Parias

[3] Valencia fell into the hands of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (1094), and upon recovery by the Muslims it was forced to briefly pay parias to Barcelona, payments which were later re-established by Raymond Berengar IV.

[12] The large payments to Cluny, which financed Hugh the Great's construction of the massive third abbey church, undoubtedly helped publish the wealth of Spain throughout Europe.

[3] Unfortunately for Cluny, changing conditions in Spain caused the payments to cease in 1111, and this brought on a financial crisis during the abbacies of Pons of Melgueil (1109–22) and Peter the Venerable (1122–56).

[14] Though the burden of these last parias was sometimes reduced to a quarter or a fifth of state revenue, the Grenadine kings were forced to tax their subjects far beyond what was permissible under Islamic law.

[3] By comparison, a typical nobleman's ransom cost 500–1,000 aurei in contemporary Spain and in Córdoba 400 horses or seventy human slaves were worth about 10,000 mithqals in the 1060s.

[3] "From being among the poorest rulers in Europe," historian Richard Fletcher notes, "[the Christian kings of Spain] quickly became among the richest," and "the kingdom of León-Castile, in particular, acquired a reputation for inexhaustible wealth during the second half of the eleventh century," due in large part to the receipt of parias.