RELIGION IN EARLY AL-ANDALUS AND THE SPREAD OF ISLAM
Under the Muslims, both Jews and Christians, who were "People of the Book" were treated well, aside from taxes (the Islamic zakat) and allowed to worship freely, with a few restrictions - the Christians were not to ring their church bells. Muslims, Christians, and Jews all dressed similarly, and the Muslims often attended Christian celebrations. These Christians who lived in many ways like the Muslims, were known as Mozarabs from the Arabic word musta'rib, meaning arabized. As we know most of Spanish Christian population practised an Arian approach to their faith, in so being very in line with the 'new' faith of Islam.
Slaves at this time were mostly war captives and included Africans, Slavs, and Germans, among others. Those who became Muslim would be freed and those who became soldiers would be paid generously. The Muslim Caliphs of Cordoba formed great armies of Slavs. Abd al-Rahman II is well known to have had a personal army of 20.000 Slavs whom where called the 'silent' ones since they couldn't talk Arabic. Captured Jews were generally ransomed by the Jewish community. Christians in north Europe where even embarrassed by the flood of Christian slaves who fled to al-Andalus from their Christian masters in the north.
It is interesting to talk about a study made by the American historian Richard W. Bulliet by analyzing medieval Islamic biographical dictionaries, which were a common genre of the time and provide a generous amount of biographical and genealogical information. We can conclude from the study that the very diverse population present in the Iberian Peninsula, would over a period of two centuries, no less, turn towards a dominant oriental culture and only later be influenced by the 'new religion' of Islam. Muslim names with diverse family names, would roughly double in numbers every fifty years until a natural balance was reached. An early 8% in 800 turned into 12% of the population by 850, to then double again by 900 and reaching a rough 50% by 950 A.C. The curve gradually flattens at a 75% Muslim population by the year 1.000.
This can be contrasted to the fact that in Cordoba, the very heart of the Caliphate, it is not until 850 C.E. that the Catholic-Roman Church would learn about Islam through Monk Eulogio's readings about 'the new Prophet' (Muhammad (s)) in manuscripts he found at a Christian library during a journey to Navarra. Precisely around the same time, the first Muezzins would start to call publicly to prayer from the minaret of the mosque at Cordoba and Islam was to become socially noticeable.
THE CALIPHATE OF AL-ANDALUS
In 929, nearly two centuries after the Umayyad Abd al-Rahman I came to Spain, his descendant Abd al-Rahman III declared himself Caliph or spiritual leader of the Hispano-Muslim. In other words, completely independent from the caliph in Baghdad both politically and spiritually, it was the birth of the Caliphate of al-Andalus.
Under his rule Muslim Spain reached it's maximum expansion, covering three quarters of the peninsula and connecting to Tangier and other locations in Maghreb. The splendid court of the caliphs, where science and arts glowed from, was moved to a fortress court city to the north of Cordoba, the famous Medinat al-Zahra.
Cordoba under the Caliphate, with a permanent population of perhaps 1.000.000 overtook Constantinople as the largest and most prosperous city in Europe. Within the Islamic world, Cordoba took an economic lead over East and West and was one of the leading cultural centres. The work of its most important philosophers and scientists (notably Abulcasis and Averroes) had a major influence on the intellectual life of medieval Europe.
By the end of the reign of Abd al-Rahman III, the king of Leon, the queen of Navarra, and the counts of Castile and Barcelona, all Christians, acknowledged him as their overlord and sent him an annual tribute.
Paradoxically quite a few Andalusian "Moors" had red and blond hair and blue eyes, since Spain had been populated by Visigoths, Vandals, and other Germanic tribes before the Arab and Berber invasions and subsequent conversion to Islam. Abd al-Rahman III - with his red hair and blue eyes, typical of many Andalusian rulers - reunited al-Andalus in a golden age.
After the death of Abd al-Rahman III, Hisham II, who was yet a boy aged thirteen, ascended to the throne. The real ruler was Ibn abi Emir, General and Chief of state, also known as Al-Mansur, The Victorious. He continued to lead al-Andalus with military might.
Reached this point in politics, the Caliph himself being overruled by his own chief of State, with the death of Al-Mansur, al-Andalus fell into a period of political instability that ended with the fall of the caliphate. The Umayyad would decay until in 1031, a republic was declared in Cordoba since no one was prepared to accept the position of Caliph. Civil war and unrest followed, with 28 princedoms being formed. These multiple princedoms were known as the Taifa Kingdoms.
THE TAIFA KINGDOMS AND THE ALMORAVID TAKE OVER
The death of Al-Mansur marked the end of the Umayyad dynasty and Muslim Spain succumbed to civil strife. In 1031 the great Caliphate was ended and al-Andalus split into a multitude of small kingdoms. These small kingdoms, ruled by the ta'ifs, or “provincial kings”, were not politically strong, except by alliances. Nonetheless, the arts flourished throughout Andalusia, and Muslim Spain was a centre for music, poetry, literature, and the sciences.
The Taifa kingdoms of al-Andalus were generally too weak and divided to defend themselves against repeated raids and demands for tribute from the Christian states to the north and west. Known to the Muslims as "the Galician nations", the raids had spread from their initial strongholds in Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, the Basque country and the Carolinian Marca Hispanica to become the Kingdoms of Navarra, Leon, Portugal, Castile and Aragon and the County of Barcelona. Eventually, raids turned into conquests and in response, the taifa kings were forced to request help from the Almoravid, Islamic rulers of the Maghreb. The notable dynasty of the Almoravid (1062-1147) began in southern Morocco and moved into al-Andalus. The Berber Almoravid were harsh, puritanical, orthodox Muslims, critical of the grandeur of the Umayyads which they considered decadent.
Spanish Christians, with help from other European Christians, continued with their Reconquista to take Spain from the Muslims. Over time they made inroads against the Muslims who were all too often fighting with each other. In 1085, the Spanish retook Toledo, in the north of al-Andalus. For another 125 years the Christian Spanish made no great inroads into al-Andalus.
In 1086 the Almoravid ruler of Morocco Yusuf ibn Tashfin was invited by the Muslim princes in Iberia to defend them against Alfonso VI, King of Castile and Leon. In that year, Yusuf ibn Tashfin crossed the straits to Algeciras and inflicted a severe defeat on the Christians at the az-Zallaqah. Realizing the weakness of the Taifa kingdoms and the continuing threat of the Christian north who had recently taken Toledo, Yusuf ibn Tashfin removed all Muslim princes in Iberia and annexed their states by 1094, except for the one at Zaragoza. Further, he regained Valencia from the Christians.
Inevitably the Almoravids who had lived a sober life in Berbería, in al-Andalus turned to a more luxurious and pleasurable lifestyle which the Taifa kings were prone to. Taking advantage of this decadence, another African Berber Dynasty, the Almohads, conquered their positions in Morocco, while the Almoravids were dethroned in al-Andalus.
Seville was to become the most northern capital of the Almohads, with their capital in Marrakech, and they would take a prominent position thereafter. Many of the historical stereotypes that are generally perceived from a modern Spanish common understanding are from the extreme cultural and political contrast that we find during this period, and the following “Reconquista”, which is in fact a
THE ALMOHAD INTERVENTION IN AL-ANDALUS
The Almohads, a religious and political group that spread from Northern Africa into al-Andalus, united the entire coast of the Maghreb from the Atlantic Ocean to the frontier of Egypt for a brief period from 1147 to 1258. The Almoravids were succeeded in the 12th century by the Almohads after the victory of Abu Yusuf Ya'qub Al-Mansur over the Castilian Alfonso VIII at the Battle of Alarcos. In 1212, Almohad troops were defeated in Navas de Tolosa, 150 km miles North-east of Cordoba, by the combined forces of King Alfonso VIII of Castile, the kings of Aragon and Navarra, a contingent of Templars and other knights from Portugal as well as French Crusaders.
After this battle, they saw the fall of Cordoba in 1236, and their own capital, Seville, was taken by the Christian King, in 1248. By 1250 Almohad power completely collapsed.
For the third and last time, al-Andalus divided into several Taifa kingdoms. Under the advantage of these quarrels between Muslim kings, the advance of the Christians over Muslim lands, the so-called 'Reconquista', fuelled up and advanced at a steady pace.
The Taifas, newly independent but now weakened, were quickly conquered by Portugal, Castile, and Aragon. After the fall of Murcia (1243) and the Algarve (1249), only the Emirate of Granada survived as a Muslim state, paying tribute to Castile. Most of its tribute was paid in gold from present-day Mali and Burkina Faso that was carried to Iberia through the merchant routes of the Sahara.
The Maghreb and al-Andalus were plunged into bitter civil wars between various Hispano-Muslim and Berber factions. Finally, all that remained of the independent Muslim state was the Kingdom of Granada, a small section of southern Spain on the Mediterranean.
GRANADA, THE LAST MUSLIM KINGDOM OF AL-ANDALUS
With these defeats, al-Andalus was mostly parcelled out among the various sovereigns until only the Kingdom of Granada remained under Islamic control stretching through the south and eastern mountain formations from Malaga to nearly Murcia.
Surrounded, the Nazari Kingdom of Granada survived for nearly two centuries and a half, thanks to the protection offered by it's natural geography in the surrounding mountain areas and a network of enclave fortified cities in key locations. Malaga, Ronda, Antequera, Alcala la Real, Loja, Almería, Salobreña, to mention but a few.
During this final period of Muslim Spain, the Nasrid kings paid tribute to the Kings of Castille. Granada being the wealthiest city in Spain, also became a sanctuary for Muslims fleeing Christian attacks and maintained a careful balance of diplomacy and military defence and strength.
The final Nasrid dynasty of Granada began in 1232. Granada was a thriving state, rich with trade, particularly silk, and the arts. The magnificent fortress and palace called al-Hamra was begun in 1248 and completed about one hundred years later. Now known as the Alhambra, it is the oldest Islamic palace in the world to survive in a good state of preservation.
Out of Granada, the last Muslim threat to the Christian kingdoms was the rise of the Marinids in Morocco during the 14th century, who took Granada into their sphere of influence and occupied some of its cities, like Algeciras. However, they were unable to take Tarifa, which held out until the arrival of the Castilian Army led by Alfonso XI. The Castilian king, helped by Alfonso IV of Portugal and Pedro IV of Aragon, decisively defeated the Marinids at the Battle of Salado in 1340 and took Algeciras in 1344.
Gibraltar was besieged from the Kingdom of Granada in 1349–1350. Alfonso XI along with most of his army perished by the Black Death. His successor, Pedro of Castile, made peace with the Muslims and turned his attention to Christian lands, starting a period of almost 150 years of rebellions and wars between the Christian states that secured the survival of Granada.
In 1469 the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile signalled the launching of the final assault on Spanish Islam as they convinced the Pope to declare their war a crusade. The Spanish Inquisition was created by the Catholic Kings in 1478, its task was to seek out heretics and non-Christians, beginning again a reign of terror for the Jews who had been well integrated into the Muslim world for several hundred years.
The final war against Granada began in 1481. Isabel brought in German and Italian artillery to destroy the protective outposts on the hills surrounding Granada. The final checkmate was produced when Granada was surrounded and the Christian Kings, after 10 years of siege over the city, decided to found a new city from their camp outside Granada. This city was to be called, Santa Fe, or Holy Faith, and encouraged the last Muslim King of Granada to hand over the keys to the Medina under peaceful terms for the remaining Muslims of his kingdom.
In January 1492, after a long siege, the Muslim sultan, Muhammad XII Abu-Abdullah (Boabdil), signed the handover treatise within the palace of the Alhambra, handing in the keys of the city to the Catholic Kings. The contract signed was called the 'Capitulations of Granada' and was to guarantee the rights of Muslims in Spain thereon, though in time proved to be fraud. The Christians Kings had sovereign control over all of Spain, marking the end of al-Andalus. An interesting fact is that the same year, Christopher Columbus was sent out to officially 'discover' and exploit what up to then had been kept within families as secret commercial routes.
While the Reconquista signalled the end of al-Andalus, Andalusian culture continued to survive in small pockets for well over one century and it has exerted an undeniable influence on Spanish culture to this day.
‘BAPTISED MUSLIMS’: THE MORISCOS
While Castile had always been strictly against Islam, Aragon was more tolerant. Now united they both agreed that any Islamic or Jewish presence was forbidden, and forced to convert by the Inquisition.
After the Christian take over and steady repression of the non-Catholic population, many Muslims and Jews left for Muslim ruled countries, although most couldn't afford to move and stayed. Named at first 'Mudejares' (in Arabic the 'domesticated').
Those Jews who refused to convert became known as the Sephardic. Jews formerly Spanish who fled around the Mediterranean, many to North Africa, some eventually going as far as the Balkans, Greece, and Turkey - many still speaking a form of medieval Spanish known as Ladino. A massive number of Jews expelled by the Reconquista crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to the Maghreb, followed by a smaller wave of Muslims fleeing from the fall of Granada.
Breaking the agreements made in the Capitulaciones of Granada, in 1502 thousands of Andalusian Muslims fled Spain for the Maghreb after decrees of expulsion. During the 16th century more people of Jewish or Muslim background were expelled from Spain or fled persecution there, and settled in Morocco. Many of them had been forcefully converted from Islam and Judaism to Catholicism, by baptism in public squares, but were suspected of continuing to practice their previous religions secretly. These new Christians are called Moriscos, or Moorish population and where treated as 'heretic' due to their ongoing Islamic traditions.
