Almogavars

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The Almogavars (Aragonese: Almogabars, Catalan: Almogàvers, Spanish: Almogávares, from Arabic: Al-Mugavari) were a class of Aragonese and Catalan soldiers, well-known during the Christian reconquista (reconquest) of the Iberian peninsula. They were much employed as mercenaries in Italy and the Levant during the 13th and 14th centuries. The name comes from Arabic Al-Mugavari, a "raider, devastator".

The Almogavars came originally from the Pyrenees, and were in later times recruited mainly in Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia. They were frontiersmen and foot-soldiers who wore no armour, dressed in skins, were shod with brogues (abarcas), and carried the arms similar to those of Roman legionaries: two heavy javelins, or "assegai" (atzagaia in Catalan); a short stabbing sword; and a shield.

They were professional soldiers, and served kings, the Roman Catholic Church, nobles, or towns for pay; eventually they also hired themselves out to the Byzantine Empire. When Peter III of Aragon made war on Charles of Anjou after the Sicilian Vespers of March 30, 1282 for the possession of Naples and Sicily, the Almogavars formed the most effective element of his army. Their discipline and ferocity, the force with which they hurled their javelins, and their activity, made them very formidable to the heavy cavalry of the Angevin armies.

When the peace of Caltabellotta in 1302 ended the war in southern Italy, the Almogavars, under the leadership of Roger de Flor ("Roger Blum", a defrocked Knight Templar), formed the Catalan Company in the service of the emperor of the East, Andronicus II Palaeologus, as condottieri to fight against the Turks.

Their campaign in Asia Minor during 1303 and 1304 was a series of romantic victories, but their greed and violence made them intolerable to the Byzantine population. When Roger de Flor was assassinated by his Greek employer in 1305, they turned on the emperor, held Gallipoli, and ravaged the neighbourhood of Constantinople.

In 1310 they marched against the duke of Athens, of the French House of Brienne. Walter V of Brienne was defeated and slain by the Almogavars with all his knights at the battle of Cephissus, or Orchomenus, in Boeotia in March. They then divided the wives and possessions of the Frenchmen by lot, and summoned a prince of the house of Aragon to rule over them.

The foundation of the Aragonese duchy of Athens was to be the culminating achievement of the Almogavars. By the 16th century the name had died out.

The name "Almogavars" was revived for a short time as a party nickname in the civil wars during the reign of Ferdinand VII of Spain. The parachute brigade of the modern-day Spanish army is also named Brigada de Infantería Ligera Paracaidista Almogávares VI (Parachute Light Infantry Brigade "Almogavars" VI).

This article is based on an entry in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.