Before the Muslim conquest the Iberian peninsula was ruled by the Visigoths, a barbarian Germanic people who had conquered the region when the Roman Empire collapsed in the early fifth century AD. The Visigoths were divided into three tribes, the Suevi, the Alani and the Vandals. Some of the Vandals crossed over to conquer the Roman province of Africa, where they were still ruling when the Arabs conquered the Maghrib. When the Arabs learned that their predecessors had crossed over from the Iberian peninsula they referred to that region by a distorted version of the name ‘Vandals’, calling it al-Andalus.
The Muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula began in the spring of 711, when Musa ibn Nusayr, the Arab governor of the Maghrib, sent an army across the strait under Tariq ibn Ziyad. The great peninsular rock on the European side of the strait was thenceforth called Jabal Tariq, which in English came to be known as Gibraltar. The last Visigoth king, Roderic, was defeated and killed in July 711 by Tariq, who went on to capture Cordoba and Toledo, the Visigoth capital.
Musa followed across the straits with an even larger army, and after taking Seville and other places he joined Tariq in Toledo. Musa was then recalled to Damascus by the Umayyad caliph, leaving the conquered lands in the hands of his son ‘Abd al-Aziz, who in the three years of his governorship (712–15), extended his control over most of the Iberian peninsula, thenceforth known to the Arabs as al-Andalus.
When the first ‘Abbasid caliph, Abu’l-‘Abbas al-Saffah (r. 749–54), came to power in Damascus he sought to consolidate his power by slaughtering all of the members of the Umayyad family. One of the Umayyads, ‘Abd al-Rahman, escaped to the Maghrib and then to al-Andalus, where in 756 he established himself in Cordoba, taking the title amir. This was the beginning of the Umayyad dynasty in Spain, which was to rule al-Andalus until 1031. ‘Abd al-Rahman I (r. 756–88) established Cordoba as his capital, and in the years 784–86 he erected the Great Mosque, which was rebuilt and enlarged by several of his successors.
The Umayyad dynasty in al-Andalus reached its peak under ‘Abd al-Rahman III (r. 912–61), who in 929 took the title of caliph, emphasising the independence of al-Andalus from the ‘Abbasid caliphate in the East. This began the golden age of Muslim Cordoba, known to Arab chroniclers as ‘the bride of al-Andalus’. The golden age continued under ‘Abd al-Rahman’s son and successor al-Hakam II (r. 961–76), and his grandson Hisham II (976–1009), who was a puppet in the hands of his vizier al-Mansur.
‘Abd al-Rahman chose a site outside Cordoba to build the magnificent palace of Madinat al-Zahra, ‘the Radiant’. Al-Hakem built one of the greatest libraries in the Islamic world in Cordoba, rivalling those at Baghdad and Cairo. The caliph’s library, together with the many free schools he founded in his capital, gave Cordoba a reputation for learning that spread throughout Europe, attracting Christian scholars as well as Muslims, not to mention the Jews who lived under Islamic rule. As the Maghrib historian al-Maqqari was to write of tenth-century Cordoba: ‘in four things Cordoba surpasses the capitals of the world. Among them are the bridge over the river and the mosque. These are the first two; the third is Madinat al-Zahra; but the greatest of all things is knowledge – and that is the fourth.’
After al-Mansur’s death in 1002 the caliphate passed in turn to several claimants in the principal cities of al-Andalus, and finally it was abolished altogether in 1031. The fall of the caliphate was followed by a period of sixty years in which al-Andalus was fragmented into a mosaic of petty Muslim states, allowing the Christian kingdoms of northern Spain to start expanding south, beginning what came to be known then as the reconquista. The first major Christian triumph came in 1085, when Toledo fell to the king of Castile and Leon, Alfonso VI (r. 1072–1109).
