New findings rewrite the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, the largest military confrontation of the Iberian Middle Ages

Eight centuries after Christians and Muslims clashed in the foothills of Despeñaperros, the latest research has shed more light on the battle of Navas de Tolosa, in Santa Elena (Jaén), one of the main war milestones of the Reconquista.

Two archaeological excavation campaigns have made it possible to precisely locate the places where the camps were located and also their functional organization.

These findings have been combined with a historiographical review, which has led the medievalist Francisco García Fitz to firmly assert that this battle, despite its enormous influence, did not change the course of history or the correlation of forces between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula.

García Fitz has presented the book Las Navas de Tolosa on the battlefield

.

The battle of punishment

(Editorial Desperta Ferro), as it understands that the conflict was experienced by both parties in dispute as a punishment to the enemy.

Although the victors were the Christians, they won the battle but far from the war.

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A crusade eight centuries later

It is in the field of archeology where the most encouraging results have been given.

Systematic prospecting and excavation work had never been carried out, until in 2022 two campaigns were launched in the Mesa del Rey, the settlement site of the Christian camp, and in the surroundings of the Castro Ferral fortress.

The Despeñaperros natural park, the area where the war took place.

Jose Manuel Pedrosa

The findings obtained by researchers from the University of Jaén (UJA) allow us to locate the camps of the armies of the battle, as well as the functional organization that was established inside them.

The research has been carried out with a system of superficial archaeological prospecting, based on the precise georeferencing of each of the documented elements, following the paradigmatic cases of the battles of Baécula or Iliturgi, also in Jaén.

The teacher of Medieval History Irene Montilla Torres, who directs the work together with professor Juan Carlos Castillo, has explained that so far almost 3,000 very relevant pieces have been recorded such as arrowheads, horseshoe nails, cavalry trappings, and clothing elements. and coins.

“The precise location of these elements in space allows us to go beyond the object itself, through the analysis of the interrelationships that occur between them, which makes it possible to establish, for example, the places where the objects were located. army camps and the functional organization that was established inside them, areas for horseshoeing or spaces for tents,” he indicates.

Archaeological excavations have also been carried out in the Castro Ferral fortification, a key piece in the articulation of what was the largest military confrontation of the Spanish Middle Ages.

"These works are demonstrating that it was not just a control and surveillance tower for the passage between the Meseta and Andalusia, as had been considered until now, but a real castle of considerable dimensions, and several lines of lines have been discovered. superimposed walls that show a much more complex history than previously anticipated,” adds another of the researchers, the professor of Medieval History Juan Carlos Castillo.

The professor of Medieval History and author of the book 'Las Navas de Tolosa', Francisco García Fitz.Jose Manuel Pedrosa

However, historians and archaeologists have launched an SOS to the administrations regarding the critical state of conservation of this castle, which is the main vestige of the conflict that remains standing and which is declared an Asset of Cultural Interest.

The fortress suffered significant damage during the construction of the firebreak in the early 1990s and since then the entire area has been subject to significant looting of materials.

“Many people came with their metal detectors to take the materials that had been left on the surface and which they then sold by weight,” says Irene Montilla.

Crusade

Among the archaeological pieces found, a nail stands out with the inscription "Praise to Allah", which leads medieval experts to assure that in this battle the maximum expression of the crusade was achieved.

In fact, it was the only medieval campaign on Hispanic soil that was declared a crusade.

“The Muslim warriors who gathered in the foothills of the Sierra Morena in the summer of 1212 against the Crusader army also came protected under a complex religious mantle extraordinarily rooted in the consciousness of Islam and in the shadow of an ideological resource,” explains the Professor Francisco García Fitz.

“Everyone talks about the crusades in Palestine, in the Middle East, but this crusade declaration is on the same level.

We have evidence of parallel materials between Palestine and Navas de Tolosa, and that should lead to the two crusades from both ends of the Mediterranean being studied together,” explains Álvaro Soler del Campo, head of the Royal Armory of National Heritage.

In the book

Las Navas de Tolosa.

The Battle of Punishment,

Professor García Fitz carries out a historiographical update of the sources collected in the last two decades.

Not only does it scrutinize the crucial clash in detail - the objectives of each contestant, the tactics used or its political and territorial consequences - but it also studies the war, institutional, organizational and ideological resources put into play, to explain it within the peninsular strategic board. and its historical context.

The name of the battle of punishment refers to the Muslim chronicler Ibn Idari, who uses the expression

al-Uqab

to describe the battle that marked the decline of Al-Andalus.

“From the Muslim perspective, that was experienced as a punishment, which the Almohads suffered and which led to their disappearance;

while for Alfonso VIII the victory was the punishment he inflicted on his enemies, those who had humiliated him 17 years before on the Alarcos plain,” explains García Fitz.

This expert says that few topics are as deeply rooted in the memory that has come down to us from the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa as that which states that the contest was decisive for the immediate history and for the future events of the contenders involved.

García Fitz does not hesitate to banish it: “No matter how extraordinary it was, only in a certain sense did it become a decisive battle: it was so insofar as it settled forever the territorial dispute around the central axis of the roads that linked the Tagus and Sierra. Brunette.

It was not so long as it neither ended the Almohad Empire nor Al-Andalus.”

The professor of Medieval History recalls that the Almohad dominion remained stable, thanks to its own forces, during the 10 years after Las Navas, without the attacks launched by the Christians shaking their presence in al-Andalus, and this despite that after the death in 1213 of Caliph Al-Nasir - the caliph defeated in Las Navas - the government of the Empire fell to a minor.

In short, García Fitz is forceful in his final reflection: “It is advisable not to be dazzled by the perception that contemporaries had: the Reconquista was not definitively decided on a day in 1212.”

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