Ramiro II of León
Ramiro II of León was the king who beat the caliph Abd al-Rahman III at Simancas in 939, the worst defeat of the caliph's reign and the one after which he never took the field again, and who then pushed the frontier of settlement south of the Duero to the Tormes, refounding Salamanca and Ledesma. He also blinded his brother and his brother's sons, made a count of Castile who would be the founder of that county's independence, and put the same count in prison. He was Ordoño II's son and took the throne in 931 by deposing his elder brother Alfonso IV, who had wanted to enter a monastery and then changed his mind. Alfonso and the three sons of their uncle Fruela were blinded and shut up in the monastery of Ruiforco. His first campaign went to Madrid, which he sacked in 932, and to Toledo, which he relieved. Abd al-Rahman answered in 939 with the campaign the Arabic sources call the campaign of omnipotence, a hundred thousand men marching up the Duero to finish the northern kingdoms. Ramiro with the counts of Castile and the king of Navarre met him at Simancas at the junction of the Pisuerga and the Duero in July. The Muslim army broke and was chased to the ravine of Alhandega, where the rest of it died; the caliph left his Koran and his coat of mail in the field and crucified the officers who had failed him. The count of Castile at Simancas was Fernan Gonzalez, whom Ramiro afterwards imprisoned for two years for rebellion and released for a marriage alliance, and who would make Castile a hereditary county. The land between the Duero and the Tormes, empty for two centuries, was settled after Simancas with Leonese, Galicians and Mozarabs from the south, and the line of the frontier moved for the first time since the Moors came. He beat the caliph's army again at Talavera in 950. He was taken ill on campaign, came back to León, abdicated to his son Ordoño III, and died in January 951, the last strong king before the caliph's vizier al-Mansur burned the city.
- Lived: 900 CE – 951 CE
- Nationality: Leonese
- Roles: king, monarch