The fall of Toledo led the petty Muslim rulers to seek help from the powerful ruler of the Almoravids in Morocco, Yusuf ibn Tashfin (r. 1061–1106). Yusuf crossed into al-Andalus in 1086, when he decidedly defeated Alfonso’s army, saving southern Spain from falling into Christian hands. This led to the domination of al-Andalus by the Almoravids, which lasted until the mid-twelfth century, when they were supplanted by another powerful dynasty from the Maghrib, the Almohads. During the reign of ‘Abd al-Mu’min (r. 1130–63) the Almohads extended their power throughout both the Maghrib and al-Andalus. The Almohads suffered a crushing defeat in 1212 at the hands of a Christian coalition, which in the next half century seized the major Muslim cities in al-Andalus, taking Cordoba in 1236. Virtually all that remained of al-Andalus was the Banu Nasr kingdom of Granada, which hung on until its capture in 1492 by Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, the ‘Catholic Kings’, who drove most of the Moors from Spain, along with the Jews. A few remained, however, protected by their Christian lords, retained for their skills or converted under the Inquisition until 1609, when there was another great wave of expulsion.
‘Abd al-Rahman II (r. 822–52) contributed to the development of science in al-Andalus by sending an agent to the East to buy manuscripts, which an anonymous Maghribi chronicler says included astronomical tables as well as works in astronomy, philosophy, medicine and music. The emir was keenly interested in astronomy and astrology, perhaps stimulated by a total eclipse of the sun on 17 September 833, which so terrified the people of Cordoba that they quickly gathered at the Great Mosque to pray for divine deliverance.
The emir’s court poet and astrologer was ‘Abbas ibn Firnas (d. 887), born in Roda of Berber origin, who was also an astronomer, physician, inventor and musician. Ibn Firnas introduced a version of al-Khwarizmi’s astronomical tables, the Zij al-Sindhind, which would subsequently be of considerable influence on the development of astronomy in Christian Europe. With the emir’s patronage, Ibn Firnas built an observatory in Cordoba, with a planetarium, an armillary sphere and a water-clock capable of indicating the times of prayer. He invented a metronome, discovered how to cut quartz, and made a celestial sphere that he could adjust to appear cloudy or clear according to the weather. He also attempted to fly by leaping from the top of the Rusafa palace in Cordoba with a hang-glider of his own invention, made of feathers attached to a wooden frame. He apparently managed to glide for some distance but suffered injuries in a rough landing, which his critics attributed to his failure to observe the manner in which birds use their tail feathers when they alight on a branch.
Tenth-century Cordoba was renowned for its school of physicians, presided over by the Jewish doctor Hasday ibn Shaprut (ca. 915–ca. 990), vizier of ‘Abd al-Rahman III and later personal physician of Hisham II. Hasday also supervised the imperial translation activities and carried out diplomatic missions on behalf of the caliphate. One of his diplomatic activities involved the reception of an ambassador from the Byzantine capital Constantinople in 949. The envoy brought with him presents for ‘Abd al-Rahman III from the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (r. 913–59), one of them being a superb Greek manuscript of De Materia Medica of Dioscorides.
No one in Cordoba knew enough Greek to read the manuscript, so the ambassador arranged for a Byzantine monk named Nicholas to be sent to Cordoba, where he arrived in 951, along with a Greek-speaking Arab from Sicily. Nicholas and the Arab then explained Dioscorides’ work to a group of Cordoban scholars headed by Hasday, thus contributing to the studies of pharmacology in al-Andalus. De Materia Medica subsequently was translated from Arabic into Latin for the education of pharmacists and physicians in Christian Europe.
Hasday then entered into correspondence with the Empress Helena, wife of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, asking her to protect the Jews of Constantinople from persecution. He also corresponded with Khan Joseph, ruler of the Khazars, a Turkic tribe in the Crimea, who had in the late eighth or early ninth century converted to Judaism.
The Jewish physician and philosopher Isaac ben Solomon Israeli (ca. 855–ca. 955) was an older contemporary of Hasday. He was born in Egypt and sometime after 900 he moved to Ifriqiya (‘Africa’, now Tunisia). There he became personal physician to the last emir of the Aghlabids, the dynasty named for Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab, who had been made hereditary governor of Ifriqiya in 800 by Harun al-Rashid. When the last Aghlabid emir was deposed Israeli became court physician to Ubayd Allah al-Mahdi (r. 909–34), founder of the Fatimid dynasty in Ifriqiya.
