WHILE THE STRUGGLE for leadership of the Islamic community continued between the Abbasids and Fatimids, a third caliphate was being proclaimed and established in Andalus. This was the far west of the Islamic world: those areas of Spain and Portugal under Muslim rule. Most of the Iberian Peninsula had been conquered by Muslim forces in the years 711–16, which left only a few impoverished, isolated areas of Cantabria and the Pyrenees under Christian rule. Muslim raiding parties then pressed deep into France, up the Rhône valley in the east and in the west through Aquitaine almost as far as the Loire valley. In 732 a raiding party led by the governor of Andalus, Abd al-Rahmān al-Ghāfiqi, was defeated by Charles Martel and a Frankish army. The defeat, though probably not disastrous in military terms, marked the end of Arab-Muslim expansion into France and the beginning of a period of consolidation when there was no more easy booty to finance the Muslim elite and systems of taxation and settled government had to be developed.
Initially Andalus formed part of the Umayyad caliphate, and rule from Damascus was surprisingly effective. Governors were appointed and dismissed with great frequency, only enjoying a few years’ tenure at most, but the province was far from peaceful. The conquerors were a mixture of Berbers and of men of Arab descent and language whose families had originally come from Arabia, mostly from the settled areas of Yemen in the south, but who had stayed in Egypt for a couple of generations before joining expeditions to the Maghreb. They were Arabic-speaking but not, by and large, nomad Bedouin, and were used to urban and agricultural environments. The Berbers, however, outnumbered the Arabs. The indigenous people of north-west Africa, Berbers spoke their own language and, in contrast to the Arabs, were largely rural pastoral people living outside the few small towns of the Maghreb. In Andalus they tended to gravitate to the upland, rural areas of the peninsula.
The Arabs had settled as well, but they were divided by fierce tribal loyalties. As in modern Yemen, living in small towns and villages did not mean that tribal links lost their importance, far from it. Tribal rivalries dominated the politics of Andalus, all the more so when the revenue from booty dried up. In 741 the demographics of the Muslim population there were changed fundamentally. In 740 the Berber tribes of North Africa had rebelled against the Umayyad-appointed governors in Qayrawan. The grievances were against the imposition of kharāj by the authorities and the taking of slaves, especially girls, for the households of the caliphs and their supporters in the Middle East. Both the great Abbasid caliph al Mansūr and Abd al-Rahmān b. Mu
āwiya, the first of the Umayyad rulers of Andalus, had Berber mothers.
To combat the rebellion, a large army was recruited in Syria and sent to the west. Many of the troops came from the Arab tribes there, the backbone of the Umayyad army, but a considerable number seem to have been mawālī of the Umayyad family, that is to say that they were not Arabs by descent but people who had converted to Islam and taken service with the Umayyads as soldiers or civil servants. They owed their loyalties not to their tribes, or even to the wider umma, but to their patrons, the Umayyad family. The campaign was not a success and many of the Syrian troops were cut off by the rebels in Ceuta, just across the Straits of Gibraltar. In Spain too there was unrest among the Berbers and the governor reluctantly allowed the Syrians in Ceuta to cross the Straits and help suppress the rebellion. Their task completed, many of the Syrians settled in the south of Andalus in different junds, military divisions named after the areas of Syria they had come from. Needless to say, there was conflict between the various elements of the Syrian army and between them and the long-established Arabs of the first conquest.
THE UMAYYAD EMIRATE OF CÓRDOBA
Such was the position when the Umayyad caliphate in Syria was overwhelmed by the advances of the Abbasid forces from the east between 747 and 750. The Abbasids set about exterminating the Umayyad family with single-minded ruthlessness and many of them were massacred on the spot or hunted down and killed. Among the few who escaped was Abd al-Rahmān b. Muāwiya, a grandson of the last great Umayyad caliph, Hishām. After some desperate adventures, including swimming across the Euphrates to get away from his pursuers, Abd al-Rahmān made his way to North Africa, presumably to take refuge with his mother’s kin. Here he could feel safe from the Abbasids.
The Abbasids made no serious attempt to conquer Andalus. It was too remote and they had other more pressing concerns. But that did not mean the province was peaceful and fierce infighting continued. Meanwhile, Abd al-Rahmān’s attempt to establish his power in North Africa had been thwarted by tribal rivalries and he sent his mawlā and right-hand man Badr to Andalus to make contact with the Umayyad mawālī there. After some negotiation, Abd al-Rahmān crossed the Mediterranean to the little port of Almunecar in 755 and, supported by the mawālī of his family, said to have been 2,000 in number, and elements of the Syrian Arab population, who retained their loyalty to the Umayyads, he entered Córdoba in May 757 and was proclaimed emir. Umayyad rule was to continue for over two and half centuries, until the abolition of the caliphate in 1031.
The long struggles by which the Umayyad emirs established and maintained their control over the unruly Muslims of Andalus are beyond the scope of this book, but some points must be noted. Until 929 the Umayyads ruled as emirs and did not claim the title of caliph. Everyone knew that they were descended from the tribe of Quraysh and were therefore eligible for the title. Everyone knew too that they were descended from the great Umayyad caliphs of Damascus; they called themselves ‘sons of the caliphs’, and this attracted the loyalty of many Syrians, whose ancestral homeland had been subdued and impoverished by Abbasid governments.
