The Poem of Almería Prefatio de Almaria (Prefacio de Almería), or Carmen de expugnatione Almariae urbis (Cantar de la conquista de Almería) is a medieval Latin

Medieval Latin

Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors,...

 epic poem in 385½ leonine

Leonine verse

Leonine verse is a type of versification based on internal rhyme, and commonly used in Latin verse of the European Middle Ages. The invention of such conscious rhymes, foreign to Classical Latin poetry, is traditionally attributed to a probably apocryphal monk Leonius, who is supposed to be the...

 hexameter

Hexameter

Hexameter is a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Greek mythology, hexameter...

s. It was appended to the end of the Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris, an account of the reign of Alfonso VII of León and Castile, and narrates the victorious military campaign of 1147 that culminated in the conquest of the port of Almería

Almería

Almería is a city in Andalusia, Spain, on the Mediterranean Sea. It is the capital of the province of the same name.-Toponym:Tradition says that the name Almería stems from the Arabic المرية Al-Mariyya: "The Mirror", comparing it to "The Mirror of the Sea"...

. The poem, as it survives, is unfinished, abruptly ending mid-line before recounting the actual siege of Almería itself. Of its surviving lines, 293 consist of "dénombrement épique, a stirring roll-call of the chief members and contingents of the army".

The Poem has tended to arouse interest among scholars and critics principally for the light it may shed on the origins and development of vernacular epic (the cantares de gesta) and on the nature of Iberian aristocratic and military customs. It has been described as "a relict of incomparable interest for the cultural archaeology of the twelfth century" and "a splendid reflection of its time and, in this regard, full of gold also as literature". Stylistically, the Poem is indebted to the parallelism

Parallelism (rhetoric)

Parallelism means giving two or more parts of the sentences a similar form so as to give the whole a definite pattern.Parallelisms of various sorts are the chief rhetorical device of Biblical poetry in Hebrew. In fact, Robert Lowth coined the term "parallelismus membrorum Parallelism means giving...

 of the poetry of the Hebrew Bible

Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...

 and to the classical

Classical Latin

Classical Latin in simplest terms is the socio-linguistic register of the Latin language regarded by the enfranchised and empowered populations of the late Roman republic and the Roman empire as good Latin. Most writers during this time made use of it...

 models of Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

 and Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

.

Editions

• L. T. Belgrano, ed. "Frammento di Poemetto sincrono su la conquista di Almeria nel MCXLVII". Atti della Società Ligure di storia patria 19 (1887).
• F. Castro Guisasola, ed. El cantar de la conquista de Almería por Alfonso VII: un poema hispano-latín del siglo XII. Granada: 1992.
• E. Flórez
  Enrique Florez
  Enrique Flórez de Setién y Huidobro was a Spanish historian.Florez was born in Valladolid. At 15 years old, he entered the order of St Augustine. He subsequently became professor of theology at the University of Alcala, where he published a Cursus theologiae in five volumes...
  
  , ed. "Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris." España Sagrada 16 (1766): 320–409.
• J. Gil, ed. "Carmen de expugnatione Almariae urbis." Habís V (1974): 45–64. online
• J. Gil, ed. "Prefatio de Almaria." Chronica Hispana saeculi XII, Pars Prima, ed. E. Falque, J. Gil and A. Maya (Turnhout: 1990): 249–67.
• G. E. Lipskey, ed. and trans. The Chronicle of Alfonso the Emperor. PhD Dissertation, Northwestern University, 1972. online
• C. Rodríguez Aniceto, ed. "El poema latino Prefacio de Almería." Boletín de la Biblioteca Menédez y Pelayo 13 (1931): 140–75. online
• H. Salvador Martínez, ed. and trans. El “Poema de Almería” y la épica románica. Madrid: 1975.
• L. Sánchez Belda, ed. Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris. Madrid: 1950.