Israeli wrote several medical treatises in Arabic that were popular in the Islamic world, and, after their translation into Latin, were much used in Catholic Europe as well. The treatises were also translated into Hebrew. The best known of his medical works are the Book of Fevers, the Book of Foodstuffs and Drugs, and the Book of Urine.
His major works are the Book of Definitions, the Book of Substances, the Book on Spirit and Soul, the Chapter on the Elements and the Book on the Elements. The writings had considerable influence on Christian thinkers, including Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon and Nicholas of Cusa, as well as on the great Jewish poet and philosopher Solomon ben Gabirol.
The principal source of information about the Cordoban medical school is Sulayman ibn Hasan ibn Juljul al-Andalusi (944–ca. 994). Ibn Juljul studied medicine in Cordoba between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four with a group headed by Hasday ibn Shaprut and the Byzantine monk Nicholas. Later he became the personal physician of Caliph Abd-al Rahman III. His most important work, entitled Generations of Physicians and Wise Men, is one of the most complete extant source in Arabic on the history of medicine. It is of particular interest because he uses not only Arabic translations of Greek sources and Islamic sources but also the works of western Christian physicians who had treated the early Andalusian emirs, their works having been translated from Latin to Arabic at Cordoba in the eighth and ninth centuries. He says that most of the physicians practising in al-Andalus up to the time of ‘Abd al-Rahman III were Mozarabs, or Christians living under Muslim rule who had taken Arabic on as their language and whose culture was connected with that of al-Andalus, and that the principal source of their knowledge was ‘one of the books of the Christians that had been translated’.
Ibn Juljul also wrote a treatise on De Materia Medica of Dioscorides, probably based on the manuscript that had been sent from Constantinople. He wrote another book on the plants and remedies that had not been described by Dioscorides. The works of Ibn Juljul remained popular in al-Andalus for some time, and one of them may have been translated into Latin, since Albertus Magnus quotes from a treatise called De Secretis which he attributes to a certain Gilgil, probably a corruption of ‘Juljul’.
The physician and pharmacologist Abu’l Qasim al-Zahrawi (ca. 936–ca. 1013), the Latin Abulcasis, was a contemporary of Ibn Juljul. His last name comes from his birthplace, the imperial Cordoban suburb of Madinat al-Zahra, where he spent most of his life. His only known work is the Kitab al-Tasrif, a medical encyclopedia in thirty volumes, which he completed in about the year 1000, encompassing the experience of nearly half a century as a physician. The encyclopedia covers every aspect of medicine, including the design and manufacture of surgical tools, midwifery, pharmaceutical preparations, diet, hygiene, medical terminology, weights and measures, medical chemistry, human anatomy and physiology, therapeutics and psychotherapy. Al-Zahrawi recommended that physicians should specialise in a particular branch of medicine, because ‘Too much branching and specialising in many fields before perfecting one of them causes frustration and mental fatigue.’ He particularly emphasised the importance of bedside medicine and the bond between doctor and patient, writing that ‘Only by repeated visits to the patient’s bedside can the physician follow the progress of his medical treatment’.
Al-Zahrawi was a great educator and encouraged young people to study medicine after completing their studies in the humanities, philosophy, astronomy and mathematics. He was also a natural philosopher and described medicinal plants and the preparation of pharmaceuticals from chemical substances. He was a pioneer in the use of drugs in psychotherapy, and he made an opium-based medicine that he called ‘the bringer of joy and gladness, because it relaxes the soul, dispels bad thoughts and worries, moderates temperaments, and is useful against melancholia’. His work was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona and others and became very popular in western Europe.
A new phase in the development of astronomy in al-Andalus begins with the work of Abu Maslama al-Majriti, who was born in Madrid in the second half of the tenth century and studied in Cordoba, where he died in 1007. He seems to have studied with the group of scholars patronised by ‘Abd al-Rahman III and may have served as the caliph’s astrologer.