In 1568, two generations after Granada's treague to the Christians, the Moriscos took it to arms in a rebellion which was to spread from the mountains of Ronda, through the Alpujarras, Granada (particularly in the Albaycin) and further north in Valencia mountain regions. Under Philip III of the new united Catholic Spain, remaining 'Moriscos' where repatriated and dissipated to other areas in the north and Ronda until later Royal decrees of expulsion where expedited. As late as 1609 to 1614 thousands more "Moriscos" fled Spain, arriving in the Maghreb.
The Sephardic Jews lived well enough in the Maghreb until the coming of the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century, which began persecuting and restricting them.
By the first decade of the 17th century all in Spain were forced to convert to Catholicism or be forcibly deported. In this short time, 3 million Muslims and Jews were executed or banished.
"1492 marked the official end to Islamic rule in al-Andalus. However, this did not mean all the Muslims left al-Andalus in one go. Muslims lived in al-Andalus for at least two hundred years after the fall (1492). Their lives were not easy. In many cases they were forced to give up their identities, could not practice Islam in public, they were not allowed to speak Arabic (and therefore could not pray in congregation) or even give their children Muslim names! So what began as tolerance for the practice of Islam in al-Andalus and allowing for their affairs to be judged under Shariah courts (Capitulations of Granada) slowly but surely led to the persecution of the Muslims of al-Andalus until no trace was to be found."
AL-ANDALUS, A CULTURAL REVOLUTION
Al-Andalus was in it's time the most vigorous source of culture in Europe. To a great degree the civilization of al-Andalus was the result of the mutual influences between Christians, Jews and Muslims.
The print of al-Andalus is present today in many customs, as well as in architecture and romance languages, specially Castillian or regular Spanish language. We are going to take a journey in the past, to go into the cities, walk the streets, enter the homes to understand how the Hispano-Muslim lived, studied, worked and enjoyed their time.
THE MEDINAS OF AL-ANDALUS
Hispano-Muslim towns where similar to those we find today in the north of Africa and the Middle East. They had a centre of the medina, walled city where there was an al-Kasr or government residence and the main mosque. They also had open spaces such as markets, little gardens and graveyards. They where surrounded by further walls and external town areas, the arrabiales.
The medina, city in Arabic, had defensive towers, with optical communication systems and offered it's inhabitants protection in times of war. The cities, both small and large, created stable environments where scholars in the different sciences would gather to share and further develop their studies.
Large cities had sewerage systems for dirty water, public fountains with drinkable water and numerous baths. There where also funduqs or guest houses for the caravans which brought diverse merchandises to the town, coming from the farmlands, other cities or diverse foreign countries.
The main streets of the medina where born at the doors of the city wall and had a stoned finish. The rest where a labyrinth of little alleyways. Due to a lack in construction regulations people would construct their home where and as they thought most suitable, which made streets never be completely straight and the town would soon turn into a genuine labyrinth which locals knew like the back of their hands.
Cordoba Highlights
After 756 AC, with the rise of AbdulRahman I (ad-daher, the migrant/refugee) the Umayyad safe guarded a new state of Al-Andalus in Cordoba to be the capital and epicentre of one the greater Civilizations in history. Beyond the inevitable warfare and political turbulence of the time, Iberia stepped from the dark ages to a brighter future becoming a bridge towards later technological, scientific and industrial revolutions in Europe and around the world.
Prior to Al-Andalus being a caliphate, al-Andalus was kept together as an Emirate since 750 and ruled from Cordoba by the Umayyad family.
As we cross the mountain ranges into Andalucia from the North, Some 140 Km south of Navas de Tolosa, lies the capital of what was once the Caliphate of Al-Andalus, Cordoba. Today we may still witness the unique culture and historic buildings from the Caliphal period of Al-Andalus(929-1031). We may witness Cordoba's main Mosque, which contains many secrets as it withstands to tine claiming history. Nowadays the mosque is used as a Cathedral since its reform in the mid 16th Century.
We may also visit what was effectively the first Parliament in Europe. The Palatial City of Medinat al Zahra is where the government organized and commissioned taxes from. From as far as the silk and gold routes reached: eastwards to China and India and southwards to Senegal and deeper into Africa, riches flowed to the arcs of our capital Cordoba!
During the Caliphal period up to 10.000 arrows and 2.000 bows were fabricated monthly by the riverside, and it was also the land that bread the best Arabian horses. The River Guadalquivir (Wadi al Kabir) from Cazorla (Al-Kasru Allah) mountains to Cordoba then Sevilla before reaching the Atlantic Ocean. The river makes its way through campiña fields planted with sunflowers, wheat and corn, as well as olive, orange and other fruit orchards.
Although the Court city only lasted under 100 years, it symbolizes the climax of Muslim Spain, the Umayyad Caliphate and its downfall. After this period the Caliphate fell into smaller units or provinces becoming fortified Kingdoms in themselves.
Under the Muslims, both Jews and Christians, who were"Peopleof the Book" were treated well, aside from taxes (the Islamic zakat) and allowed to worship freely, with a few restrictions - the Christians were not to ring their church bells. Muslims, Christians, and Jews all dressed similarly, and the Muslims often attended Christian celebrations. These Christians who lived in many ways like the Muslims were known as Mozarabs from the Arabic word musta'rib, meaning arabized. As we know most of the ancient Iberian Christian population practised an Arian approach to their faith, in so being very in line with the new faith of Islam.
Slaves at this time were mostly war captives and included Africans, Slavs, and Germans, among others. Those who became Muslim would be freed and those who became soldiers would be paid generously. The Muslim Caliphs of Cordoba formed great armies of Slavs. Abd al-Rahman II is well known to have had a personal army of 20.000 Slavs who were called the silent ones since they couldn't talk Arabic. Captured Jews were generally ransomed by the Jewish community. Christians in northern Europe were even embarrassed by the flood of Christian slaves who fled to al-Andalus from their Christian masters in the north.
As we penetrate into Andalusia from Cordoba we will at times have views of olive tree fields that stretch into a horizon of mountains, crowned white fortress villages, castles and towers.
- A RECENT ARCHEOLOGICAL FINDING
(I NEED TO STRUCTURE, SUMMARIZE AND TRANSLATE THIS CHAPTER, WHICH SHOULD CONCLUDE THE HISTORICAL REVIEW)
Imagen de la lápida de Xátiva.
MUSULMANES EN LA PENINSULA ANTES DEL 711
Ali Manzano/Identidad Andaluza
Algunas veces, cuando creemos que todo lo sabemos, cuando pensamos que la historia que hemos escrito está basada en estudios y bases científicas irrefutables, cuando despreciamos las tesis y teorías de los que violentan la historia que hemos montado para justificar nuestros prejuicios e intereses … suceden hechos reveladores que iluminan nuestra gris existencia, para darnos a conocer indicios de otra realidad, que nos llevará a revisar nuestra historia, nuestras verdades absolutas, nuestros dogmas y nuestros prejuicios para abrirnos al conocimiento de una realidad que no está basada en los intereses políticos de ninguna oligarquía y que no tiene que recurir a dogmas ni leyendas para justificar sus argumentos.
Uno de esos “hechos reveladores” apareció en las excavaciones arqueológicas de la localidad valenciana de Xativa. Me estoy refiriendo al descubrimiento arqueológico de la Bola de Xativa en junio del 2004. En las excavaciones aparecieron piezas de época romana del siglo I, junto a 170 fosas de periodo islámico y una lápida mortuoria, en perfecto estado de conservación, de mármol, de 70 cm. de anchura por 40 de altura y 15 de grosor, con un peso aproximado de 60 kg. Y con inscripciones en árabe, referentes al nombre del fallecido, año de la muerte, y ayas del Corán, en un estilo caligráfico cúfico con la siguiente leyenda:
Bismi Alláhi Alrah-máni alrah-imi ya ayuhá alnasa inna wa’da
Allahi ha’aqqun fala taguffannakum alh-ayati aldunya wa la yaguffa
nnakum biLlahi algurur hada qabru Ah’mad bni Fihr? Nahr?
i rah’imahu A/láhu kana yashadu anna lá illaha i/la
Allah wah’dahu la sharika lahu wa anna Muh’ammadan ‘abduhu
wa rasuluhu arsa/ahu bilhuda wa dinni alhaqqi liyunz’hirahu
ala aldini kulliha wa law kariha almusrikuna yawn
wa’isruna mina aljumadá alülá mina alsannati saba’a ,va’isruna
Traducción:
En el Nombre de Allah, el Todoclemente, el Todomisericordioso, “0h hombres¡ Ciertamente la promesa
de Allah es verdad. ¡Que no os engañe la vida mundana y que no os engañe
[a vosotros] el engañador respecto a Allah” (Coran 31 :33). Esta es la tumba de Ah’mad bn Fihr? Nahr?
,¡Que Allah tenga misericordia de él. Daba testimonio de que no hay ídolos sino
Allah, Único y sin socios, y que Muhammad es su siervo
y mensajero. “La envió con la guía y el Din de la Verdad para hacerla resplandecer
sobre todas las religiones, aunque repugne a los asociadores” (Coran 9:33/ 48:28). Un día y 20 [= 21] de jumada-l-ula del año 27 [de la hégira: 21 de febrero de 648].
De la lápida y de su texto podemos resaltar los siguientes datos:
1.- El texto está esculpido en un perfecto árabe.
2.- La grafia está esculpida en estilo cúfico.
3.- Las ayas coránicas son exactas.
4.- La fecha de defunción está datada en el año 648, correspondiente al año 27 de la héjira, dieciséis años Después del fallecimiento del profeta Muhammad.
5.- Tanto la piedra como la forma de esculpir la lápida es de época tardo-romana.
6.- Ha sido encontrada en el levante peninsular.
Por todo lo expuesto anteriormente, podemos deducir que la persona que hizo la lápida era un artesano local, gran conocedor del idioma árabe y del Corán. Pero la fecha de fallecimiento data del año 648, tan solo dieciséis años después del fallecimiento del profeta Muhammad (s.a.s.), lo que nos lleva a pensar, que varios años antes de esta fecha, habrían llegado al levante peninsular algunos musulmanes contemporáneos del profeta predicando el nuevo Din y creando pequeñas
comunidades islámicas en las que se enseñó el idioma árabe y el Corán a los nativos del lugar. Por las características de la lápida, parece ser que el fallecido era una persona de gran relevancia, posiblemente el maestro de esa pequeña comunidad islámica llegado años antes procedente de la península arabiga.
Lo que con este descubrimiento se nos revela como incontestable, la presencia de comunidades islámicas en el levante peninsular con anterioridad al año 711, ya lo intuyó, demostrando una inconmesurable capacidad de análisis, el historiador Ignacio Olague en su obra “La revolución islámica en Occidente”:
“Sabemos por la evolución de ideas de las que tenemos información cierta, que el sincretismo arriano evolucionaba hacia el sincretismo musulmán. Aun ante el hecho de una gravísima dificultad, como la ausencia de documentación en el slglo VIII, correcta sería la deducción, pues tenemos dos puntos situados en la misma curva de evolución y sabemos sin duda alguna que desciende el Islam, genéticamente hablando, del cristianismo unitario. Por consiguiente, se debe suponer que la penetración de los principios coránicos se realizaba desde hacia tiempo; pero no en todas las regiones peninsulares, pues las favorecidas por la geografía serian privilegiadas. Tampoco es temerario suponer que los primeros contactos se realizarían a orillas del Mediterráneo antes del mismo siglo VIII. Pues la expansión del Islam no se impuso por obra de ejércitos extranjeros, sino por la acción de ideas-fuerza. Se ha deslizado y luego ha prosperado en virtud de la misma dinámica que rigió y rige hoy día la propagación de movimientos similares. En un medio favorable, se difundió la idea por actos anónimos y muchas veces oscuros.
Nada sabemos acerca de la propagación del cristianismo en la Península Ibérica durante los primeros siglos. Surge de pronto en el IV, como por obra de una explosión. Ocurrió lo mismo con la difusión del Islam. Ante la ausencia de textos latinos y árabes, en siglo y medio, lo menos que se puede enunciar es que ha sido predicado en un ambiente propicio por oscuros propagandistas; por lo cual no han dejado de esta acción rastro alguno.
Por otra parte nos consta, por la observación de fenómenos análogos ocurridos en el curso de la historia, que se disimula este proselitismo anónimo a los ojos de los contemporáneos bajo la cubierta de una densa confusión. Aun hoy día, en que la instrucción y la facilidad de las comunicaciones – y por consiguiente el intercambio de ideas- han predispuesto el espíritu de las gente a una mayor agilidad., se requirió un cierto tiempo para que aprendiera el público a distinguir en la acción socia los adheridos a las diversas teorías. Hemos conocido en nuestra
juventud a personas selectas por su instrucción y por sus cargos que confundían a los anarquistas con los parlidarios de la II o de la III Internacional. ¿ Qué seria en el siglo IX, en que las gentes, hasta las más cultas, disponían de escasos medios informativos? Se requería una linterna muy bien encendida y un ojo avizor excelente para discernir en aquellos tiempos a un arriano de un premusulman y de un auténtico creyente. Tanto más que en muchos años compondrían éstos una pequeña minoría”.
A pesar de la contundencia de las pruebas, los “sabios de la patria española”, se empeñan en tropezar una y otra vez con la misma piedra, en mantener sus dogmas y sus prejuicios en contra de la razón, de la lógica y de la evidencia. El método de análisis histórico empleado por algunos arqueólogos y arabistas raya la locura, insultando la inteligencia de cualquier persona interesada en el esclarecimiento de los hechos históricos acaecidos en la Península Ibérica. Primero, confeccionamos los dogmas de fe históricos (invasión de árabes, reconquista, expulsión de los moriscos y repoblación con castellanos y gallegos) necesarios para justificar hechos acaecidos con posterioridad: unidad política y religiosa de España, genocidio físico y cultural del pueblo andaluz (morisco), encubierto bajo la palabra “reconquista” y los numerosos decretos de expulsión. Una vez establecidos los dogmas, intentamos encajar los hechos para que estos no contradigan los dogmas preestablecidos.
