A few days ago it was the 5th of October, the Portuguese holiday which celebrates the institution of our First Republic. Curiously, it is a little-known fact that this is also the day associated with the most famous date in Portuguese History: 1143, the year of Portugal’s independence (and thus ironically also of the institution of our Monarchy). I thought this was an excellent excuse to talk about the origins of the Kingdom of Portugal!
You see, I was once asked why Portugal became independent. I thought that sounded like an odd question. In my answer, I tried to give a quick account of the traditional story of Portugal’s independence, which is very much focused on the person of our first king. My interlocutor, an Eastern European friend whose country came into existence at the dusk of the 20th century, found this a very confusing answer. To him, he explained (in different words), the emergence of his country seemed like a natural consequence of important cultural facts. The birth of mine, by contrast, seemed pretty random to him. I expect that, to some extent, this is just going to be a crucial difference between countries formed before and after the rise of nationalism in Europe…
At the time I simply lacked an answer that would have been satisfying to my friend (though I did try to fashion one by hammering together some national myths). I suppose this post is my attempt to redeem myself by trying to make the why of Portugal as clear as possible. Mind you, at the end of the day it will still be a more random story than the emancipation of a People who already had a national identity before they had a State. Hopefully, giving a lot of historical context to a well-known Portuguese origin story should at least make it feel less confusing.
A brief early history of Spain
As with so much in European history, it all began with the Romans. The conclusion of the Second Punic War, in 201 BC, brought the Iberian Peninsula firmly into the Roman sphere of influence. Slowly but surely1, over the course of nearly two centuries, the Iberian territory was integrated into the Roman provinces of Hispania. Although the Peninsula was never administrated by Rome as one province, it was the first time that it was all under the rule of a single political entity. Thereafter, until the joint reign of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, “Spain” (a corruption of Hispania) would be the standard designation for the Peninsula. After the fall of Rome, the memory of Roman Hispania would continue to inspire subsequent attempts to establish a unified Iberia.
The dusk of Rome brought with it tides of Germanic invaders across the empire, and Hispania was no exception. Vandals, Andals, and Suebi were drawn to the Peninsula in the 5th century, triggering a major power struggle against the Romans and the Visigoths, Rome’s erstwhile scourge turned allies (who were close at hand after beeing allowed to settle in Southern Gaul). In the end, most of the Andals and Vandals moved on to North Africa and Rome’s hold on the region grew ever weaker and more nominal. After a period of bolder expansion at Roman expense, the Suebi were contained in their heartlands in Gallaecia (roughly corresponding to modern Galicia and Northern Portugal), where they established a stable kingdom until the end of the 6th century (notably introducing both Arian and Chalcedonian Christianity to German Hispania). At this point they were overpowered by the Visigoths, who then came to control the entire Peninsula – which was fortunate for them, as their original settlements in Gaul had eventually been lost to the Franks.
Despite ruling over a large province that had once been one of Carthage‘s main economic assets, the Visigoths were weakened by near-constant in-fighting, often over succession to the elective Hispanic throne. (The fact that the ruling Visigoths only comprised about 3% of the population didn’t help avoid rebellions either.) This weakness left them ripe for an eventual Moorish invasion.
Annoyingly, details of the events leading up to the Moorish invasion are shrouded in mystery. According to legend, when the daughter of Count Julian (a mythical Visigothic governor of Muslim Ceuta) was sent to the court of the Visigothic King Roderick, the King betrayed her father’s trust and raped her; causing an enraged Count Julian to convince the Muslim Umayyad to invade Roderick’s kingdom as revenge. More likely, the whole thing may have been initially intended as a large-scale raid by Tariq ibn Ziyad, then the Berber governor of Tangier. Supposedly, only after realising the Visigoth’s complete inability to repel their army did the Muslim decide to aim for domination of the entire Peninsula.
Whatever the motivations behind it, what we know is that, in 711, Tariq crossed the Strait of Gibraltar with an army and decisively defeated King Roderick in the Battle of Guadalete, spelling the end of Visigothic hegemony in Iberia. By 718, the Umayyad Caliphate controlled all but the Northernmost mountainous regions of the Peninsula. There the Visigoths allied with native Asturians to establish the Kingdom of Asturias, the last Christian stronghold in Hispania, which had by then become known as the Muslim province of Al-Andalus (later the Caliphate of Córdoba).
