The circumstances of part of that period made individual companies possible of conquest, as it was time of expansion of Christian civilization and feudal, of occupations and colonizations, of frontier movements, of the emergence of new lordships, principalities and kingdoms won at the stroke of the sword from non-Christian peoples. Normans in the British Isles, southern Italy, and Sicily; Leonese, Castilians, Aragonese, Catalans against Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula; European knights in the Near East, in the context of the Crusades; German warriors advancing east in the so-called Drang nach Osten they are principal scenes of that great Christian expansion that Europe witnessed in those formative centuries.
The expansive feudal dynamic and the fragmentation of powers facilitated, to a large extent, the success of adventurer commanders such as Robert Giscard and his brother Roger de Hauteville , Rodrigo the Champion or the count Bohemond of Taranto , each of them acting in contexts where power was disaggregated, disputed between different actors in contention. This phenomenon will begin to be more strange from the middle of the twelfth century, at which time the European feudal monarchies will be consolidated, strengthened, thanks, among other reasons, to the creation and encouragement of military orders , conceived as royal instruments to control large territories and act, together with the kings themselves, in that expansion of the Christian kingdoms. Templars and Hospitallers in different parts of Europe and the Middle East, Santiago, Calatravo and Alcantarinos in the Iberian Peninsula; Teutonic knights in the Germanic context would come to hinder, or rather make impossible, personal conquest companies such as those led by the aforementioned conquerors. These military orders, which combined ideals typical of chivalry with others characteristic of monks, would cause, to a large extent, the end of a model of stately and adventurous conquest.
But until the monarchies were in a position to monopolize the expansive process, and until the military orders were strong enough to act as effective territorial agents of the kings, those independent lords They had their windows of opportunity. This phenomenon is especially visible in the Iberian Peninsula of the twelfth century, in which the kings were strengthening their feudal relations with the nobility, also integrating the military orders in the global company of the holy war against the infidels. At the end of that 12th century, it was practically impossible for a knight commander, like the Cid Campeador decades ago, to have the option of conquering his own principality, not subject to an increasingly consolidated monarchy as an institution. The time of the adventurous conquering warriors gave way to that of the kings, strongly supported by the warrior aristocracy, the friars of the military orders and the militias of the border councils.
One such window of opportunity was opened, beginning in about 1162, for a Portuguese knight named Geraldo Sempavor (Geraldo Sin Miedo), who will later be called by some Portuguese historians “the Portuguese Cid”. Can the achievements of the Portuguese knight commander be compared to those of Rodrigo Díaz? Would that adventurous commander deserve the nickname "Cid"? Partly yes and partly no. In part yes, because his personal project and the modus operandi warrior that he develops maintain many similarities with some actions and ambitions of the Castilian Cid. In part no, because he did not complete his work, and that is why, among other reasons, he would not generate a heroic literature of the magnitude, scope and depth as the one developed around the figure of Cid Campeador.
The Iberian Peninsula in the mid-twelfth century. The emergence and expansion of the Almohad
The 12th century on the peninsula was marked by a series of political changes that conditioned relations between Christians and Muslims. In the year 1109 the emperor Alfonso VI had died. , leaving the throne to his daughter Urraca. That fact would motivate a bloody civil war that shook the kingdoms of León and Castile for a couple of decades, with the political and military intervention of the Aragonese king Alfonso I el Batallador in Leonese and Castilian affairs. Meanwhile, the Almoravids, from the Maghreb, were consolidating their power in al-Andalus, fighting intensely against the Christian kingdoms on the borders, located on the Tagus and the Ebro. The last years of the reign of Alfonso VIII, crowned "emperor" in the year 1135, supposed a certain internal stability, which made it possible for the hitherto withdrawn Castilian and Leonese territories, to resume an offensive dynamic against some Almoravids who, from approximately 1145, will begin to show certain symptoms of decline.
