Alfeizerão

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Alfeizerão is a Portuguese city ( Vila ) in the southern part of the county Alcobaça, located in the district of Leiria and in the historical province of Estremadura. It borders to the counties of Nazaré and Caldas da Rainha on. It has 3805 inhabitants (as at 30 June 2011) and covers an area of ​​28 km. She goes directly back to a Moorish foundation in 717, their roots go in Roman and Celtic times. Your present name comes with high probability from Arabic and was derived from Al- cheizaram, which means reed, reed thickets. Alfeizerão today is about four kilometers from the sea inland, but was up in the 17th century, a port on a named after her great lagoon. She had a probably built by the Moors castle, which was destroyed in the earthquake of Lisbon in 1755. Alfeizerão was one of the 13 cities of Couto de Alcobaça, the territory of the abbey of Alcobaça, which had given the first Portuguese King, Afonso Henriques, in 1153 the abbot of Clairvaux Bernard of Clairvaux Abbey French.

Up to the Moors

The lagoon of Alfeizerão from today in São Martinho do Porto remaining 900 m by 1400 m large lagoon extended about 3 km to Alfeizerão and side ( parallel to the coast running ) to the south about 10 km to before Caldas da Rainha. This lagoon was their first written mention already in the Roman writer and poet Rufio Festo Avieno in his work Orla Maritima around 350 AD a long time, it is believed that the original Gallo- Celtic city Eburobriga which the Romans then called Eburobritium, was because of the lagoon of Alfeizerão, was clarified until 1995 that this city must have been located about 20 km south of Alfeizerão at Óbidos. From the region of the Lusitanians Viriatus should come, who has led the inhabitants of Lusitania in the initially victorious verlaufenen, then ultimately lost Lusitanian War of 155-138 BC against the Romans. The figure of Viriatus dive but also in the legends of other Lusitanian regions. More recent theories assume now that in Alfeizerão the Roman city Araducta was lying. From the Visigoths, probably since the second half of the 6th century in this area, there are traces in the form of lying in the neighboring municipality Famalicão Church of São Gião. Chance also is theorized that the castle of Alfeizerão had already been built by the Visigoths.

Time of the Moors

The Moors took from the lagoon immediately after their conquest of the Iberian peninsula in 711 owned and built from 717 the castle of Alfeizerão, which also applies to the founding date of the city. From there and the neighboring forts in Alcobaça and Óbidos Moorish Alcaiden dominated the area. Alfeizerão was county and city court under the Moors and had a mosque, probably in the area of ​​today's parish church. With his success from north to south liberation struggles defeated King Afonso Henriques in 1147 the Moors in Alfeizerão and took the fort. According to legend, had the morning taking the castle its owner, the Emir Abul Hassan, along with his daughter Zaira fallen from the walls to his death, according to another story to Zaira had a night leave with a Christian knight and is therefore of her father been encountered in the morning from the walls before her father had followed her. The fort was later used by various Portuguese kings when visiting this area.

Port of the abbey of Alcobaça

In 1153 the area between Leiria and Óbidos of King Afonso Henriques was donated to the Cistercian Order at Clairvaux, who founded the abbey of the same name in Alcobaça. To the dominion of the abbey was also a part of the lagoon of Alfeizerão and thus also Alfeizerão, which was used by the monks as a port. 1332 Alfeizerão received from the Abbey the charter. 1514 King Manuel I extended the independence and also gave Alfeirezão like the other cities of Couto de Alcobaça a new city statute which, inter alia, own lower courts granted. At that time all cities were pillories ( Pelourinhos ) carrying the coat of arms of the Abbey and its persisting jurisdiction symbolized. The Pelourinho of Alfeizerão was after the end of the reign of the abbey as a result of the state closing of the monasteries in Portugal ( 1834), as in some other cities in the Couto, robbed. But he was re-discovered in 1966 during construction work at the parish church, reassembled, restored and placed at his old place in front of the church Igreja de Sao Jao Baptista again. The church dates back in its present form from the year 1663rd On the old road to Pederneira, today Nazaré, which resulted in the Middle Ages by a narrow land bridge that separated the lagoon from Alfeizerão the lagoon from Pederneira, is the 15th- / 16 Century Chapel of Saint Amaro.

Flowering and decline of the city

In the 16th and 17th centuries Alfeizerão experienced a revival, as on the banks of the lagoon as well as in the other at the entrance of the lagoon lying even to the Couto de Alcobaça -listed town of Sao Martinho do Porto in large shipyards high lake efficient ships for the Portuguese Discoveries and were also built for the Royal navy. As late as 1600 it was reported that only 80 were able to anchor ships at the port of Alfeizerão. At that time, the appearance Alfeizerãos was from the lagoon towering fort as well as from a tower, the Torre de Dom Framando coined. The tower is known only from descriptions. The fort was in the earthquake of 1755 damaged to the extent that today only ruins remain almost flush with the floor. The plot, which involves these residues, is privately owned. After starting at the end of the 15th century, the stock of fish in the lagoon was greatly diminished, fell 17-18. Century the lagoon dry, the harbor and disappeared with him all shipyards. In geologically rapid time, the lagoon walked up to the nearly circular translucent bay of S. Martinho do Porto for agricultural land.

Presence

With the end of the reign of the Abbey of Alcobaça Alfeizerão was for several years an independent county, then changed hands several times, the circle of belonging and finally stopped in 1895 in Alcobaça. Today the city thrives on agriculture and animal husbandry, processing their products and their trade; still delivers the added wood processing and ceramics industries. On the maritime past Alfeizerãos nothing more reminiscent to the Arab Times, only the name.