The Umayyads were probably restrained from taking the title of caliph partly because it would have been an open challenge to the Abbasids, who at least until the end of the eighth century maintained powerful forces in Ifriqiya. In fact, the Abbasids never mounted an expedition against Andalus, their hostile actions never amounted to more than abusive letters, and by the ninth century they had ceased to be a real threat. The Umayyads of Andalus may also have been dissuaded by the generally accepted idea that there could be only one caliph in the Muslim world and, clearly, they were in no position to march on Baghdad and overthrow the Abbasids. So they kept to the modest title of emir, but this in itself posed problems. At least in theory an emir was a commander or governor appointed by the caliph. To be legitimate he would require a deed of appointment and a banner of office sent from the capital. As we have already seen, long after the political and military power of the Abbasids had waned, these formalities remained very important. Obviously the Abbasids were not going to recognize an Umayyad ruler, even over their remote part of the caliphate. So the title remained in a sort of constitutional vacuum.
Such considerations did not deter the Umayyads of Andalus from developing a strong and effective state, probably richer and certainly more long-lasting than any of the emirates which had formed following the break-up of the Abbasid caliphate in the east. This was not due just to their standing army but to their increasingly elaborate administration and their minting of coins. The peninsula was ruled by local governors, usually but not always chosen and dismissed by the emir in Córdoba. Umayyad power was also reflected in the architecture. The Great Mosque of Córdoba, begun by Abd al-Rahmān and expanded by his namesake Abd al-Rahmān II in the ninth century, was of a scale and richness which rivalled anything in contemporary Baghdad or Samarra. Its design and masonry were a clear testament to the Syrian heritage of the Umayyads. Beside the mosque there was a lavish Amiral palace, of which almost no traces remain, and an extramural retreat at Rusafa (named after the Umayyad caliph Hishām’s Syrian palace).
Despite the ideological differences and bitter hatred between the Abbasids and the Umayyads, the court at Córdoba in the ninth century looked to and emulated the court at Baghdad when it came to royal style. By the mid-ninth century the emir lived a secluded lifestyle in his luxurious palace, surrounded by a household of slave girls and eunuchs. The connections with Baghdad were intensified by the catastrophe which overwhelmed the eastern capital in the civil war between Amīn and Ma’mūn from 811 to 814 and the ensuing anarchy. A number of intellectuals and poets abandoned the city and sought opportunities in Andalus. Among these was Alī b. Nāfi, known as Ziryāb. He was from Iraq and had been a pupil of Ishāq al-Mawsili, one of the most prominent poets and cultural leaders of the Abbasid court. After a spell in North Africa, he arrived in Andalus in 822 and rapidly established himself as an arbiter of style and taste in such matters as dress and the way in which meals should be served. Abd al-Rahmān II maintained a lively interest in both the arts and sciences and was the patron of poets and scholars, among them the eccentric scientist Abbās b. Firnās, who made himself wings and attempted to fly.
The Umayyads were the proud rulers of one of the most powerful states in the Muslim world. Their capital had a population which may have rivalled Fustat, and they presided over a court as lavish as that of Baghdad, but, until the reign of Abd al-Rahmān III, they never aspired to the caliphal title.
Abd al-Rahmān III, who succeeded as emir in 912, came to the throne after a long period when the power of the ruler in Andalus was challenged by local Muslim lords and when it seemed as if the rule of the Umayyads was about to come to an end. Slowly and methodically the new young emir set about establishing his authority over his unruly subjects in a series of annual military campaigns. By 929 he had regained control over almost all Andalus.
THE CALIPHATES OF ABD AL-RAHMāN III AND HAKAM II: THE GLORY DAYS OF CÓRDOBA
It was at this point that Abd al-Rahmān III proclaimed himself caliph and Commander of the Faithful in the Friday sermon given by the chief judge Ahmad b. Bāqī in the Great Mosque of Córdoba. Letters were sent to all the provinces telling them of his new status. He asked no one’s permission to claim the title, he was not designated by anyone and there was no question of election. He was very much a self-made monarch. What prompted this new departure and what difference did it make?
To understand this change we have to see it in the context of politics and developments in the wider Muslim world. Perhaps most obviously there was the enfeeblement of the Abbasid caliphate under the rule of Muqtadir (908–32), which made the Abbasids’ claims that they were the only caliphs and leaders of the umma seem increasingly unrealistic, even absurd. Despite the huge distance between Córdoba and Baghdad, people in Andalus were very well informed about what was going on in the east (though no eastern writer seems to have attached any importance to events in distant Andalus). Indeed, one of our main sources for the complex history of the reign of Muqtadir was written by an Andalusi, Arib b. Sad al-Qurtubi (the Córdoban). As far as we know, he never visited the Middle East, but he was astonishingly well informed about events there. He took it upon himself to write a continuation of the great Arabic chronicle of Tabarī, which took the history of the Abbasids down to 910 and which must have been available in the libraries of Córdoba. He records events in Baghdad and the debacle of the caliphate with almost diary-like precision. The troubles of the Abbasids were public knowledge and provided an opportunity for Abd al-Rahmān to assert his claims to the title of caliph.
