In 1085 Alfonso VI of León and Castile took Toledo, the old Visigothic capital, the greatest Christian gain of the Reconquista before the thirteenth century — and the shock that brought the Almoravids into Iberia.
The Conquest of Toledo in 1085 was the capture of the old Visigothic capital by Alfonso VI of León and Castile, the most important Christian gain of the Reconquista before the thirteenth century. Rather than a stormed assault, it was the surrender of a taifa city worn down by years of Christian pressure.
Its fall gave the Christian kingdoms a great walled capital on the Tagus and immense prestige, but it also frightened the Muslim taifa rulers into summoning the Almoravids of North Africa — a reaction that would soon check the Christian advance.
Toledo, capital of the Visigoths and then of a powerful taifa, was the prize the Leonese-Castilian kings most coveted. Alfonso VI had long treated it as a tributary, taking parias and meddling in its succession while backing the pliable al-Qadir.
As the balance tilted, Alfonso pressed the city ever harder until, unable to resist and abandoned by potential allies, Toledo capitulated on terms in May 1085.
The city surrendered rather than being sacked, and its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants were guaranteed protection under the terms of capitulation, though the great mosque was soon converted to Christian use. Alfonso VI, styling himself "emperor of all Spain", made Toledo a bastion of Christian power in the centre of the peninsula.
The shock of losing Toledo persuaded the taifa kings, led by al-Mutamid of Seville, that they could not withstand the Christians alone. They appealed to the Almoravid emir Yusuf ibn Tashfin, whose intervention would produce the crushing Christian defeat at Sagrajas in 1086.