Observations about the Reconquista
The establishment of the Kingdom of Asturias (or, more precisely, its successful defence at the Battle of Covadonga in 718 or 722) is traditionally seen as the starting point of the period known as the Reconquista (literally, the Reconquest). These days it’s not that uncommon to hear people object to the use of this word, arguing the whole period was artificially defined a posteriori for nefarious nationalist purposes. Whilst I do not completely buy into this argument, I think it is worth pausing to make a few notes about the nuanced complexities that characterise this period – not least because the most simplistic versions of the traditional narrative have indeed to some extent been appropriated by a certain nefarious strand of nationalism (especially in Spain, whose national identity I feel is more strongly rooted in the period3). If you think you know enough about the Reconquista, or if you really just want to learn about how Portugal formed, I’ll excuse you if you just skip this part!
0) What is the Reconquista and what’s wrong with it (historiographically)?
Essentially the Reconquista is seen as a period of religious and military struggle, when Christians sought to regain their ancestral lands under Muslim occupation. The typical narrative tends to also focus on how the Christian side fragmented into independent kingdoms with distinct identities; but the diversity and evolving circumstances of the “other side” is usually glossed over and masked under the umbrella term the Moors. It is typically a story told solely from the point of view of the Christian kingdoms (who eventually prevailed), but one where the Muslim side is (at least) every bit as important.
This one-sidedness leaves the period ripe for political exploitation. Particularly in Spain, which is a culturally diverse country with separatist issues, the Reconquista has traditionally been used as the source of a common purpose, usually centred around defending Catholicism (be it against Muslims, heretics, or communists). There being no obvious reason why this common purpose shouldn’t also apply to Portugal is perhaps part of the reason for Spain’s historical relapses into aggressive pan-Iberism (which is a complex topic for another time).
1) It was a back-and-forth messy affair
Contrary to the impression some might get from a quick glance of the description of this period, the Reconquista was not one coherent (however slow) Christian march towards victory. There were periods when the Christian kingdoms were pushing the Moors southwards, and there were periods when they were pushed Northwards. There were times of particularly overwhelming military supremacy for both sides, during which the other side tended to begrudgingly temporarily accept a submissive position (usually paying tribute to the other). Often the who had the upper hand depended on the wider context of the struggle between Christendom and Islam, with things like crusades4 and the rise and fall of caliphates5 playing an important role.
What’s more, sometimes Christians and Muslims were at… (gasp) peace! Sometimes they even formed temporary alliances against common enemies in either camp! Not to mention that great knights (most notably the Spanish national hero El Cid and the Portuguese Geraldo Geraldes the Fearless) would often alternate between offering their services to Muslim and to Christian kings.
2) The Moors were more civilised
In the grand scheme of things, the Reconquista was not good for Christendom just because they emerged victorious in the end. Most of the conflict took place during the European Dark Ages, which happened to coincide with the Islamic Golden Age. During a time when Islamic scholars were the main drivers of advances in philosophy, astronomy, medicine, etc, cultural exchanges with Muslim nations was essential for Christian intellectuals to be aware of these advances. As it happens, Córdoba was for a time one of the largest cities in Europe, and one of the world’s leading centres of learning. Although it can be rightly said that this potential intellectual heritage was squandered by the Christian victors – under whom the Southern core of Al-Andalus experienced an irreversible withering following the expulsion of the Muslims (note the contrast with the Muslim states, where Christians were generally tolerated albeit more heavily taxed, which actually made them important for the states’ finances).
Islamic culture left profound marks in European culture, in great part through Al-Andalus. To name just a few contributions: they gave us chess, they gave us words such as algebra and algorithm, not to mention arabic numerals (the alphabet of maths!) – and supposedly they also helped introduce rhyming as a central feature of European poetry!
3) The Moors fragmented badly at times – and that’s part of why the Christians won
Initally Al-Andalus was a province under the Umayyad Caliphate. One look at the size of the Caliphate at its height is enough to see why the Reconquista would have been doomed without its collapse.
Luckily for the Christians, the Muslims who had settled in Al-Andalus did not always see eye to eye. Most of the initial invaders were Berbers, but most of the ruling class were Arabs. Resentment of Berbers towards Arabs fuelled a number of revolts which led the Caliph to send in Syrians to help suppress the rebels (and who later settled there too). It also allowed Alfonso I of Asturias to expand the strangled Kingdom of Asturias into Galicia and León.
