La Puerta de la Xarea de la muralla árabe de Valencia

Abstract

[EN] In the year 714 the city of Valencia had already been conquered by the Arabs. In the 11th century 'Abd al-Aziz ben'Abd ar-Rahman had a defense wall built whose perimeter has been established by different authors throughout history, but of which few vestiges remain. It consisted of seven doors, oriented according to the cardinal points that linked the city with the main communication routes. One of these doors is the so-called “Puerta de la Xarea” (or Exarea). In this work, a description of said gate and its surroundings is proposed through documentary sources of the time such as the Llibre del Repartiment where different annotations of donations can be found that refer to the territory surrounding the gate and the surroundings of the wall. The analysis of these references together with that of other bibliographic sources and the existing archaeological reports of the area has allowed us to establish criteria for the design and organization of the territory at the time of the conquest of the city by Jaime I in 1238.