Mio Cid

My final thoughts on Burgos revolve around Rodrigo Diaz, El Cid Campeador, Spain's most famous medieval resident. His titles derive from Arabic and Latin. El Cid is a Spanish derivation of the Arabic title cidi, meaning lord. Campeador is the romance (Spanish) version of the Latin title Campi Doctoris, meaning expert of battles.

Rodrigo Diaz was a knight from a minor noble family in the Burgos region. He came of age in the second half of the eleventh century, and served King Sancho II at a time when the kingdom of Castilla-León was divided amongst the three sons of King Fernando I. When Sancho was assassinated, Rodrigo transferred his services to Alfonso VI, his brother.

El Cid had a rocky relationship with Alfonso. He apparently suspected him of complicity in his brother's death, and in a semi-legendary episode, made him swear an oath in one of the churches of Burgos attesting to his innocence. Rodrigo was also an especially charismatic and popular person, and so had many jealous enemies at court. Eventually, Rodrigo was accused of embezzling tribute payments from some of Alfonso's Muslim clients. Alfonso exiled Rodrigo from Castilla as a result.

El Cid was not a man to simply accept such setbacks. He gathered his followers and placed himself in the service of Yusuf al-Mutamin, the ruler of the Muslim city-state of Zaragoza. He successfully helped his Muslim friend for several years, defending Zaragoza quite successfully against the Count of Barcelona, whom he captured twice. It was the second defeat of Barcelona that earned him his Campeador nickname, which first appears in a Latin poem, the Carmen Campidoctoris (Song of the War-leader), which dates from the 1080s.

Rodrigo became an expert in the politics of the eastern Iberian peninsula. In the early 1090s, when his Muslim ally al-Qadir was kicked out of his city of Valencia, El Cid set out to carve a principality for himself. He triumphantly entered the city in May of 1094, and held it for the rest of his life.

He was immediately challenged by the arrival of the Almoravid dynasty from Morocco, who had come at the request of the Andalusian Muslims to help them against their powerful Christian neighbors (El Cid and Alfonso VI). Alfonso VI was badly defeated by the Almoravids at the battle of Zallaqah in 1086. El Cid, however, managed to successfully defeat Almoravid attacks on his principality twice in the later 1090s.

Rodrigo Diaz died peacefully in Valencia in 1099, at about sixty years of age. He was a legend in his own time, and, within 100 years, was the subject of a major Latin biography, and Spain's first and most famous medieval epic, the Cantar de Mio Cid. Though later generations of Spanish Christians tried to turn El Cid into the ultimate Christian hero, he was, in all reality, a mercenary and free-booter, equally at home, as were many of the elites of his day, like Alfonso, in both the Christian and Muslim courts of eleventh century Spain.