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Europe · High and late Middle Ages

Crown of Castile

1230–1715

Corona de Castilla; the united Kingdom of León and Castile. Formed by the definitive 1230 union under Ferdinand III (the Saint, king of Castile 1217, of León 1230–1252), who conquered the Guadalquivir valley: Córdoba (1236), Jaén (1246), and Seville (1248), and made Granada a vassal.

Existed
1230–1715
Shown on the map
1236–1515
Peak area
537k km²
Region
Europe

Names

Corona de Castilla; the united Kingdom of León and Castile. Formed by the definitive 1230 union under Ferdinand III (the Saint, king of Castile 1217, of León 1230–1252), who conquered the Guadalquivir valley: Córdoba (1236), Jaén (1246), and Seville (1248), and made Granada a vassal. His son Alfonso X the Wise (1252–1284) sponsored the Siete Partidas legal code (completed c. 1265, based on Roman law), the Alfonsine Tables, translation schools at Toledo, and Galician-Portuguese poetry (Cantigas de Santa Maria); he was elected (contested) king of the Romans. The Crown's Cortes united those of Castile and León. Later monarchs included Peter the Cruel, the Trastámara dynasty from Henry II, and Isabella I (1474–1504), whose marriage to Ferdinand II of Aragon (1469) joined the two crowns. The Crown persisted as a distinct realm until the Nueva Planta decrees (early 18th century).

Common questions

What was the Crown of Castile?
Corona de Castilla; the united Kingdom of León and Castile. Formed by the definitive 1230 union under Ferdinand III (the Saint, king of Castile 1217, of León 1230–1252), who conquered the Guadalquivir valley: Córdoba (1236), Jaén (1246), and Seville (1248), and made Granada a vassal.
When did the Crown of Castile exist?
The Crown of Castile existed 1230–1715. On this map it is drawn 1236–1515.
How large was the Crown of Castile?
At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Crown of Castile covered about 537,000 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:

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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