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The legend of the battle of Calatañazor

Calatañazor, Tierras del Burgo, Soria

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The legend of the battle of Calatañazor

Historical milestone · Calatañazor, Tierras del Burgo, Soria

Tradition places in Calatañazor, in July of the year 1002, the defeat of Almanzor at the hands of the Christian armies of Castile, León and Navarre, summed up in the saying «at Calatañazor Almanzor lost his drum». Branded unreal since the 18th century for lack of evidence in the chronicles of the time, the legend was first told by the chronicler Lucas de Tuy, who includes a fisherman weeping in Arabic and in the Romance tongue, announcing the fall of the Moors; to the prelate, that apparition was the devil. According to this tradition, Almanzor refused to eat or drink and died on reaching Medinaceli. Muslim sources place the encounter near the castle of las Águilas, without mentioning a decisive defeat. Present-day historians regard the episode as a compensatory myth.

1002

Photo: Pedro J Pacheco (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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