Spanish EL CID, also called EL CAMPEADOR ("the
Champion"), by name of RODRIGO, or RUY, DÍAZ DE VIVAR (b. c. 1043, Vivar,
near Burgos, Castile [Spain]--d. July 10, 1099, Valencia), Castilian
military leader and national hero. His popular name, El Cid (from Spanish
Arabic as-sid, "lord"), dates from his lifetime. See
the complete translation of
.
Early life
Rodrigo Díaz' father, Diego Laínez,
was a member of
the minor nobility (infanzones) of Castile. But the Cid's social
background was less unprivileged than later popular tradition liked to
suppose, for he was directly connected on his mother's side with the great landed
aristocracy, and he was brought up at the court of Ferdinand I in the
household of that king's eldest son, the future Sancho II of Castile. When
Sancho succeeded to the Castilian throne (1065), he nominated the
22-year-old Cid as his standard-bearer (armiger regis), or commander of
the royal troops. This early promotion to important office suggests that
the young Cid had already won a reputation for military prowess. In 1067
he accompanied Sancho on a campaign against the important Moorish kingdom
of Saragossa (Zaragoza) and played a leading role in the negotiations that
made its king, al-Muqtadir, a tributary of the Castilian crown.
Ferdinand I, on his death, had partitioned his
kingdoms among his various children, leaving Leon to his second son,
Alfonso VI. Sancho began (1067) to make war on the latter with the aim of
annexing Leon. Later legend was to make the Cid a reluctant supporter of
Sancho's aggression, but it is unlikely the real Cid had any such
scruples. He played a prominent part in Sancho's successful campaigns
against Alfonso and so found himself in an awkward situation in 1072, when
the childless Sancho was killed while besieging Zamora, leaving the
dethroned Alfonso as his only possible heir. The new king appears to have
done his best to win the allegiance of Sancho's most powerful supporter.
Though the Cid now lost his post as armiger regis to a great magnate,
Count García Ordóñez (whose bitter enemy he became), and his former
influence at court naturally declined, he was allowed to remain there;
and, in July 1074, probably at Alfonso's instigation, he married the
king's niece Jimena, daughter of the Count de Oviedo. He thus became
allied by marriage to the ancient royal dynasty of Leon. Very little is
known about Jimena. The couple had one son and two daughters. The son,
Diego Rodríguez, was killed in battle against the Muslim Almoravid
invaders from North Africa, at Consuegra (1097).
The Cid's position at court was, despite his
marriage, precarious. He seems to have been thought of as the natural
leader of those Castilians who were unreconciled to being ruled by a king
of Leon. He certainly resented the influence exercised by the great landed
nobles over Alfonso VI. Though his heroic biographers would later present
the Cid as the blameless victim of unscrupulous noble enemies and of
Alfonso's willingness to listen to unfounded slanders, it seems likely
that the Cid's penchant for publicly humiliating powerful men may have
largely contributed to his downfall. Though he was later to show himself
astute and calculating as both a soldier and a politician, his conduct
vis-à-vis the court suggests that resentment at his loss of influence as a
result of Sancho's death may temporarily have undermined his capacity for
self-control. In 1079, while on a mission to the Moorish king of Seville,
he became embroiled with García Ordóñez, who was aiding the king of
Granada in an invasion of the kingdom of Seville. The Cid defeated the
markedly superior Granadine army at Cabra, near Seville, capturing García
Ordóñez. This victory prepared the way for his downfall; and when, in
1081, he led an unauthorized military raid into the Moorish kingdom of
Toledo, which was under Alfonso's protection, the king exiled the Cid from
his kingdoms. Several subsequent attempts at reconciliation produced no
lasting results, and after 1081 the Cid never again was able to live for
long in Alfonso VI's dominions.