But there was another change which made the proclamation of the caliphate both more possible and more pressing. In 909, just three years before Abd al-Rahmān became emir in Córdoba, the first Fatimid had proclaimed himself caliph in Qayrawan. This was a major development. Of course, Shiite pretenders and rebels had proclaimed themselves caliphs before, but they had always in the end been crushed and their pretensions brought to nothing. This time, however, it was obviously different. The Abbasids were in no position to even think of invading Ifriqiya and destroying this new caliphate. It was clearly here to stay. This meant that the reservations about having two caliphs at the same time were effectively out of date. And if there could be two, why could there not be three? It was evident that the Sunni Andalusis could never acknowledge the authority of, or pay allegiance to, a Shiite caliph.
And there were more practical matters. The Fatimids and the Umayyads soon became rivals for the allegiance of the tribes of the largely Berber populations of the western Maghreb (roughly speaking modern Morocco). Clearly if there was going to be this sort of competition, the Umayyads of Córdoba needed to improve their ideological armoury to compete on equal terms. The Berber tribal leaders could now choose between two caliphs, not just a caliph and a simple emir, when they debated to whom they should offer their allegiance.
There were aspects of this inauguration of a new caliphate which had never occurred before. The Umayyads were not claiming to be successors to the Abbasids or the Fatimids. The proclamation, as far as we can tell, did not involve cursing the Abbasids or impugning their right to rule. Unlike other caliphs, including the contemporary Abbasids and Fatimids, the Umayyads of Córdoba did not claim to be rulers or leaders of the whole Muslim umma. The boundaries of their caliphate were not formally defined, but it seems to be understood that they would include Andalus and such areas of the Maghreb that accepted their rulership.
The Umayyads based their claim to legitimacy firstly on their descent. As their name indicated, they were indisputably members of the Prophet’s tribe of Quraysh and the genuineness of their lineage was generally accepted, by contrast to the Fatimids, whose claim to be descendants of Isma’il and hence of the Prophet Muhammad and his daughter Fātima was challenged at several points. Not only were they members of Quraysh, they were also descendants of the Umayyad caliphs. This obviously carried weight, but there is no evidence that they claimed to be reviving or restoring the old Umayyad caliphate in its whole, wide geographical extent.
Another important claim to the caliphate was the role of the Umayyads in leading the jihād in Andalus. They were the acknowledged leaders of the Muslims against the Christian kingdoms and countries to the north and Abd al-Rahmān III had kept up and publicized this role when he was still emir. In 920 he led the Muslims in person for the first time. He went north through Toledo, where he received the allegiance of the semi-independent local leader, Lubb b. Tarbīsha, and then struck north-east to Medinaceli, taking San Esteban de Gormaz and the now deserted city of Clunia. He then pressed on to the upper Ebro valley at Tudela and marched into the heart of the Christian kingdom of Navarre, defeating its army and Leonese allies near Pamplona. In 924 he was on the move again, marching up the east coast of Andalus and receiving the allegiance of the Muslim lords of Lorca and Murcia. From there he went to the Ebro valley again and marched into Navarre, sacking the city of Pamplona and burning the cathedral.
These, and other expeditions, had a three-fold purpose. The first and most obvious was to secure the safety of Muslim populations who had been attacked by the increasingly aggressive and powerful Christian kings of Pamplona and León, though it was noticeable that very little new territory was conquered or settled. The second objective was to meet in person and secure the allegiance of local Muslim lords, like those of Toledo, Murcia and Zaragoza, who had in effect become semi-independent in the disturbed conditions prevailing in the late ninth and early tenth centuries. The fact that Abd al-Rahmān was leading a large army against the unbelievers in the north made his demands difficult to resist. Not only would the recalcitrant nobles be defying the demands of their legitimate emir, they would also, and this was much worse, be undermining the Muslim military effort. The final purpose was to show that the emir, and the emir alone, was able to lead all the Muslims of Andalus against the non-Muslims, clearly confirming his status as leader of all the Muslims of the peninsula. Furthermore, this was a time when the Byzantines were making increasingly aggressive moves against the Syrian frontiers of the Muslim world, capturing Malatya in 934. The contrast between the Abbasid caliph, who never ventured to lead his army in the jihād and whose armies were unable to protect his Muslim subjects, and the emir of Andalus, who was fulfilling that role publicly and successfully, was plain for all to see. Of course, the other caliphal duty, that of leading and protecting the hajj, was way beyond the powers of the ruler of Córdoba, but this does not appear to have been a serious handicap.
It was important too that they owed no allegiance to any other power, so no authority was in any position to object. Nor do they seem to have felt it necessary to ask for the approval of their subjects: there was, in fact, not even the pretence of an election. It was simply announced that the prayer was being said in the name of the caliph and letters were written to the provinces. In this rather ad hoc manner, a caliphate was founded which was to last for a century and earn the respect of the Muslim world and of posterity.
The next question to ask is whether Abd al Rahmān’s style of rulership altered as a result of his assumption of the new title. The first and perhaps most obvious point is that he changed his name. The Umayyad emirs of Córdoba, like the Umayyad caliphs of Damascus, had simply continued to use their own names when they became caliphs, but the Abbasids, apparently from the beginning of their rule, had adopted the practice of having formal titles (Mansūr, Mahdī, etc.) by which they were usually known in official parlance and by which they appear in the historical record. The Fatimid caliphs in Tunisia imitated this practice, and so did Abd al-Rahmān III and his successors. Abd al-Rahmān himself becoming Nāsir li’dīn Allah, Victorious for the Faith of God.
