Tomar (), also known in English as Thomar (the ancient name of Tomar), is a city and a municipality in the Santarém district of Portugal. The town proper has a population of about 20,000. The municipality population in 2011 was 40,677, in an area of .
The town of Tomar was created inside the walls of the Convento de Cristo, constructed under the orders of Gualdim de Pais, the fourth Grand Master of the Knights Templar in Portugal in the late 12th century.
Tomar was the last Templar town to be commissioned for construction and one of Portugal's historical jewels. The town was especially important in the 15th century when it was a center of Portuguese overseas expansion under Henry the Navigator, the Grand Master of the Order of Christ, successor organization to the Knights Templar in Portugal.
Geography
Tomar lies in the most fertile region of Portugal, and one of the most fertile in the whole of the Iberian Peninsula: the Ribatejo ("by the river Tagus") meadows. It is located in the district of Santarém. The predominant landscape is agricultural, consisting of olive, pine and fig trees.
The seat of the municipality is the city of Tomar, which comprises the parishes of Santa Maria dos Olivais and São João Batista. Tomar is also the capital of the Médio Tejo (Mid-Tagus river) region.
The Nabão River cuts across what was the ancient city of Nabantia: its inhabitants are called Nabantinos.
Parishes
Administratively, the municipality is divided into 11 civil parishes (freguesias):
Além da Ribeira e Pedreira
Asseiceira
Carregueiros
Casais e Alviobeira
Madalena e Beselga
Olalhas
Paialvo
Sabacheira
São Pedro de Tomar
Tomar (São João Baptista) e Santa Maria dos Olivais
Serra e Junceira
History
Under the modern city lies the Roman city of Sellium. After the conquest of the region from the Moors in the Portuguese Reconquista, the land was granted in 1159 as a fief to the Order of the Knights Templar. In 1160, Gualdim Pais, the Order's Grand master in Portugal and Tomar's somewhat mythical founder, laid the first stone of the Castle and Convent of the Knights Templar that would become the headquarters of the Order in Portugal.
Local traditional legends preach that the choice was for mystical reasons and by divine inspiration, and from practices by the Grand Master of geomancy, based on exercises taken from luck and predestination. Reinforcing this magical view is the setting of the site among a small chain of seven elevations (lugar dos sete montes), which became known as the city of seven hills, as the seven hills of Jerusalem, the seven hills of Rome or the seven columns of Constantinople.
The foral or feudal contract was granted in 1162 by the Grand Master to the people. The Templars ruled from Tomar a vast region of central Portugal which they pledged to defend from Moorish attacks and raids. Like many lords of the unpopulated former frontier region of central Portugal, the villagers were given relatively liberal conditions in comparison with those of the northern regions of Portugal, in order to attract new immigrants. Those inhabitants who could sustain a horse were obliged to pay military service in return for privileges. They were not allowed the title of Knight which was reserved to the Templars. Women were also admitted to the Order, although they did not fight.
In 1190 Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur, an Almohad caliph, and his army attacked Tomar. However the knights and their 72-year-old leader, Gualdim Pais, kept them at bay. A plaque commemorates this bloody battle at the Porta do Sangue at the Castelo Templário (Castle of Tomar).
In 1314, under pressure from the Pope Clement V, the order was suppressed. Philip IV of France, who owed the Templars huge debts, held the pope a virtual prisoner and coerced him to suppress the order on bases of false accusations and forced confessions. The Order was suppressed in most of Europe and its holdings were to be transferred to the Knights Hospitaler. Instead, King Dinis negotiated the transfer of the Order's possessions and personnel in Portugal to a newly created Order of Christ. This Order moved in 1319 to Castro Marim, but in 1356 it returned to Tomar.