page_title: Valencia
section_title: Middle ages
hierarchical_section_title: Valencia / History / Middle ages
caption_attribution_description: plat àrab València بركة = Baraka
context_page_description: Valencia, officially València, is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-largest city in Spain after Madrid and Barcelona, surpassing 800,000 inhabitants in the municipality. The wider urban area also comprising the neighbouring municipalities has a population of around 1.6 million people. Valencia is Spain's third largest metropolitan area, with a population ranging from 1.7 to 2.5 million depending on how the metropolitan area is defined. The Port of Valencia is the 5th busiest container port in Europe and the busiest container port on the Mediterranean Sea. The city is ranked as a Beta-global city in the Globalization and World Cities Research Network.
  Valencia was founded as a Roman colony by the consul Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus in 138 BC, and called Valentia Edetanorum. In 714 Moroccan and Arab Moors occupied the city, introducing their language, religion and customs; they implemented improved irrigation systems and the cultivation of new crops as well. Valencia was the capital of the Taifa of Valencia.
context_section_description: The city surrendered to the invading Moors (Berbers and Arabs) about 714 AD, and the cathedral of Saint Vincent was turned into a mosque.
  The Castilian nobleman Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, known as El Cid, in command of a combined Christian and Moorish army, besieged the city beginning in 1092. After the siege ended in May 1094, he ruled the city and its surrounding territory as his own fiefdom for five years from 15 June 1094 to July 1099.
  The city remained in the hands of Christian troops until 1102, when the Almoravids retook the city and restored the Muslim religion. Alfonso VI of León and Castile drove them from the city, but was unable to hold it. The Almoravid Mazdali took possession on 5 May 1109, then the Almohads, seized control of it in 1171.
  Many Jews lived in Valencia during early Muslim rule, including the accomplished Jewish poet Solomon ibn Gabirol, who spent his last years in the city. Jews continued to live in Valencia throughout the Almoravid and Almohad dynasties, many of them being artisans such as silversmiths, shoemakers, blacksmiths, locksmiths, etc.; a few were rabbinic scholars. When the city fell to James I of Aragon, the Jewish population of the city constituted about 7 percent of the population.
  In 1238, King James I of Aragon, with an army composed of Aragonese, Catalans, Navarrese and crusaders from the Order of Calatrava, laid siege to Valencia and on 28 September obtained a surrender. Fifty thousand Moors were forced to leave.
  The city endured serious troubles in the mid-14th century, including the decimation of the population by the Black Death of 1348 and 
  subsequent years of epidemics — as well as a series of wars and riots that followed. In 1391, the Jewish quarter was destroyed.
  Genoese traders promoted the expansion of the cultivation of white mulberry in the area by the late 14th century, later also introducing innovative silk manufacturing techniques, with the city becoming a centre of production of mulberry, yet, at least not for a time, a major silk-making centre. The Genoese community in Valencia—comprising merchants, artisans and workers—became along Seville's one of the most important in the Iberian Peninsula.
  The 15th century was a time of economic expansion, known as the Valencian Golden Age, during which culture and the arts flourished. Concurrent population growth made Valencia the most populous city in the Crown of Aragon. Some of the landmark buildings of the city were built during the Late Middle Ages, including the Serranos Towers (1392), the Silk Exchange (1482), the Micalet, and the Chapel of the Kings of the Convent of Sant Domènec. In painting and sculpture, Flemish and Italian trends had an influence on Valencian artists.
  Valencia became a major slave trade centre in the 15th century, second only to Lisbon in the West, prompting a Lisbon–Seville–Valencia axis by the second half of the century, powered by the incipient Portuguese slave trade originated in Western Africa. By the end of the 15th century Valencia was in the group of largest European cities, being the most populated city in the Hispanic Monarchy and second to Lisbon in the Iberian Peninsula.
caption: 12th century Arab dish
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