County of Aragon

The County of Aragon, also called the County of Jaca, was a small Frankish marcher county in the central Pyrenees, in the valley of the Aragon river. It was created by the Carolingians late in the eighth or early in the ninth century to guard the mountain passes against the Moors, and it comprised the districts of Anso, Echo and Canfranc around the town of Jaca. Its earliest attested ruler was Oriol in 807, and the county was settled by Hispano-Visigothic and Frankish frontier families who organised defence and repopulation. As Carolingian power faded, the counts turned to the kings of Pamplona and Navarre, and the county was absorbed into Navarre in 922. It remained a frontier district of the Navarrese realm until Sancho III divided his lands among his sons in 1035, when Ramiro I received Aragon and raised it to a kingdom. The little mountain county thus became the seed of the Kingdom of Aragon, whose crown would later rule much of the western Mediterranean.