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Europe · High and late Middle Ages

Kingdom of Portugal

1139–1910

Reino de Portugal. Capital: Coimbra, later Lisbon (from 1255). Grew from the County of Portugal. Afonso Henriques (Afonso I) was acclaimed king by his troops after the (possibly legendary) Battle of Ourique on 25 July 1139 against the Almoravids.

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Existed
1139–1910
Shown on the map
1147–1581, 1640–1911 (2 periods)
Peak area
2.0M km²
Region
Europe

Names

Reino de Portugal. Capital: Coimbra, later Lisbon (from 1255). Grew from the County of Portugal. Afonso Henriques (Afonso I) was acclaimed king by his troops after the (possibly legendary) Battle of Ourique on 25 July 1139 against the Almoravids. Independence from León is variably dated: to the acclamation of 1139, or more securely to the Treaty of Zamora (5 October 1143), in which Alfonso VII of León recognized Afonso as king (papal confirmation came only with Manifestis Probatum, 1179). Afonso took Lisbon (1147) with the aid of Second Crusaders. The Reconquista in Portugal was completed with the conquest of the Algarve (1249) under Afonso III. The Aviz dynasty came to power after the 1383–1385 interregnum, when João I secured the throne by defeating Castile at the Battle of Aljubarrota (14 August 1385). Portugal then led the Age of Discoveries (Henry the Navigator; Vasco da Gama's sea route to India, 1498; Cabral's landfall in Brazil, 1500). The Iberian Union (1580–1640) joined the crown to Habsburg Spain until the Restoration under the House of Braganza (1 December 1640). The monarchy fell in the Republican revolution of 5 October 1910.

Common questions

What was the Kingdom of Portugal?
Reino de Portugal. Capital: Coimbra, later Lisbon (from 1255). Grew from the County of Portugal. Afonso Henriques (Afonso I) was acclaimed king by his troops after the (possibly legendary) Battle of Ourique on 25 July 1139 against the Almoravids.
When did the Kingdom of Portugal exist?
The Kingdom of Portugal existed 1139–1910. On this map it is drawn 1147–1581, 1640–1911.
How large was the Kingdom of Portugal?
At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Kingdom of Portugal covered about 2 million 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:

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).

Around the same time

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