In April 1238 an army stood on the doorstep of the Valencian plain. It had taken six years of fighting, but finally their target lay before them: Madinat Balansiya, the Muslim city of Valencia. The siege of Valencia was about to begin. It would last for five months. But what truly transpired in those months?
Before we dive in, I would like to make a few points about this post. Firstly, the order of events described in it follow the chronology provided by King Jaume I of Aragón in his Llibre dels Fets. The king dictated this semi-autobiographical work to a scribe, as he could not write himself. Throughout the narrative, I have cross-checked and expanded upon Jaume’s account using other sources. Some of these are contemporary with the author, while others are more modern.
Whenever a quote does not have a source mentioned below it, you can assume it is from the Llibre dels Fets. All quotes, whether from the Llibre dels Fets or from other texts, have been translated by me from the original Valencian or Spanish.
Finally, this is a long post. In fact, it is about three times longer than my longest article so far! To make it easier to read in parts and jump back in later, I have divided it into five sections. Each of these is linked below. Simply click on a section title to be taken right back to where you left off last time!
The king goes south
Part of King Jaume’s crusader army had spent the winter at what we know today as Puig de Santa Maria. The castle on this small hill, some thirteen kilometres north of Valencia, guarded the strip of land between the Serra Calderona mountains and the sea. Conquered in June 1237 by Jaume, it now became the staging ground for his approach to Valencia.
Winter was a bad time for premodern warfare, so campaigns usually began around March or April. Jaume had sent out messages to his vassals to gather at Puig on Easter Sunday, which in 1238 fell in early April. However, despite these messages, only a few nobles had turned up with their knights and retinues. The delay of the others might have been logistical, but might also have been part of a wider pattern of disobedience and disagreement between the king and his vassals.
Nevertheless, Jaume was keen to begin, possibly emboldened by the surrender of Paterna, Bétera and the fortified al-qarya of Bofilla shortly after Easter. He took possession of these places and left small contingents of knights behind to guard them, thereby gaining strategic control over the entire countryside north of the Túria River. Emir1 Zayyan of Valencia must have known Jaume was about to strike: all preconditions for a siege were met.
Two weeks after the deadline, King Jaume marched out with five high-ranking noblemen, around 140 knights, and 1,150 infantrymen. It was not much of an army to attack a major city with. For comparison: nine years earlier Jaume attacked Mallorca with 1,500 knights and 15,000 footmen!
Jaume’s march to Valencia
Nowadays, around Puig de Santa Maria, you find a beautiful huerta: lush, irrigated countryside characterised by small- to medium-scale agriculture. In Jaume’s time, however, the area featured marshes, crossed by the main road leading from Valencia to Sagunto (the old Via Augusta). Jaume probably did not want to take that road to Valencia, because that would have positioned him to the north of the city, where the famously strong city walls were additionally protected by the Túria River.
Consequently, his troops had to find their way through the marshes to the coast. They then followed the coast southward, until they reached the mouth of the Túria River at Valencia’s harbour. Turning inland, the army followed the river until they came to a ford – a place where the river was shallow enough to wade across – probably close to where the Palau de les Arts stands now. On the other side, they came to a few houses. The king decided they would make camp there and wait for reinforcements. The city lay about a mile2 to the northwest, and approaching it might have risked a sudden attack. After all, they did not constitute a powerful force at this point.
Dusk had not yet fallen while the Christians made their camp. Sentries soon reported enemy activity – the first so far! Muslim soldiers on horseback lurked nearby, waiting to see if any of the soldiers became distracted enough to be raided. After all, capturing any provisions would both weaken the enemy and improve the city’s chances. The king decided to remain vigilant, but not to react otherwise: “I asked my knights to keep watch and not to venture into those lands until we knew them better.”
Battle for Russafa
Thus, battle did not ensue, and finally dusk fell. The next morning, Jaume woke up feeling terrible. “My eyes were sore, and I could not open them without washing them with warm water.” Having had similar experiences as a child with hay fever, I wonder if Jaume suffered from the same. April tends to be the month when pollen concentrations are at their highest in Valencia’s coastal area. Jaume did not seem to have had the energy to go out. This explains why he missed a large group of his infantry leaving camp to raid the al-qarya of Russafa.
This al-qarya, an extensive farmstead,lay approximately one kilometre from his camp, and “at only two crossbow shots’ distance”3 from Valencia. The troops took the hamlet quickly, but Jaume realised equally quickly the danger they were in. Valencian troops could rapidly cross that “two crossbow shots’ distance” and come to the villagers’ rescue. He was at risk of losing a significant part of his army before the siege had even properly begun! Despite his sore eyes, he gathered his personal retinue and took charge himself:
We rushed to the al-qarya called Russafa. Had we hurried any less, everyone there would have been killed or captured. When I entered the al-qarya the Saracens4 were already at the other end. We stopped them in a square there.
