Hi Everyone
In what ways did The King Cid also known as El Cid help to throw out the attacking Moorish Muslims from Spain? I await and Look forward to some replies.





kind regards John Stefan

I don't think El Cid (Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar) did very much at all to get the Moors out of Spain - rather the opposite in fact in that he happily worked with them when it suited his own purposes. He'd served as a soldier under the Moorish king of the al-Andalus city of Zaragoza, Yusuf al-Mu'taman ibn Hud, notably fighting against the Christian kingdom of Aragon. Then using a combined Moorish and Christian army he briefly reclaimed the Taifa of Valencia from Moorish control, but this was done entirely for his own benefit and advancement. He briefly ruled the principality from 1094 until his death in 1099 (his wife, Jimena Díaz, inherited the city and maintained it until 1102 when it was reconquered by the Moors). During his short tenure, Valencia, while officially ruled by him in the name of Alfonso VI of Leon, Galicia and Castille, was fully independent under his personal rule, yet it nevertheless continued to be administered, as it had been previously, by a combined Christian, Muslim, Jewish council. Notably no Moors were expelled from the city while it was under El Cid's personal rule. His famed defence of Valencia against its recapture by Almoravid forces is likely to have be more about protecting his own feudal possessions - and the status and income that came from them - than a defiant stand against Islam. In the end of course he died, likely from famine or disease as a result of the siege, and the city was duly recaptured, to remain under Muslim control for the next 125 years.

His memory as a celebrated Spanish folk hero is probably due to the later medieval epic poem, El Cantar de mio Cid, which has less to do with factual history than about presenting him as the ideal chivalrous medieval knight. I don't know but I wouldn't be surprised if these days he is lauded as personifying the combined Muslim and Christian inheritance that went to make Spain, and that rather than being associated with the expulsion of the Muslims he actually represents inter-faith tolerance, or at least acceptance.    

The systematic and concerted expulsion of Muslims - along with the Jews and indeed anyone else with a religious belief other than orthodox Catholicism - only really came after 1492 when the last Moorish emirate, Granada, fell to the forces of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille and they, and subsequently their successors, thereafter ruled a more-or-less united and exclusively Catholic Spain.