The Jiménez dynasty, alternatively called the Jimena, the Sancha, the Banu Sancho, the Abarca or the Banu Abarca, was a medieval ruling family from the 9th century which would expand control to become the royal houses of the several kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula during the 11th and 12th centuries, namely, the Kingdoms of Navarre, Aragon, Castile, Leon and Galicia as well as of other territories in the South of France. They played a major role in the Reconquista, expanding the direct control of the Christian states as well as subjecting neighboring Muslim Taifas to vassalage. Each of the Jiménez royal lines would go extinct in the male line in the 12th or 13th century. History The first known member of the family, García Jiménez of Pamplona, is obscure, it being stated by the Códice de Roda that he was "king of another part of the kingdom" of Pamplona, presumably lord of part of Navarre beyond the area of direct control of the Íñiguez kings: probably the frontier areas of Álava and the western Pyrenees given the list of their landholdings preserved in a later charter. It was long believed that their origins lay in Gascony. In 905 Sancho Garcés, a younger son of the dynasty founder, used foreign assistance to displace the Íñiguez ruler Fortún Garcés and consolidate the monarchy in his dynasty's hands. He would be viewed as founder of the dynasty, with several Iberian Muslim sources calling the family the Banu Sanjo ( - the descendants of Sancho) for several subsequent generations, while a 12th-century Tunisian chronicler of Al-Andalus, Ibn al-Kardabūs, referred to Sancho III of Pamplona as ibn Abarca ( - son or descendant of Abarca), referencing a nickname originally borne by Sancho I in the naming of this Banu Abarca dynasty. In addition to repulsing several attacks from the Emir of Córdoba, Sancho I crushed the neighboring Banu Qasi and thus expanded Pamplona to the upper Ebro River valley, as well as incorporating the previously-autonomous County of Aragon into the realm. Following the death of Sancho in 925, his brother Jimeno Garcés maintained a position of strength, intervening in the politics of neighboring Christian and Muslim states. His death left the crown to his nephew, Sancho's son García Sánchez I, who was still a child. Originally ruling under the tutelage of his mother, the Íñiguez descendant Toda Aznar who established a web of political and