Onwards, or not?
Thus, Jaume conquered Russafa by accident, thanks to the audacity – or disobedience – of his men. Spurred on by their accomplishment, two knights called his attention to a group of fifty Valencians working the fields close to the farmstead. They were still harvesting beans, just a stone’s throw away from their enemies. Valencia was preparing for a siege, and all food would soon be worth its weight in gold.
Needless to say, these labourers had protection. Zayyan, the Muslim emir of Valencia, had positioned his army outside the city walls. Jaume described their location as “at a tower halfway between Valencia and Russafa, where there are some rocks and where water pools when it rains or from the irrigation channels.” Looking at a map of Muslim-era Valencia and its irrigation canals, I would wager the Muslim army stood around current Plaça de l’Ajuntament, or a bit further west, next to the old Via Augusta. It may have been the Baytala Tower.
Jaume counted around four hundred horsemen, and ten thousand infantry – a real army, eight times larger than the whole crusader force! Yet Zayyan did not advance. He may have suspected that only the Christian vanguard had arrived, and not the entire army. Likewise, Jaume did not want to risk a confrontation that he would surely lose. Moreover, he considered it unwise to advance into the fields ahead, since they did not know exactly where the narrow, deep irrigation channels were. A rushed advance – or retreat in the event of a fight – could result in men or horses stumbling into an unseen ditch and sustaining serious injuries.
The siege playbook ignored
Ultimately, the Muslim farmers harvesting the fields worked on undisturbed while the two armies remained watchful, ready to react if the other side made a move. “We stayed armed all day,” writes Jaume, “and nobody ate except when on horseback, and then only bread, wine, and cheese.”
By not attacking, Jaume refused to follow the traditional siege playbook.5 When starting a siege, it was practically a given to immediately assault the castle or city, even if there was practically zero chance of success. On rare occasions such a swift attack would demoralise the enemy, leading to a quick surrender. More often, however, it was a probing attack, intended to assess the level of resistance to be expected, or to identify weak spots in the defence. It could also distract the enemy while the attackers set up their siege camp, ensuring that the enemy would not disturb its construction. But in the event, Jaume opted to hold off.
When the sun finally set, Zayyan ordered his soldiers back behind city gates, allowing the crusaders to finally relax. Dinner was served and the night watch organised. Reflecting on what had happened after the capture of Russafa earlier that day, Jaume sent out spies to find out where the irrigation channels lay and whether the fields had been watered.6 The next morning, he ordered his men to prepare for battle once more. However, “the Saracens did not sally out against us and let us rest. We were there for five days.”
The siege of Valencia
The siege now commenced properly. As Josep Suñé Arce tells us in his Técnicas de ataque y defensa en los asedios del siglo XIII, a siege camp’s location mattered. A standard defensive measure was the sally: a sudden attack by the besieged on the besiegers. The objective could be to destroy siege equipment, raid provisions, or try to break the siege itself. Bearing that in mind, Jaume deemed Russafa to be the perfect base. Thanks to the arrangement of Valencia’s southern city walls, it lay close to the city, yet far enough from the two closest city gates for any attack to be detected in time.
Soon reinforcements arrived. It must have been a relief for the diminutive army that had made the initial push. Finally, some extra manpower to hold off an attack, if and when it came! The first to arrive were the archbishop of the French city of Narbona, Pere Amiel, with forty knights and six hundred infantry, as well as citizens from various large cities, including Barcelona. The latter caught Jaume’s attention by daring to pitch their tents particularly close to the city walls. The fact that no Muslim sally came despite this drove the king to conclude that his growing army had successfully intimidated the Valencians.
With more men and more captains on the field, planning began. The more aggressive councillors proposed attacking the Bab Baytala, Valencia’s main gate,7 but Jaume disagreed. He had the southernmost part of the city in mind.8 Its layout there made it difficult to defend, as the wall curved away from the closest towers, meaning they did not directly overlook the area under attack. Furthermore, if the army attacked the Baytala Gate, the defenders could launch a counterattack from the Bab Al-Xaria gate against the supply lines between El Grau and Russafa. And finally, a sudden counterattack from the Baytala Gate itself could quickly reach the siege engines and destroy them.
The first attack
The decision not to attack the Baytala Gate frustrated Archbishop Pere Amiel, but Jaume insisted, even as he praised Amiel’s courage. Such an attack would require any more soldiers to avoid exposing their flanks and supply line. Meanwhile, the king positioned three catapults near the city to begin bombardments.