Pero algunos hechos tienen un difícil encaje en la historia dogmática oficial, como por ejemplo la lápida de la que estamos informando en esta web, datada en el año 648. ¿ Como puede ser del año 648 si los árabes no invadieron “España” hasta el año 711? En vez de replantear la historia ante
la aparición de nuevas pruebas, los “científicos oficiales” – muy bien pagados por el Estado – nos ofrecen un juego de prestidigitación. Como los árabes no invadieron “España” hasta el año 711, la lápida no puede ser del año 648. El artesano que esculpió la lápida “se equivocó” de fecha, poniendo la de 648 en vez de la de 1038, fecha dada por los arqueólogos de forma caprichosa y sin justificación alguna. Si en la lápida la fecha de fallecimiento, en un perfecto árabe está datada en el año 648, ¿en que se basan los arqueólogos para decirnos que corresponde al año 1.038? ¿imaginación, desinformación, incompetencia, miedo a la verdad? ¿Cómo le llamaríais vosotros? El que acierte mi calificativo tiene premio: un viaje a algunas universidades “españolas” para conocer a esa raza de “científicos en extinción” que investigan al dictado de la administración que les paga, con el objetivo de mantener los “dogmas oficiales”. Cuando la libertad de investigación y de pensamiento llegue a las universidades del Estado español, la HISTORIA se podrá empezar a escribir con letras mayúsculas.
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CORDOBA, THE UMAYYAD EMIRATE
Introduction
As we cross the mountain ranges into Andalucia from the North, Some 140 Km south of Navas de Tolosa, lies the capital of what was oncethe Caliphate of Al-Andalus, Cordoba. During our sightseeing day, we will witness the unique culture and historic buildings from the Caliphal period of Al-Andalus(929-1031). Prior to Cordoba being a caliphate, al-Andalus was kept together as an Emirate since 750 and ruled from Cordoba by the Umaya family. We will visit Cordoba's main Mosque, which contains many secrets as it stands witness to History. Nowadays the mosque is used as a Cathedral since its reform in the mid 16th Century.
We'll also visit what was effectively the first Parliament in Europe. The Palatial City of Medinat al Zahra from where the government organized and commissioned taxes that were collected from as far as the silk and gold routes reached: eastwards to China and India and southwards to Senegal and deeper into Africa! Although the Court city only lasted just under 100 years, it symbolizes the climax of Muslim Spain, the Umayyad Caliphate and its downfall. After this period the Caliphate fell into smaller units or provinces becoming fortified Kingdoms in themselves.
As we penetrate into Andalusia we will at times have views of fortress cities surrounded by olive tree fields that stretch to the horizon. The River GuadalQuivir(Kabir)from Cordoba to Sevilla, makes it's way through the'campiña':fields planted with sunflowers, wheat and corn, a s well as olive, orange and other fruit orchards. It was here that during the Caliphal period up to 10.000 arrows and 2.000 bows where fabricated monthly, and it was also the land which bread the best'arabian'horses.
The Umayyad safe guarded the capital of a newly declared Islamic state of Al-Andalus in Cordoba, founding here the epicentre of one the greater Civilizations in history. Iberia had just stepped from the dark ages, to a brighter future becoming a bridge towards later technological, scientific and industrial revolutions in Europe and around the world.
Under the Muslims, both Jews and Christians, who were"Peopleof the Book" were treated well, aside from taxes(theIslamic zakat) and allowed to worship freely, with a few restrictions - the Christians were not to ring their church bells. Muslims, Christians, and Jews all dressed similarly, and the Muslims often attended Christian celebrations. These Christians who lived in many ways like the Muslims, were known as Mozarabs from the Arabic word musta'rib, meaning arabized. As we know most of Spanish Christian population practised an Arian approach to their faith, in so being very in line with the'new'faith of Islam.
Slaves at this time were mostly war captives and included Africans, Slavs, and Germans, among others. Those who became Muslim would be freed and those who became soldiers would be paid generously. The Muslim Caliphs of Cordoba formed great armies of Slavs. Abd al-Rahman II is well known to have had a personal army of 20.000 Slavs whom where called the'silent'ones since they couldn't talk Arabic. Captured Jews were generally ransomed by the Jewish community. Christians in north Europe where even embarrassed by the flood of Christian slaves who fled to al-Andalus from their Christian masters in the north.
The Umayyad Emirate Of Al-Andalus
The Iberian Peninsula is large and holds a complex geography. It's cities well spaced and self governed, it took a great leader to organize and unite them into one nation. Forty years after Musa reaching Toledo in 712, rivalry and instability again swept across the Peninsula
In 756 a ginger haired, blue eyed warrior named Abd al-Rahman, arrived in Spain after some years of hiding in Tunisia. He claimed to be the only survivor of the last Umayyad Dynasty in Damascus. The Umayyads, while out of power were not destroyed completely it seems. The only surviving member of the Umayyad royal family ultimately made his way to al-Andalus!
Striving for the unity of the Iberian Peninsula Abd al-Rahman fought several battles and further declared an Islamic Emirate based in Cordoba. He is since to be remembered as Abd al-Rahman I, the first Umayyad Emir of al-Andalus.
Al-Andalus was again one united state and continued to be an independent Muslim kingdom, under the blessing of the caliphs in Baghdad. This was the beginning of the Umayyad emirate during which the successors of Abd al-Rahman made al-Andalus the most advanced country in the West.
We have to see this period as a very delicate mosaic in the religious aspect, yet balanced by a central Emir who's duty was to seek justice beyond the veils of Religion. In 817 there had been a revolt in Cordoba where a group of Muslims rose against the Caliph protesting about a general'religious'laxity and tolerance over the Jews, Christians and new converts to Islam. The Emir at the time, Al-Hakm II, grandson of Abd al-Rahman I and father of Abd al-Rahman II, ordered the exile of the entire rebel area and for the district to be literally'flattened'forbidding it's reconstruction. This is said to be the origin of the Andalusi Medina within the city of Fez, in Morocco, where the inhabitants of this district fled to.
A more dramatic conflict occurred when the Catholic monk Eulogio discovered about the new religion of Islam, in 850 from texts about the new Prophet Muhammad and his revelations. Hearing the news, Christian monks would approach the Emir at Cordoba and after enquiring about the religion of Islam and the prophet Muhammad, insult and defame him publicly and insistingly until AbdelRahman II great-grandson of Abd al-Rahman I, punished them by public execution. This manner of Christian martyrdom became popular for a while until it was condemned as'suicidal'and improper by the head of the Catholic Church in Toledo. Later Christian acts of these kind where punished with exile.
In 844 the Vikings from Scandinavia and Northern Europe sacked Lisbon, Cadiz and Medina Sidonia, and then captured Seville. However, the Muslims counter attacked and defeated them. The Vikings carried out further raids on al-Andalus but the Muslims fought back effectively. The first navy of the Emirate was built after this humiliating Viking ascent of the Guadalquivir in 844. These and other raids prompted a shipbuilding program at the dockyards of Seville. The Andalusian navy was thenceforth employed to patrol the Iberian coastline under the caliphs Abd al-Rahman III and Al-Hakam II(961– 76). By the next century, piracy from North Africans superseded Viking raids.
Another story relates about Umar Ibn Hafsun, in 889, who was a Muslim'convert'natural of Ronda and descendant of the last Visigoth King Witiza. In face of what he considered classicism and hypocrisy from behalf of the Umayyad Rulers, turned back to his roots as a Christian, of the Arian Unitarian faith. Moreover he formed a rebellion over the midlands mountains of Al-Andalus,'protecting'nearly all of what was later to be the Granada Kingdom, against the Caliphs tax collectors, defending and promoting a popular class in the form of his own Kingdom. This Christian Kingdom within the Emirate of the Umayyad Dynasty was to last for 40 years until 917. Sources vary as to whether Umar Ibn Hafsun died under the Christian name of Samuel in his local town, Bobastro, or whether he was captured and sent as a mercenary to the North fronts due to his courage.
In this uneasy but steady manner, the Umayyad Dynasty of Cordoba was to last for nearly three hundred years, although at no stage could it boast of having'fixed'borders, nor internal stability. Al-Andalus was in fact under permanent siege by the Catholic Kingdoms of Aragon and Castile from the North and yet a worse threat from the South by the Fatimid Caliphate, a new disloyal movement against the existing Abbasid Caliphs, which had formed in the North of Africa. The Fatimid threat shared it's roots within the very Umayyad Dynasty of Damascus and hence was a larger threat to the state of Al-Andalus then the'lesser'problem of the Christian advance in the north.
Under this climate, seven generations after Abd al-Rahman I, Abd al-Rahman III declared himself the Caliph of Islam turning Al-Andalus into a Caliphate. He declared sovereignty over Muslim faith from a politically and religiously independent state, this represented the peak of an Islamic Golden Age in Spain.
Map 1: Al-Andalus, 790 to 1300 a.c.
Abd al-Rahman I the immigrant
Furthermore, out of nostalgia for his nationalist origin, he constructs at the border of Cordoba a summer residency, the Rusafa palace, in remembrance of his grandfather
« A place of retreat intended, for him and his new family; hence with a botanical garden in which he can unite the beautiful things from Syria. »28.
Many pomegranates were planted under his ruling, until this day we still eat fruits that were planted during that time. The first palm tree in Spain was planted in that time and he identified very strongly with it and dedicated a poem, evoking the nostalgia from his lost homeland:
« At the heart of Rusafa, a palm tree appeared, lost, but truthfully, on this Occidental terrain, so far away from the palm tree countries; you are similar to me, I told him, you living in exile and so distant, and who, since a long time, separated from my children and family! »29.
In his last days he seemed to be haunted by demons, becoming more solitary, more lost, more despotic,
« protected by terror and isolated by hate »30, he dies in Cordoba in 788.
The foundation of the Umayyad emirate in Cordoba
In a location close to the Ummayad Mosque, perhaps by the door of AbdulRahman I so that it covers from inside the mosque , to outside from the street. Also by the river, as we enter Cordoba, from the North of the city.
The destiny of Abd al-Rahman is like that of a phoenix. Broken, reduced to a fugitive state, without a moment of pause or the right to rest, he would elevate himself to higher powers by becoming the Umayyadian Emir of Cordoba. And since it was in the fusing moment of a heightened violent chaos and without having mercy for the power changes that characterises him, he becomes a stubborn man, determined but necessarily ruthless and tricky. Member of the Umayyad dynasty at the head of the Muslim empire in 650 until 750, from a Syrian father and enslaved Berber mother, he enjoys a soft education as a prince in his lineage. The sweetheart of his grandfather Hisham the caliph, who lives in the Al-Rusafa palace, a fortified oasis, used as a family retirement, close to Euphrate. In 750, at the age of nineteen, his life changes completely. Rebellions explode in the Oriental province and take the Umayyad power down in Damascus. The new masters call themselves the Abbasids and get installed in Baghdad, the circular city, the new city of the Muslim empire21. The new caliph Abu l-Abbas al-Saffah, the Giver of blood, assigns the task to abolish the predecessors. He starts by profaning the tombs of the Umayyad Caliphs, he lets his aunty Abd al-Rahman be stabbed, cutting of the foot and hand of one of his cousins and taking him on a donkey for one year in the Syrian villages to humiliate him. Then later he asks for amnesty and organises a banquet of reconciliation. Abd al-Rahman did not participate but instead 70 Umayyadin surrendered to Abu Futrus, in Palestine. The doors closes, a poet recites and announces the end of his poem on the extermination of the Umayyad. The ambush was done. Abu Futrus is covered by blood. Alerted by a messenger, Abd al–Rahamn,accompanied by his brother, two sisters and his sons, crossing the Euphrate and went hiding in a small village. The manhunt continues. At the end of a certain time, in the distance, horses with black banners of the Abbasids would arrive at the horizon; the little one who was playing outside comes home crying and completely terrorized.
The two brothers escape and face the Euphrate again. Abd al-Rahman manages to cross but his cadet could not confront the current. He comes back at the shore, directs himself to his soldiers and they see his aging unfolding in front of them. Despite that, Abd-al Rahman doesn’t return nor revives his fatherland.
During 5 years, with his loyal servant Badr, he knew a life of wondering, crosses North-Africa, intrigued, strikes by cutting territory, chased from one city to another, afraid and undesired, he finally debarked at the age of 25 in Al-Andalus(Almunecar).A group of Syrians, who have served the Umayyad and the noble Arabs, will end up swearing allegiance to him. Strong trough his double ancestry, he manages to bring the Berber elements to his inner circle. The governor of Cordoba, who saw this new entrant with suspicion not knowing their intentions, tries to woo him; he offers some of his territories, even his daughter for marriage, but the immigrant refuses. He walks on Cordoba, moves the governor and settles himself to his new attained power. In 756, he creates the emirate of Cordoba. With that gesture, he initiates « an essential change for the outcome of Al-Andalus»22 since the Umayyad domination in Spain lasted 250 years.