The main cause of the end of the Almoravids we must look for it, once again, in North Africa. There, around his, a region located in the southwest of Morocco, a character named Ibn Tumart began to preach around 1120 a new, more rigorous Islamic doctrine, critical of the moral and religious relaxation that the Almoravids had reached. From a community of faithful, who named him mahdi (“Guided by God”), he began to preach a new, more rigid interpretation of the Koran, gaining more faithful every day. The Almohad movement was born. Upon his death, he was succeeded in the imamate by Abd al-Mu'min, an important figure who brought military consistency to what had begun as a purely religious movement. Around 1145 the Almoravids were completely defeated in North Africa. This new Almohad empire and caliphate would soon set its sights on the Iberian Peninsula, also extending to Tunisia, Algeria and Libya.
The genesis, expansion and consolidation of the Almohad empire It was similar, in some points, to what the Almoravid movement had been, going from being a religious current inspired by an intellectual, to becoming a military empire with a powerful expansive thrust and based on the idea and practice of holy war. In this expansive dynamic, the Almohads jumped to the Iberian Peninsula in 1146, starting since then fights between Almoravids and Almohads in al-Andalus. A year later Alfonso VII, the Emperor, launched a crusade that had the naval support of Genoese and Pisan fleets, and which resulted in the short-lived conquest of Almería. From then on, the Almohad implantation will be unstoppable, although important pockets of Almoravid resistance will emerge, especially in the regions of Granada and Murcia, where leaders such as Ibn Hamusk and, especially, Ibn Mardanish, the Wolf King, will resist the Almohad push thanks, among other things, the support received from Castilian, Navarrese, Aragonese and Catalan nobles and knights.
In 1157 Alfonso VII died, who had managed to unify and give strength to the kingdom of León-Castilla. But before he died he had decided to divide his kingdom between his two sons. To Ferdinand he gave the kingdom of León, to Sancho that of Castile. The following year the two brothers met in the Leonese town of Sahagún to negotiate the lines of expansion against the Muslims that both kingdoms would henceforth carry out. The Via de la Plata would be the limit, established in the Treaty of Sahagún, that would separate León from Castile, and also the areas of future conquest of both kingdoms. Disputes between the two Christian kingdoms would not take long to begin, especially after the premature death of Sancho de Castilla (Sancho II). Two powerful noble houses, Lara and Castro, will maintain harsh power struggles in these newly divided kingdoms, fighting to control a new Castilian king who is still very young, Alfonso, the eighth of his name, who decades later will lead a crusading army that will defeat the Almohads in Las Navas de Tolosa.
Meanwhile, in the west of the peninsula, Count Alfonso Enríquez he was taking steps to turn the county of Portugal into a real kingdom. In the year 1139 he had defeated the Almoravids in the battle of Ourique, after which his men hailed him as a true king. In fact, Alfonso Enríquez, son of Count Enrique de Borgoña and Countess Teresa, daughter of Alfonso VI, would act from now on, and more than until then, as a de facto king, and thus would be regarded by his subjects as a true king. . The new division between León and Castile, and the disputes between the two kingdoms, would give impetus to a kingdom of Portugal that would not be officially recognized by Pope Alexander III until the year 1179, through the bull Manifestus Probatum . Previously, in the year 1143, Alfonso Enríquez had submitted to vassalage to the Leonese emperor Alfonso VII, who since then recognized him as King of Portugal.