Click to expand: King Jaume’s catapults
Jaume lists his three catapults as one large trabuquet and two smaller fenèvols. These were both types of trebuchet, which was the heaviest type of medieval artillery. Josep Suñé Arce describes these machines in his article on 13th-century siege warfare. The best-known version of the trebuchet is the trabuquet, which uses a counterweight to hurl massive stones. Fenèvols were so-called “hybrid” trebuchets, combining a counterweight with traction-based energy. This means that, as well as dropping the counterweight, men would pull on ropes to increase the speed of the projectile.
Suñé Arce’s interesting observation is that Jaume draws attention to these siege engines now, but barely mentions them again throughout the siege. Based on other, similar cases, he suggests that this does not mean that the crusaders only used them a few times, but rather that they were shooting continuously throughout the whole siege. However, Jaume only mentions them now because, later on, they are overshadowed by more interesting events.
A screen of soldiers deployed in front of the catapults. They set up barricades to protect themselves from crossbow bolts. Slowly but surely, they approached the city wall and the shallow ditch in front of it, which functioned as a moat. The moat contained water, most likely diverted from the Túria River. The troops began throwing wood and branches into the water, creating a makeshift bridge over which some men could eventually cross.
Three brave soldiers managed to reach the wall. Jaume soon heard about it and came to watch. The defenders at the top of the wall were unable to scare the them off. The attackers received a few picks and began to chisel away. In the end they managed to open several holes “through two of which two men could easily enter” and… Then an emergency forced Jaume to halt the attack.
Tunis has come
A messenger arrived from El Grau, Valencia’s harbour. They had sighted twelve or fifteen galleys which were not flying the banner of Aragón. A naval force from the emir of Tunis, an ally of Emir Zayyan of Valencia, had come to his aid. The date of their arrival is unclear. If everything happened as Jaume described, without any leap forward in time without telling us, only seven or eight days had passed since his arrival at Valencia. However, it would not be the first time that Jaume skipped ahead in time without mentioning it.
It would, of course, be no coincidence that a Tunisian fleet arrived early in the siege. As early as 1237, probably after Jaume had conquered Puig de Santa Maria, Zayyan sent the politician, historian and poet Ibn al-Abbar to Tunis to request assistance. It would have taken him a long time to make the journey, which was a thousand kilometres by sea. Having pleaded his case, Ibn al-Abbar probably returned home before the siege began, bringing with him the promise of a fleet that would come to Valencia as soon as it was ready.
The Tunisians arrived late, “between the first sleep and midnight.” Jaume immediately sent fifty knights and two hundred footmen to prepare for their landing. Their instructions were to hide “among the reeds of a riverbank” and not to attack until the Muslims had disembarked. I think thus they intended to ensure that they could ambush all the Muslims, rather than attacking the first arrivals and having the majority stay on their ships to fight another day. In the event, the Tunisians suspected something just like that and decided not to disembark.
A shouting match
Early the next morning, possibly before sunrise, Jaume’s soldiers and Zayyan’s Valencians awoke with a start. Drums! The Tunisian fleet stood out against the dark sky as torches lit on every ship. A rhythmic beat rolled across the fields separating Valencia from the sea. Soon the people of Valencia appeared on their walls and towers to witness the spectacle. Some followed suit and began to tap out beats of their own. Jaume was not impressed.
At the end of that uproar, I ordered that torches be placed on all the tents, and that, at nightfall, these be lighted and that a great shout be made. It was done as I ordered, to make them see that we were not at all impressed by their arrogance.
To add insult to injury, Christian troops threw some five hundred burning torches into the Valencian moat. It is not clear from the text whether the moat was now dry and the torches caused smoke to billow up, or whether there was still water flowing through, and the torches simply caused a lot of steam to rise. Either way, the Valencians would have lost sight of their allies’ fleet.
The Tunisian leader finally decided not to risk an attack and sailed north along the coast to Peníscola. An attempt to attack the castle there failed, and a Christian fleet with reinforcements on its way to Valencia scared them off for good. When these ships arrived at Valencia, they brought with them many, many soldiers, and an abundance of bread, wine, fruit, and much more.
The strength of the army now rose to an impressive one thousand knights and sixty thousand footmen, if we can believe Jaume. For medieval times that was an astoundingly large number. For comparison, it almost quadrupled the force with which Jaume had attacked Mallorca. With all these troops and provisions safely in place, Jaume could rest easy. He held a strong position and had enough supplies to last as long as he needed to. Meanwhile, Zayyan’s stocks began to dwindle, and no one was bringing in more food…
Lost in time
By this point, any continuity left in Jaume’s chronicle disappeared. The king recorded episode after episode with only minimal attention to chronology. Phrases such as “once upon a time” and “about a month later” offer only the slightest indication of the passage of time. It is only at the end, when negotiations began, that we can roughly calculate when events occurred again.
