Spain's greatest Christian hero carries a title borrowed from Arabic
Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar fought for Christian kings and Muslim rulers alike. His famous name, El Cid, comes from an Arabic word meaning lord. Exiled by his own king, he ended up conquering Valencia and ruling it as an independent prince until his death in 1099.
Born around 1043 in Vivar near Burgos into the minor nobility, he grew up at the court of Ferdinand the Great. When Ferdinand's son Sancho II took the Castilian throne in 1065, Rodrigo became his commander and royal standard-bearer, leading campaigns against the Muslim kingdoms of al-Andalus and against Sancho's own brothers, who ruled León and Galicia. His other title, Campeador, from Latin for master of the battlefield, probably dates from those wars, and he signed documents with it himself.
Everything changed when conspirators killed the childless Sancho in 1072. The crown passed to Alfonso, the brother Rodrigo had helped depose, and the new court kept him at a distance before exiling him in 1081. He took service with the Muslim rulers of Zaragoza, defending them against Aragon and beating both the rulers of Lérida and a large army under King Sancho Ramírez of Aragon. After North African Almoravid forces crushed Castile in 1086, Alfonso swallowed his resentment and took him back.
Rodrigo then pursued his own ambitions around Valencia, backing Muslim dynasties opposed to the Almoravids. Its ruler, al-Qadir, became his tributary in 1092; when an Almoravid-inspired revolt killed al-Qadir, Rodrigo besieged the city and took it in 1094. That year he handed the Almoravids their first major defeat, on the plain of Caurte, and he held Valencia undefeated until he died. His only son Diego fell fighting them in 1097, and his widow Jimena ruled the city until forced to give it up in 1102.
No surviving record from his lifetime calls him Cid; Arab writers used Arabised forms of Rodrigo the Campeador, and the title first appears in the Poema de Almería of 1147 to 1149. Scholars think he likely earned it after taking Valencia. The epic Cantar de mio Cid later cast him as the perfect knight: brave, loyal, just and devout, and he remains Spain's best-loved national hero. Through his daughter Cristina he was grandfather of García Ramírez, King of Navarre.
Source: El Cid
