1113–1115 Balearic Islands expedition
1113–1115 Balearic Islands expedition | |||||||
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Part of the Crusades | |||||||
![]() The taifa of the Balearics (green), with its capital (Mallorca), the Crusaders' chief target, indicated. | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Republic of Pisa Catalan counties County of Provence Giudicato of Torres Papal States | Taifa of Majorca Almoravids | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Pietro Moriconi Ramon Berenguer III of Barcelona Hug II of Empúries Saltaro of Torres | Abu-l-Rabi Sulayman (POW) Abu al-Mundhir † | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
300 Pisan ships 150 Catalan and Provençal ships | Unknown | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
Unknown | High |
- v
- t
- e
- 8th century
- Covadonga
- 1st Roncevaux Pass
- Burbia River
- Orbieu River
- Lutos
- Las Babias
- Río Quirós
- Oviedo
- 1st Lisbon
- 9th century
- 1st Barcelona
- 1st Tortosa
- Pancorbo
- 2nd Roncevaux Pass
- Clavijo
- Albelda
- Guadalacete
- Monte Laturce
- Morcuera
- Polvoraria
- 1st Cellorigo
- 2nd Cellorigo
- 2nd Barcelona
- 10th century
- Day of Zamora
- 1st Majorca
- Pallars and Ribagorza
- 1st San Esteban de Gormaz
- 2nd San Esteban de Gormaz
- Valdejunquera
- 1st Toledo
- Alhandic
- Simancas
- Estercuel
- Torrevicente
- Rueda
- 3rd Barcelona
- 11th century
- Cervera
- Calatañazor
- Torà
- Albesa
- Aqbat al-Bakr
- Graus
- Coimbra
- Barbastro
- Paterna
- Llantada
- Golpejera
- Cabra
- Piedra Pisada
- Morella
- 2nd Toledo
- 1st Zaragoza
- Sagrajas
- Tudela
- Tévar
- 3rd Toledo
- Almodóvar del Río
- 1st Valencia
- 2nd Lisbon
- Alcoraz
- Bairén
- Consuegra
- 4th Toledo
- 5th Toledo
- 12th century
- 2nd Valencia
- Mollerussa
- Balaguer
- Uclés
- Norwegian raid
- 3rd Lisbon
- Talavera
- Formentera
- Ibiza
- 1st Balearic Islands
- 6th Toledo
- Candespina
- Vatalandi
- 1st Santarém
- 2nd Balearic Islands
- Martorell
- Coimbra
- 2nd Zaragoza
- Cutanda
- 1st Lleida
- 1st Granada
- Corbins
- Alcalá
- 3rd Valencia
- Aceca
- 1st Badajoz
- Fraga
- Leiria
- 1st Coria
- Ourique
- Oreja
- Trancoso
- 2nd Coria
- 4th Lisbon
- 1st Montiel
- Soure
- Albacete
- 1st Almería
- Al-Ludjdj
- 2nd Santarém
- Sacavém
- 5th Lisbon
- Sacavém
- 2nd Tortosa
- 2nd Lleida
- 2nd Almería
- 1st Alcácer do Sal
- Palmela
- 1st Évora
- 2nd Badajoz
- Juromenha
- Central Iberia
- Cuenca
- Calatrava
- 2nd Seville
- Abrantes
- 2nd Évora
- 3rd Santarém
- Alvor
- 1st Silves
- 2nd Silves
- Tomar
- 2nd Alcácer do Sal
- 2nd Silves
- Alarcos
- Salamanca
- 13th century
- Al-Dāmūs
- Las Navas de Tolosa
- 3rd Alcácer do Sal
- 1st Jaén
- Peníscola
- Aragonese raid
- 2nd Majorca
- 2nd Jaén
- 1st Jerez
- Ares
- Burriana
- Córdoba
- El Puig
- 4th Valencia
- Algarve
- 1st Xàtiva
- 2nd Xàtiva
- Biar
- 3rd Jaén
- 3rd Seville
- Faro
- 2nd Jerez
- Mudéjar revolt
- 3rd Jerez
- 1st Murcia
- Écija
- Martos
- Andalusia
- 1st Algeciras
- 2nd Algeciras
- Moclín
- Iznalloz
- 14th century
- 1st Gibraltar
- 3rd Algeciras
- 3rd Almería
- 2nd Gibraltar
- Vega de Granada
- Shepherds' Crusade
- Teba
- 3rd Gibraltar
- 4th Gibraltar
- Vega de Pagana
- Getares
- Río Salado
- Estepona
- 4th Algeciras
- 5th Gibraltar
- Linuesa
- Guadix
- 2nd Montiel
- 5th Algeciras
- 2nd Murcia
- 15th century
- Collejares
- Antequera
- 6th Gibraltar
- La Higueruela
- 7th Gibraltar
- Los Alporchones
- 8th Gibraltar
- 9th Gibraltar
- 2nd Granada campaign
- Lucena
- Málaga
- Post-Reconquista Rebellions
- 1st Alpujarras
- 2nd Alpujarras
- North Africa