After the Umayyad Caliphate fell to the Abbasid, the ousted Umayyad managed to establish an independent emirate in Al-Andalus (ousting the local Arab Fihrids who had earlier become de facto independent from their own rule, in a rather ironic turn of fate). This emirate survived a precarious start (during which it had to deal with invasions by both the Abbasid and Charlemagne) and later prospered and became the Caliphate of Córdoba, at the height of which Córdoba briefly overtook Constantinople as Europe’s largest city. Alas for the Muslims, the Caliphate disintegrated after a civil war, leaving behind a large number of small taifas which could not hope to face up to the advancing Christians.
In order to survive, the Muslim rulers asked the Berber Almoravids for protection against the Christian. The Almoravids protected them so well that they were almost all annexed to their own empire. Rule of the empire eventually passed to the (also Berber) Almohads, and then eventually they too split into taifas after another bad civil war. These were again too weak to stand up to the now even stronger Christians and quickly fell one by one until there was only the Emirate of Granada. By this point the Muslims were hardly a threat (especially after the Moroccan Marinids were defeated by a united Christian front in 1340) and the Christian states went through a phase of fighting amongst themselves rather than against their weakened Southern neighbours (who most of the time were tributaries of Castile anyway). Only after the union of Castile and Aragon did the Muslims have to fight for their survival in the Peninsula again, finally meeting defeat in 1492.
4) It didn’t really finish in 1492
I mean, sure, technically it did finish in 1492 with the “Spanish” conquest of Granada (and earlier in 1249 for Portugal with the conquest of the Algarve). But only in the sense that the term “Reconquista” means “Reconquest” and from 1492 there is no former Visigothic land left to reclaim. That being said, the general tendency of Iberian kingdoms to pursue “holy wars” against the Moors continued for a long time with pretty much the same justifications as before.
Technically, this stage of expansion into North Africa is usually regarded as part of the new imperialist era that Portugal and Spain experienced, but (at least in Portugal) it is very clear that conquests in Africa are very different in character and motivation from expansion elsewhere in our empires. Crucially, North African conquests were anything but profitable, as they required enormous amounts of money and manpower to defend for no obvious economic gain (their value for the Moors was in their role in their own trade routes, which they just changed to avoid conquered territory after it was lost to them). A prime example of this is the Portuguese conquest of Ceuta, often described as “a military success and an economic disaster”. The Moors were generally regarded as the arch-enemies of any pious Iberian king, so fighting them was seen as good in itself and thus we did just that for a very long time. This is contrasted with expansion everywhere else in our empires, where there is a conscious effort to dominate trade routes and establish control over strategically important regions.
Interestingly, it should be noted that in the case of Portugal our North African holdings were for a long time viewed as a natural extension of the Algarve, so much so that our kings’ claims of sovereignty over both territories were always jointly stated in the title of “King of the Algarves on this side of the Sea and Beyond in Africa”. In fact, the Algarve only ceased to be formally regarded as a separate kingdom (with a status akin to Brazil’s before the Napoleonic Wars) at the time of the abolition of the monarchy in Portugal.
The Kingdom of Galicia and the County of Portugal
By the 9th century, the Christian Kingdom of Asturias had managed to secure the territory of the former Roman province of Gallaecia – the Northwesternmost region of the Peninsula, reaching about as far south as Porto and the river Douro. This territory came to be firmly under the control of Galician nobility, and by the early 10th century had been expanded as far south as Coimbra. Thus, when in 910 the Kingdom of Asturias was split among the sons of Alfonso III, this region became independent as the Kingdom of Galicia under Ordoño I (later Ordoño II of León). Over the following couple of centuries, the kingdoms of Galicia, León, and Castile were to be reunited and divided among brothers a few more times. Nevertheless, while it is certainly anachronistic to speak of national identities in a feudal age, it seems safe to refer to a Galician culture as surviving – and thriving – through the political turmoil.
While historical sources from those times are hard to come by, the available evidence points towards the existence of a distinctive Galician culture since early on. Remarkably, it is thought that by this time the local Latin vernacular had already evolved into a new Galician language which already displayed some of the most distinctive characteristics of modern Portuguese and Galician. Moreover, some memory of the old kingdom of the Suebi seems to have lingered, with their old capital of Braga having become the seat of an Archbishop claiming primacy over the entire peninsula6.
