V

The regions of Mediterranean Spain below the Tortosa region of the Ebro River delta and above the region of Murcia constituted the crusader kingdom of Valencia after its conquest from Islam by Jaime I of Aragón-Catalonia. In modern times Valencia comprised, from north to south, the Spanish provinces of Castellón, Valencia, and Alicante; currently it is one of Spain’s “autonomies” as the Comunidad Valenciana, popularly also called the País Valencià. The mountain barrier at its back fairly isolates it from neighboring Aragón, Castile, and formerly Granada, facing it out to sea at its port cities. The strip of littoral and its hilly hinterland consequently had a north-south orientation and a maritime-international character. Its agriculture divided between intensely irrigated huertas, or mini-farm green zones, and dry-farming uplands of olive and vine, with transient as well as local flocks and stock raising on the larger estates of the north. Roughly the size and shape of the crusader Holy Land at the facing east of the Mediterranean, Valencia increased King Jaime’s mainland holdings from 87,000 to over 104,000 square kilometers. Jaime wrote of almost fifty Islamic “castles,” or strongholds and towers, defending it. In 1635 the Dutch mapmaker of Valencia described the realm as “about sixty leagues long, and seventeen wide at its widest point; it contains within its circuit four cities, sixty towns surrounded by walls, and a thousand villages; it is watered by thirty-five rivers, large and small [and] … it holds about 100,000 families.”