El desafío del Miramamolín antes de la batalla de Las Navas de Tolosa (1212). Fuentes, datación y posibles orígenes

Abstract

Numerous European sources have asserted that before the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212, July 16) the Almohade Mimmamolin al-Nāṣir (1199-1213) proclaimed his wish to fight against all Christendom in a great pitched battle. Joined to the memory of the great Christian victory, the notice of the «Miramamolin's challenge» appeared in different versions and experienced a progressive enrichment. That allows us to observe a singular and outstanding feature in medieval historiography: the conversion of a uncertain fact into a historical and even well-documented event owing to its unusual or instructive nature. The analysis of its chronology during the critical period 1195-1212 and of its possible «historical» origin allows us to judge the «Miramamolin's challenge» like a rumor of great geographic and temporal diffusion full of ideological and propagandistic intention and framed in the context of military and religious crisis that involved the Spanish Crusade of Las Navas de Tolosa. Real or suppossed event, this episode is interesting because it was believed true by many contemporaries. It explains its subsequent historiographical importance. For the same reason it is possible to observe through its analysis many of the ideological and psychological elements that conformed the warlike mentality of Christendom at the beginning of the 13th Century.