Skirmishes and tournaments
With the army at its full strength, they could take more risks. In one (long) sentence Jaume described how he sent off a warband led by two nobles to take Silla. The al-qarya, just over ten kilometres south of Valencia on the Via Augusta, fell after a seven-day siege. On the eighth day the men returned, along with the catapult – a fenèvol – they had used.
Jaume recorded various ‘tournaments’ – he uses the word torneig – between Muslims and Christians. Although you might think of tournaments like those in Game of Thrones or A Knight’s Tale, the reality seemed very different. These were serious armed clashes, just not on a grand scale. Some took place between individual soldiers, others involved groups. During one of these group battles Jaume came very close to his death.
How Jaume skirted death
Some of Archbishop Pere Amiel’s troops took part in a tournament against a Valencian company. But Jaume saw danger looming:
They were unaware of the stratagem used by the Saracens in which these pretended to retreat, so that their enemies would approach the town. Thus, seeing that the footmen grew emboldened on seeing them flee, I sent them a message not to pursue them, because they would lead them into a trap. But they did not listen.
The group consisted of thirty soldiers, and Jaume did not want to lose them in vain. He jumped on his horse and went to fetch them back himself.
But when I returned with the men, I turned towards the city to keep an eye on the Saracens, for many of them were outside the walls. At that moment a crossbowman shot, and piercing the helmet and the chainmail, he wounded me close to my front head. Thanks to God, it did not penetrate the skull.
In a moment of adrenaline – or rage, as Jaume himself called it – he broke the bolt. With blood streaming down his face, he pretended to laugh, so that no one would be alarmed to see their king wounded. Yet it was a serious injury. For nearly five days Jaume lost all sight on the wounded side, while also battling severe swelling. As soon as he felt better, he made it a point to ride around on horseback “so that the people would not lose hope.”
The attack on Baytala Tower
Sometime in the second half of August the crusaders attacked the Baytala (or Boatella) tower. There is some doubt as to the location of this tower. Some researchers suggest that it was a so-called albarrana tower, built just outside the city wall and connected to it by a bridge or arcade. In this case, it would have been named after the nearby Baytala Gate.
However, I suspect that it might instead have been a precursor to the tower found beneath the MuVIM museum, about half a kilometre outside of Muslim Valencia. In that general area it would have guarded the southern edge of the Baytala suburb and the main access road to Valencia. It may have been the tower where Zayyan gathered his army to prepare for a possible battle just after Jaume conquered Russafa.
Two lords, Pere Cornell and Eiximén d’Urrea, had secretly plotted to take the tower, without informing their king or other nobles. The plan failed miserably as the defenders fought very well and held out long enough for reinforcements to arrive from Valencia. When they returned to camp, Jaume scolded them for keeping him in the dark, and told them that they had fully deserved their failure.
A second attempt
Nevertheless, Jaume shared their intentions. The next morning he gathered two hundred knights and all crossbowmen in the army and attacked at dawn. The defenders of the tower – only ten! – again proved brave, but so many crossbow bolts flew their way “that no one could raise his hand without it being hit.” But when the ten soldiers were urged to give up, they refused. A crusader then set fire to the tower. Its occupants immediately changed their minds and attempted to surrender. But Jaume, frustrated by their earlier refusal, showed his cruel side and denied the offer. “We burned them there, took the tower, and returned to camp.”
What makes me think that this tower stood at the MuVIM site, rather than next to the gate, are two reasons. First, it makes no sense to me that at no point during the second attack reinforcements or counterattacks arrived from the city. If the tower was only a few metres from the city, that would be unthinkable. Second, if the tower had been connected to the wall by an arcade or bridge, the defenders could have attempted an escape that way instead of burning to death. These two facts suggest to me a location further away from the city.
Negotiations
The capture of the Baytala Tower constituted a watershed moment in the siege of Valencia. King Jaume noted that it caused quite a stir in Valencia, which he wanted to leverage. His siege engines began to bombard the city day and night. Then, a month after the event, a captured Valencian offered to speak to the king in exchange for his safety. The man recounted the mood within the city walls, and the concerns of Emir Zayyan.
