The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa was a major battle in Medieval Spain and marked a turning point in the long war against the Muslim invaders. The battle took place on July 16, 1212, near Jaen, Andalusia. The forces of King Alfonso VIII of Castile were joined by the armies of his Christian rivals, Sancho VII of Navarre, Pedro II of Aragon and Afonso II of Portugal in battle against the Berber Muslim Almohad rulers of the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. The sultan Caliph al-Nasir led the Almohad army, made up of people from the whole Almohad empire, which included northern Africa.
Alfonso VIII of Castile had been defeated by the Almohads in the so-called Disaster of Alarcos in 1195. After this victory the Almohads went on to take important cities as Trujillo, Plasencia, Talavera, Cuenca and Ucles. Meanwhile Muhammad al-Nasir had crossed the Strait of Gibraltar with another powerful army in 1211, invading more Christian territory and capturing the stronghold of the Calatrava Knights in Salvatierra. Then the Muslim threat became so great for the Iberian Christian kingdoms as well as for the rest of Europe that the Pope Innocent III called European knights to a crusade. Innocent III reminded the French Frankish knights that four centuries before a Islamic army had made its way into France and had been stopped not with peaceful prayers but with the valiant intervention of Charles Martel in 732 at the Battle of Poitier.
Alfonso of Castile crossed the mountain range that protected the Almohad camp and stealthily made his way with his army through the Despeñaperros Pass. Thus the Christian coalition caught by surprise and smashed the Moorish army that left some 100,000 casualties at the battleground. The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa was a bloody and decisive encounter. The Caliph Muhammad al-Nasir himself died shortly after the battle in Marrakesh, where he had fled after the defeat. At the end of the battle, Sancho VII of Navarre himself broke into the Caliph’s fortified camp, broke up the defensive ring, disbanded al-Nasir’s personal bodyguard, and took the fortress.
After the battle, the Christian army engaged in the annihilation of the Muslim troops, so that very few of them could escape the killing. Despite legends that Christian casualties were very few, in fact they were some 2,000 men, and particularly heavy among the Orders. Those killed included Pedro Gomez de Acevedo (bannerman of the Orden de Calatrava), Alfonso Fernandez de Valladares (comendator of the Orden de Santiago), Pedro Arias (master of the Orden de Santiago, died of wounds on 3 August) and Gomez Ramirez (master of the Orden del Templo). Ruy Diaz (master of the Orden de Calatrava) was so grievously wounded that he had to resign his command.
The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa was a crushing defeat for the Almohads. It significantly hastened their decline both in the Iberian Peninsula a decade later. This would give further momentum to the Christian Reconquest begun by the kingdoms of northern Iberia centuries before, resulting in a sharp reduction in the already declining power of the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula. Shortly after the battle, the Castilians took Baeza and then Ubeda, major fortified cities near the battlefield, and gateways to invade Andalucia. Thereafter, Ferdinand III of Castile took Cordoba in 1236, Jaen in 1246, and Seville in 1248; then he took Arcos, Medina-Sidonia, Jerez and Cadiz. After this chain of victories, only Ferdinand’s death prevented the Castilians from crossing the Gibraltar Strait to take the war to the heartland of the Almohad empire.