Another outward and visible change was the minting of gold coins. Whereas many of the dynasts who took power from the Abbasids in the east minted silver coins, of very variable quality, in their own names, none of them minted gold dinars. This was partly, no doubt, because they did not have access to sufficient quantities of gold to be able to do this, but also because this was generally felt to be a caliphal prerogative. The only exceptions to this rule were the Fatimids of Egypt, as we have seen, and their minting of very fine gold coins was a clear indication of their exalted status. The opening up of trans-Saharan trade routes to both the Umayyads of Córdoba, through their North African connections, and the Fatimids of Egypt had given them both access to gold, and new-found wealth.
The proclamation of the caliphate reflected wider changes in Andalusi society. We cannot be sure of the numbers, but the late ninth and tenth centuries likely saw a rapid increase in the rate of conversion to Islam in the Iberian Peninsula, as more and more local people wished to join the Muslim community. By the time Abd al-Rahmān proclaimed his caliphate it is probable that a majority of the population were Muslims. The coming of the caliphate was a sign that he was not an emir ruling over an elite minority of Muslims but rather a caliph ruling over all Muslims in a largely Muslim society. Still, there were many distinctions and divisions within that society. Not only were there ancient tribal and regional loyalties, but there had also been considerable friction between those Muslims who claimed Arab or Berber descent and the muwalladūn, the descendants of the pre-invasion Christian and Jewish populations who had converted to Islam. In the years of the first two caliphs (912–76), loyalties to tribe and region were replaced by loyalty to the caliph and the increasingly powerful state apparatus and the distinction between Arabs and Berbers and muwalladūn became gradually irrelevant.
In his long reign of almost fifty years, Abd al-Rahmān’s style of government changed and evolved significantly. As we have seen, much of the power and prestige which had enabled him to claim the caliphate in the first place had been the result of his leadership of the jihād against the Christians of the north. For the first ten years of his caliphate (929–39), he continued this campaign, leading the Muslim army in person and cajoling and persuading those lords in the frontier areas, like the Ebro valley, to join him in the Muslim enterprise. In 939, however, he suffered a serious reverse. That year he led an expedition against Ramiro II, the Christian king of León. As he had done in previous years he marched through the Ebro valley, recruiting the reluctant lords of Zaragoza and Huesca to join him. He then embarked on an unsuccessful and demoralizing siege of the castle at Simancas. After this setback he turned south through rugged country to lead his army back to Muslim territory. It was here, at an unidentified place which the Arabs simply called the trench (khandaq), that he engaged a force of Christian irregulars. The Muslim army was soundly defeated, many were killed and others taken prisoner. The humiliated caliph led his shattered army south to the safety of Muslim territory at Guadalajara.
The fundamental cause of this defeat seems to have been that the lords of the Ebro valley, ever resentful of the caliph’s attempts to control them, deserted at a crucial moment, leaving Abd al-Rahmān to his fate. This reverse resulted in a profound change in his government. In the immediate aftermath he seized and executed Fortūn b. Muhammad, lord of Huesca, one of the leaders who had betrayed him, but he made no effort to destroy the power of the other rebellious lords. He himself never led another campaign to the north, and neither, in the last twenty-two years of his reign, did he lead Muslims in jihād. Instead he retired to Córdoba where, three years before in 936, he had begun the construction of the great palace complex at Madinat al-Zahra outside the city. Here he developed a lavish caliphal style in a large palace-city whose ruins can still be seen today, with its gardens, its courts and pools and a sumptuously decorated throne hall with mosaics and marbles. He welcomed visitors and used these magnificent surroundings to display the caliphate in all its glory. The court, its luxuries and its culture attracted lords from all over the peninsula and Berber chiefs from North Africa, especially at the time of the two great īds (festivals) of the Muslim calendar. Rather than taking the caliphate on tour, so to speak, he created a court to which notables were drawn and wanted to belong, and where they wanted their sons to be educated. It was a pattern which, many centuries later, Louis XIV was to adopt in the palace and court at Versailles: autocracy by attraction rather than by the naked use of force.
This wealthy and apparently stable state elicited much admiration at the time and nostalgia for the lost glories of Andalus has remained a minor but continuing motif in Arabic culture ever since. In recent years, in fact, there has been a renewed interest, especially in the west, in the concept of convivencia. Convivencia, ‘living together’ in Spanish, has come to be applied to the perceived situation in Andalus at the time of the caliphate when members of the three great monotheistic faiths, Muslims, Christians and Jews, lived together in harmony and, at least to some extent, shared a common culture. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, some commentators looked to Andalus as a historical example and, possibly, as a model showing that hostility between the faiths was not inevitable, a view most eloquently espoused in the writings of Rosa Maria Menocal of Yale University.1 Not everyone saw it this way: for Usāma b. Lādin and the ideologues of Al-Qaeda, the story of Andalus was a terrible warning. Muslims had tolerated Christian and Jewish elements in the population and allowed them rights and positions. The result was plain to see: Muslims ended up driven out of their own country and the Iberian Peninsula was permanently lost to the Dār al-Islam.
