How did Valencia and Seville fall to the Christian kings?

Valencia and Seville fall to the Christian kings

Jaime I toma Valencia y Fernando III, Sevilla

between 1236 and 1248. The generation after Las Navas saw the map of the peninsula redrawn.

Where: Spain, Seville, Valencia, Córdoba

What happened

The generation after Las Navas saw the map of the peninsula redrawn. Jaume I of Aragon took Mallorca and then, in 1238, the city of Valencia, which became a new kingdom within his crown and a Catalan-speaking land. Fernando III, who had united Castile and León, moved down the Guadalquivir: Córdoba fell in 1236, its great mosque becoming a cathedral, and Seville, the largest city of al-Andalus, surrendered in 1248 after a long siege. Many Muslims left or were moved out, and Christian settlers from the north took their houses and fields. By mid-century only Nasrid Granada remained Muslim, paying tribute to Castile. Fernando was later made a saint; he is buried in Seville cathedral.

Say it

Fernando III conquistó Sevilla en 1248.

Fernando III conquered Seville in 1248.

Why it matters

These conquests fixed the language map: Valencia became Catalan-speaking, Andalusia Castilian-speaking, and the Castilian of Seville, with its own accent, was the Spanish that sailed to America two and a half centuries later.

There today

See
Fernando III, who took Seville in 1248, is buried in the cathedral of Seville, which you can visit; the great mosque of Córdoba, taken in 1236, is open too as the Mezquita-Catedral.

Read about it

Connected

Sources

  1. Reconquista — World History Encyclopedia
  2. The history — Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba (Cabildo Catedral)
  3. Museum of the Batalla de las Navas de Tolosa — Jaén Paraíso Interior (Diputación de Jaén)