Portuguese tensions with the kingdom of León. Geraldo Sempavor enters the scene
In 1163 Abd al-Mumin, the first Almohad caliph, died and was succeeded by his son Yúsuf I (Abu Yacub Yúsuf), who until then held the position of governor of Seville, and that is why he was well versed in peninsular affairs. That rise to the caliphate of Yúsuf I will coincide with the appearance of the character we will deal with here, Geraldo , called in his time Sempavor, and much later "the Portuguese Cid". And it is that we begin to have news of Geraldo's actions around 1165, seven years after the kings of León and Castile had substantiated the distribution of the expansion against the Muslims in the aforementioned treaty of Sahagún. That treaty between Fernando II and Sancho II did not contemplate Portugal, what is more, the territories of this incipient kingdom, not yet recognized by the pope, were also included in the distribution, corresponding to that area of expansion, "up to Lisbon", to the kingdom of Lion. That would deeply irritate Alfonso Enríquez, since Sahagún's treaty seriously threatened the consolidation of Portugal as a kingdom and its future expansion against the Muslims. That is why Enríquez will move a piece, a piece called Geraldo, since he had the Portuguese Templars busy fighting the Almohads on the borders of the Tagus, in Alentejo. In the year 1147 Alfonso I had conquered the important square of Lisbon, thanks to international crusade aid, within the framework of the so-called Second Crusade, and from then on the Portuguese border against the Muslims had been fixed on the Tagus line . But around 1165 it is possible that the Portuguese monarch was more concerned about another border, the one that marked the limits of his territories with the neighboring kingdom of León.
That year of 1165 was important in several ways. Trying to reduce border tensions between León and Portugal, the marriage between the infanta Urraca, daughter of Alfonso Enríquez, and Fernando II of León was substantiated. But that marriage would not ease the tensions between the two kingdoms too much. Pushed by an ambitious aristocracy, both monarchs, now father-in-law and son-in-law, began to act in the territorial strip that separated the two kingdoms. Between 1166 and 1168 Alfonso Enríquez attacked the kingdom of León by Galicia, occupying some Leon squares. In those same years Fernando II repopulated and fortified Ciudad Rodrigo, very close to the border, and snatched the Alcántara and Alburquerque squares from the Almohads, inserting León like a wedge into territories of natural Portuguese expansion. The Miño River acted as a natural border between the two kingdoms to the north, while the east-west borders were set by a line of important Leonese towns and positions from north to south:Zamora, Ledesma, Ciudad Rodrigo, Coria, Alcantara and Alburquerque.
The Leon conquest of points such as Alcántara and Alburquerque was possible, also, by virtue of another factor that helps us to better understand the actions of Geraldo Sempavor during the years from 1165 to 1169, and which we will detail below. And it is that in that interval the Almohad presence in the so-called Garb al-Andalus, the western lands of al-Andalus, was scarce, fragile and weak. At that time the Almohad caliphal power was concentrated in the fights with the rebel Ibn Mardanish, the Wolf King , in the Sharq al-Andalus, or eastern sector of al-Andalus, who had the epicenter of his lordship around Murcia. This explains why the Almohad caliphal power concentrated its military forces and its attention in that area of concern, because the Wolf King even threatened to expand into Granada and Córdoba, where there had been harsh fights between the Almohads and the last remnants of Almoravid power, embodied by local anti-Almohad lords.
All this meant that in those years the Garb al-Andalus was an unstructured space, a large area where there was an obvious vacuum of solid power. This absence of authority was taken advantage of by Geraldo Sempavor to carry out a rapid succession of conquests of different Almohad fortified positions, located in the Portuguese Antentejo and in Extremadura's "Mesopotamia", the space between the Tagus and Guadiana rivers in the current region. of Extremadura. That dizzying capture of strengths it was made possible by the absence of a solid Almohad power. But also thanks to the cunning, audacity and courage of its protagonist, Geraldo Sempavor, whose actions we know from the chronicle of the contemporary and pro-Almohad historian:Ibn Sahib al-Sala. And it is that the work of this author is the main source, and almost the only one, to know in detail the actions of the mysterious Portuguese knight commander.
