The fifth templar: The order of the temple and the Counts of Barcelona in the conquest of Al-Andalus

In November 1143, Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona, and the Order of the knights Templar signed an agreement to solve the dispute caused by the will of the Aragonese king Alfonso the Battler. In one of his arrangements, the Count promised the Order the fifth of future conquests. Historians have considered it as the fifth part of the lands. This article suggests a different interpretation: the fifth is not related to any territory distribution but to a revenues one which would be collected in all the al-Andalus regions to be conquered by the Count and the Templars from then on. This seems to have taken place in Tortosa and Lleida where the Order started very quickly to acquire important domain, although no documents about land grants were written during the first conquests after the above mentioned agreement. Nevertheless, the fifth coult eventually adopt a territorial approach and in such a case, it was registered, as it happened in the Ribera d'Ebre. The intervention in the colonization by the Order could be different according to the way of receiving the fifth.