Ferdinand I (c. 1015 - 24 December 1065), called the Great (el Magno), was the Count of Castile from his uncle's death in 1029 and the King of Leon after defeating his brother-in-law in 1037. According to tradition, he was the first to have himself crowned Emperor of Spain (1056), and his heirs carried on the tradition. While Ferdinand inaugurated the rule of the Navarrese Jimenez dynasty over western Spain, his rise to preeminence among the Christian rulers of the peninsula shifted the locus of power and culture westward after more than a century of Leonese decline.