Al-Majriti and his student Ibn al-Saffar (d. 1034) improved the astronomical tables of al-Khwarizmi and adapted them for the latitude of Cordoba, a work that passed to Christian Europe through a Latin translation by Adelard of Bath. Two other extant works of al-Majriti are the Commercial Arithmetic and a brief Treatise on the Astrolabe, while his Arabic edition of Ptolemy’s Planisphaerium survives in a Latin version by Herman of Dalmatia. The eleventh-century historian Ibn Sa’id of Toledo says that al-Majriti ‘applied himself to the observation of the heavenly bodies and to understanding the book of Ptolemy called the Almagest’, and that he was ‘the author of a summary of the part of al-Battani’s table concerning the equation of the planets’. According to the fourteenth-century astronomer Ibn al-Shatir, al-Majriti was one of a number of Islamic astronomers who produced theories of the motion of the celestial bodies that were different from the standard Ptolemaic model.
Al-Majriti was once thought to be the author of the Ghayat al-hakim (The Aim of the Wise), as alleged by Ibn Khaldun, but this attribution has now been rejected. This work was translated into Castilian in 1256 through the patronage of King Alfonso X of Castile. It was later translated into Latin under the title of Picatrix, a corruption of Buqratis, the Arab name of Hippocrates, on the supposition that he, and not al-Majriti, was the author, who is described on the title page as being a ‘very wise... philosopher...most skilled in mathematics...[and] very learned in the arts of necromancy’.
The Picatrix has been described as ‘a compendium of magic, cosmology, astrological practice, and esoteric wisdom in general’, which ‘provides the most complete picture of superstitions current in eleventh-century Islam’. Lynn Thorndike devotes a whole chapter of his History of Magic and Experimental Science to the Picatrix, which he describes as a ‘confused compilation of extracts from occult writings and a hodgepodge of innumerable magical and astrological recipes’.
The occult knowledge in the Picatrix may have come to al-Andalus from the eastern Islamic world. Ibn Juljul mentions a physician named al-Harrani, (from Harran) who practised in Cordoba at the court of ‘Abd al-Rahman II, and he also writes of two other physicians of that name who may be grandsons of al-Harrani. These are Ahmad and ‘Umar ibn Yunus al-Harrani, who before coming to Cordoba had studied at Baghdad with Thabit ibn Sinan ibn Thabit ibn Qurra, who as his name indicates was a grandson of the great Thabit ibn Qurra of Harran.
Al-Majriti is also credited with an Arabic lapidary, or work on gems and their medical and magical properties. The lapidary was used by William of Auvergne (d. 1249), who refers to it in writing that the tortoise stone can produce visions and revelations. This wizard stone is described thus in the lapidary. He writes that ‘The virtue of the stone is that when it is placed under the tongue, which has first been anointed with honey, the tongue utters knowledge of the future, as long as the stone remains under it.’
The beginning of Arabic philosophy in al-Andalus comes with the work of Ibn Hazm (994–1064), who was born and spent most of his life in Cordoba, where his father and grandfather had been functionaries in the Umayyad court. His best-known philosophical work is his Book on the Classification of the Sciences. Aside from his many philosophical works, he also wrote poetry and treatises on history, jurisprudence, ethics and theology. His most famous poetical work is entitled Tawq al-hamama, or The Dove’s Neck-Ring, a treatise on the art of love, which he says is ‘a serious illness’.
Love, may God honor you, is a serious illness, one
whose treatment must be in proportion to the
affliction. It’s a delicious disease, a welcome malady.
Those who are free of it want not to be immune, and
Those who are stricken by it want not to be cured.
Ibn Hazm was particularly qualified to write a book on the art of love, he writes, having been brought up to the age of fourteen in the harem, or women’s quarters, of his family home: ‘I have observed women at first hand and I am acquainted with their secrets to an extent that no one else could claim, for I was raised in their chambers and I grew up among them and knew no one but them.’ He goes on to say that ‘women taught me the Qu’ran, they recited to me much poetry, they trained me in calligraphy’.
The Islamic schools of the time in Cordoba employed several women copyists, as did the city’s book market, whereas more highly educated women worked as teachers and librarians, while a few even practised medicine and law.