It is possible that in an alternate reality Braga would have been the undisputed centre of power in Galicia. Had that been the case this story would have probably been very different. Maybe Portugal would include modern Galicia (and probably just be called Galicia). Maybe Portugal (or Galicia) wouldn’t have become independent at all. It is even plausible (though unlikely) that Galicia would have come to dominate the other Iberian kingdoms!
In reality, however, Braga was blindsided by the 9th century discovery of the supposed remains of Saint James the Greater at the site that grew into Santiago de Compostela, which quickly became one of the most important pilgrimage destinations in Christianity. This discovery was central in strengthening Galicia’s standing in the Christian world, and surprise surprise: before you knew it, Galician kings were being crowned in Santiago and the Archbishops of Braga could do nothing about it. Well, nothing except become major political agents bringing together the lords of Southern Galicia against the perceived abuses of their Northern brethren – which is exactly what they did.
For a long time, the main secular political entity in Southern Galicia was the County of Portugal – the name having evolved from the Latin name of modern Porto, Portus Cale. Founded in 868 following Vímara Peres‘ reconquest of the region, it steadily grew in power and prestige (as border territories often do when borders aren’t secure) until at the end of the 10th century Count Gonçalo Mendes was using the title of “great duke of the Portuguese” and maybe even taking part in major political moves like assassinating the King of Léon. While posterior counts never got back to quite that level, they continued to maintain a considerable degree of autonomy and to alternate between being important supporters and main sources of annoyance to the kings of León and Galicia. Eventually, in 1071, García II of Galicia killed Count Nuno Mendes of Portugal in battle and decided to put an end to Portuguese defiance by abolishing the county and declaring himself “King of Galicia and Portugal”7.
García II may have correctly concluded that tighter control over “the Portuguese land” was required for the cohesion of the Kingdom of Galicia in the context of the Reconquista. A King of Galicia just couldn’t afford to have a powerful count ruling over half of his kingdom and constantly striving to expand southwards. However, soon after in 1071, García was defeated by his brother Alfonso VI of León, Galicia was reunited with León (and soon after Castile), and his successors’ attention had to focus elsewhere. And anyway, at this point the king of León was starting to dream of the title of Emperor of All Spain, and surely a Spanish emperor wouldn’t need to worry about keeping such a close eye on such a small region, even if it did come with a particularly powerful archbishop.
A tale of two cousins and two sisters
In 1086, Alfonso VI of León lost half his army against the newly arrived Almoravids at the Battle of Sagrajas; a setback that was to stump Christian progress in the Reconquista for a few generations, even if it didn’t result in loss of territory. Desperate for manpower, Alfonso attempted to drum up a crusade against the Almoravid empire, calling on several European rulers to help expand the borders of Christendom. One such ruler to heed his call was Duke Eudes I of Burgundy, who came to León at the head of a contingent of ambitious Burgundian knights.
In the end, Alfonso’s efforts failed to attract enough foreign support to significantly threaten the Almoravid position, and thus Duke Eudes’ force ended up being of little use. However, since he had gone through all that trouble to cross the Pyrenees, the Burgundian duke decided to make use of the opportunity to go pay a visit to an aunt of his at some Galician convent. Some of his knights seem to have liked the weather in Galicia, thought about how tiring a second crossing of the Pyrenees sounded like, and elected to stay behind to serve the Leonese king and to try and make a name for themselves in the war against the Moors. Among these were two particularly important knights8: Henri, the youngest brother of Duke Eudes, and his cousin Raymond, the fourth son of the count of Burgundy (not to be mistaken with the Duke of Burgundy).
Either through their military valour or, more likely, through the influence of Big Bro Eudes, Raymond and Henri soon found themselves married to daughters of Alfonso VI: Raymond to Urraca, the King’s eldest surviving legitimate daughter, and Henri to Teresa, his ambitious illegitimate daughter. Crucially, at the time, Alfonso lacked a male heir, making Urraca (and now Raymond) the likely successor to a nascent Spanish empire. To go with the prestige this position earned him, Raymond was thus also created Count of Galicia.
