County of Portugal | ||||||||||||||||
Condado Portucalense Condado de Portugal |
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Vassalage of the Kingdoms of Asturias, Galicia and León | ||||||||||||||||
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Second County of Portugal
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Capital | Braga | |||||||||||||||
Languages |
Galician-Portuguese Mozarabic Andalusian Arabic |
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Religion |
Roman Catholicism Islam Judaism |
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Government | Feudal monarchy | |||||||||||||||
Count of Portugal | ||||||||||||||||
• | 868–873 | Vímara Peres (first of the first county) | ||||||||||||||
• | 1050–1071 | Nuno II Mendes (last of the first county; Brief Annexation to the Kingdom of León | ||||||||||||||
• | 1096–1112 | Henry of Burgundy(first of second county) | ||||||||||||||
• | 1112–1139 | Afonso Henriques (last of the second county) | ||||||||||||||
History | ||||||||||||||||
• | Established | 868 | ||||||||||||||
• | Disestablished | 1139 | ||||||||||||||
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Today part of |
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The County of Portugal (Portuguese: Condado de Portugal, Condado Portucalense, Condado de Portucale, in documents of the period the name used was Portugalia) refers to two successive medieval counties in the region around Braga and Porto, today corresponding to littoral northern Portugal, within which the identity of the Portuguese people formed. The first county existed from the mid-ninth to the mid-eleventh centuries as a vassalage of the Kingdom of Asturias and later the Kingdoms of Galicia and León, before being abolished as a result of rebellion. A larger entity under the same name was then reestablished in the late 11th century and lasted until the mid-12th century, when its count elevated it into an independent Portuguese kingdom.
The history of the county of Portugal is traditionally dated from the reconquest of Portus Cale (Porto) by Vímara Peres in 868. He was named a count and given control of the frontier region between the Limia and Douro rivers by Alfonso III of Asturias. South of the Douro, another border county would be formed decades later when what would become the County of Coimbra was conquered from the Moors by Hermenegildo Gutiérrez. This moved the frontier away from the southern bounds of the county of Portugal, but it was still subject to repeated campaigns from the Caliphate of Cordoba. The recapture of Coimbra by Almanzor in 987 again placed the County of Portugal on the southern frontier of the Leonese state for most of the rest of the first county's existence. The regions to its south were only again conquered in the reign of Ferdinand I of León and Castile, with Lamego falling in 1057, Viseu in 1058 and finally Coimbra in 1064.