13th–14th centuries
Massacre of the Jewish quarter by foreign crusaders who came to fight at Las Navas de Tolosa; the Castilian knights put an end to it
1212·Tolède
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
Contingents from France and from beyond the Pyrenees had joined the army that the Christian kings were assembling against the Almohads. Passing through Toledo, they turned toward the Jewish quarter, which they regarded as a target as legitimate as the enemy they had come to fight.
The Castilian knights intervened in arms to prevent them; the chronicles, including that of Archbishop Rodrigue Jiménez de Rada, who was present during the campaign, report this without ambiguity. The foreigners left the army shortly afterward, before the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa.
The episode reveals the gap between two ways of conceiving the war against Islam: for the Iberians, Jews were part of the kingdom and served in its administration; for the northern Crusaders, the enemy began at home.
- Period :
- 13th–14th centuries
- Type :
- Massacre
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- Espagne
Rodrigue Jiménez de Rada, *De rebus Hispaniae* ; *Chronique latine des rois de Castille*.