He informed us that there were three things that had caused great distress to [Zayyan]: first, how useless the galleys of the king of Tunis had been; second, the tower I had burned; third, how great the army was he saw around his town, now that Valencia was almost completely surrounded. He felt that he could not hold out much longer, as they did not have provisions for all the men, women, and children present in Valencia, since we had taken the city by surprise, besieging it before they could harvest the wheat. He believed with certainty that we would not tarry in conquering it.
Soon after, on September 13, 1238, Zayyan officially opened negotiations.9 He did not attend in person, but authorised his nephew to act on his behalf. This relative, rais Abulfamalet,10 was known to be the most powerful man in Valencia, apart from Zayyan himself, and enjoyed his full trust. One other Muslim attended, Ali Albaca, born in Peníscola, who translated.
Dossier: Top Secret
Interestingly, the king, on Queen Violante’s advice, made a point of keeping his noblemen and bishops in the dark, at least for now. The couple feared that if these warmongers knew about the talks, they would try to sabotage them. They did not want a negotiated surrender, but rather a violent conquest, as had happened in Mallorca. After all, that would have allowed them to sack and pillage the city, greatly increasing their wealth, and – perhaps not coincidentally – reducing its value as an asset to the king. The king’s authority was not absolute in those days, and Jaume had a history of power struggles with his lords.
With the lords unaware of what was happening, the siege continued as usual. Two Muslim knights challenged any two crusaders to a tournament. Two nobles asked Jaume for permission to fight, and, unable to refuse, he granted it. The knight who had pleaded the most to be allowed to fight was quickly thrown from his horse. The other was luckier: his opponent suddenly became frightened and fled the field, returning to the safety of his friends!
The first meeting
For negotiations which were supposed to be secret, I have no clue how Jaume managed to keep them so. On the morning of September 15, two of Jaume’s knights left for Valencia. A while later they returned, escorting Abulfamalet and a company of eleven Muslim knights back to camp. Jaume highlighted how well dressed and presented these knights were; it could not have been a subtle entrance! The only ‘excuse’ I can think of for this spectacle is that Jaume, writing his memoirs decades after the fact, misremembered a Muslim embassy from another moment that arrived with such pomp….
However it happened, Abulfamalet, his translator, and King Jaume eventually met in the latter’s pavilion. A somewhat awkward greeting ensued. The rais refused the customary greeting when meeting a monarch and would not kiss his hand. Instead, he bowed first, and then embraced him.11 That settled, the king invited his guest for a meal, which he again refused. Zayyan had made his nephew promise not to eat outside the city. Small talk thus exhausted, negotiations began.
Jaume’s casus belli
Abulfamalet’s first point of order was to discuss Jaume’s casus belli: why did he attack Valencia? It was a good question, because the answer might indicate what kind of concessions the king was seeking. The answer came quickly: Zayyan had broken the peace by attacking various towns in Catalonia. Moreover, he had refused to pay the customary Valencian tribute of 100,000 bezants,12 and would only pay half that.
The rais protested. Zayyan had no obligation to pay the tribute. After all, the Kingdom of Aragón had imposed the tribute on Zayd abu Zayd, the former emir of Valencia. Zayyan and the people of Valencia had deposed Zayd ten years earlier, and so his responsibilities and duties would not have been transferred to Zayyan. In any case, Abulfamalet argued, if it was money that Jaume wanted, he had played himself. All the Christian raids and attacks had devastated Valencia’s economy, so there was not much money left.
An honest king
Jaume probably saw the logic in what Abulfamalet had said. Besides, he had not been entirely honest. Zayyan’s attacks and the unpaid tribute had only been an excuse to attack, not the main reason. Before they talked any further, the king asked his guest’s approval to bring another person into the conversation: Queen Violante. He probably wanted her there as a witness to what he was about to say. Abulfamalet agreed, and so she came in, made her acquaintance with the Valencian, and got up to speed. Then Jaume responded:
I came here, and God has guided me in everything that I have started and finished until today. Now that I am here, this is my aim: I will not leave from here until I have taken Valencia. If king Zayyan wants to avoid the harm that could be caused by the conquest of the city, where many men, women, and children might be killed and lose all they have, that seems good to me. And I say this for their sake: I will take responsibility, on my word, to protect them, so that they can leave with all they can carry. I prefer to take the city that way rather than by force. However, most of my army would like to sack it. I do not want that because of the pain I feel for you. That is my will, and I will not act otherwise, provided you do not force me to harm you.
King Jaume’s cards were now on the table. Abulfamalet thanked him for the clarity of his message and for his honesty. However, he could not continue the negotiations without consulting first with his uncle. He left the royal couple and returned to the city.
