Taifa of Saltés and Huelva

The Taifa of Saltés and Huelva was a small Muslim kingdom in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, centred on the port of Huelva and the island of Saltés in the Odiel estuary. It emerged around 1012, during the collapse of the Caliphate of Córdoba, when the local ruler Abd al-Aziz Izz al-Dawla made himself independent. The geographer al-Bakri, writing in the eleventh century, described Saltés as a prosperous island town with a busy market. The taifa controlled the copper trade of the Río Tinto region and the Atlantic approaches to Seville. In 1051 it was absorbed by the more powerful Taifa of Seville under al-Mu'tadid, and the port was later used by the Abbadids. After the Almoravid conquest of 1091 the area passed under Berber governors; a short-lived second taifa appeared in 1147-1151 before it was taken by the Almohads. Its memory survives in the archaeological site of Saltés, on the outskirts of modern Huelva.