Logbook · 6 places

The battle of Simancas

Simancas, Campiña del Pisuerga, Valladolid

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Nature · 1 Activities · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones

Spain › Castile and León › Valladolid › Campiña del Pisuerga › Simancas › The battle of Simancas

The battle of Simancas

Historical milestone · Simancas, Campiña del Pisuerga, Valladolid

Image of Simancas, not of the place itself.

The Battle of Simancas, known in Arabic sources as the Battle of Alhándega, pitted the Christian troops of Ramiro II of León, who came to support the governor of Zaragoza, Muhammad ibn Hashim, against the army of the Cordoban caliph Abd al-Rahman III in the year 939; the caliph had launched a great campaign — the gazat al-qudra, or Campaign of Supreme Power — to destroy the kingdom of León. Modern estimates of the size of the armies vary widely, from 7,000 to 30,000 men on the Umayyad side, against the few hundred knights the Christian kings usually mustered on campaign. The victory before the walls of Simancas secured the northern kingdoms' hold over the lands of the Duero and became linked in local memory to the legend of the seven maidens.

939

Photo: Leofenix (CC BY-SA 3.0)

What to see and do in Simancas