“Giraldo the dog” and special or command operations
How is it possible that a practically unknown warrior conquered in just four years, between 1165 and 1169, and in this order, castles and fortresses such as Trujillo, Évora, Cáceres, Montánchez , Serpa, Jurumeña, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Monfragüe and Alconchel? Ibn Sahib al-Sala illustrates this ability, describing for us the tactic used by Gerald to gain control of fortified positions. This tactic would be based on surprise, nocturnality, stealth, audacity and a great training of his men to develop actions that can be considered authentic commando operations:
In this way Geraldo Sempavor created in four years a virtual manor in a no man's land , in a border area where the Almohad power was very weak and where the influence of León, Castile and Portugal did not reach, kingdoms that at that time were in conflict with each other, and were afflicted by some internal problems. Geraldo took advantage of his window of opportunity to dominate, from the heights of his sierras and mountains, a vast territory through which his cavalry squadrons would travel quickly, living on looting based on raids launched against rural and agricultural populations. 
Geraldo Sempavor had arisen, had been substantiated and had operated because the Portuguese king, Alfonso Enríquez, had given him power in an area devoid of power. He would have started acting in those territories because the Portuguese monarch had granted him command and a certain independence, an autonomy of criteria that the warrior commander knew how to take advantage of in four years. Would the Portuguese king have promised him the possession and government of the lands that he could conquer in that space? Had the king assured the commander that he would make him count or lieutenant of that territory? We do not know what agreements they would reach, but we can guess that Geraldo was stimulated by Alfonso, and that he would grant Geraldo a wide margin of autonomy of action and criteria, even pointing out the points, or not, that he had to control with the warriors of the. The Almohad court chronicler, Ibn Sahib al-Sala, enlightens us again:
But to turn a virtual manor into a truly consolidated one, Geraldo needed to possess the only important city in that vast space:Badajoz . And it is that Badajoz was then the only true city existing in the wide territory dominated by Geraldo from his different positions, and it was there where the Almohad presence was more solid. There were quite a few kilometers that separated Badajoz from Seville, a city well known by Yusuf I, who would end up turning it into the Almohad capital on the Iberian Peninsula. Badajoz was isolated, lonely, because the Almohad caliphal power was concentrated in other wars. Geraldo took advantage of the situation to attack the city of Badajoz, using a base of operations that he had recently seized from his adversaries:Jurumeña.
The threatened lion reacts. The Sevillian embassy of Fernando Rodríguez de Castro el Castellano
From that position, Jurumeña, located on escarpments downstream of the Guadiana, Geraldo Sempavor pressed the surroundings of Badajoz with his raids, preparing the ground to submit the city to a siege . Meanwhile, Fernando II of León was going through problems, and was more in need of alliances than ever, due to his border frictions with Portugal, his conflicts with Castile, and, especially, due to Geraldo's conquests in his line of natural expansion towards the south. And it is that this Leonese territorial expansion against the Muslims, and with it the very survival of the kingdom, would be seriously compromised if Alfonso Enríquez consolidated his presence in present-day Extremadura through the lordship of Geraldo's friend. The only ally that Ferdinand II had left was the Almohad caliph, and that is why he sent to Seville, seat of the caliphal power, who was possibly his most powerful and valuable man at the time, Fernando Rodríguez de Castro, “the Spanish” , one of the most preponderant Christian tycoons of the moment. Fernando Rodríguez was an ambitious nobleman. Of Castilian origins, he had been at odds with the kings of León and Castile alike, and with the noble house that ruled the Castilian royal power, the house of Lara, the guardians and protectors of the child Alfonso VIII.