The second meeting
Three days passed without any news. Then Abulfamalet returned. Emir Zayyan had made his decision. He would surrender the city on one condition: “that the men and women could carry away all their clothes, that they would not be searched or harmed, and that safe passage would be assured until Cullera.” Again Jaume consulted with his wife Violante, discussing the risks of not accepting the offered pact. If the siege went on, the likelihood a violent conquest increased, as did the likelihood of internal disputes about the division of loot, as had happened in Mallorca. Furthermore, in such an attack Jaume would of course be leading from the front. He had already been hit by a crossbow bolt once before; another such accident could endanger the entire crusade!
Thus it happened: King Jaume accepted the surrender of Madinat Balansiya, Muslim Valencia, from the hands of Emir Zayyan. Abulfamalet negotiated five days for the Valencians to gather their belongings, and they agreed a date for their exodus. Still, the king asked for Abulfamalet’s discretion. He wanted to personally inform his vassals of this great victory.
Joyful news for joyful hearts
Jaume did not rush to his task. According to the Llibre dels Fets Jaume first calmly ate, drank, and slept – never skip siesta! – and only then sent someone to look for the Archbishops of Narbona and Tarragona, and the other bishops and noblemen.
When I found them before me, I told them that Our Lord had graced us many times, but that now He had bestowed upon me something that we should all be very thankful for. And since they had had such a great part in this joyful fact, I wanted to share it with them so that they would be glad: Valencia was mine.
The tension was palpable. Various lords “turned white as a wall, as if they had been struck in the heart.” While some of the clergy had the grace to give thanks to God, most of the lords reacted angrily. Two of them, almost accusingly, asked Jaume how he had managed it. Only one nobleman reacted positively: Ramon Berenguer d’Àger. Personally very loyal to Jaume, he emphasised how momentous the occasion was: “because that which you and your ancestors wished for has now been fulfilled by you.”
The conquest of Valencia
That same evening, at sunset, hostilities ceased. Come the morning, Jaume sent a message to Valencia. To signal to the Christian army that Valencia had surrendered and that stood under the king’s protection, the Senyera – the royal banner of Aragón – was to be raised on the highest tower of the city walls. This tower protected the Bab Ibn-Sajar, Valencia’s easternmost gate. It was a very emotional moment for Jaume. When he finally saw the banner appear over the tower, he “turned to the east, crying and kissing the earth in gratitude for God’.”
The surrender agreement
Jaume never mentioned it in his Llibre dels Fets, but an official capitulation agreement was written up after the raising of his banner. I am going to present the full text below, omitting only the looong list of noblemen who also signed it.
We [royal plural], Lord Jaime, by the grace of God King of Aragón and Mallorca, Count of Barcelona and Urgell, and Lord of Montpellier, promise you [royal plural], King Zayyan, grandson of the Wolf King and son of Modofé, that all Muslims, both men and women, who wish to leave Valencia may do so safely with their arms and all the possessions that they wish to carry, on our faith and with our guidance. They must be gone from the city within twenty days, counting from today, without delay.
Moreover, we want and concede that all those Muslims who wish to stay within Valencia’s confines, can do so safely on our faith, provided they settle with the lords who will take over those estates.
We also assure you of a firm truce on our own behalf and that of all our vassals, whereby we promise not to cause any harm, evil, or war, neither by sea nor by land, for a period of seven years. Nor will we permit anything to be done against Dénia, nor against Cullera, nor in their territories. Should anything be done by chance by our vassals and men we will compensate you fully according to the extent of the damage.
To ensure, comply with and record all of this firmly, we swear to it personally, and will also make [29 noblemen] swear to promise to ensure compliance with all of this and to attend to it as much as possible in good faith.
And I, the aforementioned King Zayyan, promise to you, Lord Jaime, by the grace of God King of Aragón, that I will deliver to you within the twenty days mentioned, all the castles and towns that exist and are mine on this side of the [River] Xúquer, except for the castles of Dénia and Cullera.
Provided in Ruzafa, in the encirclement of Valencia, on 4 of the Kalends of Octobre of the era 1276.
Capitulation of Valencia, by Jaume I and Zayyan. (Translated by the author.)
That date, right at the end there, seems wrong, doesn’t it? But it is not – though I did initially suspect as much. Firstly, regarding the year, in medieval times the Iberian Peninsula used a different calendar called the Era Hispánica. This calendar started not at the birth of Jesus in 1 CE, but in 38 BCE. The medieval Iberians believed that this was the year when the Peninsula was finally pacified by the Roman Empire. This calendar was in use in the Kingdom of Valencia until 1358 (ours, not theirs). Subtracting the 38 ‘extra’ years from the Era Hispánica we end up in 1238, right where we want to be!
