Qualla: Siege of Tortosa (1148)

Siege of Tortosa (1148): Introduction

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hans Hillewaert, CC BY-SA 3.0. The men who laid siege to Tortosa in the summer of 1148 called themselves pilgrims. Some had set out to fight for Jerusalem and been rerouted to a Muslim city on a Spanish river; others were Genoese sailors, Occitan lords, Catalan knights, and Englishmen who had already stormed Lisbon on their way south. For six months they battered the walls of a place the Islamic world prized for its learning. When it was over, a charter would call Tortosa "the key of the Christians, the glory of the people, an ornament of the whole world." Getting the key cost far more than anyone had expected.

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Image: Hans Hillewaert | CC BY-SA 3.0

Siege of Tortosa (1148): A Crusade That Turned West

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Manel Zaera, CC BY-SA 2.0. The campaign was born of commerce as much as faith. In 1146 the maritime republic of Genoa struck a deal with Count Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona: Genoese ships and men would help him take Tortosa in exchange for a third of the city and freedom from tariffs across his lands. R...

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Image: Manel Zaera | CC BY-SA 2.0

Siege of Tortosa (1148): The Key of the River

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Manel Zaera, CC BY-SA 2.0. Tortosa was worth all this trouble because of where it stood. The city lay about twelve miles up the Ebro from the Mediterranean, on the river's eastern bank beneath a ridge of hills—a busy seaport with extensive dockyards and an inner citadel the Arabs called the suda. Perhaps 1...

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Image: Manel Zaera | CC BY-SA 2.0

Siege of Tortosa (1148): Six Months of Stone

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Manel Zaera, CC BY-SA 2.0. The fleet sailed from Barcelona and entered the Ebro on 1 July 1148. The army split into three camps around the city and set to work. The Genoese raised two siege towers and breached the outer wall from the southeast, then fought street by street toward the mosque. On the hill ca...

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Image: Manel Zaera | CC BY-SA 2.0

Siege of Tortosa (1148): A City Kept, Not Emptied

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ramon Berenguer, Public domain. What followed was, by the standards of the age, remarkably restrained. There was no massacre and no sack—unlike the fall of Almería the year before—probably because the conquerors had already learned how hard a stripped city was to repopulate. The Muslim and Jewish inhabitants we...

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Image: Ramon Berenguer | Public domain