In 1093, however, the future ahead of Raymond became less bright with the birth of Sancho Alfónsez, the King’s only legitimate son. Soon his influence in the Leonese court began to wane and Raymond turned rebellious. Apparently, at this stage Raymond started conspiring with Henri to succeed to the throne by force upon the old king’s death. In exchange for his help, Henri was supposed to receive either Toledo or Galicia, as well as a princely sum of money.
Seemingly in reaction to this pact, Alfonso VI cunningly offered Henri the government of the newly-rebooted County of Portugal, in one fell swoop taking away half of Raymond’s land and turning his ally into a rival.
And then guess what happened? Raymond died of some illness in 1107, Sancho died in battle in 1108, and Alfonso died just one month later, making the recently widowed Urraca the first reigning European queen. Having ascended to the throne unburdened by a husband’s control, Urraca was in a position to exercise real power, but also vulnerable to doubts about her competence as a ruler. Consolidating her position took a while, and required a strategic marriage to the King of Aragon, as well as in 1111 formally offering the Kingdom of Galicia to her six-years-old son with Raymond, the future Alfonso VII. Nevertheless, consolidate her position she did, and not only did she succeed at imposing her personal rule, but also at being recognised Empress of All Spain (as her father had been before).
Henri and Teresa, on their end, tried to make the most of the instability. When Urraca started warring with her new husband, they managed to expand their influence by alternatively lending their support to both sides of the conflict. (Alfonso VII’s early crowning in Galicia seems clearly intended to soothe rebellious Galician nobles who feared for his succession, thereby forcing the Portuguese counts into a more peaceful position.) In 1112, it was Henri’s turn to die – at a siege in which he was fighting for Urraca against her husband. Henri’s son, Afonso, may have been as young as one at the time; so the government of Portugal passed to Teresa, who like her half-sister was determined to rule in spite of her gender.
A tale of a mother and her son
Teresa turned out to be just as competent a leader and diplomat as Urraca. After intially focusing on defending her hold on the recently reconquered southern border of the County (around Coimbra), she took advantage of Urraca’s commitment to multiple fronts to try and establish Portugal’s independence and to take some land from León (which she presumably claimed as her inheritance). At a point things were going so well that Pope Paschal II was addressing her as “Queen” (though note that, given Urraca’s imperial pretensions, this was not necessarily equivalent to an admission of independence). Alas, in 1121 she was captured at Lanhoso and forced to relinquish all her gains.
Most likely, Teresa would have followed a policy of patiently waiting for a safe time to revive her rebellion. Though she had been beaten back, she retained control of Portugal and the support of the Count of Traba, one of the most powerful Galician nobles of the time and Teresa’s ally and lover since around 1120. With a little patience, there is no reason to think she shouldn’t be able to mount an effective resistance effort.
Patience, however, the Portuguese nobles did not have. It was all well and good to be ruled by a woman when she was making territorial gains, but suddenly things didn’t look so good. Moreover, the alliance with Traba was more than a little uncomfortable to the Archbishop of Braga and his party, who feared for their influence if Portugal were reunited with Galicia. Her own vassals then turned her son Afonso to against her (which wouldn’t have been very hard seeing as they were the ones effectively raising the young count). Following another failed attempt at expansion by Teresa in 1127, Afonso (possibly as young as 16) led a rebellion against her rule, emerging victorious from the Battle of São Mamede. Afonso thus took control of the County, exiled Mom to Galicia (where she would die in 1130), and started working on becoming a major pain in the royal neck of his cousin Alfonso (now sole Emperor of All Spain, following Urraca’s death in 1126).
Afonso was definitely more aggressive than his mother in his approach to politics in general, but he was more than just an eager warrior. For starters, he was careful not to use either the title of Count or King; as the former would be seen as an admission of his subordinate status and the latter as an affront to his cousin. Soon after taking charge, in 1131, he changed the capital of the County from Guimarães, in the heart of the Northern Portuguese heartland, to Coimbra, near the southern border he had every intention to push past. Crucially, this move served the dual purpose of keeping him close to the action of the Reconquista and relatively free from the influence of the main Portuguese magnates, whose seats were all in the North.