The historical reality is a bit more mixed. It is true that there seems to have been very little active persecution of Christians in Andalus. They were allowed to continue to worship in churches and monasteries and Christian bishops played an important role in the administration of the Christian population. Caliph Nāsir used the Christian Recemundo as his ambassador to both Aachen and Constantinople, and in the next century the administration of the kingdom of Granada was largely entrusted to powerful Jewish officials.
Relations between the faiths were not static. In the ninth century there was some opposition to Muslim rule. The so-called ‘martyrs of Córdoba’ were a pious group of Christians who courted death by openly insulting the Prophet Muhammad and the Islamic faith. Despite the intervention of the bishop of Córdoba, who was firmly opposed to the movement, and the attempts of the Muslim authorities to persuade them to recant, a number of them were put to death. In the first decades of the tenth century a rebel leader in the mountains of southern Spain, Ibn Hafsūn, attempted to rally support by claiming to be a champion of the Christians. In the period of the caliphate, however, we find nothing of this.
There are no accounts of Christian or Jewish resistance or of any persecution at that point. The reality was probably that, with a growing proportion of the population converting to Islam, both Christians and Jews were less important and posed little threat. This position changed in the eleventh century when growing Christian military pressure from León, Castile and Navarre meant that Christians could be seen as a potential fifth column and, under the rule of the Almoravids in the early twelfth century, many of them left for the north. Although convivencia meant peaceful co-existence, it did not mean equality. Christians and Jews were second-class citizens and a peaceful coexistence was only possible as long as they accepted an inferior status. When this was no longer the case and the Muslims felt threatened, then convivencia was doomed.
It was not only Muslims who came to pay their respects to the caliph in Córdoba and left impressed. Nāsir initiated a ‘foreign policy’, as befitted a caliph. In about 950 there began an exchange of ambassadors with the most powerful ruler in western Europe, the German emperor Otto I (938–73). Otto wanted the cooperation of the caliph against Muslim pirates who had seized the southern French city of Fréjus and used it as a base to terrorize the surrounding country and prey on shipping. No Arab source records this mission, but we know about it from a Latin account of the life of the German ambassador Abbot John of Gorze, which gives an outsider’s view of the magnificence of the caliphal court.2 John was a very undiplomatic ambassador, determined not to be impressed or intimidated, and progress was slow. He was scathingly dismissive of the local Christian bishop when he described the compromises Christians had to make to survive in Muslim-ruled Córdoba. Eventually Abd al-Rahmān sent an ambassador, a Mozarab (Arabized Christian) known by his Latin name of Recemundo or his Arabic name of Rabī b. Zayd, to Aachen. Finally, after a three-year wait in Córdoba, John was granted an audience.
The account of this meeting, written by a fellow monk, is the only first-hand report of a pre-modern caliph we have by an outsider to the Muslim world. Before he met the caliph (who is called rex, king, throughout), John was meant to make himself ‘presentable to royalty by cutting his hair, washing his body and putting on clean clothes’. He refused, even when the caliph sent him ten pounds in coin to smarten himself up, thanking him for the gift but suggesting that it would be better spent on alms for the poor: ‘I do not despise royal gifts,’ he wrote in response, ‘but it is not permitted to a monk to wear anything other than his usual habit’, and eventually the caliph gave in, saying, ‘Even if he comes dressed in a sack, I will most gladly receive him.’
When the day came for John to meet the caliph, he was treated to the full display of caliphal power:
Ranks of people crowded the whole way from the lodging to the centre of the city and from there to the palace [presumably they met at Madinat al-Zahra, hence the walk along the dusty road from the city]. Here stood infantrymen with spears erect; beside them others brandishing javelins and staging demonstrations of aiming them at each other, after them others mounted on mules with their light armour; then horsemen urging on their steeds with spurs and shouts to make them rear up. In this startling way, the Moors hoped to put fear into our people by their various marshal displays, so strange to our eyes. John and his companions were led to the palace along a very dusty road, which the very dryness of the season alone served to stir up (for it was the summer solstice). High officials came to meet them, and all the pavement of the outer area of the palace was carpeted with most costly rugs and coverings.
When John arrived at the cubiculum where the Caliph was seated alone, almost like a deity accessible to none or very few, he saw everything draped with rare coverings and floor-tiles stretching evenly to the walls. The Caliph himself reclined upon a most richly ornate couch. They do not use thrones or chairs as other peoples do but recline on divans [lectis] or couches when conversing or eating, their legs crossed one over the other.
Then the Caliph signed to John to be seated. A lengthy silence ensued on both sides. Then the Caliph began: ‘I know that your heart has long been hostile to me, and that is why I refused you an audience till now. You yourself know that I could not do otherwise. I appreciate your steadfastness and your learning. I wish you to know that things which may have disturbed you in that letter were not said out of enmity towards you and not only do I now freely receive you, but I assure you that you shall have whatever you ask.’ John who, as he later told us, had been ready to say something harsh to the Caliph, since he had long harboured such resentment, now became very calm and was perfectly at ease.