Since the beginning of the state, known to be divided and not well outlined, the emir Abd al-Rahman the first was obliged to use all his political and military capacities to maintain his authority since « not even one year of his reign passed and he had to check out a revolt, punishing the rebels.»23. During the thirty years he faces many conspiracies by his family members, attempted murder attacks by the Arab tribes, and the desire for independence by the local Berber leaders. All these attempts were counterattacked with force and determination; heads were rolling. For the purpose of understanding the cruel punishments of this era, one has to remember that
« Estos guerreros(…)obedeciana un jefe solo cuando no cabia la menor duda de que detentaba la mision divina de gobernar, cosa que tenia que manifestarse en su santidad o en su poder irresistible. En el fondo, cada uno de ellos estaba convencido de que el mismo gobernaria mejor que el hombre que ostentaba el poder.(…)A los arabes y berberes mas audaces el peligro de ser decapitados no les arredraba lo suficiente como para desisitir de rebeliones, pues, en resumidas cuentas, cada uno tiene que morir alguna vez. »24.
In 777, a rebellion was a dangerous fact for the immigrant. With the initiative of the governor of Saragossa, de Muslim leaders demanded to capture the representative of Cordoba, they take him hostage, leave to the embassy in Saxe and offer him as their hostage and testify their reliance to Charlemagne25: they demand the help of the king of Francs to overturn the emir and capture Catalonia. Charlemagne accepts, puts himself at the head of the army, crosses the Pyrenees but arrives at closed city gates. The governor of Saragossa was being removed and the beleaguered townspeople gave an unexpected resistance, outraged about the alliance between Muslims and Christians combatting the co-religionists. The seat of Saragossa does not last for long and turns short since new revolts in the Saxe oblige the Christians to return back to their kingdom. It made it possible for Charlemagne to order the bag of Pamplona, a Christian village in the hands of the Vacons to return booty after the failure of the Spanish campaign.
But they avenge the French attack throughout de crossing of the Pyrenees, killing the army’s rear guard. The disastrous return in 778 has been told in the most ancient moving songs from Moyen Age, the song of Roland, the dukes name was Roland from Bretagne, the high dignitary Charlemange dies in action :
« Forced to traverse the Pyrenees trough narrow streets, his army, in Roncesvalles, fallen victim to the Basques who at the mountains, crushing the soldiers with rocks by throwing it on them, stole their baggage and throw it in the ravines. »26
The failure of the expedition nevertheless created a Franc march(areof security and defence) in Catalonia. A number of times, Abd al-Rahman ended up in conflict with the authorities in Bagdad. The Abbasids attempt to overturn the Umayyad interloper in his new territories. In 763, Mansour the caliph sends his man to eliminate the emir of Andalusia. Since he has been receiving decapitated heads of his officers, transported by a merchant arriving at the principal place of Kairouan, Abbasid zone, he cried out:
« Praise to God for putting the sea between such demons and me »27. Also the attempts in 777 to overturn the immigrant by caliph Mahdi were without success. Besides the function as a statesman, it was under his force that the first visible traces of Arab-Andalucía civilisation were exposed. Around 780, he started with the construction of the big mosque in Cordoba in which the pillars, comprised of antic columns or Visigoth columns enduring vaults and double arcs in the shape of the iron horseshoe, characterising the Andalus Umayyad style.
Abd al-Rahman II : the pinnacle of the emirate
The period that opens up after Abd al-Rahman the first will have many succeeding emirs31 in which they will elapse in the same territorial space: the Iberian peninsula with exception of the Christian North: the kingdom of the Asturias, the little villages in the Pyrenees and Catalonia, Carolingian territories. In 822, when Abd al Rahman II ascends on the throne, the central power of Cordoba is strong and the country is stable. The society prevails progressively based on three elements: the politics of dhimmi, the Arabization of the society and the use of Roman language by the Muslims. The politics of dhimmi was established since the conquest of the peninsula; it consists of full recognition of Jews and Christians with the title of Koranic status « the people of the book », those who received a revelation; this made it possible for them to be part of the tax costs, to follow their customs, their religion, to live under authority of their bishops and counts, to practise their profession(eightgenerations of Jews experienced a peaceful life under the Umayyad dynasty). The Arabization of the population made it possible, trough the Arab language, by leaving its strict religious frame, and allowing it to become the language of daily life, the exchanges, the unifying business, also the ethical and religious strata in society: Arabs, Berbers, indigenous converts to Islam(muwallads),indigenous Christians(Mozarabs)and Jews. The third point, little has been mentioned in historical research, which assured the social membrane of strong ties, is the practice of the Roman language by the Muslims:
« The permanent contact of the Muslims with the Spanish forced the conquerors to learn the Roman language as the outcome of Latin-Iberian idiom.(…)In al-Andalus, until the XIIIth century , Muslims used two languages: Arab and roman, in that way they could serve the daily life with the artisans and their contact with the peasants. »32
These three aspects allowed a relative tolerance and conviviality between the different communities and this brought the emirate of Cordoba to its zenith: the reign of Abd al-Rahman II(822-852).Abd al-Rahman II succeeded his father Hakam the first at the age of thirty and inherited a stable country. In contrast to the latter, feared for his use of violence and force, he becomes an appreciated monarch33. When he reached his power, he takes sanctions that will earn him the respect of the people: decrease of taxes, punishment of corrupt functionaries, risking the removal of the rebellious and ambitious governors. He received a strong, complete education, within his armies as in his letters; he prefers the use of poetry, books, woman and sensuality during the summer period, during the implementation of the wars. According to some, he had « forty sons and forty-three daughters »34. As the cultivated patron, he also introduces pumps in Andalucia based on a model from Bagdad, which itself was inspired by the Persians: constructing the palace, beautifying the city, managing the peoples gardens and exotic animals like giraffes, rhinos, migrating birds, introducing a high number of domestication of animals. He for example invited, on high costs, three slave musicians of Medina who each gave a daughter to him:
« In the palace they directed a veritable orchestra of slave musicians for which the emir build a special pavilion. On the festive nights(…)the visitors would be regaled by the spectacle of dance and music. »35
The stability of the country made it possible for him to push his talent forward as a great organiser of the state: he created the money Hotel, he ameliorated the administration for the taxes by creating desks that controlled the taxes and payments of the soldiers. He constructed cities, fortifications and mosques. He enlarged the building of the big mosque of Cordoba by replacing the meridian wall more to the South and by adding eight building spans. To test that time period, two protagonists from Cordoba embodied the transformation of the century. One representing the new Arab-Andalucian model: Zyriab al Bagdadi; the other, Eulogue, the « furious theologian »36, rejects this model and anchors himself in the ancient Visigoth and Christian world that disappeared.
Zyriab al Bagdadi, the black bird of Bagdad, was born in 789. As a brilliant student of the caliph’s favourite musician, Al Mawasali, Zyriab seized an occasion to present his brilliance by leaving the given limits of his master. The young man addresses the caliph: « I sing what others know, he says, but I also know how to sing that what others don’t know. If you like, I can sing you something nobody every heard before.»37
He plays on his own 5-string lute instead of the traditional 4-string lute. He uses an eagle’s claw instead of the wooden lamella. It had such a strong effect on the caliph that he was asked back the next morning. The old master conscious of the effortless genius of his student saw it as a threat to his position as the favourite player.
Al-Mawasali orders the young prodigy to immediately leave the city under the mum of a dead penalty. The caliph never saw him back. Zyriab starts his journey the next morning on the roads that Abd al-Rahman the immigrant had borrowed before him; he crosses North Africa as a wondering musician. At the age of 33, Hakam the first invites him to his courtyard in Cordoba. But it is only under the reign of Abd al-Rahman does he join Cordoba. He was treated like a prince. He was given a house and a big sum of money. He was not anymore a wandering musician, but he becomes a close friend to the emir by sharing the joy of woman and poetry. For the elite in the society, he also imposes himself, thanks to his experience at the courtyard in Baghdad, as a reference of respectability. He opens up a conservatorium, he introduces the chess game, he teaches table manners, the order of plates, he suggests new hairstyles and cosmetic recipes: he is « from 822 until 857, the real referee, of highest societal elegance in Cordoba. »38. The antipode of the hedonic oriental life style(pleasure,joy, music, woman) by Zyriab, the priest Eulogue, worked from his younger years in mortifications and penitence, he worsened in front of all the unacceptable transformations in the world. A descendant of a patrician Hispanic-Visigoth family, he rejects since his birth the loss of his predominantly Visigoth Christian essence.
He becomes merciless towards the Arabization of the society and the disaffection for the Latin culture and the religious, traditional formation »39 like the witness of his laic friend Alvaro written in his letter:
« My fellow religious friends like to read poems and romans of the Arab, they study the theological and philosophical writings of Muslims, not to refute but to form a correct and elegant diction. Where does one find a laic that would read the Latin comments of the Holy Writings? Who would still study the evangelists, the prophets and the apostles? Alas, all the young remarkable, talented Christians knew the languages and literature of the Arabs: they would read and study with a lot of devotion the Arab books, they would invest in big libraries… they would speak differently about the Christian books. They would answer with contempt that those books are not even worth their attention. What a pain! The Christians forgot their own language and of the thousands of you there will not be one who can write a convincing letter to a friend in Latin... » 40
In that context, Alvaro shares a distressing realization of the Mozarab situation,(Christiansliving under domination of the Arabs and using Roman as the common spoken dialect) and their immersion in a tradition and language that is not theirs. He approaches the forgetting of their liturgical and scholarly language: I don’t wish their identity to disappear. In defence of the deprivation of his culture, its members add hate towards the Muslims, their God and prophet. Eulogue, head of a small group of partisans, incites his fellow religious people to become martyrs. The method is simple: it consists of leaving to a public place and insult the prophet of Islam; the offense was privately tolerated but not publically, in that time era, this resulted in dead penalty. Some of them even went on Fridays, the day of communal prayer, at the big mosque in Cordoba, in great despite of the judge, who did not understand the motivations of these fanatics. However the Mozarabs could practice their religion, their procession, and their funerals and sound their bells; one council condemned the appeal to martyrdom. During multiple years, the number of people who committed them selves to martyrdom and only trough the death of the principal instigator did the movement finally knew an end. Eulogue ends up being publically executed and later the Catholic Church sanctioned him. These events are known to be the martyrdom of the Mozarabs.
A Curve of Conversion to Islam
It is interesting to talk about a study made by the American historian Richard W. Bulliet by analyzing medieval Islamic biographical dictionaries, which where a common genre of the time and provide a generous amount of biographical and genealogical information. We can conclude from the study that the very diverse population present in the Iberian Peninsula, would over a period of two centuries, no less, turn towards a dominant oriental culture and only later be influenced by the'newreligion' of Islam. Muslim names with diverse family names, would roughly double in numbers every fifty years until a natural balance was reached. An early 8% in 800 turned into 12% of the population by 850, to then double again by 900 and reaching a rough 50% by 950 A.C. The curve gradually flattens at a 75% Muslim population by the year 1.000.
The Catholic Discomfort in Cordoba
This can be contrasted to the fact that in Cordoba, the very heart of the Caliphate, it is not until 850 C.E. that the Catholic-Roman Church would learn about Islam through Monk Eulogio's readings about'thenew Prophet (Muhammad(s) in manuscripts he found at a Christian library during a journey to Navarra. Precisely around the same time, the first Muezzins would start to call publicly to prayer from the minaret of the mosque at Cordoba and Islam was to become socially noticeable.
CORDOBA, THE CALIPHATE CAPITAL OF AL-ANDALUS
The Caliphate of Al-Andalus
In 929, nearly two centuries after the Umayyad Abd al-Rahman I came to Spain, his descendant Abd al-Rahman III declared himself Caliph or spiritual leader of the Hispano-Muslim. In other words, completely independent from the caliph in Baghdad both politically and spiritually, it was the birth of the Caliphate of al-Andalus.
Under his rule Muslim Spain reached it's maximum expansion, covering three quarters of the peninsula and connecting to Tangier and other locations in Maghreb. The splendid court of the caliphs, where science and arts glowed from, was moved to a fortress court city to the north of Cordoba, the famous Medinat al-Zahra.
Cordoba under the Caliphate, with a permanent population of some say 1.000.000, others 200.000, however it overtook Constantinople as the largest and most prosperous city in Europe.
Within the Islamic world,
Cordoba took an economic lead over East and West and was one of the leading cultural centres. The work of its most important philosophers and scientists (notably Abulcasis and Ibn Rushd /Averroes) had a major influence on the intellectual life of medieval Europe.
By the end of the reign of Abd al-Rahman III, the king of Leon, the queen of Navarra, and the counts of Castile and Barcelona, all Christians, acknowledged him as their overlord and sent him annual tribute.
Paradoxically quite a few Andalusian"Moors"had red and blond hair and blue eyes, since Spain had been populated by Visigoths, Vandals, and other Germanic tribes before the Arab and Berber invasions and subsequent conversion to Islam. Abd al-Rahman III - with his red hair and blue eyes, typical of many Andalusian rulers - reunited al-Andalus in a golden age.
After the death of Abd al-Rahman III, Hisham II, who was yet a boy aged thirteen, ascended to the throne. The real ruler was Ibn abi Emir, General and Chief of state, also known as Al-Mansur, The Victorious. He continued to lead al-Andalus with military might.
Reached this point in politics, the Caliph himself being overruled by his own chief of State, with the death of Al-Mansur, al-Andalus fell into a period of political instability that ended with the fall of the caliphate. The Umayyad would decay until in 1031, a republic was declared in Cordoba since no one was prepared to accept the position of Caliph. Civil war and unrest followed, with 28 princedoms being formed. These multiple princedoms were known as the Taifa Kingdoms.
