High Middle Ages · Europe · Politics

1108

Zaragoza falls to the Almoravids

1108

The Taifa kingdom of Zaragoza, long a literate and tolerant Muslim polity on the Ebro, was absorbed into the Almoravid empire after a succession crisis. It would remain Muslim for only another decade before King Alfonso I of Aragon took it for the Reconquista. Under Taifa rule, Zaragoza had been one of the great centers of Islamic learning in Spain, its court sheltering philosophers and translators who bridged Arabic and Latin thought.