Battle of the Salado
| date | October 30, 1340 |
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| place | on the Salado river near Tarifa |
| output | Victory of the Christians |
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The battle of the Salado took place on October 30, 1340 near Tarifa in today's province of Cádiz . It was one of the most important battles of the final phase of the Reconquista . In it the combined forces of Alfonso XI struck . of Castile and Alfonso IV of Portugal, the Moroccan Merinids under Abu l-Hasan and their allies, the Nasrids of Granada under Yusuf I , who besieged Tarifa.
prehistory
After the defeat at the Battle of Teba in 1330 , the Nasrid emir Muhammad IV of Granada called on the Merinid sultan Abu Hasan for help. Hasan then came with a fleet and an army from Morocco , which landed in Algeciras in 1333 . After five months of siege, in June 1333 they had conquered the Castilian city of Gibraltar . Abu Hasan then returned to Morocco to assemble a large army with the aim of undoing as much as possible of the Christian conquests of the past centuries.
The following invasion was the last attempt by the Merinids to establish a center of power on the Iberian Peninsula.
The battle
Abu l-Hasan defeated a Christian fleet in the naval battle of Gibraltar in April 1340, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar with a large force and had his troops gathered in Algeciras and Gibraltar. In August he united his troops with those of Yusuf I and together with him began to besiege the city of Tarifa.
Alfonso XI of Castile succeeded in convincing the kings of Portugal, Aragon and France of the threat to their Iberian possessions by the Merinids and in setting up a relief army. Pope Benedict XII. even issued a church crusade special tax in favor of Alfons.
In October the Christian relief army arrived by land in front of Tarifa, as did a new Castilian fleet. The contemporary information on the troop strengths of the Christian and Muslim armies are grossly exaggerated, but the Muslim army was probably larger than that of the Christians.
A battle broke out at the gates of the city on the nearby Salado River . The Muslims were beaten and withdrew to Algeciras. The Christians captured the enemy camp including the war chest.
consequences
It was the last attempt by a Muslim army to invade Spain. The war with Granada lasted ten more years, in which Alfonso XI. could only conquer a few areas. The city of Algeciras was conquered in 1344 after two years of siege.
literature
- JM Alonso-Núñez: Salado, battle on. In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Vol. 7, Col. 1281.
- Angus MacKay: Spain in the Middle Ages. From Frontier to Empire, 1000-1500. Macmillan, London et al. a. 1977, ISBN 0-333-12816-8 .
- Theresa M. Vann: Salado, Battle of. In: E. Michael Gerli: Medieval Iberia. An encyclopedia (= The Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages 8). Routledge, New York NY et al. a. 2003, ISBN 0-415-93918-6 , p. 732.