Abd al-Rahman III : the golden era of al-Andalus
In 912, Abd al-Rahman the third, child of a franc concubine who gave him light eyes and ginger hair(hespoke the Roman language) and the Umayyad prince, he was designed to succeed his grandfather emir Abd Allah on the throne of the emirate. His enthronement goes smoothly, the members of his family and the high dignitaries pledge allegiance to him(baya).However, in contrast to his homonym of the precedent century, the political situation when he comes to power is troublesome: it’s an era of fitna, chaos and conflicts. Until the end of Mohammed the first’s reign, in 884, the authority of Cordoba was mainly challenged internally then externally. Internally, the three zones, the border zones with the Nordic Christians, became independent by the hands of the Muwalladian aristocrats. At the centre, the revolt of the Muwallid Omar Ibn Hafsun, who threatens the gates of Cordoba, which were the heart of the Emirate. Externally, in the North, the Christian kings enlarged their territory by wounding the emirate and in Africa the Fatimidians became the most powerful. Four months after his ascent to power, which stayed for 20 years, Abd al-Rahman launches a political conquest and consolidation of the territories. He stabilises the countryside and imposes himself in the cities(thesiege in Seville lasted two years); he has put a definitive term on the revolt with the one of Ibn Hafsun by eliminating his descendants.41 ; He fixes the borders with the Christians in the North and fortifies his positions in the north of Africa to limit the influence of the Fatimidians. It is possible to affirm this period
« fue el periodo de la historia de Espana en que el poder y el control de la peninsula Iberica se hallaban, sin ningun genero de dudas, exclusivamente en manos musulmanas, bien fuera de manera directa, bien à traves des pago de vasallajes. »42
Strong after his success in 929, he reclaims the title of « prince of the believers »43, a caliph, literally means the lieutenant, the representative of God on earth. A letter send by the governors in the provinces of al-Andalus, taken from the Anonymous chronicles Abd al-Rahman III, a compilation dating from the eleventh century but with contemporary writings of the events, witnessing the positional statement:
"In the name of the Most Merciful and lenient God. May the blessings of God be upon our Prophet Mohammed.
We are the most worthy to claim our right and to be of those who deserve the most complete of fortune and favours including the almighty who we have invested in; this is the reason for which God has given us this privilege, we have shown its preference, and we raised our authority up to this title. It has allowed us to get through our efforts, we facilitated the task, to us and to our government; it has extended our glory in the world; it has proclaimed our authority on the land; the fact that the hopes of the world are based on us; he ordered to those who are gone astray back to us and that our subjects, rejoice to live in the shadow of our government(allthis by the will of God; Praised be God, the giver of the benefits, he who has delivered, as well he deserves the greatest praise for the grace that He has granted). Accordingly, we decided that we would call him now the"princeof believers" and that, in the letters, both those that we will give and those that we receive would give this Title. The one who uses the name outside of this is appropriating it undeservingly; he is an imposter who is assuming a title that he does not deserve to wear. In addition, we have understood that continuing in governing without the use of this title that we have given, it is depriving him from the rights we have, and it is to lose an essential designation. I therefore order the preacher of jurisdiction that he employs this title, and thee, uses-The now when we write you. If God is willing.»44
The political stability well held in the Rennes of the caliphate allows the flourishing development of the economy. An effective network of trade routes and mercantile infrastructure benefit the cities, which in turn will become the centres of fruitful administration and economy. The Alhondigas emerge warehouses-hostels for traders and their transport animals and will bear witness to this development. « Their prostitutes lived elsewhere in the warehouses-hostels. They were required to pay a contribution ». But the regular bail-out and prosperous state offers is ensured by other means: the tributes of vassalage Kingdoms and Christian counties; taxes on crafts; taxes on the domestic and international trade: the import of luxury products from Egypt, Tunis, the export of manufactured products such as tissues, ceramics to northern Europe. Abd al-Rahman goes up to create his fleet for defensive and mercantile purposes by reducing the intermediaries and increasing the profits. All levels of society, leaders, traders, take advantage of this particular opulence and material well being in Andalusia. The peasants don’t stay inactive. A side of these heights is the development of irrigation techniques, allowing an intensive culture of Andalusian soil: the manufacturing of wheels, Noria(thatof the Albolafia of Cordoba was built by Abd al-Rahman(I),the drilling of wells, the construction of the Acequias who provide the terrace cultivation in flanks of arid mountains. The introduction of new crops such as the orange, the pomegranate, the lemon, the almond tree, apricot, peach, chestnut, the banana tree, the melon, the asparagus, the date palm, sugar cane, rice, and the contribution of botanical knowledge solving the problem of fertilizers and diseases, providing an Andalucian agriculture and horticulture with a great prosperity, which was significantly higher than in the rest of Europe. At the time of the caliph, « la agricultura era indiscutiblemente la base de la sociedad, y de tal importancia que determino la superioridad economica andalusi con respecto al resto de Europa. »45. This document of the Calendar of Cordoba of 961, indicating for each month the corresponding agricultural activities, testifying the wealth and diversity of Andalusian territories: Let us look at a few lines about the month of January:
« The horses graze the fertile lands, cows are being calved and give abundant milk; there are small groups of geese and ducks(…)we plant the guardians of olive trees, pomegranate and other similar trees. The narcissus flowers early; we size up trellised vineyards and plants that do not provide table grapes; we sow the floating duckweed early and we harvest the sugar cane. We make jam of citrons and can the carrots, as well syrup made of lemon acid. »46
As soon the year 936 enters, to give more splendour to the Caliphate, after having spent half of his reign in the Alcazar inaugurated by Abd al-Rahman the first, like the Abbasids who were gushed out of Baghdad, Abd al-Rahman III inaugurates outside the city ramparts, on the slopes of the Sierra, a huge site: the construction of the palatine city Madinat al-Zahra, the name of one of his concubines. During these 16 years, more than ten thousand workers, masons, craftsmen, donkey riders are working every day to build this city, in a rectangular shape, 750 m by 1500 m under the direction of the prince heir Hakam. The materials such as the columns are derived from the ancient sites, the marble from Carthage or from Constantinople. Surrounded by a bastion, the city is divided into three parts: the upper part, the palace; the lower part, the Great Mosque and homes; between the two, the gardens and the vineyards.
In 945, Abd al-Rahman settled there with his court."Morethan 6300 women from who were the wives, the concubines and maidservants " worked there. The embassies that came from the north are crushed by the Andalusian luxury. Leaving behind the dark castles, cold and no direct access to water, they passed through scented gardens of flowers where the nightingales sang, where the water was controlled and passed from basin to basin, to reach the palace to the bright parts, fresh and open. At night, a garland of torches illuminated the path between Cordoba and Madinat al-Zahra. In 939, the defeat to the Christians at the Battle of Simancas was a turning point to the policy of the caliph who decided to stay in his palatine city:
« Al-Nâsir was overwhelmed by his failure in this campaign, failure with everything that had happened before; dissatisfied with its bad fortune, had tormented his spirit and he ended up being unfair to himself: That is why he was advised to divert his worries and to devote himself to his greater pleasure, the construction. It is said that there is a certain dedication, while making Madinat al-Zahra, not far from Cordoba, that still obtains, thanks to the magnitude and the majesty of its building, which shows the rest of his Spirit and the oblivion of the world; therefore, it ceased to personally conduct his troops »47.
He delegates to the faithful families, the Government of marches, in particular the top march, but never ceases to send each year quotas to the disciplined men to ensure his authority towards the Christians:
« Thus the succession of his conquest; accompanied by triumph, his luck continues, which enables him to have lived the greater part of his Caliphate peacefully on his throne, enjoying the tranquillity of his reign, without warfare itself, until his death.»48
In sum, with the foundation of the Caliphate, Abd al-Rahman III restores to the Omayyads the title appropriated 250 years earlier by the Abbasids. He makes of Cordoba the major centre of the West, of which Cordoba competes with two major metropolises of that time: Constantinople, in the Christian East, with which it maintains respectful exchanges, and Baghdad, in the Muslim East. He also marks clearly its position on the European political chessboard, playing the role of an arbitrator in conflicts between piracy and the Court of the first Otton, restoring The Christian king, Sancho the big, who was removed from his throne, but also on the political Muslim chessboard, claiming to be the face of the Fatimid and Abbassis caliphate. It displays therefore in the eyes of the world its mastery of the great Andalusian destiny on the level of social well being exceeding the rest of Europe which only knew how « to keep the pigs in the mud »49. Culturally, his son, Hakam II, second Caliph, leads the Iberian Peninsula to its vertices and contributes to the golden age of the Hispano-Arabic civilisation, « the most brilliant State the Middle Ages has ever known»50.
Hakam II : The enlightened sovereign
Hakam II, son of Abd al-Rahman III, accesses to power at the ripe age of 46 years. He remains in the shadow of the long reign of his father(almost60 years) who apologized for his reigns longevity. A pious man, in fragile health, educated by the best preceptors, ends up spending his time between the palace, the gardens of the Madinat the Zahra which he oversees its construction and beautification and the Library of the Alcazar, located on the inside of the city. He inherits a very prosperous and stable territory, which made him one of the richest and most powerful monarchs of his time. Concerned for his people, he makes enormous means at disposal to construct water systems, roads and bridges; he also strengthened mosques and public hostels
In Cordoba, he founded 25 free schools for children from disadvantaged backgrounds personally paying the main teaching necessities; he offers medical care to the poor and opening the doors of the pharmacy of Alcazar. He enlarges and beautifies the Great Mosque. He has the temperament of a little warrior, and no taste for military expeditions in view of simple looting and he refrains himself from conducting war to indicate his strength and authority in respect to the Christian North and Southern Fatimids.
« In a testamentary letter directed to his son Hisham, he wrote:"Don'tgo into war if not needed to. Maintain the peace for your own well-being and that of your people. Never use the sword except against those who commit injustices. What pleasure is there in ravaging and invading nations, to pillage and destruct until the ends of the earth? Do not let yourself be dazzled by the vanities: your image of justice should be like that of a calm lake. »51.
On top of all that, the second Caliph of al-Andalus is known in history to have been " the Lord of the books“.If his father has led Andalusia into a political and economic apex, then Hakam II placed this apex " the intellectual plan at the forefront of civilized nations". He loved reading and revelled in the pleasure of studying. " An impeccable learner", by the time he attains the power, he has acquired an encyclopaedic knowledge affecting all areas: from logic to history, grammar to mathematics, and poetry to theology.
Under his reign, the cultural life flourishes, there are approximately 70 libraries in Cordoba, and the Court enriched by many scholars, poets and theologians who came from the East. His personal library located in the Alcazar, was the largest one in Cordoba during his time. According to descriptions of particular catalogues, Ibn Hazm had 400 000 books, many marked by the hand of the caliph and dealing with various types of knowledge. There were 70 copyists, scholars, men and women, who were working there on a daily basis. Ambassadors sent from various major cultural centres from, Damascus, Cairo, and Constantinople. These centres had to find the rare books to satisfy the richness of the enlightened sovereign. When the library was moved, the relocation lasted 6 months. He was also a great patron supporting several scholars of his time, including Jews Hasday Ibn Shaprut and Abucassis, but also the Christian bishops. In the eleventh century, the cadi of Toledo gives a portrait of Hakam II.
« He took it on him to cultivate science and to sponsor the scholars. He came from Baghdad, Egypt and elsewhere in the East and other Work Capitals where they study the rare sciences, ancient as well as modern. He stays until the end of the reign of his father and, subsequently, during his reign staff, an amount almost equal to that convened by the Abbasid. This task was made easier by his extreme love for science, and his desire to acquire all the virtues that will make him resemble the wise monarchs. Everyone went to read books and to study the doctrines of the former. »52
In 976, he dies of hemiplegia.
Mohammed ibn Abi Amir, al Mansour
Mohammed Ibn Abi Amir grows up in Algeciras and moves to Cordoba with the death of his father to study literature and theology. He begins to earn his living as a calligrapher and writer for the public under a porch in the medina. Thanks to his talents, he gets employed to the offices of the Grand cadi and to the great mosque and then becomes the scribe of the Grand Vizier in the offices of the Alcazar. When Hakam II refers to his second son Hisham II as successor, he is chosen as the guardian of the property of the throne and continues his social ascent in the circles of power: First director of the hotel of currency(whichgives him a direct access to the Public Treasury) and then as the commander of the caliphs guard.
Supported by the vizier al Mushafi, sustained by the General al Ghalib(GrandGeneral under the first two caliphs), very definitely a lover of Subh, the concubine of Hakam II and Mother of Hisham II, he becomes more intriguing, richer, more powerful and also more ruthless at the Court. Fed by an extreme ambitious vision, as a student already he asked his friends to know what function they wanted to obtain when he would hold the reins of power. The death of the caliph Hakam II(976)gives him the opportunity to realize his thirst for power. At the age of 12 years, he presents to the people the new sovereign, caliph’s child Hisham II; on the podium behind him are the three real masters of the State: The Grand Vizier, Al Mushafi; the old General al Ghalib and Mohammed Ibn Abi Amir. Dissatisfied with this trio, he framed an eviction of his two competitors. He organized a trial against al Mushafi, accusing him of multiple unfounded accusations and he finished miserably in a Dungeon(978).He then engaged in a battle against Al Ghalib who died there at the age of 80 years(981).Only now as the head of power, he built a new administrative centre outside of the city, Madinat al Zahira, and now the caliph ends up living in a golden Prison, apathetic, enjoying the pleasures of women and the vapours of alcohol.
