Battle of al-ʿIqāb (Las Navas de Tolosa)

A shepherd's path through the Sierra Morena let the combined armies of Castile, Aragon and Navarre descend on the Almohad camp at the pass the Arabic sources call al-ʿIqāb. On Monday 15 Ṣafar 609 the caliph al-Nāṣir's great army — drawn from both shores of the strait — was routed; the chained guard around his tent became the emblem of the disaster, and the caliph fled to Marrakesh to die within the year.

The defeat broke Almohad power in Iberia. Córdoba fell within a generation, Seville soon after, and of al-Andalus there remained the mountain emirate of Granada — whose ending, 280 years later, this database records at 2 Rabīʿ al-Awwal 897.

The Arabic sources carry the Monday and the 14/15 Ṣafar pairing.