In Spain, below the Sierra Morena, the great mountain range that stretches across the south of the Iberian peninsula, God’s favour had granted Christian arms a decisive victory. The Saracens’ defeat at Las Navas de Tolosa in the summer of 1212 had left them fatally exposed. Two decades on, their greatest cities – Cordoba, Seville – stood on the brink of capture by the king of Castile.