John explained to the caliph that he had now banished these hostile sentiments and the latter was
greatly pleased with these sentiments, and talked to John about other things. Then he asked him to hand over the presents from the Emperor. [Sadly we are not told what these were.] When this was done, John instantly asked permission to leave. The Caliph asked in surprise: ‘How does this sudden change come about? Since both of us have waited so long for a sight of each other, and since we have only just met, is it right for us to part as strangers? Now that we are together, there is an opportunity for each of us to acquire a little knowledge of each other’s mind and we could meet again at greater length, and on a third occasion forge a truly firm bond of understanding and friendship. Then, when I send you back to your master, you could go there with all due honour.’ John agreed to this. They ordered the other emissaries to be brought in and the presents which they were carrying were handed over to the Caliph.
The Christians returned to their lodging, and when after a time, John was again called to see the Caliph, he conversed with him on a number of subjects of mutual interest: the power and wisdom of ‘our Emperor’, the strength and numbers of his army, his glory and wealth, events of war and many things of that kind. The Caliph for his part boasted that his army exceeded that of any other of the rulers of the world in strength. John made little answer to this in order not to annoy the Caliph, but eventually he added, ‘I speak the truth when I say that I know of no monarch in the world who can equal our Emperor in lands or arms or horses.’
Here this fascinating account breaks off and we have no idea what, if any, results were achieved. It may be that the report of this friendly man-to-man conversation between monk and caliph should be treated with some scepticism, but much of the rest of the description rings true, for instance the rugs and tiles in the palace and the way in which the caliph sits cross-legged on a couch (which would be called sarīr in Arabic). It shows a degree of mutual respect between the two most powerful rulers in western Europe, the emperor in Aachen and the caliph in Córdoba.
At the same time, the caliph also began diplomatic relations with the Byzantine Empire. Constantinople and Córdoba were the two biggest and most sophisticated cities in Europe at that point; both states had highly developed and literate administrations, regular systems of taxation and the the use of coined money was widespread. They were in a different world from the peoples of northern and western Europe, with their war-bands, primitive castles and Viking invasions. It was natural that they should be aware of each other and make contact. The vast distance between the two meant that military conflict, even naval conflict, was out of the question so there were no obstacles to alliances based on mutual esteem. As we have seen, the Abbasids had tried to use Byzantine embassies as a way of demonstrating their leadership of the Muslim community and the caliph in Córdoba was now attempting to do the same. In the summer of 949 an embassy from Constantinople was received in Córdoba and in October of the same year an embassy led by Recemundo was in Constantinople. Although both parties came to share a common enemy in the Fatimids, this diplomacy seems to have been more about display and prestige than about making a military alliance.
There was an important cultural aspect to this exchange. Under the reign of the caliph’s son Hakam, Byzantine mosaicists came to work in Córdoba and the brilliant results of their labours can still be seen around the mihrab of the Great Mosque and in the domes in front of it. Of course, the mosaics in Córdoba were very different in their iconography and images from the mosaics being created in Constantinople to decorate the churches of the city. The images of Christ and his apostles and saints were replaced by scrolls of vegetation and golden calligraphy but all showed consummate, and expensive, craftsmanship. Mosaic work was a luxury product and only Byzantine craftsmen could deliver the best. Just as fine and exotic textiles, including Byzantine silks, were signs of royal status in the Muslim world, so were these mosaics very public affirmations of the caliph’s place among the monarchs of the world. The difference is that, except for a few rare fragments, the textiles survive only in descriptions in literary sources whereas we can still see the mosaics today, very much as the subjects of the caliphs did in the tenth century, and we can draw the same conclusions about their position in the world.
The cultural exchanges were not confined to public displays. In 951, presumably at the request of the caliphal court, a Greek monk called Nicholas was sent there to work on and interpret a manuscript of Dioscorides’ ancient book on herbal and medicinal plants, apparently because no one in Andalus had sufficient Greek to do it. Here again the caliph was following the example set by the Abbasid court in the eighth and ninth centuries when the collection and interpretation of ancient Greek scholarship was an important aspect of the performance of caliphate.
Abd al-Rahmān al-Nāsir was succeeded by his son Hakam, who had long been groomed for the inheritance and had been given the title of Mustansir. He was an able and intelligent ruler (961–76) and followed his father’s example in most of his policies. It was in the fifteen years of his stable administration that the civilization of Córdoba reached its zenith. He collected a vast library of books and it was he who created the mihrab and the domes, already mentioned, in the mosque of Córdoba. He also held court at Madinat al-Zahra, the scene of many glittering gatherings.
We know a great deal about these events because they are recorded in meticulous detail by a writer called Īsā al-Rāzī. Īsā came from a family of Persian origin (his name shows that they were originally from Rayy, in northern Iran). Like many other inhabitants of the eastern Islamic world, his family was attracted to the rich and cultured court of Andalus where their expertise in Arabic literature and history would be valued and well rewarded. Īsā’s record is more a court diary than a universal chronicle: he describes who the main courtiers were, who came to the palace, where they stood in the formal majlis. Hakam continued his father’s policies and ruled over a glittering and cultured court; the lords of the frontiers of Andalus and the Berber tribal leaders of Morocco came to pledge allegiance and were rewarded with gifts and a public acknowledgement of their status.
