. As a result, from the beginning there were dynastic and political ties between them and the rulers of Pamplona, ​​which facilitated a rapid alienation of Aragon from the Frankish Empire. Until the middle of the 9th century the counts had dated their documents after the reigns of the Franconian kings, but they later renounced them. With the marriage of his last heiress to King García I in the early 10th century, the incorporation of Aragon into the Kingdom of Navarre was finally completed. The Frankish empire, which was marked by internal power struggles and feudal disintegration, could not prevent this loss, just as the entire Spanish mark evaded royal supremacy at that time. Aragón remained a part of Navarre for another century, whose kings occasionally appointed their own counts to administer it until King Sancho III. shortly before his death in 1035 the Great decided to divide his empire among his sons. The illegitimate Ramiro I received the old county of Aragón, but now with all the regalia of a king, which ultimately established the Kingdom of Aragón .

The Counts of Aragon were:

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