Rodríguez de Castro remained in Seville for a few months, defending the interests of King Ferdinand and, perhaps even more, his own. Geraldo, meanwhile, harassed and pressed Badajoz with his rides and “his terrors”. He was a little less than a hundred years old than another illustrious Castilian, Rodrigo Díaz, the Champion , he had enjoyed Muslim hospitality in Seville for a few months. Rodrigo had gone there in 1079 sent by his king, Alfonso VI, to collect the outcasts that the Taifa king of that time owed to the powerful Castilian-Leon sovereign. Fernando Rodríguez sought in that room to solidify an alliance with the Almohad caliph Yúsuf I. Ibn Sahib al-Sala relates that "the Christian chief Fernando", "Lord of Trujillo" (he was not yet Lord of Trujillo, but he was when the chronicler wrote his chronicle), "famous among Christians for his lineage and courage... he arrived in Seville (June-July 1168)... with the desire to become a servant of the Amir al-Muminin... abandoning the company of the infidels". He stayed in Seville for five months with his retinue, surrounded by luxuries and gifts. There, the chronicler affirms, “his heart softened with the great gifts, until he became almost Islamized and promised God to be a faithful adviser to the Almohad power with the best service, and he submitted and promised that he would not raid the country of the Almohads and would be for them their support and ally of the Muslims”, and left full of donations and honors. The best "gift" that Fernando Rodríguez would take from Seville would be a mutual military aid agreement, a pact that in the future will be beneficial for King Fernando II, and for the Castilian tycoon himself.
Battle in Badajoz
Between the months of March and April of the year 1169 Gerald had managed to dominate most of Badajoz. The Almohads only resisted in the citadel , subjected to siege by the Portuguese commander. Geraldo granted a conditional truce to the besieged, a period of non-aggression for those surrounded to seek help abroad, with the promise of handing over the citadel if after the given period the aid was not received. Fernando II received the requests for help from the besieged Almohads and went with his troops to Badajoz, camping near him. The Portuguese king Alfonso Enríquez had also gone to Badajoz, to support his commander militarily in the siege. The Almohad defenders managed to secretly open a breach in the walls of Badajoz, through which a group managed to secretly reach one of the gates of the outer wall and open it for the passage of Leonese troops. At that time Geraldo and the Portuguese had managed to dominate the space between the first walled enclosure and the citadel itself, where the Almohad garrison was resisting. When the Leonese troops managed to penetrate the Portuguese space, a hard battle took place, which had disastrous consequences for the Portuguese:
The Portuguese king was forced to flee precipitously, and in his retreat he suffered a strong blow to the leg with one of the bars that served to bar the door of the wall through which he was escaping. Unconscious from the impact, Alfonso Enríquez was arrested by his enemies. Geraldo was also captured by the Leonese during the clash. The Portuguese monarch had been defeated by his own son-in-law, with the help of the Almohads, and in exchange for his freedom he had to hand over the border positions of Limia and Torón to Fernando II. Geraldo was able to recover his freedom in exchange for giving up all his conquests to the Leonese. The great beneficiary turned out to be Fernando Rodríguez de Castro, who from now on would be the owner of all that virtual lordship that Geraldo had managed to establish. Rodríguez de Castro would settle in Trujillo the center of his power, and henceforth he will be called "Lord of Trujillo". Ferdinand II left the situation as it was. Consistent with Badajoz remaining in Almohad hands, thinking that in the future it would be more legitimate for him to conquer the city from Muslims than Christians, he withdrew into his kingdom. His father-in-law, Alfonso Enríquez, was so badly injured that day, with a fatally fractured leg, that he will never be able to ride properly again. From then on it will have to be his son, the infante Sancho, the commander in chief of the Portuguese hosts.
