Alfonso I of Portugal
| Afonso I | |
|---|---|
.png)
|
|
| King of Portugal | |
| Reign | 26 July 1139 – 6 December 1185 |
| Acclamation | 26 July 1139 |
| Successor | Sancho I |
| Count of Portugal | |
| Reign | 24 June 1128 – 25 July 1139 |
| Predecessor | Countess-queen Teresa of Portugal |
| Born | Disputed: 1106, 1109 or 1111 Disputed: Coimbra, Guimarães or Viseu, Portugal; Tierra de Campos or Sahagún, León |
| Died | 6 December 1185 Coimbra, Portugal |
| Burial | Santa Cruz Monastery, Coimbra, Portugal |
| Spouse | Mafalda of Savoy |
| Issue among others ... |
Urraca, Queen of León Sancho I Teresa, Countess of Flanders |
| House | Burgundy |
| Father | Henry, Count of Portugal |
| Mother | Teresa of León |
| Religion | Roman Catholicism |
Afonso I (1106/ 25 July 1109 /1111 – 6 December 1185), nicknamed "the Conqueror" (Portuguese: O Conquistador), "the Founder" (O Fundador) or "the Great" (O Grande) by the Portuguese, and El-Bortukali [in Arabic البرتقالي] ("the Portuguese") and Ibn-Arrink [in Arabic ابن الرَّنك or ابن الرَنْق] ("son of Henry", "Henriques") by the Moors whom he fought, was the first King of Portugal. He achieved the independence of the southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia, the County of Portugal, from Galicia's overlord, the King of León, in 1139, establishing a new kingdom and doubling its area with the Reconquista, an objective that he pursued until his death, in 1185, after forty-six years of wars against the Moors.
Afonso was the son of Henry of Burgundy and Theresa, the natural daughter of King Alfonso VI of León and Castile. According to Fernão Lopes' Crónica de Portugal de 1419, the future Portuguese king was born in Guimarães, which was at the time the most important political center of his parents. This was accepted by most Portuguese scholarship until Torquato de Sousa Soares proposed in 1990 Coimbra, the center of the county of Coimbra and another political center of Afonso's progenitors, as his birthplace, which caused a huge outrage in Guimarães and a polemic between this historian and José Hermano Saraiva. Almeida Fernandes later proposed Viseu as the birth place of Afonso basing himself on the Chronica Gothorum, which states Afonso was born in 1109, a position followed by José Mattoso in his biography of the king. Abel Estefânio has suggested a different date and thesis, proposing 1106 as the birth date and the region of Tierra de Campos or even Sahagún as likely birth places based on the known itineraries of counts Henry and Teresa.
...
Wikipedia