His approach to relations with his cousin, the Emperor and King of León, was akin to that of a child who stops misbehaving when an adult is around only to resume mischief the minute they leave their sight. While Alfonso VII was busy warring with Navarre, Afonso attacked the Count of Traba, his late mother’s lover, taking the opportunity to grab some land in Galicia. Once Cousin’s attention turned to him in 1137, Afonso promptly signed the Treaty of Tui promising to be good and faithful (though crucially not clarifying his own status as a vassal) and turned his own attention to war against the Moors.
Only two years later, in 1139, Afonso defeated a numerically superior Moorish army at the Battle of Ourique, in such convincing and spectacular fashion that he felt emboldened to just go ahead and start calling himself King of Portugal9. Naturally, Alfonso VII wasn’t just going to quietly let this happen, so Afonso took the liberty of forging an alliance with the King of Aragon (with whom Alfonso VII was still at war), and eventually the Emperor was forced to recognise he couldn’t keep up the war on all fronts after being defeated by the Portuguese at the Battle of Valdevez in 1140ish. The result was an armistice that was to result in the formal recognition of Portugal’s independence.
A nascent kingdom
On the 5th of October of the year of grace 1143, Alfonso VII, Emperor of All Spain, King of Galicia, León, and Castile, met his rebellious homonymous first cousin, the self-styled King of Portugal, at the Cathedral of Zamora. Under the mediation of Cardinal Guido de Vico, the representative of the Pope, they signed a treaty recognising Afonso’s right to kingship and de facto independence. D. Afonso Henriques, as he is known in Portugal10, thus became the first king of an independent Portugal. And thus the date 1143 became to Portuguese History like 1066 is to English History.
Note, however, that whether this signalled the beginning of Afonso’s de jure reign is not all that clear. Since at the time the King of León claimed the title of Emperor of All Spain, it is likely that he kept regarding Afonso as a vassal, albeit a particularly unfaithful one. Knowing this, Afonso made it a diplomatic priority to woo the Pope into accepting him as the Pope’s direct vassal – and thus not the King of León’s, in practice making him recognised as a legitimate independent king in all of Christendom. To this end he sent money to the Pope and offered lands and privileges to the Church throughout his reign, succeeding only in his old age, in 1179.
And the rest, as they say, is History.
Footnotes
1. It should be noted that local tribes occasionally put up heroic resistance to Roman rule. In fact, the Portuguese foundational myth presents the Portuguese people as the successors of the Lusitanian people, who twice broke away from Rome’s political control, under Viriato and Sertorius. That struggle might be a topic for a future post.
2. The significance of this crossing was such that the Muslims started calling the Iberian side of the Strait “Jabal Tariq”, meaning “Tariq’s Mount”; which was later corrupted to become the modern name “Gibraltar”.
3. As opposed to Portugal, where it seems to me that the Age of Discoveries plays a far more significant role.
4. A good example is the siege of Lisbon, when the Portuguese managed to attract knights on their way to the Second Crusade in order to capture our current capital.
5. For example, the Caliphate of Córdoba under al-Manṣūr forced all Iberian kingdoms to submit to muslim overlordship, whilst the political instability brought about by his death was what allowed the Christians to go on the offensive again.
6. Interestingly, the dioceses of Galicia and León only ceased to recognise the precedence of the Archbishop of Braga in the 14th century, over a century after Portugal’s independence!.
7. García II of Galicia thus has a reasonable claim to the title of first king of (a non-independent) Kingdom of Portugal! Note however the earlier claim by Ramiro II of León, who between 925 and 931 used the subtly different secondary title of “king of the Portuguese land”.
8. Possibly. Apparently there is actually some disagreement among historians about whether Raymond and Henri came to the Peninsula at the same time and under the same circumstances. Still, this is better for the story, and I’m the one telling it, so shut up.
9. I believe all we really know is that Afonso started using the title of King of Portugal in the aftermath of this battle. It is possible that he did so only after being more or less spontaneously acclaimed as king by his troops on the battlefield. At any rate, the events on that day became associated with a legend that the day before the battle Afonso had a vision of Christ and a bunch of angels in which he was assured of his victory and/or instructed to go become King of Portugal. And apparently one interpretation of the five shields in the Portuguese flag is that they are a reference to Christ’s five wounds and this supposed miracle!
10. D. is just short for Dom, an honorific used for any noble man, and every Portuguese king. Henriques is a patronymic signifying “son of Henrique” (the Portuguese version of Henri).
Aetherial Porosity 
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