Europe · The early medieval west
Kingdom of Castile
1065–1230
Reino de Castilla ("land of castles"). From the 9th-century County of Castile, a frontier lordship of León. Count Fernán González (c. 930s–970) won effective autonomy for the county.
- Existed
- 1065–1230
- Shown on the map
- AD 961–1027, 1040–1125, 1139–1235 (3 periods)
- Peak area
- 257k km²
- Region
- Europe
Names
Reino de Castilla ("land of castles"). From the 9th-century County of Castile, a frontier lordship of León. Count Fernán González (c. 930s–970) won effective autonomy for the county. Castile became a kingdom in 1065 when Ferdinand I (already king who had united Castile and León 1037–1065) partitioned his realms, giving Castile to Sancho II. Alfonso VI (king of León 1065, of Castile 1072–1109) captured Toledo in 1085 and took the title of emperor; he suffered defeat at Sagrajas (1086). Alfonso VIII (1158–1214) was defeated at Alarcos (1195) by the Almohads but led the Christian coalition — with Aragon, Navarre, and crusaders, blessed by Pope Innocent III — to the decisive victory at Las Navas de Tolosa on 16 July 1212, breaking Almohad power. Castile and León were definitively united under Ferdinand III in 1230.
Common questions
- What was the Kingdom of Castile?
- Reino de Castilla ("land of castles"). From the 9th-century County of Castile, a frontier lordship of León. Count Fernán González (c. 930s–970) won effective autonomy for the county.
- When did the Kingdom of Castile exist?
- The Kingdom of Castile existed 1065–1230. On this map it is drawn AD 961–1027, 1040–1125, 1139–1235.
- How large was the Kingdom of Castile?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Kingdom of Castile covered about 257,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for al-Andalus, the taifas and the Christian kingdoms as the primary basis, with Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia and academic work on the historiography of the Reconquista and the taifa period (García-Sanjuán). The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Kingdom of Castile en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Castile
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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