In 1114, an expedition to the Balearic Islands, then a Muslim taifa, was launched in the form of a Crusade. Founded on a treaty of 1113 between the Republic of Pisa and Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona, the expedition had the support of Pope Paschal II and the participation of many lords of Catalonia and Occitania, as well as contingents from northern and central Italy, Sardinia, and Corsica. The Crusaders were perhaps inspired by the Norwegian king Sigurd I's attack on Formentera in 1108 or 1109 during the Norwegian Crusade.[1] The expedition ended in 1115 in the conquest of the Balearics, but only until the next year. The main source for the event is the Pisan Liber maiolichinus, completed by 1125.
Treaty and preparations
In 1085 Pope Gregory VII had granted suzerainty over the Balearics to Pisa.[2] In September 1113 a Pisan fleet making an expedition to Majorca was put off course by a storm and ended up near Blanes on the coast of Catalonia, which they initially mistook for the Balearics.[3] The Pisans met with the Count of Barcelona in the port of Sant Feliu de Guíxols, where on 7 September they signed a treaty causa corroborandae societatis et amicitiae ('for strengthening [their] alliance and friendship'). Specifically the Pisans were exempted from the usagium and the jus naufragii in all the territories, present and future, of the Count of Barcelona, though Arles and Saint-Gilles, in the recently acquired March of Provence, were singled out for special mention (three times).[4]
The only surviving copy of the treaty between Pisa and Barcelona is found interpolated in a charter of James I granted to Pisa in 1233. It affirms that the meeting was unplanned and apparently arranged by God.[5] Some scholars have expressed doubt about the lack of preparation, citing the Catalans' rapid response to the presence of the Pisans as evidence of some previous contact.[6] The attribution of the meeting to Providence alone may have been concocted to add an "aura of sacredness" to the alliance and the crusade.[4]
The treaty, or what survives of it, does not refer to military cooperation or a venture against Majorca; perhaps that agreement was oral, or perhaps its record has been lost, but a Crusade was planned for 1114. The chief goal was the freeing of Christian captives and the suppression of Muslim piracy.[7] Most of the Pisan fleet returned to Pisa, but some ships damaged by the storm remained to be repaired and some men remained behind to construct siege engines.[8] In the spring of 1114 a new fleet of eighty ships arrived from Pisa, following the French coast, briefly staying at Marseille.[9]
The fleet brought with it Cardinal Bosone, an envoy from Paschal II, who vigorously supported the expedition, authorising it in a bull as early as 1113.[2] Paschal had also granted the Pisans the Romana signa, sedis apostolicae vexillum ("Roman standard, the flag of the apostolic see"),[10] and his appeals for the expedition had borne fruit. Besides the 300 ships of the Pisan contingent, there were 120 Catalan and Occitan vessels (plus a large army), contingents from the Italian cities of Florence, Lucca, Pistoia, Rome, Siena, and Volterra, and from Sardinia and Corsica under Saltaro, the son of Constantine I of Logudoro. Among the Catalan princes there were Ramon Berenguer, Hug II of Empúries, and Ramon Folc II of Cardona.[11] The most important lords of Occitania participated, with the exception of the Count of Toulouse, Alfonso Jordan: William V of Montpellier, with twenty ships; Aimeric II of Narbonne, with twenty ships; and Raymond I of Baux, with seven ships.[11] Bernard Ato IV, the chief of the Trencavel family, also participated.[12] Ramon Berenguer and his wife, Douce, borrowed 100 morabatins from the Ramon Guillem, the Bishop of Barcelona, to finance the expedition.[citation needed]
Conquest and loss