Hakam’s reign saw important changes in the politics of North Africa. In 969, after the Fatimid conquest of Egypt, we saw that the caliph and his court established themselves in their newly founded capital of Cairo—Madinat al-Zahra on the Nile, so to speak. From now on the Fatimids were inextricably linked to Egypt. No Fatimid ruler visited the original power base of the dynasty in Ifriqiya ever again. They entrusted the province to a Berber family known to history as the Zirids, but while they recognized the Fatimids as their overlords, as mere emirs they were not in any sense a threat to the Umayyad caliphs. Morocco was never an easy country to control, however, and Hakam and his government spent a lot of money and resources to very little effect trying to do so.
The Umayyad caliphs main rivals were the various branches of the Idrisids. The Idrisids were Alids, direct descendants of Alī and Fātima and hence of the Prophet himself. They traced their origin to Idrīs b. Abd Allah who had fled from Arabia in 785 when a Shiite rebellion, of which he had been one of the leaders, was crushed by the Abbasids. Idrīs went to the Maghreb to seek both refuge and support. While the family never managed to establish a stable state in this pastoral and tribal environment, some of its members attempted to exploit their status to attract followers. They did not claim the title of caliph—their poverty and marginal position in the Islamic world would have made that untenable—but their Alid antecedents were not contested. Unlike other Berber chiefs, they could use this status to appeal to followers beyond their own tribal networks. In the end, the Idrisid challenge could not undermine Umayyad rule in Andalus, but it did pose both an ideological and political threat which prevented the caliphs from establishing real control in the Maghreb.
THE AMIRIDS AND THE END OF THE CALIPHATE OF CÓRDOBA
Although the Umayyads of Córdoba were in many ways rivals of the Abbasids of Baghdad, as we have seen, they did emulate their politics and political structures, and this wasn’t always beneficial to the long-term political health of their caliphate. Hakam seems to have been devoted to his young son Hishām, who was invested as heir apparent when only seven years old. He was just fourteen when his father died in 976. His accession to the caliphate was by no means a done deal. Many in Córdoba were very reluctant to accept this inexperienced youth as ruler and a group among the Siqlabi (Slav) officials who formed the elite of the Córdoban army3 attempted to secure the appointment of the dead caliph’s brother Mughīra, son of the first caliph, Nāsir. However, they were soon outmanoeuvred by an ambitious courtier called Mu hammad b. Abī Āmir and the unfortunate Mughīra, though he seems to have been innocent of any political ambition, was strangled in his own house in front of his family. The events were uncannily reminiscent of the circumstances surrounding the accession of Muqtadir as Abbasid caliph in Baghdad seventy years before in 908. In both cases ambitious politicians, the vizier Ibn al-Furāt in the case of Muqtadir, Ibn Abī Āmir in the case of Hishām, sought the appointment of a young and inexperienced caliph whom they could control. In both cases too a rival, both adult and respected, Ibn al-Mutazz in Baghdad, Mughīra in Córdoba, was put forward by another group, but the supporters of the youthful candidates were quicker and more ruthless and both Ibn al Mutazz and Mughīra lost their lives.
In a sense, both accessions represented the triumph of the hereditary principle over any idea of election or shūra. In Baghdad and Córdoba, powerful women played an important role. In the Abbasid court it was the queen mother who dominated her son right up to his death. In Córdoba it was the Basque princess Subh, mother of the young Hishām, who worked with Ibn Abī Āmir closely, too closely for propriety, some rumours said, to secure her son’s succession, though once this had occurred she seems to have found herself increasingly sidelined. Finally, in both cases, the accession of the young boy had a catastrophic effect on the power and prestige of the caliphate, an effect from which the institution never recovered. Ironically, as we have seen, people in Córdoba must have been fully aware of what had happened in Baghdad and the disastrous consequences that had ensued, but they were powerless to prevent it happening to them.
The reasons for this debacle lay in the changing political system. The caliph had absolute power, at least in theory, and winning the caliph’s favour or, even better, controlling the person of the caliph was the most effective route to power. The increasing isolation of the caliph within the walls of massive palaces was an important part of this. It meant that those courtiers with immediate access could prevent the caliph exercising his own judgement and prevent anyone with whom they disagreed having access to him.
In Córdoba, it was announced that the new caliph Hishām wanted to devote himself to prayer and pious exercises. So that he would have the solitude to permit him to do this, he was installed, not in the great expansive palace of Madinat al-Zahra, but behind the high walls of the old Alcázar in the centre of town by the Great Mosque. Nobody came and nobody went and even when he did visit the mosque, just across the narrow road, the caliph was so secluded that none of his subjects could glimpse him, still less communicate with him.
Meanwhile Ibn Abī Āmir set about making himself caliph in all but name. He recruited new elements into the army, notably Berber tribesmen from North Africa who were brought in not as individuals, like the Slavs from eastern Europe who formed the other main contingent in the army, but in tribal groups operating under their own leaders. His aim was to create an army of many different factions, none of which would be powerful enough to challenge him on their own. He also completed the demilitarization of most of the indigenous Muslim population of Andalus. The military might of the caliphate was now almost entirely composed of foreigners, Slavs, brought in from eastern Europe, and Berbers, brought in from Morocco, just as in the Abbasid east it was largely composed of Turks brought in from Central Asia. It was a system which boosted the power of the rulers in the short term but had very deleterious consequences in the long run. This was especially true in Andalus where, in the thirteenth century, Slavs and Berbers were no longer available and the local people had neither the resources nor the skills to defend their towns and villages against the advancing Christians.
