In 1309, Castillian troops under Ferdinand IV of Castile captured Gibraltar, then known as the Medinat al-Fath (City of Victory), from the Muslim-ruled Emirate of Granada.

The Castillians were distracted by the coronation of King Alfonso XI and were slow to respond to the invasion force, which was able to lay siege to Gibraltar before much of a response could be organised.

Its governor, Don Vasco Perez de Meira, had looted the funds allocated by the crown to pay for food and maintenance of the town's defences, using it to buy land for himself near Jerez.

The shipwreck of a grain ship off the Gibraltarian coast, only eight days before the siege began, gave the garrison a little extra food supply, but as events were to prove, it was not nearly enough.

[5] The town consisted of a series of individually fortified districts that reached from the dockyard on the sea front to a castle several hundred feet up the slope of the Rock of Gibraltar.

The food had run out and the townspeople and garrison had been reduced to eating their own shields, belts and shoes in an attempt to gain sustenance from the leather from which they were made.

[6] Admiral Jofre attempted to sling bags of flour into the town by firing them over the walls from ship-mounted catapults, but the Moors were able to drive the Castillian ships away.