"On Saint James Way in castle proud
A glorious king of men did dwell
And brought his steel upon the Moor
Until the savage Moor-king fell."
- Verse from "The Ballad of William of the Bull," circa 1196
~
Excerpt: Fractured Cross: The Kingdoms of Northern Iberia - Leona Mondeforo, Falconbird Press, AD 2011
One would be hard-pressed to write a history of the Hispano-Normans without dwelling extensively on Guillermo I - the monarch remembered in history as Guillermo del Toro.
Guillermo was born in 1091, a grandson of Geofredo I, the first King of Santiago - the eldest son of Geofredo's second son, Balduino, and thus never expected to be in the line of succession. Indeed, when Geofredo passed in 1105 and the crown went to his first son (the short-lived Tancredo I), it seemed Guillermo would be out of the line of succession entirely. Of course, fate would intervene on his behalf - or perhaps more than fate.
In 1110, Tancredo died suddenly. Histories record that he fell off his horse while practicing the joust, but an analysis of his corpse has identified nicks on various bones suggesting that he was stabbed through the back by a professional who knew where to find the heart. Rule in the Kingdom of Santiago thus passed to Tancredo's infant son, Geofredo II, then just two years old. A regency council was established to govern for the young man; that council included Guillermo, whose father had died some years before.
Already by this time, at least according to tradition, Guillermo had shown himself to be a young man of some promise. Raised by both Norman and Iberian tutors, Guillermo was said to have been visited in his teenage years by the Moorish mathematician Avezali (known to Andalusi intellectual history as Ibn Salih), who was in Santiago to debate the greatest minds in Christendom. Embellished tales suggest that the teenage Guillermo converted Avezali to Christianity by using the Bible to disprove his theorems. However, the existence of Ibn Salih's "Explorations of Problems of Numbers" - written in the 1020s and referencing discussions with "the elders of the
ferengi"[1] and full of references to Islam - suggests that Ibn Salih may never have even met Guillermo.
The story from here is a famous one. In 1111, the infant Geofredo II is said to have been "touched by the Devil's plague-hand" and killed in his cradle, then buried in state. The kingdom is said to have been awash with despair and confusion, for the infant king had died without heir or sibling. The myth goes that Satan then sent a great bull to plague the citizens of Santiago, which was only stopped when Guillermo, then a brave young knight bearing the Scallop-Shell of St. James on his shield and surcoat, stepped forward and wrestled the bull into submission with his bare hands. The citizens of Santiago are said to have then proclaimed him their king and carried him to the palace on their shoulders, there to enthrone him. It is from this incident that Guillermo gained the nickname "Guillermo of the Bull."
Historians treat this story as the ludicrously embellished myth that it is, but robust histories have now been built based on a number of factors. In 1897, the tomb of Geofredo II was opened for the first time and discovered to be empty. A text was discovered in 1966 speaking of a Great Bullfight in Santiago, in which "William the Cousin of Our Kinge" took part - in the year 1110,
before Geofredo II's apparent demise. And genetic tracing has also given credibility to the family history of the Banu Jifrid of Balansiyya, who claim to be the direct descendants of Geofredo II - despite said king apparently dying as an infant.
Current theory leans towards a more clandestine explanation. Historians believe that Guillermo, while part of Geofredo's regency council, was popular at court, impressing both the Norman ruling class with his embrace of their values and the Iberian commons with his fluency in their language and customs. With Moorish raids constantly an issue, it is likely that the nobility - who saw fit to remove Tancredo I by assassination - saw little use in continuing to keep Tancredo's child on the throne. The nobility is believed to have selected Guillermo as a replacement candidate, both due to his royal lineage (as Geofredo II's cousin) and his prominence after what may have been a memorable performance in or at the prior year's bullfight. The palace coup then sent Geofredo and his mother into exile in Andalusia, publicly announced that the boy had died of an illness and held a funeral for him to give it legitimacy, and finally enthroned Guillermo, touting the bullfighting story to legitimize him in the eyes of the public. Geofredo, meanwhile, grew up in obscurity and converted to Islam, establishing the roots of the Banu Jifrid line.
Whatever the case, Guillermo del Toro is widely considered the first true Normando king of Santiago. He spoke both Old Gallaecian and Norman French, incorporated both Norman and Gallaecian traditions into his rule, and introduced the scallop-shell banner to Santiago. He marks the beginning of the process by which the Normans were absorbed into Gallaecian culture and language, both reforming and modernizing political and social life and separating it from its Old Iberian roots as new "Normando" ways became facts of life for the common people.
Guillermo spent his first few years stepping up raids along the border with Andalusia, recruiting new knights from the ranks of the commons and training loyal Gallaecians in Norman ways. It would seem that Guillermo's early raids were successful enough to provoke a response from the Andalusians - enough so that, in 1116, the new
hajib Shams al-Din personally joined a major northward raid into the Kingdom of Santiago.
The raid proved to be a disaster; the Andalusian raiding party was turned back by a smaller force of Normans and Gallaecians, suffering significant casualties. In the fighting, Shams al-Din took an arrow to the chest and fled, eventually dying in his tent and leaving Andalusia with a succession crisis: Shams al-Din's children were babies and his brothers were mostly teenagers, and the Caliphate needed a strong hand to ensure the
Saqaliba did not lose their grip on power.
An internal power struggle ensued, with the Rus' faction of the
Saqaliba - suffering a loss of leadership after the debacle in Gallaecia - eventually losing out to those
Saqaliba originating from the Haemus. By 1117, the title of
hajib was solidly in the hands of Mujahid ibn Dalibur, a descendant of Sirmian slaves, who took on the moniker of Saif al-Din. But the Daliburids were not without their opponents, and the changeover left Saif al-Din and his core weakened for several years as the new administration wrangled with loyalists of the Rus' faction.
It was under these conditions that, in 1117, Guillermo successfully orchestrated the recapture of several border towns, the largest being Aveiro. The Hispano-Normans took home substantial loot from these conquests and came home with a new sense of momentum. However, Saif al-Din was able to blunt the 1118 campaign through the expeditious use of hired swords, stemming that momentum and working to re-establish security in the north.
Nevertheless, a new adversary had arrived for the Andalusians: Guillermo del Toro would be the most potent threat from the north the Caliphate had ever faced.[2]
[1] The Franks. Also "firanj" or "ifranji."
[2] Yes, I am alive. Work and winter depression ate my soul.
SUMMARY:
1111: Guillermo I - known as Guillermo del Toro - takes power in Santiago following an apparent coup against his infant cousin, ending the Great Upheaval.
1116: Hajib Shams al-Din is killed on the battlefield in a clash against the Hispano-Normans. In the subsequent succession crisis, the Rus' faction of the Saqaliba is replaced by the Sirmian Daliburids under Saif al-Din.
1117: King Guillermo I of Santiago recaptures Aveiro from the Moors.