Europe · The early medieval west
County of Barcelona
9th century–1137/1162
Comtat de Barcelona. Capital: Barcelona. Emerged from the Carolingian Spanish March. Wilfred the Hairy (Guifré el Pilós) — Count of Urgell and Cerdanya (from 870), Barcelona, Girona, and Besalú (from 878), and Osona (from 886) — was the last count appointed by the Frankish king and the first to pass his counties as a hereditary inheritance to his sons; he died fighting Muslims in 897 and became the mythic founder of Catalonia.
- Existed
- 9th century–1137/1162
- Shown on the map
- AD 898–1027, 1040–1168 (2 periods)
- Peak area
- 19k km²
- Region
- Europe
Names
Comtat de Barcelona. Capital: Barcelona. Emerged from the Carolingian Spanish March. Wilfred the Hairy (Guifré el Pilós) — Count of Urgell and Cerdanya (from 870), Barcelona, Girona, and Besalú (from 878), and Osona (from 886) — was the last count appointed by the Frankish king and the first to pass his counties as a hereditary inheritance to his sons; he died fighting Muslims in 897 and became the mythic founder of Catalonia. Almanzor sacked Barcelona in 985; Count Borrell II's appeal to the Frankish king went unanswered, and in 988 he did not renew allegiance to Hugh Capet — traditionally marking Catalonia's de facto independence from the Franks. The county grew powerful; Ramon Berenguer IV's marriage to Petronilla of Aragon in 1137 created the dynastic union that became the Crown of Aragon.
Common questions
- What was the County of Barcelona?
- Comtat de Barcelona. Capital: Barcelona. Emerged from the Carolingian Spanish March. Wilfred the Hairy (Guifré el Pilós) — Count of Urgell and Cerdanya (from 870), Barcelona, Girona, and Besalú (from 878), and Osona (from 886) — was the last count appointed by the Frankish king and the first to pass his counties as a hereditary inheritance to his sons; he died fighting Muslims in 897 and became the mythic founder of Catalonia.
- When did the County of Barcelona exist?
- The County of Barcelona existed 9th century–1137/1162. On this map it is drawn AD 898–1027, 1040–1168.
- How large was the County of Barcelona?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the County of Barcelona covered about 19,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for al-Andalus, the taifas and the Christian kingdoms as the primary basis, with Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia and academic work on the historiography of the Reconquista and the taifa period (García-Sanjuán). The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — County of Barcelona en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_of_Barcelona
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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