The combined Crusader fleet raided Ibiza in June, and destroyed its defences, since Ibiza lay between Majorca and the mainland and would have posed a continued threat during a siege. The Liber maiolichinus also records the taking of captives, who were trying to hide in careae (probably caves), on Formentera.[13] Ibiza was under Crusader control by August.[12] The Crusaders invested Palma de Majorca in August 1114.[14] As the siege dragged on the counts of Barcelona and Empúries entered into peace negotiations with the Muslim ruler of Majorca, but the cardinal and Pietro Moriconi, the Archbishop of Pisa, interfered to put an end to the discussions. Probably the Catalan rulers, whose lands lay nearest the Balearics, expected an annual payment of parias (tribute) from the Muslims and the cessation of pirate raids in return for lifting the siege.[14]
Muslim reinforcements, Almoravids from the Iberian port of Denia, surprised a Pisan flotilla of six in the waters off Ibiza, with only two of the Pisan vessels making it to safety, which consisted of the remains of a fortress burned by the king of Norway a decade earlier.[13] In April 1115 the city capitulated and its entire population was enslaved. This victory was followed by the capture of most of the Balearics' major settlements and the freeing of most captive Christians on the islands. The independent Muslim taifa ruler was taken back to Pisa a captive.[15] The greatest victory, however, was the annihilation of Majorcan piracy.[citation needed]
The conquest of the Balearics lasted no more than a few months. In 1116 they were reconquered by the Almoravids of peninsular Iberia.[14]
References
- ^ Gary B. Doxey (1996), "Norwegian Crusaders and the Balearic Islands", Scandinavian Studies, 10–11. In the Liber maiolichinus the Norwegian king is referred to only as rex Norgregius, and is recorded as sailing with 100 ships, though the later sagas record sixty.
- ^ a b Charles Julian Bishko (1975), "The Spanish and Portuguese Reconquest, 1095–1492", A History of the Crusades, Vol. 3: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. Harry W. Hazard (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press), 405.
- ^ Silvia Orvietani Busch (2001), Medieval Mediterranean Ports: The Catalan and Tuscan Coasts, 1100 to 1235 (BRILL, ISBN 90-04-12069-6), 207. The fleet had left Pisa in August.
- ^ a b Busch, 208.
- ^ It records the Providential meeting of Pisans and Catalans as divino ducatu in portu Sancti Felicis prope Gerundam apud Barcinonam [Pisanorum exercitus] applicuisset (Busch, 207).
- ^ Busch, 208 n4. Enrica Salvatori, "Pisa in the Middle Ages: the Dream and the Reality of an Empire" Archived 2009-02-24 at the Wayback Machine, Empires Ancient and Modern, 19, likewise believes the familiarity of the author of the Liber maiolichinus with Catalan and Occitan geography points to longer and earlier Pisan contacts.
- ^ Doxey, 13. The memory of Sigurd's abundant spoils may have played a secondary rôle.
- ^ Busch, 210. During their winter in Catalonia, many Pisan knights reportedly wandered abroad into southern France (Provintia, Provence, to the author of the Liber) as far as Nîmes and Arles.
- ^ Many of the Pisans killed were buried at the Abbey of Saint Victor in Marseille on the return trip, cf. Salvatori, 19.
- ^ This is almost certainly the vexillum sancti Petri ("banner of Saint Peter") used by papal armies on other occasions. The pope also gave a processional cross to the Pisan archbishop, who gave it to a certain layman, Atho, to carry. Cf. Carl Erdmann (1977), The Origin of the Idea of Crusade (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 186, who points out that the banner of Saint Peter is not the basis for the later white cross on a red field associated with Pisa.
- ^ a b Busch, 210 n12.
- ^ a b Salvatori, 19.
- ^ a b Doxey, 11.
- ^ a b c Busch, 211.
- ^ Giuseppe Scalia (1980), "Contributi pisani alla lotta anti-islamica nel Mediterraneo centro-occidentale durante il secolo XI e nei prime deceni del XII", Anuario de estudios medievales, 10, 138.
Further reading
- Parker, Matthew E. (2014). "Pisa, Catalonia, and Muslim Pirates: Intercultural Exchanges in the Balearic Crusade of 1113–1115". Viator. 45 (2): 77–100.