Service to the Muslims
The exile offered his services to the Muslim
dynasty that ruled Saragossa and with which he had first made contact in
1065. The king of Saragossa, in northeastern Spain, al-Mu'tamin, welcomed
the chance of having his vulnerable kingdom defended by so prestigious a
Christian warrior. The Cid now loyally served al-Mu'tamin and his
successor, al-Musta'in II, for nearly a decade. As a result of his
experience he gained that understanding of the complexities of
Hispano-Arabic politics and of Islamic law and custom that would later
help him to conquer and hold Valencia. Meanwhile, he steadily added to his
reputation as a general who had never been defeated in battle. In 1082, on
behalf of al-Mu'tamin, he inflicted a decisive defeat on the Moorish king
of Lérida and the latter's Christian allies, among them the count of
Barcelona. In 1084 he defeated a large Christian army under King Sancho
Ramírez of Aragon. He was richly rewarded for these victories by his
grateful Muslim masters.
In 1086 there began the great Almoravid invasion of
Spain from North Africa. Alfonso VI, crushingly defeated by the invaders
at Sagrajas (Oct. 23, 1086) suppressed his antagonism to the Cid and
recalled from exile the Christians' best general. The Cid's presence at
Alfonso's court in July 1087 is documented. But shortly afterward, he was
back in Saragossa, and he was not a participant in the subsequent
desperate battles against the Almoravids in the strategic regions where
their attacks threatened the whole existence of Christian Spain. The Cid,
for his part, now embarked on the lengthy and immensely complicated
political maneuvering that was aimed at making him master of the rich
Moorish kingdom of Valencia.
Conquest of Valencia
His first step was to eliminate the influence of
the counts of Barcelona in that area. This was done when Berenguer Ramón
II was humiliatingly defeated at Tébar, near Teruel (May 1090). During the
next years the Cid gradually tightened his control over Valencia and its
ruler, al-Qadir, now his tributary. His moment of destiny came in October
1092 when the qadi (chief magistrate), Ibn Jahhaf, with Almoravid
political support rebelled and killed al-Qadir. The Cid responded by
closely besieging the rebel city. The siege lasted for many months; an
Almoravid attempt to break it failed miserably (December 1093). In May
1094 Ibn Jahhaf at last surrendered, and the Cid finally entered Valencia
as its conqueror. To facilitate his takeover he characteristically first
made a pact with Ibn Jahhaf that led the latter to believe that his acts
of rebellion and regicide were forgiven; but when the pact had served its
purpose, the Cid
arrested the former qadi and ordered him to be burnt alive. The Cid
now ruled Valencia
directly, himself acting as chief magistrate of the Muslims as well as the
Christians. Nominally he held Valencia for Alfonso VI, but in fact he was
its independent ruler in all but name. The city's chief mosque was
Christianized in 1096; a French bishop, Jerome, was appointed to the new
see; and there was a considerable influx of Christian colonists. The Cid's
princely status was emphasized when his daughter Cristina married a prince
of Aragon, Ramiro, lord of Monzón, and his
other daughter, María, married Ramón Berenguer III, count of
Barcelona.
Aftermath
The great enterprise to which the Cid had devoted
so much of his energies was to prove totally ephemeral. Soon after his
death Valencia was besieged by the Almoravids, and Alfonso VI had to
intervene in person to save it. But the king rightly judged the place
indefensible unless he diverted there permanently large numbers of troops
urgently needed to defend the Christian heartlands against the invaders.
He evacuated the city and then ordered it to be burned. On May 5, 1102,
the Almoravids occupied Valencia, which was to remain in Muslim hands
until 1238. The Cid's body was taken to Castile and reburied in the
monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, near Burgos, where it became the centre
of a lively tomb cult.
The Cid's biography presents special problems for
the historian because he was speedily elevated to the status of national hero of Castile, and a complex
heroic biography of him, in which legend played a dominant role, came into
existence; the legend was magnified by the influence of the 12th-century
epic poem of Castile,
and later by Pierre
Corneille's tragedy Le Cid, first performed in 1637. For authentic
information historians have to rely mainly on a few contemporary
documents, on the Historia Roderici (a reliable, private 12th-century
Latin chronicle of the Cid's life), and on a detailed eyewitness account
of his conquest of Valencia by the Arab historian Ibn 'Alqamah.
(P.E.R.