Sisnando Davides
Sisnando Davides[a] (died 25 August 1091) was a Mozarab nobleman and military leader of the Reconquista, born in Tentúgal, near Coimbra.
Much information can be gleaned about Sisnando's life from the detailed narratives that begin the diplomas issued by his Abbadid-influenced Mozarabic chancery at Coimbra, though the authenticity of these has lately come to be doubted.
[4] This marriage between Sisnando, from an unknown lineage, and the heiress of the last Count of Portucale, might have been a contract to seal peace between the Mozarabs of Coimbra and the high nobility families of northern Portugal.
[12] Later that same month he was one of many judges in a case between the bishop of Oviedo and count Vela Ovéquiz concerning the property of the monastery of San Salvador de Tol, though only he and El Cid signed the decision.
Sisnando thrice (1076, 1080, and 1088) acted as an envoy from Alfonso to the taifa of Zaragoza,[12] and on another occasion to Abdallah ibn Buluggin, the last Zirid king of Granada.
[17] Sisnando was appointed the first governor (amil) of Toledo after its fall in 1085 and he implemented the Alfonsine policy of tolerance to the Mozarabs and Mudéjars (Muslims) of the region.
[19] Sisnando counselled Alfonso to maintain good relations with al-Qadir of Toledo by acting as the taifa's governor and protector (instead of foreign overlord interfering in its internal affairs), but when this advice was ignored the way was opened for the Almoravid conquest of Toledo, which Alfonso had treated as a tributary state; following that success the Almoravids made several gains against the Castilians.
According to Ramón Menéndez Pidal, if Sisnando's far-sighted advice had been heeded, the disaster of the Almoravids and the failure of Alfonso's empire to survive his death could have been averted.
[25] In a document dated 25 April 1085, Sisnando made a grant to Pedro, an abbot who had recently fled to Portugal from al-Andalus.
[25] The appearance of a second ecclesiastical center on the Mondego River at Coimbra seems to have been a result of the operation of local forces rather than Sisnando's initiative, as an interpolated document of 13 April 1086 suggests.
[26] According to a diploma of 1086, when Paternus, Mozarab Bishop of Tortosa, came to Ferdinand I at Santiago de Compostela in 1064 on a mission from Moctadir of Zaragoza, he was approached by Sisnando, who offered him the see of Coimbra.
[12] But the document of 1 March 1088 on which this claim is made is not trustworthy and the notion that the king sent Sisnando to Zaragoza for just such a purpose as recruiting a bishop is false.
[28] On 15 March 1087 Sisnando dictated a testament in procinctu on the occasion of his leaving for a campaign with Alfonso against Yusuf ibn Tashfin, the Almoravid general.
