Almoravids Crush Castile at az-Zallaqah

The Almoravid cavalry charge at az-Zallaqah on October 23, 1086, shattered the army of Castile's King Alfonso VI and halted the Christian reconquest of Iberia for a generation. Yusuf ibn Tashfin, the Berber ruler of a vast North African empire stretching from Senegal to Algiers, had crossed the Strait of Gibraltar with thousands of Saharan warriors at the desperate invitation of the Muslim taifa kings, who were losing their territories piece by piece to Alfonso's expanding kingdom. Alfonso had conquered Toledo in 1085, the most significant Christian victory in Spain in centuries, and was pressing his advantage southward. The remaining Muslim principalities, small and fractious, recognized that none of them could resist him individually. They summoned Ibn Tashfin despite knowing that the Almoravid ruler might decide to stay and claim their lands for himself. The threat from the north was simply too immediate. The two armies met near Badajoz, in present-day western Spain, on a field the Arabic sources call az-Zallaqah ("the slippery ground"), named for the blood that soaked the earth during the fighting. Alfonso's forces, including heavy Castilian cavalry and infantry, initially drove back the taifa contingents on the Almoravid left wing. But Ibn Tashfin had held his elite African troops in reserve. When the Castilian knights were fully committed, the Almoravid center and right swept around their flanks. Alfonso himself was wounded and barely escaped with a few hundred horsemen. The victory temporarily preserved Muslim rule across southern Spain and checked the momentum of the Reconquista. Ibn Tashfin returned to North Africa but came back to Iberia repeatedly over the following years, eventually deposing the taifa kings and incorporating their lands directly into the Almoravid Empire. His intervention transformed the political landscape of medieval Spain, extending the contest between Christian and Muslim rulers by another four centuries.