Ibn Hazm believed in revelation, but he felt that ‘the first sources of all human knowledge are the soundly used senses and the intuition of reason, combined with the correct understanding of a language’. He said that the first Muslims had experienced divine revelation directly, whereas those of his own time were exposed to contrary beliefs and needed logic to preserve the pure teachings of Islam, so that they can know ‘the reality of things and...discern falsehood without a shred of doubt’.
Ibn Hazm also wrote a work on ethics entitled The Characters and Conduct Concerning the Medicine of Souls. There he describes the Socratic ideal of moderation in all things that governed his own way of life: ‘In this book I have gathered together many ideas which the Author of the light of reason inspired in me as the days of my life passed and the vicissitudes of my existence succeeded one another. God granted me the favour of being a man who has always been concerned with the vagaries of fortune.’
The leading Andalusian astronomer in the century after al-Majriti was Ibn Mu’adh al-Jayyani (d. 1093), whose last name comes from the fact that he was a native of Jaen, east of Cordoba. His best known work is the Tabulae Jahen, a set of astronomical tables based on al-Khwarizmi’s Sindhind and adapted for the latitude of Jaen. His tables were an improvement over the Sindhind, for he took into account the precession of the equinoxes, which al-Khwarizmi had ignored, and he utilised advances in astronomical theory made by al-Biruni and his other predecessors. The Tabulae Jahen also gives detailed instructions in such practical matters as determining the times of prayer, the direction of Mecca, the visibility of the new moon to establish the beginning of the Islamic months, the prediction of lunar eclipses, and the casting of horoscopes, all of which made it very useful for later mosque astronomers.
Al-Jayyani’s other writings include treatises on astronomy and mathematics. His astronomical works include a treatise dealing with the phenomena of twilight and false dawn, which in its Latin translation was popular from the medieval era up to the Renaissance. His treatise On the Total Solar Eclipse describes an eclipse of the sun visible at Jaen on 1 July 1079. One of his mathematical works is a treatise on spherical trigonometry. Another is his treatise On Ratio, which he says he composed ‘to explain what may not be clear in the fifth book of Euclid’s writing to such as are not satisfied with it’. Unlike many other Islamic mathematicians, he did not try to prove Euclid’s definition of parallel lines, writing that ‘There is no method to make clear what is clear in itself’.’
Al-Jayyani’s contemporary Abu ‘Ubayd ‘Abdallah ibn ‘Abd al-’Aziz ibn Muhammad al-Bakri (ca. 1010–94) was one of the pioneers of Andalusian geography. Al-Bakri was born in Huelva, but spent most of his life in Cordoba, Almeria and Seville. His most important work is the Book of Roads and Kingdoms, completed in 1068, a description of land and sea routes for the use of travellers. The book describes Europe, North Africa and Arabia, giving useful facts on the main cities, geography, climate, history, people and social conditions. His sources include Jewish and Islamic travellers and writers.
Al-Jayyani’s treatise on spherical trigonometry was indirectly transmitted to parts of Christian Europe through a work of Jabir ibn Aflah, known in Latin as Geber, an astronomer and mathematician who flourished in Seville in the first half of the twelfth century. One of Jabir’s most important works, in which he used and added to al-Jayyani’s methods in spherical trigonometry, is an adaptation of Ptolemy’s astronomical theories in a treatise entitled Islah al-Majisti (Correction of the Almagest). According to Ibn al-Qifti, the Islah al-Majisti was revised ca. 1185 by Moses Maimonides and his student Joseph ben Yehuda ben ‘Aqnin, and it was translated from Arabic to Hebrew by Moses ben Tibbon in 1274. The unrevised text was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the second half of the twelfth century and was used by European astronomers and mathematicians up until the seventeenth century. European mathematicians were particularly influenced by Jabir’s version of spherical trigonometry, which was used by Regiomontanus in his De triangulis, published in the early 1460s, a work ‘which systematized trigonometry for the Latin West’, according to R. P. Lorch. Lorch also notes that Copernicus made use of the work of Jabir, whom he called an ‘egregious calumniator of Ptolemy’.
