page_title: Almanzor
section_title: Weakening of León and harassment of the Castilian border
hierarchical_section_title: Almanzor / Campaigns against Christians / Raids / Weakening of León and harassment of the Castilian border
caption_attribution_description: English: Interior of the Mosque at Cordova
context_page_description: Abu ʿĀmir Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn Abi ʿĀmir al-Maʿafiri, nicknamed al-Manṣūr, usually simply called Almanzor, was a military leader and statesman. As the chancellor of the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba and hajib for the weak Caliph Hisham II, Almanzor was the de facto ruler of Islamic Spain.
  Born in an alqueria on the outskirts of Torrox to a family of Yemeni Arab origin with some juridical ancestors, ibn Abi ʿĀmir left for Córdoba when still young to be trained as a Faqīh. After a few humble beginnings, he joined the court administration and soon gained the confidence of Subh, mother of the children of Caliph Al-Hakam II. Thanks to her patronage and his own efficiency, he quickly expanded his role.
  During the caliphate of Al-Hakam II, he held several important administrative positions, including director of the mint, administrator for Subh and her children, and for intestate inheritances, and quartermaster for the army of General Ghalib ibn Abd al-Rahman.
context_section_description: As a result of the defeat of Ghalib in the summer of 981, Almanzor's forces continued their advance to loot and destroy the lands around of Zamora at the end of summer and later defeated Pamplona, León and Castile at the Battle of Rueda (or Roa) 376 and recovered Simancas, which was razed. The loss of Simancas disrupted the Christian defensive line along the Duero, which later campaigns eventually dismantled. These losses, along with Almanzor's support for rivals to the Leonine crown, first Bermudo against the weakened Ramiro III and later rival counts, one of which briefly took the throne, plunged León into a political crisis that they submitted to the arbitration of Almanzor. In general, Almanzor supported the noble families opposed to the monarch of the moment to take advantage of their intra-Leonese squabbles. From 977, he launched attacks into León'a territories almost annually.
  The Galician and Portuguese counts, hostile to Ramiro III as they had been to his father, sought to appease Almanzor after the Trancoso and Viseu campaign of the beginning of winter of 981 and for this they sought to impose a new king, Bermudo II, crowned in October of 982 in Santiago while Almanzor pillaged the outskirts of León. Castile and León, continually exposed to Cordoban assaults, on the other hand supported Ramiro. In 983, Ramiro suffered the plundering of Salamanca in the fall, which though it could not be taken its surroundings were looted, and of Sacramenia at the beginning of winter, at the latter slaughtering the men and taking captive the rest of the population. In his attempt to halt the Christian advance south of the Duero, he continued assailing the Leonese and Castilian positions in this area and the most important points of repopulation, such as Zamora (984) or Sepúlveda the same year, razed before he fell on Barcelona. The destruction of Sepúlveda forced Ramiro to submit to Córdoba in 985, the year of his death due to natural causes, as Bermudo had done before. Bermudo's submission had been accompanied by that of other Portuguese and Galician counts. This imposed the presence of Cordoban forces on the Leonese kingdom, as a protectorate, which it remained until 987.
  The expulsion of the Cordoban troops from León by Bermudo once he won victory over Ramiro triggered the 988 campaign against Coimbra and the torching of the Monastery of San Pedro de Eslonza in the first retaliatory campaign in 986, in which he also took León, Zamora, Salamanca and Alba de Tormes before attacking Condeixa.
caption: Call to jihad in the mosque of Córdoba, from a nineteenth-century painting. Almanzor presented himself as champion of Islam in his numerous campaigns against the peninsular Christian states and used this image to justify his political power.
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