Fortification of Badajoz and new attempts by Geraldo Sempavor (1170-1173)
Caliph Yúsuf I understood that he had been very close to losing the important seat of Badajoz. That is why he appoints a new governor of the city, Abu Yahya, whom he instructs to adopt measures to strengthen that position key, ensure the water supply inside the citadel and garrison it with warriors. A siege like the one suffered could be repeated in the not too distant future, and the opponents could once again be the Portuguese commanded by Geraldo and supported by their king or, who knows, the kingdom of León. Abu Yahya was quick to obey the Caliph's orders from him:
Geraldo Sempavor did not take a year to resume hostilities against Badajoz. This time he will develop a reverse strategy to the previous one. If years ago he had conquered different places to later focus on Badajoz, this time he would go from the beginning to the central pearl of that necklace, to the most important city in all that territory. The places that he had previously conquered were now in the hands of Fernández de Castro, who would have tried to prevent them from being assaulted and taken by the Portuguese commander. Geraldo chose the position of Lobón as his main base of operations, located about 40 kilometers from Badajoz, following the course of the Guadiana to the east. From there he launched cavalcades against the surroundings of his target, to exhaust his resources , prevent supply and thus prepare the ground for a subsequent siege. The atriction was soon felt in Badajoz, in such a way that it became necessary for the Almohad governor to try to neutralize the raids launched by Geraldo Sempavor. Governor Yahya, on one occasion, launched himself against Geraldo's troops, which feigned flight and led the Almohads into an ambush in which they were defeated. The brother of the chronicler Ibn Sahib al-Sala, who was in that party, was arrested, and could only recover his freedom by paying the high figure of 300 dinars. It is not surprising that the Almohad historian expresses so much hatred towards the Portuguese warrior.
Badajoz was already feeling the effects of shortages and hunger. Geraldo tried with his rides that no supplies reached the people of Badajoz. Ibn Sahib al-Sala clearly relates this situation of haste, saying that "the weakness of the city of Badajoz increased due to lack of food in it, due to the harassment of the cursed foreigner, Giraldo, against it with attacks, and cut off the entrance in it of provisions”. That is why the Almohad authorities were forced to supply Badajoz from Seville, sending a convoy of "five thousand pack animals loaded with food, fodder and weapons". Geraldo set out to intercept that procession, and to do so he ambushed his men in a strategic and rugged position near the current town of El Valle de Matamoros , located 66 kilometers from Badajoz, on the way to Seville. In that trap Geraldo Sempavor undid the Almohad contingent, seized the supplies. Governor Yahya died in that crash. It is possible that the name of the current town comes from the massacre of Muslims ("Moors") perpetrated by Geraldo and his men in the vicinity of the town. Those events took place in May 1170, a year after Geraldo and Alfonso Enríquez were defeated by the Leonese and Almohads in Badajoz.
During the following months Geraldo's harassment of Badajoz continued, until the Almohad power reacted again. To this end, Almohad troops targeted the two main positions from which the Portuguese commander was harassing the city, Jurumeña and Lobón, while sending new supply convoys. Jurumeña was conquered by the Almohads in the fall of 1170, and Lobón a year later.
The end of Geraldo Sempavor
The last years of Geraldo Sempavor they are quite dark. It is very little, almost nothing, what we know of that period. We know that at some point he was defeated by the Almohads, perhaps in 1173 or 1174, and possibly captured by them in some action. We find him again acting as a mercenary in the service of the Almohads in Morocco, where he would have been deported after his arrest. In the region of the Sus valley, where Ibn Tumart had started the Almohad movement decades before, he was granted land in exchange for fighting anti-Almohad uprisings that were taking place in that region. It is not known why, but around the year 1176 he was sentenced to death and beheaded . A later Christian chronicler, familiar with the international situation at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries, asserts that Gerald, "impoverished and deprived of all help, took refuge with the Saracens, on whom he had inflicted much damage, and by the que fue decapitado en tierras marroquíes con un pretexto baladí”. Se especula con la posibilidad de que desde aquel nuevo destino marroquí, Geraldo pudiera ponerse en contacto con su rey, para proponerle un plan de invasión a aquellas tierras fértiles del valle de Sus, o que fuese Alfonso Enríquez quien contactara con su antiguo vasallo, para ordenarle que preparara desde allí un desembarco portugués. Al ser descubierto el plan Geraldo habría sido ejecutado. Los últimos días de Geraldo, como sus primeros años de vida, sus orígenes sociales, su procedencia geográfica, sus relaciones con Alfonso Enríquez… son cuestiones que permanecen en la bruma y el misterio.
