In 1115, forces of the Almoravid Emirate under the commander and acting on the orders of the Emir Ali ibn Yusuf, carried out a raid against the city of Barcelona, the main city of the County of Barcelona.
Following the death of , the governor of Zaragoza, during the 1114 campaign in Catalonia, the Emir Ali ibn Yusuf appointed Abu Bakr ibn Ibrahim ibn Tifilwit as the new governor. The latter was also the governor of Murcia, Valencia, Tortosa and the rest of the Sharq al-Andalus. The emir ordered Abu Bakr to march on the County of Barcelona. The purpose of the attack was to avenge the death of Ibn al-Hajj.
During the raids of 1114âÂÂ1115, Count Ramon Berenguer III of Barcelona was away on the Balearic Crusade. There are two sources for the 1115 raid: the contemporary Latin Liber maiolichinus, a poem about the Balearic expedition, and the later Arabic Rawd al-Qirtas of Ibn Abi Zar. While some historians questioned the account in the Rawd al-Qirtas, seeing it as a piece of propaganda, a successful doublet of the failed 1114 campaign, the Liber maiolichinus corroborates the reality of a second raid.
Abu Bakr gathered all his forces and headed north, plundering and razing the lands around Barcelona. The Almoravid attack reached the gates of Barcelona, which was besieged for 20 days. The Rawd al-Qirtas described the attack:
The of Sant Andreu de Palomar and the monastery of Sant Pau del Camp were among the victims of the raid. News of the Almoravid attack on Barcelona reached the crusader camp in the Balearic Islands, leading to the withdrawal of the Catalan contingent under Count Ramon Berenguer III. He returned with the forces drawn from Barcelona and Narbonne and there were battles between the two sides. This is recorded in the Liber maiolichinus.
After this campaign, the Almoravids returned to their lands. Before the end of the year or early in 1116, they had retaken the Balearic Islands.
The devastation wrought by the raiders was less than that inflicted on the city in the sack of 985, but the city's recovery was slower since the raid came at a time when the local economy was suffering. A document of June 1116 refers to frequent famines in the area. In 1127, the abandoned monastery of Sant Pau del Camp had to be handed over to the monastery of Sant Cugat. In 1132, Sant Andreu de Palomera was reconsecrated.