Six months earlier, in December of 1235, a daring band of Christians, led by a few knights, stormed and took a portion of Córdoba’s eastern quarter. Word reached King Ferdinand in January of 1236, even as he was in mourning over the recent death of his thirty-year-old wife from childbirth complications.

Through their envoy, the Spaniards “implored him to help them because they were placed in most grave peril.” Against the Muslim “multitude of Córdoba, they were very few” and “separated from the Moors only by a certain wall running almost through the middle of the city.” Though at a standstill, time, the envoy made clear, was not on the Christians’ side.

The king, who for years had been spearheading the Reconquista—the Christian attempt to liberate Spain from Islam—was heavily moved by such a heroic feat; and “the grief for the loss” of his wife “did not long suspend his warlike preparations.” On the same evening that the envoy arrived, Ferdinand’s advisors strongly warned him against setting out immediately, during winter; they cited impassable roads due to snow, rain and floods, and possible ambushes from the “innumerable multitude of people in Córdoba”—to say nothing of Ibn Hud, the de facto king of al-Andalus, who was even then headed to relieve the Muslim city.

But Ferdinand “placed his hope in the Lord Jesus Christ and closed his ears” to all such talk.  He was resolved to “aid his vassals who had exposed themselves to such a great danger in his service and for the honor of the Christian faith.” After sending word to his magnates in Castile and León to muster their forces, he set off for Córdoba on the very next morning—with only one hundred knights.