El Cid: hero, friend or servant?

Anthony Mann, director of the film, El Cid, highlights the constant conflicts between Christians and Moors in Spain during the time of the taifa states around 1080 AD. These altercations arose from each other’s overzealous religious ambitions as well as their interdependence on the procurement of parias. The film opens with the aftermath of the burning of a Christian village by neighbouring Moors in Spain during the 11^th century.  Our hero, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar releases his prisoner, Al-Mutamin, the Emir of Zaragoza who solemnly pledges allegiance to king Ferdinand of Castille and who baptizes his saviour with the name, El Cid. The line delivered by El Cid when he was ambushed on his way to Zaragoza to collect parias for King Ferdinand I of Castile, “Betrayed by a Christian and saved by a Moor”, well illustrates the infighting between Christian nobles, kings and their beneficiaries, which was just as rampant between nobles and emirs in Moorish taifa states and led to their weakening. After being exiled from Alfonso VI’s court we see El Cid combining his own loyal Christian forces with the Moorish army of the Emir of Zaragoza in order to take Valencia, while leaving King Alfonso, with his armies from León, Aragón and Castile, to be defeated by the Almoravids and the Andalusian taifa emirs at the Battle of Sagrajas in 1086.

           

            The friendship that is shown between the Emir of Zaragoza and El Cid is a romanticized version of the collaboration and manipulation that we know existed between Christian kings and taifa Emirs prior to the invasion of the Almoravids. We know that after El Cid was exiled from Alfonso VI’s court, he became a mercenary soldier for his new master (not friend), Al-Mutamin, the Emir of Zaragoza, and that he commanded a large Moorish army against the Christian king Sancho Ramirez of Aragón to protect the taifa of Zaragoza from Christian invasion. Moorish forces defeated Christian troops of Aragón, Castile and León at Sagrajas, after which Alfonso VI became El Cid’s new master out of fear and necessity on the part of the King. By combining Christian and Moorish forces El Cid conquered the Kingdom of Valencia in the name of Alfonso VI, a few years before it too fell to the mutual enemy of Moors and Christians living in Spain: the Almoravids from Northern Africa led by Ben Yusuf.

It is understandable that 20^th century film-writers would have viewed this switching of alliances and masters as traits not worthy of such a heroic figure, hence the discrepancies in historical events. However, it should be noted that civil wars between Christian kings and their beneficiaries as well as revolts between Moorish nobles, their emirs and invaders, were typical of the times and hence such shifts in allegiance would have been fitting of brave knights such as El Cid, who fought as part of their livelihood.