From the Catholic Encyclopedia:
The date of its composition has long been a disputed question. Many critics whose names must be mentioned with respect, among them Dozy and Ticknor, place it at the beginning of the thirteenth century; but today the best opinion places the poem a half-century earlier. Among...
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From the Catholic Encyclopedia:
The date of its composition has long been a disputed question. Many critics whose names must be mentioned with respect, among them Dozy and Ticknor, place it at the beginning of the thirteenth century; but today the best opinion places the poem a half-century earlier. Among those who think it was written as early as the middle of twelfth century are many eminent Spanish and foreign scholars, including Sanchez, the first editor of the poem, Capmany, Quintana, Gil y Zarate, Bouterwek, Sismondi, Shlegel, Huber, and Wolf. The learned Amador de los Rios, whose opinion carries great weight, thinks that the famous poem must have been written prior to 1157.
Further Reading
When was the El Cid poem written? What year?
Well, that's a tough question to answer with precision, because versions of the poem almost certainly circulated via oral tradition before it was written down.
That said, the oldest written version we have is a fourteenth century copy of a version that indicates it was copied from a manuscript written in 1207 by Per Abbat
Greg
Further Reading