It also supported his power of the jurists in his time, from which he drew the favours by burning many books of the Alcazar that were considered unorthodox. There were only the remains to shine in the military actualities. Aware of the potential dangers of Arab contingents always capable to rebel, he engaged and trained mercenaries who were mainly Berbers, slaves and Christians Catalans. By paying them a good balance and an offer of promises of loot in exchange for an allegiance faithful to the supreme head of the State; himself. Mohammed Ibn Abi Amir then becomes a general feared and invincible. During the thirties, he organizes more than 50 expeditions: his intention seemed less to expand the Muslim territories then to plunder the Christian Territories and report triumphantly the trophies of war in the streets of the capital. He burns Barcelona(985).He plunders Santiago de Compostela(997),which will leave a deep imprint in the Christian memory. On his return of a victorious expedition, he assumes the title of al-Mansour, the victorious, ranging up to demand his hand to be kissed, a privilege only reserved to the caliph. He installs a kind of prosperous dictatorship: the prices of slaves and foods have never been as low and the streets of Cordoba never as safe.
In 1002, he departed at the age of 62 years during a military campaign. His reign is considered to be the climax of the Western Caliphate, just before its collapse. According to Ibn Khaldun,
« This is where the last sparkle of the wick before it turns off, as it happens for the flame of a lamp which, on the point of dying, produces suddenly a glare that makes us think it will get lightened up again.»53
Before it turns off permanently, enjoying the brilliance of Cordoba in approaching the city and its great mosque.
CORDOBA: « SHINING JEWEL OF THE WORLD »
Cordoba: An Urban Medina « Shining jewel of the world »
In its most prosperous time, Cordoba, in the 10th century, the city and the surrounding villages of the fertile plain of the River Guadalquivir, accounted by an estimated 100 000 inhabitants. It was"thelargest city in the West on the built surface".It had six hundred mosques, three hundred hammams, fifty hospitals, eighty public schools, ten-seven madrasas, and twenty public libraries. The abbess Hrotswitha visiting Otto the first describes Cordoba as follows:
« Shining jewel of the world, new and beautiful town, proud of its force, celebrated for its delights, resplendent with the full possession of its property »54.
Outside the ramparts are the buildings of the Madinat al-Zahra, City of the Caliphs, Madinat al Zahira of al-Mansour, Al Rusafa of Abd al-Rahman I. There are also the Jewish, Christians and Muslims cemeteries, which would be filled on Fridays, both to see the deceased and to reunite in the meetings, the homes of the campaign, the munyas, small properties of aristocrats or dignitaries surrounded by irrigated lands with gardens, fruit trees, cherry trees, almond trees, pear trees, orange trees, lemon trees…oasis during the summer. As the interior of the ramparts, trough seven gates surrounding the heart of the city in Medina. A main street crosses the medina from the north to the south, from the door of the Ossuary to the bridge or the Statue, passing between the buildings of the Alcazar and the Great Mosque.
The urban landscape is organized around this main artery and deploys a labyrinth of narrow streets due to the chaotic growth. But the city is hospitable. The streets are paved, accompanying the night by lanterns hung on the walls of houses, regularly cleaned with the help of oxcarts. They sometimes lead to deadlocks of grids closing the crossing at night for security reasons. It hears the call of the muezzin, the sound of the bells on Sunday. Among crossroads of donkeys and mules caravans, there are also a multitude of characters: rabbis or Jewish merchants, peddlers, musicians, black slaves or blonds, water carriers, perfumers, craftsmen, wild madmen, beggars, Arab theologians, grumpy monks, thieves, haughty aristocrats… The facades of the houses without windows separated the public space from the private space, concealing courtyards which were surrounded by various parts with on the ground pitchers containing oil, flour; the patios, the wealthiest ones had a well, a place of family privacy, of calm…
… Cordoba counted around its medina up to 21 suburbs, each with its wall, its baths, its Mosque, its souk, its alimentation shops:
« Butchers that would expose skinned goats and sheep as well as major working class of beef, merchants of four-seasons which proposed fresh vegetables of the valley of Guadalquivir, fruitarians, merchants of spices which also sold oil, salted butter, eggs, sugar and honey, manufacturers of pastries which proposed their sweets with much support from the Andalusians were very fond of it, comfortable cooking their foods in public and where we could buy toasted head of sheep, fried fish, laced sausages, while an aroma of thick odours invaded the air and afflicted the stomach of the hungry. »55
There is the suburb of the Jews, the juderia, the district where parchments were manufactured, the skin of veal being the most adaptable, the neighbourhood of the copyists with their inkwell attached to the belt. A famous suburb was that of the Secunda, which housed the Muwallad merchants, and craftsmen that were completely razed to the ground as a result of a rebellion by the emir Hakam the first and later transformed into a cemetery. By entering through the south, it must be before crossing the roman bridge and therefore by the Land of the dead. Between the Secunda and the bridge are two large esplanades where it meets on the feast days, of military parades or parts of polo. There is an aisle located at the foot of the wall where executed bodies were sometimes exposed. In the heart of Cordoba, the great mosque is the entry door to excellence for the incoming Hispano-Arabic civilisation, as has been masterfully demonstrated by T. Burckhardt. Rare architectural testimony of the Umayyad capital with remains of walls and ruins of the Madinat al-Zahra.
THE UMAYYAD GREAT MOSQUE OF CORDOBA
The Umayyad Great Mosque of Cordoba
To find the primitive state of the Mosque, make an effort to imagine it as it was, dispensing the Church in the middle of the Mosque planted inside the clear forest of columns and arches as a massive cross, with the silhouette of a foot, treading right on the previous culture that constructed the mosque. Exiting the wall separating the current patio of the orange groves from the interior of the building, the light of the day could thus freely enter the forest of the pillars in the prayer room; imagine the patio with basins where the believers could do their ablution before entering the mosque; to represent the doors open sides giving access to the merchants and surrounding inhabitants to the canonical prayers.
The building can be approached according to three aspects:(a)it attests to the presence and the evolution of the Omayyad dynasty,(b),it recalls the social functions of the Mosque,(c)it evokes the spiritual meaning of Islamic art56.
(a) The construction of the Great Mosque of Cordoba is made throughout more than two centuries by the great emirs and the great Umayyad caliphs. Until the arrival of Abd al-Rahman I to Cordoba, the church of Saint Vincent had a shared wall that separated the Christians and Muslims while praying.
During the times of the Muslim population increase, Abd al-Rahman I buys the Christian part for a hundred thousand dinars, completes the work of the building and inaugurates the mosque in 786. His son and successor Hisham I completed this first step by adding a building solely reserved for women, a minaret and basins for ablution. This first mosque includes twelve rows of columns forming eleven bays of which the central leads to the mihrab. The style is one of the most original Muslim art, perhaps inspired by the Roman aqueducts or by the Mosque of Damascus: the columns, borrowed from the Christian monuments or Visigoths, bear a double series of arcs to the alternating colours; the lower arcs are in the form of horseshoe, separated from each other by pilasters extending the main columns on which the upper arches are based; the space between the upper arches is closed by stonework on which the roof beams rest. This construction with double series of arcs recalls the form of a palm tree, an important symbol for the Andalusian people.
From this first step, the construction evolves depending on the religious needs of the population and the financial means of the emirs and the rightly guided caliphs. Abd al-Rahman II(822-852)enlarges the building by moving the southern wall more to the front towards the south by adding eight spans. Abd al-Rahman III built a new minaret(theminaret of the mosque is today incorporated in the bell tower of the church) to the side of the Court of ablutions. In 962 Hakam II builds a house of rest for travellers and beggars, by renewing the southern wall with twelve spans. Since being the heir of a very flourishing state, he could beautify the mosque in majestic ways. He builds a portal with Kufic entries, which leads to a mihrab decorated by tiles sent by the Byzantine emperor. The tiles had an octagonal form and were covered with three cupolas. This part of the mosque is magnificent: It is decorated with carved marbles, stuccoes appearing of plant motifs, mosaics carried out by workers of Constantinople. A maksoura, a fully sculpted space reserved for the Caliph of 11 meters to 40 and a mimbar, the Chair of the preaches, only completed in 5 years attests to the luxury of the mosque. The transport of new basins of ablution, from a quarry near Cordoba, emphasizes the size of the site:
« Arranged on a plate of wood, wrapped in a rounded form strengthened iron seat frames, placed on a truck dragged by sixty robust bulls on an established route. At the end of sixty days, the convoy reached the mosque and the vats were recessed in the pits prepared to receive them ».57
20 years later, the final extension of the mosque is made by al-Mansour. He puts his touch to the prestigious building and responds to the increase of the population by putting quotas on the Berbers. He could not lengthen the mosque in the direction of the south because of the River Guadalquivir, so he expands it in the direction of the east. The eastern wall is therefore destroyed; homes are expropriated by adding the new wing, also off-centring the position of the mihrab within the building. During his expedition to the Compostela, he returns with bells carried on the back of Christian captives, which will become the chandeliers of the mosque. During the taking of Cordoba by Ferdinand III in 1236, the bells will be returned to Santiago de Compostela on the back of Muslim captives.
(b) The Great Mosque where the population would meet to celebrate the annual Feasts of the Muslim calendar has vital social functions outside of the obligatory Friday prayers, the mosque is a meeting place, a place of rest and relaxation where you can take refuge from the heat and the hustle and bustle of the city, in the shade of the orange trees, palms, galleries and around refreshing water of the basins. The mosque is also a place of teaching of the Koran and religious sciences, jurisprudence and grammar. Masters, often travellers, coming from the East or of the holy places, teach books learned by heart, backed by a pillar, to disciples of all social strata. It also becomes at specific times the room of the Tribunal for the Grand Cadi, Supreme Court judge, who, sitting simply on a mat, gives his sentences deemed for their accuracy and their righteousness. Impartial, independent of the power, leading a modest life, the cadis of Cordoba are famous for their exemplary nature. The grand cadi also plays an important role in the social structure of the caliphate. He is the second in the hierarchy of the kingdom at the same rank as the chancellor, after the Caliph himself.
But unlike the chancellor who usually lived in the luxury of the Court, directs the Council of Ministers and is in charge of the royal treasury, incomes of royal properties, the supreme judge who exerts to the great mosque is a modest person with impeccable morals. He ensures the contact with the population, making the bridge between the classes in power and the citizens. He manages the donations left to the mosque by distributing it to schools, mosques or to other public offices. He is responsible for the religious education part and often happens to be the Imam of the Great Mosque. There are numerous biographies on the judges of Cordoba. They represent a kind of paradigm of generous justice, right and wise to the application and interpretation of the law.
(c) Unlike Christianity in which there is a hierarchy of priests, any person can play the role of the imam in Islam. This principle is found in the religious architecture that is radically different from a church and a mosque. In a church, any one moves through a corridor that leads to the centre of the building: the hotel overseen by the priest. In a mosque, the infinity of pillars and mats laid on the floor create a homogeneous space, without centre, which is where there is the praying person is the centre of the mosque. Moreover, becoming Caliph, a representative of God on earth, beyond his political meaning, is the spiritual end of any human on earth.
Certainly the niche of prayer(mihrab)seems to play the role of the altar in the Church but it has the function to indicate the direction of Mecca and to echo the words of the Imam to make them audible in any mosque. As well the mihrab, the niche, even if it is not essential to the Muslim ritual it exist since the beginning of Islam; its form and its name recall some of the passages of the mysterious Koran:"Theniche of Lights", symbol of the divine presence in the human heart. The arc entry of the mihrab, the mihrab itself and its dome are at the service of the Verb, its recitation:
« Es caracteristico del arte islamico utilizar la decoracion mas suntuosa para enmarcar y honra algo que, en si mismo, no es visible : la palabra hablada. La palabra es para el Islam lo que para el arte cristiano la imagen sagrada. »58
The entry of the niche is crowned by an arc, forming a range, delimited by a framework,(alfiz,rectangular molding) on which is written the Surah 59, 24:"Itis God!!!! There is no God then him!!! It is the King, the Holy, the Peace, The one who testifies to His own truthfulness. The Vigilant, the Almighty, the Very Strong, the Very Great. Glory to God!!!! It is very far from what they associate with Him! " 59. This entry
« emite sus rayos como el disco de la luna o del sol cuando se esta élévando paulatinamente sobre el horizonte ; el arco no es rigido, parece respirer, ensachando su pecho con la plenitud de su lelicidad interior, mientras el marco retangular, que le encierra, compens su dinamismo : energia irradiante y quietud estatica llegan a un equilibrio insuperable. Precisamente en esto consiste la formula basica de la arquitectura musulmana occidental. »60
It is a balance between revitalizing energy and static tranquillity, it allows access to the niche of the heart where the revealed Word of God is recited and listened to, like a shell61. The space of the niche is covered by a barrel dome in the shape of a ribbed shell, which houses a pearl. The legend tells that a spring morning the shell rises to the surface of the sea opens to receive a taste of dew that ends up growing into a pearl.
Granada - Do & See
*work in progress with the maps and media in this section.
It is possible to explore the city by foot, though you may find a local guide useful to make good use of your time in town.
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- The Alhambra
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- Albayzín
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- Plaza Larga Market
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- Arco De Las Pesas
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- Mirador de San Nicolás
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- Sacromonte
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- Nasrid Wall
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- Generalife Garden
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- Mosque of Granada
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- Alcaiceria
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- Museo Cuevas del Sacromonte
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- Carrera del Darro
GRANADA
*currently revising this content.
MADRID
Welcome to Madrid, Spain.
12:40 Arrive - Taxi from airport and Checkin to hotel.
The Islamic origin of Madrid is integrated here in a welcome city tour, passing through the capital's most popular highlights, and key areas. *This tour includes the recently declared UNESCO World Heritage Site, "Paseo de Las Luces" , from Madrid-Atocha Train Station to Palacio de Cibeles, passing by the Arts District, Paseo del Prado and Botanic Garden of Maddrid.