Another set of astronomical tables was compiled for Toledo around 1069. These were the famous Toledan Tables, known only through a Latin translation, which survives in an enormous number of manuscript copies. The tables, which were an adaptation of earlier works from Ptolemy through al-Khwarizmi and al-Battani, were prepared by a group of astronomers, the best known of whom was Abu’l-Qasim Sa’id (d. 1070), the qadi, or judge, of Toledo.
Another notable member of the group was al-Zarqallu (d. 1100) (arguably more famous than Abu’l-Qasim), the Latin Arczachel, a self-educated artisan who worked for Abu’l-Qasim Sa’id as a maker of astronomical instruments and water-clocks. After Abu’l-Qasim Sa’id died, al-Zarqallu became director of the group that completed the new astronomical tables.
The observations that led to the Toledan Tables were continued for another three decades by al-Zarqallu, who left Toledo ca. 1078 because of the repeated attacks by the Christian king Alfonso VI and moved to Cordoba, where he lived for the rest of his days. The water-clocks built in Toledo by al-Zarqallu remained in use until 1133, when King Alfonso VII of Castile and Leon had them taken apart to see how they worked but could not reassemble them. Water-clocks of the type built by al-Zarqallu, which showed the motion of the celestial bodies, became popular in seventeenth-century Europe.
The Toledan Tables were used in both al-Andalus and in Christian Europe, where they were translated into Latin ca. 1140 as the Marseilles Tables. There are at least two tables under this name, one ascribed to Raymond de Marseilles, the other William of England, and though they used the Toledan Tables, they also referred to other material and thus their versions are not considered true translations. The original translators of the Tables are generally assumed to be John of Seville and Gerard of Cremone and the Tables were known before 1140 in southern France, where Raymond de Marseilles compiled his Liber cursurum planetarum. They remained in use until the fourteenth century, and a Latin version of the Toledan Tables was translated into Greek around 1340 in Cyprus, completing a remarkable cultural cycle. The tables are mentioned by Chaucer in ‘The Franklin’s Tale’, where one of the characters is a magician-astrologer of Orleans, equipped with all the tools of his celestial trade:
His tables Toletanes forth he brought
Ful wel corrected, ne ther lacked noght,
Neither his collect ne his expans yeres,
Ne his rotes ne his othere geres...
After the fall of Cordoba to the Christians in 1252, western Arabic science continued in Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in al-Andalus, and in the Maghrib, though on a much diminished scale.
The mathematician Ibn al-Banna al-Marrakushi (1256–1321) was a native of Granada, though, as his last name indicates, he had some connection to Marrakech. He is known to have studied in both Marrakech and Fez, where he taught mathematics and astronomy at the Madrasa al-Attarin. Eighty-two of his works are known, of which the most famous is the Summary of Arithmetical Operations, a compendium of the lost works of the mathematician al-Hassar (fl. ca. 1200).
The mathematician al-Qalasadi was a native of Basta (now Baza) in Spain, but when the city was taken in 1486 by Queen Isabella of Castile he was forced to flee to the Maghrib, where he died at Beja in Tunisia. One of al-Qalasadi’s works is a commentary on Ibn al-Banna’s Summary of Mathematical Operations. The first of his own writings was the Classification of the Science of Arithmetic, which he followed with a simplified version entitled Unveiling the Science of Arithmetic, and then an abridgement of the latter work called Unfolding the Secrets of the Use of Dust Letters (i.e., Hindu numerals). The last two works were used in Moroccan schools for generations after the death of al-Qalasadi.
Al-Qalasadi died only about fourteen years after the fall of Granada in 1492, which ended the history of al-Andalus. The principal remnant of the intellectual world of Muslim Granada is the al-madrasa al-yusufiyya, founded in 1349 by the emir Yusuf I (r. 1334–54). Only fragments of the Moorish building remain, but it is still referred to by its original Spanish name, La Madraza, from madrasa, a Muslim school of higher studies, the last one in al-Andalus. La Madraza eventually became part of the University of Granada, which was founded in 1531 by the Emperor Charles V.