Es muy poco lo que conocemos sobre este enigmático personaje, que pudo consolidar un señorío propio en las tierras de la actual Extremadura y el Alentejo portugués. Si no fuese por la crónica de Ibn Sahib al-Sala , sus acciones serían prácticamente desconocidas para nosotros, aunque quedaran de él otros rastros de memoria. Donde más se ha conservado la memoria de Geraldo Sempavor es en la bella ciudad de Évora, por él conquistada mediante el empleo de su táctica sorpresiva y osada. Esa ciudad con tanta historia conserva la memoria de su primer conquistador cristiano en su escudo heráldico, en el que el guerrero es representado en actitud combativa, a caballo, sobre las cabezas decapitadas de dos musulmanes, un hombre y una mujer. También podemos encontrar en Évora algún rincón que lleva su nombre, incluso alguna estatua que representa al guerrero agarrando la cabeza cercenada de un musulmán, alguno de aquellos que habrían sido víctimas de sus acciones bélicas y sus “terrores”.
¿Un Cid portugués?
Aunque Geraldo Sempavor no generó todo el torrente de literatura heroica y mitificaciones posteriores a las que sí dio pie Rodrigo Díaz, lo cierto es que ambos personajes guardan alguna similitud. Ambos aprovecharon momentos y lugares donde no había un poder bien definido y asentado, donde la autoridad estaba disgregada. Ambos intentaron, con éxito desigual, conquistar y consolidar un señorío propio en base a su capacidad para comandar huestes y su talento militar . Rodrigo culminó su empresa gracias a la conquista de Valencia, Geraldo chocó contra las murallas de la alcazaba de Badajoz, la más grande de Europa, y fue víctima de una alianza de almohades y leoneses. Ambos explotaron la razia intensa y persistente para debilitar sus objetivos militares y mantener sus ejércitos. Ambos fueron arrojados e inteligentes, aglutinando tradiciones y concepciones cristianas y musulmanas. En definitiva, los dos fueron hombres de frontera en un contexto de convulsión y guerra, en un mundo en el que lo cristiano y lo musulmán no estaba demasiado bien diferenciado en aquellos contextos fronterizos tumultuosos y cambiantes.
Fuentes y bibliografía
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- IBN SAHIB AL-SALA:al-Mann bil-Imama , estudio preliminar, traducción e índices de Ambrosio Huici Miranda, Valencia, Anubar, 1969.
- CRESSIER, Patrice, FIERRO, Maribel y MOLINA, Luis (eds.):Los almohades:problemas y perspectivas , 2 vols, Madrid, CSIC, 2005.
- Crónica latina de los reyes de Castilla , traducción de Luis Charlo Brea, Madrid, 1999.
- HUICI MIRANDA, Ambrosio:Historia Política del Imperio Almohade , edición facsímil, estudio preliminar de Emilio Molina López y Vicente Carlos Navarro Oltra, Granada, 2000.
- LAPIEDRA, Eva:“Giraldo Sem Pavor, Alfonso Enríquez y los almohades”, en Fernando Díaz Esteban (ed.), El reino taifa de Badajoz , Madrid, 1996, pp. 147-158.
- LOPES, David:“O Cid portugués:Geraldo Sempavor”, en Revista Portuguesa de História , 1 (1941), pp. 93-110.
- PORRINAS GONZÁLEZ, David:“La actuación de Giraldo Sempavor al mediar el siglo XII:un estudio comparativo”, en Julián Clemente Ramos y Juan Luis de la Montaña Conchiña (eds.), II Jornadas de Historia Medieval de Extremadura. Ponencias y Comunicaciones , Mérida, 2005, pp. 179-188.
- PEREIRA, Armando da Sousa:Geraldo Sem Pavor. Um guerreiro de fronteira entre cristaos e muçulmanos, c. 1162-1176 , Oporto, 2008.
- VIGUERA MOLINS, María Jesús y otros:El retroceso territorial de al-Andalus. Almorávides y almohades, siglos XI al XIII , Historia de España Menéndez Pidal, Tomo VIII-III , Madrid, 1997.