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- Madjrid as a Ribayat fort city, defending Umayyad Al-Andalus. | MADRID, FROM ISLAMIC FORT, TO CAPITAL OF SPAIN TODAY
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- Ofiicial Madrid Bus Tour - 10%OFF | Madrid City Tour
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- Madrid Panoramic Tour
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- Tours From Madrid > Book Now Tickets > The Yellow Tours
Madrid Islamic Highlights & Other Landmarks
CALLE MAYOR & PLAZA MAYOR
Calle Mayor is probably the most historic street in Madrid; dating back to the Middle Ages, it had changed greatly with time, and now the facades of many of the buildings date back to the early 19th century, when cars first started cruising around the Spanish capital. Calle Mayor is also important due to its location, connecting the Royal Palace to Plaza del Sol. Walking down the street in this direction, you will find several places of interest to the right; after passing the military HQ and a few religious buildings, you will come to an open square with a picturesque building at the back, and a statue standing in front of it, almost in the middle of the square. This statue represents Quevedo, a famous Spanish literary figure from Madrid, and the building is the former Town Hall, which was moved a few years ago to Palacio Cibeles.
PLAZA MAYOR:
Plaza Mayor (Main Square) is surrounded by residential buildings that overhang a covered pavement that runs around the whole square, bursting with restaurants and café terraces.Built over the original Plaza del Arrabal, it was the scene of manyauto-da-feevents, at which ‘heretics’ (secret Muslims and Jews) were condemned at tribunals of the Spanish Inquisition. Today it has lost its eerie connotations, and the varied seasonal markets and events regularly held here make Plaza Mayor a reference point in Madrid.
If you cross the square to its southernmost entrance and go down the steps, you can walk down to Calle Toledo, a street that leads to our next stop, Puerta de Toledo, which will allow us to expand a little on our ongoing topic of Madrid as an Islamic citadel.
PUERTA DE TOLEDO (Bab Tulaytulah):
‘Is this really an Islamic gateway?’ you may well ask, since nowadays it looks more like anarc de triomphe, a tribute to the city of Madrid’s historic origins. This is a good place to start understanding Madrid from its roots as an Islamic medina. We are close to the original palace founded in Umayyad times, currently the Spanish monarchy’s residence, Palacio de Oriente.
PUERTA DE ALCALÁ: (Bab Alqala’at):
This emblematic Neoclassical monument retains nothing more than the memory of the original foundation of the city of Madrid. A silent witness to centuries of history, it has been referred to in pop songs since the 70s, yet still bears scars from bullets from the Spanish Civil war in the 1930s, visible as patches in the granite. The Puerta de Alcalá thus embodies Spain’s heritage all the way from its roots through its Neoclassical architectural elements and up to the present.
PARQUE DEL RETIRO:
Retiro Park was made by and for the monarchs. These recreational grounds were where Spanish kings and queens came to escape their urban routines and enjoy riding, outdoor games, or hunting, until the mid 17thcentury, when the royal family donated it to the city of Madrid. Since then it has been a public park.
CALLE ALCALÁ:
The longest street in Madrid is Calle Alcalá, which begins at the Puerta del Sol and leads northwest. It intersects Paseo del Prado at Cibeles Square, and its main highlight is the Puerta de Alcalá, the gateway to Alcalá. This was the original entrance to the Islamic city, from Alcalá la Real, a city that lies some 40 km away from Madrid in that direction. Alcalá comes from the Arabic wordal-qala’a, meaning ‘the fortress or castle’. There are many towns and cities in Spain whose names contain this reference in their names, hinting at their Arabic and Muslim roots.
CASA ÁRABE:
A visit to the Casa Árabe (Arabic House) is also fascinating for tourists interested in Spain’s relationship with the Muslim world: this is a public Spanish consortium headed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation. A strategic centre in Spain’s relations with the Arab world, this meeting point is where various private and public agents and institutions – in the spheres of education, academia, business, culture and politics – can come together, dialogue, and develop joint projects.C/ Alcalá, 62. 28009 · Madrid +34 91 563 30 66 info@casaarabe.es
PLAZA DE TOROS DE LAS VENTAS:
This is our first example of Mudéjar art, and it allows us to explore the fusion of the unique cultural heritage to be found in modern Spain. Mudéjar – from the Arabic term meaning ‘adopted’ or ‘integrated’ – refers to Spanish art made after the end of the political state of al-Andalus, but based on Islamic inspirations, techniques, or motifs – and even, initially at least, created by the Muslim craftsmen who had remained in Spain after theReconquista.
Madrid’s bullring was constructed in 1925 at the same time as Plaza de España, which was built to a very similar design; the two buildings were the centrepieces of Seville’s ‘World Ibero-Latin Expo’ that year, an event that was intended to present Spain and Hispanic American countries to the rest of the world. The results of that exhibition were strongly affected by the Wall Street crash of the same year.
MEZQUITA M-30:
This is the main mosque in Madrid, founded and maintained by the Saudi Kingdom for Spanish Muslims, and inaugurated in the late 1980s. The complex contains not only a large prayer room with a ladies area upstairs, but also a library, offices, shower rooms, toilets andwudu’facilities in which about 50 people can perform their ablution simultaneously. The complex also boasts a café and restaurant. On our tour we usually stop here for a few minutes to pray before continuing with our exploration of Madrid from its Muslim roots to the present day.
Mezquita de la M-30 mosque and cultural centre, C/Salvador de Madariaga, 4
Tel: 913262610
PASEO DE RECOLETOS – PASEO DE LA CASTELLANA:
Paseo de Recoletos is often confused with Paseo de la Castellana or Paseo del Prado, although this is not surprising, as it is essentially the same avenue. From Atocha through to the north of Madrid, it is first called Avenida del Prado, then once it reaches Plaza de Cibeles and passes through the city centre it is called Paseo de Recoletos, while further north, after passing Nuevos Ministerios, it becomes Paseo de la Castellana, ending at the northernmost point of Madrid at Plaza de Castilla.
NUEVOS MINISTERIOS:
In the Chamberí district of Madrid, just off Paseo de la Castellana, we find Nuevos Ministerios (‘New Ministries’), one of the most important governmental buildings in the capital that now houses the Ministries of Employment Development and Social Security. Construction began in 1933, and despite being halted during the civil war, the complex was eventually finished in 1942. Nearby we can also find the Nuevos Ministerios station, a transport interchange connecting bus, metro, and local train services.
SANTIAGO BERNABEU STADIUM:
The Santiago Bernabeu stadium is the grounds of the Real Madrid football club, and is categorised by UEFA as an ‘élite stadium’ – the highest rank. With a maximum capacity of 81,044 spectators, it is situated on the Paseo de la Castellana, in the Chamartín district. It was inaugurated on the 14thof December, 1947.
An official tour of the stadium can be made independently. The €21 cost includes access to the stadium, and arrows point the way so you can carry out the tour at your own pace, passing through various areas and the field itself, and even the trainers’ seats. The tour comes to an end at the Real Madrid Official Store, on the opposite end of the stadium to the main entrance.
PLAZA CASTILLA:
This public square is a landmark at the very north of the Spanish capital city, named after the central kingdom of former Iberia, Castilla. Some of the highest buildings in Madrid can be found on this square, which are its main attraction. The Puerta de Europa (Gate of Europe) – also colloquially called the Kío Towers – are a pair of skyscrapers that stand at 114m tall and have almost 30 floors. They are visible from anywhere in Madrid, and their main curiosity is that they are symmetrical, both of them leaning at 15º towards the same central point. Also on this square is the blue and yellow Castilla Tower, with a total of 24 floors, on the far west side of the square.
THE CALATRAVA OBELISK (PLAZA CASTILLA)
This 92m tall, 6m wide obelisk was designed by Santiago Calatrava, and was donated by Caja Madrid to the city of Madrid to celebrate the bank’s 300th anniversary. Set on the southern side of the square, when seen from Cuzco station as in this picture, the obelisk seems to be placed exactly between the two slanting towers of the Puerta de Europa. Its steel structure is made up of 12 turning rings that give the impression of creating waves as it slowly spins. The project was launched in 2004, but because of the busy metro stations underneath, the plans had to be altered, and construction finally ended in 2009. Further along this street we come to the four tallest towers in Madrid, also of recent construction.
M-30, M-40, M-50 RING ROADS
MADRID BARAJAS / ADOLFO SUAREZ INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
TAKE THE METRO INTO TOWN
FLIGHT CONNECTIONS TO MADRID
EXPRESS ARRIVAL FROM AIRPORT TO HIGH SPEED TRAIN: CORDOBA, SEVILLA, MALAGA, OR BARCELONA
PATRON SAINTS OF MADRID
The veneration of Madrid’s patron saints dates back to the earliest years of Christian domination. Legend tells that an image of the Virgin Mary was found on the outer city wall on the 9thof November, 1085 CE (463 AH), while San Isidro Labrador (b. circa 1070 CE, d. 1130 or 1172 CE), a Mozárabe farmworker born during the Muslim era, was a great devotee of the Virgen de la Almudena. Both are patron saints of Madrid.
This brings us back to the religious syncretism of this European capital, which has barely been studied but which is in plain evidence: the Virgin of the Almudena is the image of the Madrid cathedral, which is situated over the foundations of the ancient mosque of the citadel. The word Almudena is derived from Al-mudayna, meaning citadel in Arabic, and related to the worddin, or religion. SanIsidro Labrador could be a Hispanisation of Idris, probably referring to a local Muslim saint.
Although this was a fortified city, designed to control the border and protect the important city of Toledo, few vestiges of the Islamic or Mudéjar period remain. However, we will explore these on this tour, shining a light on a little-known aspect of this European capital’s Muslim past.
MINARET OF SAN MIGUEL DE LOS SERVITAS & THE MORERÍA:
Even though all that is left of the original building is its tower, the archaeological remains that have been found, together with its location, suggest that this 12thcentury Mudéjar church was built over one of the six mosques that existed in Majrit before the Christian conquest in 1083 CE (461 AH). This is why it is referred to historically as the only minaret that was preserved in the city, although this is not conclusively proven. What is evident is that it was built by thealarifes(Muslim builders and master craftsmen) that remained in the city after the Reconquista, on the condition that they continued their work as builders for the new Christian rulers.
At the end of the 11thcentury or beginning of the 12th, a second city wall was built around Madrid; it was described as the ‘Christian wall’, but constructed in the same style as the previous one, as it was the Mudéjars who were responsible for its construction. These Mudéjars lived in what would be the modern-day neighbourhood of La Latina, previously known as the Morería (Moorish quarter); in this district we can still find the Moorish gate and a square that bears the original name of the neighbourhood.
Tiles showing the names of squares in the original Moorish quarter of Madrid
The new name of this district came from an old hospital, but today it is better known as the most fashionable district in the capital, to which thousands of people flock every weekend to enjoy its atmosphere and itstapas.But while La Latina might be the correct name for the Mudéjar district, locally it is still known as La Morería.
La Morería is the neighbourhood where initially the Mozárabes (Arabised Christians) lived during Islamic times, and to which the Mudéjars (Muslims who remained after the Christian conquest) would later move when the city fell to Alfonso VI in 1083 CE (461 AH). This Spanish ruler gave the Muslims a generous degree of autonomy, allowing them to live according to their customs and traditions.
Muslim farmers, craftsmen, and builders crossed the city towards the valley of Las Vistillas to live in what had been the Mozárabe quarter, which was eventually incorporated into the citadel when Alfonso VI raised the new defensive walls around the suburb, protecting it from attack. The interior boundary of the Muslim quarter was delimited by a small stream that the Muslims called Majra, literally meaning ‘running water’ in Arabic – from which the Muslim name for the city, Majrit, was derived, and from there its modern name. This is where thehammamwas situated. This stream has long since dried up, and Calle Segovia was built over it.
12th century addition to the city walls; within these new precincts the Mudéjar quarter was found, also known as the Morería or Aljama quarter
In contemporary times, the layout of this neighbourhood allows us to distiguish its original street plan, splayed out around the Plaza del Alamillo, where the Islamic court of law was located. There were also two mosques on the sites where the churches of San Andrés and San Pedro el Viejo – with its magnificent Mudéjar tower, clearly recalling its Andalusi influences – stand today.
Mudéjar church of San Pedro el Viejo in the Morería district
An ancient Muslim water channel (qanat) from the 11th century is hidden in the Plaza de los Carros (shownbelow). Channels like these brought the water that lay under these rich soils out through underground conduits and carried it to distant agricultural fields for irrigation. This hydraulic supply system is one of the most important inheritances of Islamic Madrid, as it remained in use until the creation of the Isabel II canal.
Next to this old water channel we also find some of the almost 100 granaries and wells that have been found in excavations, which served to store foodstuffs until, much later, they were turned into rubbish dumps. Shards of Andalusi pottery have been found in these containers, which are now on display in the Museo de los Orígenes, located in the same district.
Muslim-era granaries in the centre of Madrid
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- Calle Mayor
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- Plaza Mayor
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- Puerta del Sol
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- Puerta de Alcala
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- Plaza Castilla
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- Plaza De Cibeles
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- Estadio Santiago Bernabéu
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- Nuevos Ministerios
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- Islamic Cultural Center of Madrid
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- Aeropuerto Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas (MAD)
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- Monasterio San Pedro el Viejo - Iglesia San Pedro el Viejo
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- Las Ventas Tour
MADRID
2nd day in Madrid
PUERTA DEL SOL (Bab Shams):
Close to Plaza Mayor,coming fromCalle Mayor, is perhaps the most central square in Madrid. It is also named after the former Muslim-era gate, the Puerta del Sol, or Gate of the Sun. This was the entrance to the heart of the original Islamic medina. Today, the Puerta del Sol is famous in Spain for being the place where many people come to celebrate New Year, afiestathat is transmitted live on all television channels and attracts the highest number of TV viewers in the entire year. Puerta del Sol is also famous for another detail, one that is small in size but large in significance: the Km 0 plaque, our next stop.