Secondly, the day: ‘kalends’ is the medieval name for the first day of the month. But here it says “4 of the Kalends.” For a complicated reason, to calculate the modern date, one must count as follows: [number of days of the preceding month] + 2 – [number of days mentioned]. In this case, the calculation is: 30 + 2 – 4 = 28 September.13
Thus, Valencia officially surrendered on 28 September 1238, the eve of the Feast of Saint Michael. For the Muslims, this was 17 Safar 636.
A note on timing
Now, have you been counting the days? Because something does not add up. According to Jaume’s timeline, we are now on September 19, or maybe 20, if we are generous. Yet the surrender agreement, when converted to our calendar, says September 28! That latter date is more plausible: most authors mention that day, often referring to it as “the eve of the Feast of Saint Michael,” a feast day which falls on September 29.
This should not surprise us. Jaume’s Llibre dels Fets has certain characteristics that facilitate mistiming events. Firstly, from Jaume’s perspective, it was an oral work. The King dictated his story to a scribe, who wrote it down. When speaking, it is easy to skip over events or forget to include something. Secondly, Jaume dictated the sections of the Llibre dels Fets that we are discussing today at the earliest six years after the events in question. However, perhaps Jaume ‘wrote’ his book decades later, between 1270 and 1276. Try to imagine recounting the exact order of events that happened in a particular week over 30 years ago…
The exodus
Although they had five days to prepare for their departure, those Valencians who planned to leave only needed three. Not everyone took up the offer to relocate, however. Jaume tells us that around 50.000 Valencians decided to move south. An unknown number stayed behind, though they did have to leave the city. A new moreria, or Moorish Quarter, quickly sprang up just west of the city, where the neighbourhood of El Carmen now lies.
The evacuees gathered in the fields between the city and Russafa, likely on the plain next to the Via Augusta, where Plaça de l’Ajuntament and Estació del Nord are located today. The King had promised Zayyan that he would protect the evacuees, and he meant it. He and his retinue provided security. Several crusaders, probably frustrated that they could not sack the city now that it had surrendered, tried their luck now. They robbed evacuees and even attempted to kidnap some adults and children. A slave could be valuable. Yet Jaume quickly put a stop to it, even executing a few of these soldiers.
When the Valencians finally began their march south, Jaume and his retinue accompanied them. From the beginning of October until the eve of the 9th, the King was probably on the road, escorting the Muslims all the way to Cullera. The road to that town measured about 40-45 kilometres, and they must have travelled slowly. After all, the evacuees carried their whole livelihoods, and as civilians did not march at a military pace.
The triumphal entry in Valencia
It is no surprise then that King Jaume’s triumphal entry in Valencia took place eleven days after the surrender had been signed. In those eleven days the Valencians had packed and gathered, marched south en masse, Jaume had returned from Cullera, and his soldiers had prepared the city for his arrival.
And, when all that was done, I entered Valencia.
According to tradition, he rode in through the Bab Ibn-Sajar, the gate where Zayyan had raised his banner on September 28. The first task for the crusader army, their objective now achieved, was to thank God and the Virgin Mary, Jaume’s favourite saint. The clergy consecrated the Great Mosque officially as Valencia’s first church: the Església Catedral de Santa Maria. They mounted an altar, and there they held the first mass of rechristianised Valencia.
Conclusion
Ending the siege of Valencia was no easy feat. Jaume fought for six years to just to bring his army to the city, and once there, he besieged it for five months before it surrendered. When that moment finally arrived, he had to balance achieving a peaceful surrender with the eagerness of his unruly nobles to destroy and sack the city. Yet he managed it in the end, and without the help of any bat to boot!
King Jaume thus laid the foundations for the Comunitat Valenciana, the modern autonomous region of Valencia, which largely coincides with the ancient Kingdom of Valencia. Although not all of its current territory was yet conquered – this would not happen until the reign of Jaume II with the fall of Alacant – the institutions that still exist today as the Generalitat and the Corts, as well as the Valencian language and regional identity, all trace their roots back to this very moment. That is why, even today, over 785 years after the event, October 9 is still one of Valencia’s most important holidays!
Yet not everyone rejoiced at the end of the siege of Valencia. The Valencian Muslims – true Valencians, mind you, whose families had lived in the area since time immemorial – faced banishment from their homeland. As they tried to rebuild their lives in unfamiliar lands, all they had was their memory to cherish.
Forever and ever, farewell to the beloved land.
Ibn al-Abbar. (Translated by the author from a Spanish rendition of the original Arabic.)
Our youth and our dear friends are lost.
All that is beautiful has been undone, scattered, or far removed.
