Battle of Sagrajas

October 23, 1086

Yusuf ibn Tashfin's Almoravid army, summoned by the taifa kings of al-Andalus to halt Alfonso VI's advance, crushed the Christian forces near Badajoz. Alfonso escaped with five hundred horsemen out of sixty thousand. The Almoravid intervention revitalized Muslim Iberia and stalled the Reconquista for decades. The thunderous sound of Almoravid war drums, never before heard in Spain, terrorized the Christian cavalry into breaking formation.