Alfonso VI captures Toledo

May 25, 1085

The king of Leon-Castile entered the old Visigothic capital after a long blockade. Toledo's mixed Christian, Muslim, and Jewish population was left alive and largely undisturbed. The city became the intellectual bridge across which Arabic translations of Aristotle would flow to Latin Europe over the next century. Its famous translation school made Toledo the single most important conduit for the transmission of classical knowledge to the medieval West.