The Battle Jihadists Still Celebrate: How Yusuf Stacked 2,400 Christian Heads at Sagrajas by Raymond Ibrahim

Today in history, a battle that all would-be jihadists venerate took place against Christians in Spain (then known among Muslims as al-Andalus).

In 1085, Alfonso VI of Leon-Castile captured the Muslim city of Toledo, launching the Reconquista. Great was the lamentation among Muslims and the rejoicing among Christians. The Muslim emirs of al-Andalus — notorious for their disunity and dissipated lifestyles — had to act fast, for “the arrogance of the Christian dogs” had “waxed so great,” wrote a Muslim chronicler. 

So the emirs called on their fanatical coreligionists in North Africa, the Almorivades, a sect devoted to waging jihad and enforcing sharia. Its elderly leader was Yusuf bin Tashfin, “a wise and shrewd man,” who had “passed the greater part of his life in his native deserts; exposed to hunger and privation, he had no taste for the life of pleasure.”

Dressed in black with a veil cloaking all but the zeal in his eyes, the 76-year-old sheikh accepted the invitation and entered al-Andalus. The Moorish emirs quickly “acknowledged his sway, hoping that he would stop the victorious course of the infidel, and thus open, for the prosecution of jihad, those gates which they had hitherto kept criminally locked,” thereby “propping up the tottering edifice of Islam, and humbling the pride of the insolent Christian.”

By October 1086, a vast coalition of thousands of Almorivades and Andalusians under Yusuf’s command found themselves facing King Alfonso and his knights at Sagrajas, near Badajoz. While exact numbers are unclear, the Muslims outnumbered the Christians by roughly three to one. According to a Muslim chronicler,

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