Without joy or home, defeated and not at peace I feel.
Where are the houses of Valencia?
Where are the voices of her doves?
All is lost.
The Bridge and Russafa have been lost.
Mislata and Massanassa have been lost.
All is lost.
Where are those meadows with rivers and green groves?
Where are the fragrant gardens where we used to retreat to?
Where is the ever-fresh breeze?
Where are the gentle twilights?
Alas Balansiya, what has become of those mornings when the sun played with the waves of the Albufera?
Nothing can be done when fate brings loss.
Sources
- Capitulación de Valencia, by Jaime I and Zayyan, king of Valencia.
- Crònica, by Bernat Desclot.
- Crònica, by Ramon Muntaner.
- Estudio y puesta en valor del tramo de muralla islámica de la Plaza del Ángel de Valencia (Conservation and Restauration of Cultural Heritage master thesis of the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia), by Talía Martínez Talon.
- Fragments of texts from various books and a website, by Ibn al-Abbar.
- Islamic social structures in Muslim and Christian Valencia, by Míkel de Epalza.
- La memoria del museo: la torre medieval del MuVIM, by the Museu Valencià de la Il·lustració de la Modernitat (MuVIM).
- La Valencia Musulmana, by Vicent Coscollá.
- Llibre dels Fets, by King Jaume I de Aragón.
- Técnicas de ataque y defensa en los asedios del siglo XIII: ámbito catalano-aragonés y occitano, by Josep Suñé Arce.
Footnotes
- Although Jaume and other contemporary Christian sources refer to Zayyan as ‘king’, ‘emir’ is a more appropriate term. Zayyan never had himself made king. ‘Emir’ is a broader term, encompassing meanings such as ‘monarch’ or ‘aristocrat’, and generally referring to a person in a high military or political position. ↩︎
- About 1.6 to 1.8 kilometres, depending on the type of historical mile that Jaume used. This is consistent with the distance from the Santuari de la Mare de Déu de Montolivet (the presumed location of Jaume’s camp) to Carrer de les Barques (the southern tip of Valencia’s Muslim-era city walls). ↩︎
- That is a creative measurement, Jaume, but what are you actually saying? A quick search tells me that a medieval crossbow could theoretically shoot up to 300 metres. The distance from Carrer de les Barques (see the footnote above) to Carrer del General Prim (according to folklore the place where Jaume later places his pavilion “in Russafa”) is about 850 metres, so closer to three crossbow shots. However, we must keep in mind that Jaume is not writing this the evening after the event, but years or possibly decades later. Memory is a fickle thing. ↩︎
- ‘Saracen’ was, in medieval times, a common word used by Christians to refer to Muslims, since the latter term had not yet entered the Western lexicon. ↩︎
- As described in “Técnicas de ataque y defensa en los asedios del siglo XIII: ámbito catalano-aragonés y occitano” by Josep Suñé Arce. The siege of Valencia is one of the case studies included in the article, and thus it is of particular interest to see the ‘rules’ laid out in it being broken by King Jaume. ↩︎
- Muddy terrain could spell disaster for the heavily armoured soldiers of a medieval army, as a French army would find out almost two hundred years later, at the Battle of Agincourt. ↩︎
- This accessway stood where the current Carrer de Sant Ferran meets Carrer de Sant Vicent Màrtir. ↩︎
- What is now Carrer de les Barques and Carrer del Pintor Sorrolla. ↩︎
- Jaume dates it to “fifteen days ahead of the eve of Saint Michael.” The day of Saint Michael falls on September 29, its eve on the 28th, and so the negotiations begin on September 13. ↩︎
- Rais means captain or governor. Abulfamalet is alternatively named as Abú-l-Hamlek. ↩︎
- Interestingly, – though I am not an expert on Islam – Albulfamalet seemed to break Islamic precept here, where you are never supposed to bow to anyone except Allah himself. This is reiterated in medieval “ruler’s handbooks”, though the rule seemed to have been broken with in descriptions of a meeting between crusaders and Caliph al-Adid in 1167 as well. See for example the blog Richard the Lionheart – A Medieval Newsletter. ↩︎
- Bezants (Valencian: bessants) were a catch-all term for different gold coins. In western Europe gold coins were rare (they rather used silver and bronze), so gold coins came from two sources: Byzantium, the capital of the eastern remnants of the Roman Empire and still a great power; and Muslim rulers who governed territories spanning from the Middle East all the way to Spain. ↩︎
- Both the calculation of the kalends and the information about the Era Hispánica I based on the post ‘Calendario medieval cristiano: cálculo e interpretación de fechas’ from the blog Condado de Castilla. ↩︎