Kingdom of Aragon

Born as a small Pyrenean county around Jaca, Aragon became a kingdom in 1035 and grew, by conquest and marriage, into the core of one of medieval Europe's great Mediterranean powers. Its lands match the modern Spanish region of Aragon, but its kings also ruled Catalonia, Valencia, Majorca and lands in Italy and Greece through the wider Crown of Aragon. Joined with Castile under one monarch from 1479, it kept its own institutions until the early eighteenth century.

Its origins lie in a small Carolingian county around the town of Jaca, which fell under the overlordship of Pamplona, the future Navarre, during the early ninth century. Its line of counts died out without a male heir in 922. The name comes from the river Aragón that runs past Jaca; one suggestion traces it to Basque words for "good upper valley", another to the Roman province of Hispania Tarraconensis.

When Sancho III of Navarre died in 1035, his lands were split. His illegitimate son Ramiro received Aragon, and after the early death of his half-brother Gonzalo he also took Sobrarbe and Ribagorza. Although Ramiro himself never took the title of king, tradition counts him as the first, and his victory over his brother, García Sánchez III of Navarre, freed Aragon from Navarrese control. Ramiro's son Sancho Ramírez, who gained the Navarrese crown as well, called himself king of both the Aragonese and the Pamplonese.

As part of the Reconquista, Aragonese kings took land from al-Andalus and moved their capital southwards, from Jaca to Huesca in 1096 and to Zaragoza in 1118. When Alfonso the Battler died childless in 1134, Navarre and Aragon chose different rulers and went their separate ways. By 1285 the southernmost parts of today's Aragon had been taken from Muslim rule.

The marriage of Queen Petronilla of Aragon and Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona, produced the dynastic union known as the Crown of Aragon, usually dated to 1150. Their son Alfonso II inherited both inheritances. Later kings added Majorca, Valencia, Sicily, Sardinia and Naples, and at times held titles such as Count of Provence, Lord of Montpellier and Duke of Athens and Neopatria. Each territory was administered separately; the Kingdom of Aragon proper was only one of them. In the fourteenth century the Union of Aragon placed serious limits on royal power.

The House of Barcelona died out in 1410. Two years on, over fierce objections from Catalonia, the Aragonese chose a Castilian prince, Ferdinand of Antequera, as their king. One of his successors, John II, who reigned from 1458 to 1479, arranged for his heir Ferdinand to marry Isabella, heir to the throne of the Crown of Castile. When John died in 1479 the two crowns came together under one couple, forming the nucleus of modern Spain.

Aragon kept its own parliament, the Corts, and its own administration under the Spanish monarchy. That ended after the War of the Spanish Succession, when Philip V issued the Nueva Planta decrees between 1707 and 1715, abolishing the separate kingdoms of the Crown and merging them with Castile. A decree of 1711 restored some Aragonese civil law but not self-government. Aragon remained a unit of administration until 1833, when it was divided into three provinces; since 1982 it has been an autonomous community of Spain.

Our maps label it Aragón from 1000 to 1500. The 1000 map shows it before it became a kingdom in 1035; in the following centuries it borders Navarre, France and, to the south, successively the Almoravid dynasty, the Almohad Caliphate and the Emirate of Granada.