Valencia is an important port on the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The city was founded by the Romans in 138 B.C.E. with the Latin name of Valentia.  After the Muslim conquest in 714, it was known in Arabic as Balansiya (some scholars read this form of the name in a kharja preserved by Moses ibn Ezra: Hebrew series XIX).

The town was of relatively minor importance during the Umayyad period, but in 1010 it became the capital of one of the taifa kingdoms that emerged on the disruption of the caliphate, ruled by two freedmen of the ʿĀmirids, al-Mub…