To begin with, however, the new army was powerful and effective. Ibn Abī Āmir claimed he belonged to a family descended from the first generation of Muslim conquerors, but he could not claim Qurashi antecedents. As he himself realized, this meant that he could never aspire to the caliphate, but he did arrogate to himself a caliphal honorific title: Mansūr, the Victorious. Not only did this have caliphal pretensions, but it was also the title of one of the greatest of the Abbasids: the symbolism could not have been more explicit. He also made a point of demonstrating his traditional piety. Hakam al-Mustansir had been a great book collector and it is clear that at least some of the tomes in his library were not acceptable to the rigorists among the religious classes and their followers among the ordinary people of Córdoba. What these books were we cannot know, but we can imagine that at least some of them were translations of Greek philosophy and science, deeply suspect material. Ibn Abī Āmir made a point of clearing out the library and destroying any work which might seem to threaten a strictly orthodox view. Nor were there any more embassies or craftsmen coming from western Europe or Constantinople. The Dār al-Harb (the lands beyond the Dār al-Islam) was a field for jihād and unrelenting hostility not cultural interchanges. Ibn Abī Āmir claimed to model himself on the Buyid sovereigns of Iraq who had ‘protected’ the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad just as he ‘protected’ the Umayyad Hishām.
To justify his own position and his new title, and assert the legitimacy of his new army, he began a series of campaigns against the Christians of the north. He launched raids almost every year and no one could doubt his commitment to the jihād. The campaigns were largely successful on their own terms, as many prisoners and a certain amount of booty were taken. Mansūr also made sure that his subjects were aware of his achievements and letters describing his victories were read out in the mosque in Córdoba at Friday prayers. His greatest public relations coup was when he sacked the shrine at Santiago de Compostela, then just emerging as a major pilgrimage centre, and had the bells of the cathedral carried back to Córdoba on the backs of Christian prisoners. But in a larger strategic sense, the campaigns were less effective. Little or no new territory was occupied and the Christian kingdoms of León and Navarre, and the emerging county of Castile, were still strong, as events after his death showed.
When Mansūr died, he was succeeded by his son and designated heir also who was given a quasi-caliphal title, in this case Muzaffar, yet another word meaning ‘Victorious’. For the six years of his reign (1002– 8), Muzaffar continued in his father’s tradition, leading frequent campaigns against the Christians and keeping the nominal caliph carefully hidden. When he died, power passed to his brother Abd al-Rahmān, known as Sanchuelo, or Little Sancho, after his Christian Basque grandfather, the king of Navarre. He abandoned the delicate balancing act which had kept his father and brother in power. One of his first acts was to oblige the captive caliph Hishām to appoint him as heir apparent, meaning that there would soon be a non-Umayyad, non-Qurashi caliph.
It was not a wise move. It aroused the deep hostility of the religious classes and the people of Córdoba who supported Umayyad claims and, of course, the numerous members of the Umayyad family themselves, who feared that they were going to be deprived of wealth and status. The reaction was swift. The new ruler decided to establish his position in the traditional way, by leading his army against the Christians. He chose to disregard his advisers and launched an expedition in the winter. No sooner had he passed into enemy territory than conspirators struck in Córdoba. The leader of the rebels was one Muhammad b. Hishām, an Umayyad and a great-grandson of the first caliph, Nāsir. He had a clear plan to restore the Umayyad caliphate as a reality. The useless Hishām was obliged to abdicate in his favour, and he took the title of Mahdī, following the third Abbasid caliph, a title which stressed that he was God-guided rather than militarily victorious. He recruited other members of his family and appealed to the loyalty of the people of Córdoba to join a militia to protect the new regime. At first all went well—the capital was secure and the new caliphate proclaimed— but the regime immediately faced the hostility of established military groups, notably the Berbers. The events which followed were complicated and very destructive. The Berbers themselves adopted another member of the Umayyad family as ‘their’ caliph. Córdoba endured a three-year siege by the Berber troops and when it was forced to surrender the city suffered a terrible sack.
The end days of the caliphate dragged on as a number of different members of the Umayyad family and others attempted to establish their power, but the divisions were too deep and different military leaders concentrated on securing their positions in their own areas rather than rebuilding the central government. To make matters worse, Christians began to intervene on a large scale in the affairs of Andalus, demanding payments and territory in exchange for their support. It was the shape of things to come.
In 1031 a group of Córdoban notables came together and abolished the caliphate, preferring one of their own, unrelated to the ruling family, as local governor. The abolition of the caliphate was an unusual move in a society which valued traditions and titles, particularly a title with such a history and resonance. What is even more surprising is that no one seriously attempted to revive it. The Umayyad family just disappeared from the political scene. One important reason was the destruction of Córdoba and its Campiña, the rural area which surrounded it. The fate of the city and that of the Umayyad caliphs were closely bound up. After the siege of 1010–3, many of Córdoba’s people were dead and many others had emigrated, while the luxurious villas and estates which had provided the settings for so much of the social and cultural life of the caliphate were ruined and abandoned. The surviving inhabitants seem simply to have concluded that the caliphate was more trouble than it was worth. And they were probably right.