Mountains of doom and mountains of salvation: topographies of conflict in the early medieval Latin chronicles of Iberia

Abstract

ABSTRACT Early Latin chronicles of Iberia repeatedly situate bellicose encounters between Christians and Muslims in one specific topographical environment: the mountain. This paper examines the Mozarabic Chronicle (mid eighth century) and two Asturian narratives known as the Chronicle of Albelda (late ninth century) and Chronicle of Alfonso III (early tenth century). In the former, mountainous terrain constitutes the backdrop for successive encounters (the Islamic invasion and Battle of Guadalete, and the Christians’ attempts at resistance and first successes) and are associated with ambivalent sentiments of despair, uncertainty and hope. In the latter, the mountain is where the foundational act of the Battle of Covadonga occurs, a univocal place of victory for the Christians. Such a change of attitude towards the mountain and its narrative and symbolic potential accompanies a historiographical evolution in which we recognise the birth of the ideology of Reconquest as an interpretive framework for the Christian–Muslim conflict in Iberia.