County of Aragon

That Aragon was a combined creation of Frankish efforts at Reconquest and the activity of the local Hispano-Visigothic elite to unite the rural populace against the Moors of the Ebro valley seems assured.

In the first half of the 9th century, under the strong Carolingians, such as Charlemagne, the county of Aragon was culturally oriented northwards, across the important passes at Echo and Canfranc.

The cultural endowment of the monastery was extensive; by 848 its collection of manuscripts included Vergil, Horace, Juvenal, Porphyry, Aldhelm, and Augustine of Hippo's De Civitate Dei.

In 820 Charlemagne's vassal, Count Aznar I, was ejected from the county by his son-in-law García 'the Bad', who rode to power on the back of troops supplied by Íñigo Arista, ruler of the fledgling Kingdom of Pamplona.

The Navarrese fortification of this area severely curtailed the possibility of Aragonese expansion via reconquest by cutting off the obvious route of such conquest.

Sancho the Great, who had united most of Christian Iberia under his control, gave lands in Aragon to his illegitimate son, Ramiro as early as 1015.