KM 0 & THE NATIONAL ROAD SYSTEM:
If you walk towards the centre of the square and look up, you will see a central building with a clock at the top of its facade. Under that is a large door providing access to the building, usually flanked by two uniformed Civil Guards in their traditional three-pointed hats, and beneath their feet, a few metres ahead, you will see a plaque made of coloured stone with bronze lettering. This marks the Km 0 or absolute beginning of the national road system in Spain. Six major roads start symbolically at this point, which are, clockwise: National 1 to Burgos, (North), N2 to Barcelona (North-East), N3 to Valencia (East), N4 to Andalusia (South), N5 to Extremadura & Portugal, and N6 to Galicia, Asturias, and the North-West.
MADRID
ATOCHA TRAIN STATION
ATOCHA:
Atocha is Madrid’s main railway station, connecting the capital with Barcelona, Cordoba, Seville and Malaga via the high-speed AVE line within a matter of 2-3 hours! It is also an interchange that connects Madrid’s local train and metro networks.
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- Atocha
INFORMATION & DOCUMENTS
Historical Introduction
The scope and interest of Al-Andalus is immense since Al-Andalus was in fact the first monarchic democracy to be established in Europe, in the IXth Century. As a foundation stone of Europe and the modern world, we should try to come close to Al-Andalus, learn more about it. We might find clues about our world, how to live in it better and avoid falling into the same mistakes.
This is what Al-Andalus Experience is about, for you to get beyond the veils of your daily life and step into the true lands of Al-Andalus through it's generous heritage which can most be witnessed in Cordoba and Granada provinces.
Unfortunately there is a general miss culture which has lead to offering the worldwide public a'historicalpantomime' going as far as to bend history into a series of fables and chronicles which in many cases pay little tribute reality. This is well known to modern Spanish historians and researchers and we know exactly where the mistakes or'blackholes' are in both popular and official account of history. As an organization we are in touch with researchers and historians as well as publishers and editors, it is our intention to rediscover the true history of Al-Andalus and we’re working on several projects in this line. Through our tours we invite you to participate in the memory of Al-Andalus and also help you actively to discover it.
Al-Andalus Experience originally emerged partly due to the lack of a service that goes about solving logistic problems for Muslim travellers in Spain. A great part of our team and collaborators are of Muslim faith and religion, hence we appreciate the needs and interests of Muslim travellers.
It is evident that our world needs to go beyond the veils and prejudice of labels, to hold respect for the diverse nature of humanity, if we are to walk into a peaceful and blessed future.
Some More Specific Details
The biggest part of Spanish history is closely related to the history of Islam, especially after the Islamic history left eight centuries of an indelible mark in the Iberian Peninsula. This Islamic presence had different levels: after the rapid entry (711) and the establishment of the first group of Muslims, Cordoba becomes the most powerful city, the new province of a Muslim empire: al-Andalus. In the hands of the Umayyad dynasty, almost three centuries, the power gets more centred, the territory is administered, the economy develops and the society as a whole blossoms as a consequence of the Caliphate in Cordoba(929).The sharp fall from the Caliphate happens during the reyes taifas period that was facilitating the advancements of the Christians.
The capture of Toledo by the Castile (1085) would announce the beginning of the Reconquista byconfronting first one of the Berber empires, Almoravids, and eventually the Almohads. The defeat of the Muslims in 1212“LasNavas of Tolosa” battle made an end to their superiority in the peninsula. Nevertheless the last political Muslim entity remained for another three centuries: the Nasruddin kingdom in Granada.
The capitulation of Granada in 1492 saw its last Muslims living consequently under Christian domination, to be named“Moriscos”thereafter, before an expulsion by Royal Decree in 1609.
Most local Muslims here in Spain, nowadays believe that the invisible seeds sown by the Muslim saints during these centuries allowed the present communities to reap the fruits in our contemporary multicultural societies.
RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY IN THE IBERIAN PENINSULA, ARIANS AND TRINITARIANS
Because of the size and geography of the Iberian Peninsula, there has always been many different'pockets'of population. These pockets where extended around the country in a very decentralized and disperse manner. As to religion, the Visigoths where Arian – followers of Ario – a form of Christianity which had extended throughout the Roman Empire during the 4th century and which negated trinity, considering it a form of polytheism. Though there weren't confrontations with the so called'orthodoxChristians', the majority of Hispano-Roman population was Catholic, defenders of the idea of three personalities of one same God.
The global picture of Europe until then had been very divided, religious views within Christianity not being an exception. In the peninsula, thousands of slaves, many of whom were Germanic, joined with their kin, who had become the real masters of Spain. In this equation we must not forget about the large population of Jews which spread out through Europe and the Iberian Peninsula. The further the aristocratic power changed from milder Arianism to Catholicism, which was completing itself by the 8th century, times got worse for the Jews.
The Catholics where an aristocratic minority of only around 12% including clerics who held much corruption and confusion at this time, weak knowledge and lack of a consensus or any religious criteria. Moreover, they where opposed by a mass of what they considered as'heretic'Christian movements throughout the entire peninsula. Within the Visigoths there weren't only Arian Christians but also Priscilian, following another old Unitarian Christian, Priscilio, with similar views to Ario.
THE DECADENCE OF THE VISIGOTH KINGDOM AND THE FORMATION OF AL-ANDALUS.
Towards the beginning of the VIII Century, the Visigoth kingdom who's capital was Toledo, was in the midst of a political and social crisis provoked by the impoverishment of economy, frequent droughts, hunger in the lower classes, lack of prestige of the monarchs and how not, a rivalry in the noble class.
As the post of the throne was not hereditary but by appointment, the main noble families rivalled against each other to achieve it. Kings where frequently assassinated by members of the noble class who aspired to take the throne. This struggle ended weakening the Visigoth Kingdom. In this state of affairs, the king before last, Vitzia, tried to make the crown hereditary. As it happened, when he passed away, his young son Aguila was proclaimed king, but part of the noble class refused to accept him and put the charge onto a noble man named Rodrigo, duke of the Betic region, who was Catholic. In spite of his efforts, Rodrigo couldn't avoid a civil war breaking throughout the country. The sons of Vitzia had decided to get back in throne to whatever effect. From here the story becomes unclear and there are many elements of legend in it.
A common mistake is to think Northern Africa as being Berber in the modern understanding of the term, by the 8th Century. At this point Modern Morocco was indeed nothing but an extension of the Visigoth Kingdom, where population had been stirred in excess through increasing desertification of more Southern areas(ModernSahara). In any case, the monotheistic vision of Islam, a newly revealed religion, had already reached these lands along with a wave of cultural and scientific achievements from the more developed cities of Egypt and Damascus. These where Eastern cities which thrived ahead of their time in a cultural revolution, later to become the Islamic Golden Age.
Returning to the political state of affairs, it is at this point when the sons of Vitzia decided to seek help from the nearby Muslims to dethrone Rodrigo. The Archbishop of Seville, Oppas, uncle of Aguila - the dethroned son of Vitzia - asked his governor Count Don Julian of Ceuta to negotiate with the governor of North Africa under the Umayyad Dynasty of the Caliph Al-Walid I of Damascus, Musa Ibn Nusayr.
History tells us that in 711, Don Julian, Count of Ceuta, helped the Islamized Berber Tariq, the Lieutenant Colonel of Musa across the strait from Morocco to Spain. The sons of Vitzia, archbishop Oppas and other Gothic noblemen summed to a small group of Muslim troops which where commanded by Tariq. Since then the name given to the rock is Gibraltar, or JablTarr, Arabic for'Mountainof Tarr(iq)'.
It is not known how many Muslims went into Spain, some say only 400, others 7000, others 12.000 troops. The prior more likely and whoever they were, they were only relatively new Muslims since the new Prophet, Muhammad, had revealed the religion of Islam only 50 years before.
Another element that historians give importance to is the discomfort in the Jewish communities, many of which lived in exile around Tingitania, north of current Morocco. Many refugees from Iberia, both Jewish and Visigoth lived in Ceuta and many are likely to have joined the famous''Arabinvador'' troops into the Iberian Peninsula.
What conclusively explains such a speedy penetration into the peninsula, as well as the later permanence of Muslims in Spain, is the fact that the Unitarian Visigoths where much closer to eastern cultural revolution and the new Muslim faith, than to the alternative Roman Catholic Church. Hence they would give support to the allied army as they moved swiftly through the Peninsula from city to city.
The Muslims made a pact with noble Visigoths helping them to enter the peninsula, respecting their property, status and privileges. In just 3 years a mixed army of some 3 to 12 thousand men took power over the peninsula up to Zaragoza, and in one more year the entire peninsula was under Muslim government. Many towns opened their doors to the Muslims offering no resistance and in fact welcoming them as their rescuers, others surrendered through advantageous agreements.
An example of such agreements is that of a Visigoth duke, Theodomiro from Murcia, who could continue to govern in his territory – which was to be newly named Tudmir – after his agreement with the Muslims.
Musa, a charismatic figure himself, freshly invigorated by the cultural revolution in the east and moreover by the spirit of a newly revealed religion, would enter into Iberia in 712 C.E. further establishing an independent state from Rome. This was celebrated by the casting of new coins in Toledo stating the Quranic verses''Thereis no god but The God''(lailaha illa Allah),''Hewas not borne nor does he beget''(lamyalid wa lam yulad). These first Quranic verses casted onto Iberian coins where to express the one common thing between the three subsequent cultures living in al-Andalus. One same God worshipped by three cultures: Christian(mostlyUnitarian), Muslim and Jew. Al-Andalus was born.
It is paradoxical that the latest of the Councils of Toledo, number XVIII from 712, has been removed from the safely preserved Church archives and nothing is know of it. There is obvious speculation over what this Council document contained since this was the year when coins where cast in Toledo and the new independent state of al-Andalus was formed.
A famous battle in Covadonga in Asturias, was to later symbolize the resistance of a Catholic-Christian north Spain by the hands of the Asturian King Pelayo. Much in the same manner the battle of Tours in Poitiers 732 E.C, is generally remembered as: when Europe was saved from the Islamic advance, by merit of French Charles Martel. Though there remain many historical paradoxes, some say the battle was simply one of many battles between northern and southern Gales, each accusing the other of being'heretic';in a time when Spain and France were effectively'onesame land'.
From these independent Kingdoms in the north of Spain and in a parallel manner to the Crusades in the rest of Europe, the Catholic Kingdoms of Spain initiated the so called'Reconquista':A series of battles spread over 800 years whereby the Kingdoms of Aragon, Navarra, Castilla and Leon supported by the Church of Rome, steadily gained land over the'arabized'Spanish Muslim state.
On the other hand, within the newly named al-Andalus, in spite of Islam becoming the official religion of the new state, no one was forced to convert. On the contrary, Christians and Jews where allowed to practise their religions and even Muslims shared churches with the old Christians before building their own mosques. A minority of Catholics also remained, mostly religious clerics and monks.
THE COUCILS OF TOLEDO AND NICEA
The need for finding a unifying criteria in the diverse picture of Christian religion during the early middle ages forced the Church to form regular local Councils. The Councils where frequently gathered in order to adopt the necessary means to regulate constant abuses taken by the cleric and noblemen over the lower classes, as well as to learn about and eradicate'heresies'.The Councils where formed by select bishops and took place in Toledo. From Toledo the issues treated where taken to the supreme Council in Nice for further consensus by the Church in Rome.
It is well known about this period that Iberia, just as the rest of Europe lived a severe'darkage' in which human rights where abused on a regular basis by the Clerics, wealth and work were taxed at will by local Monarchs and epidemics where frequent. It was also a time when Iberia lived a profound religious crisis. Religion was divided within Christian faith itself and further, there was discomfort within the Jewish communities who where submitted to a miserable condition close to slavery.
In this state of affairs it shouldn't surprise anyone that there where XVII Councils in Toledo from 325 to 694-712, reflecting the needs for the Church to adapt and to solve the problems throughout the Peninsula
During the Council celebrated in 589, the division in Christianity was officially solved through the conversion of King Recaredo to Catholicism in 587 and Arianism was condemned as a'heresy'.From here on the documents have a constant mention about Christian'heretics',through which we learn that they where'UnitarianChristians', followers of Ario. This and other descriptions of the Arian doctrine which are issued in the Councils, where otherwise completely wiped out during the later'Inquisition'.
The climate in the VII century didn't get any better. The clergy and the two main Visigoth noble families, that of Wamba and Chindasvinto, where divided into Arian(Unitarian)and Catholic(Trinitarian).An interesting characteristic of the Visigoth kingship is that the crown was not hereditary, but through appointment by council of clerics. The king before last, Vitzia, was of an Arian Christian profession as was his inheritor Aguila. After Vitzia's death, Aguila took the throne but however, shortly after, it was given to Rodrigo who was Catholic. This is thought to be the straw that broke the camel's back.
Under this climate, seven generations after Abd al-Rahman I, Abd al-Rahman III declared himself the Caliph of Islam turning Al-Andalus into a Caliphate. He declared sovereignty over Muslim faith from a politically and religiously independent state, this represented the peak of an Islamic Golden Age in Spain.
In this uneasy but steady manner, the Umayyad Dynasty of Cordoba was to last for nearly three hundred years, although at no stage could it boast of having 'fixed' borders, nor internal stability. Al-Andalus was in fact under permanent siege by the Catholic Kingdoms of Aragon and Castile from the North and yet a worse threat from the South by the Fatimid Caliphate, a new disloyal movement against the existing Abbasid Caliphs, which had formed in the North of Africa. The Fatimid threat shared it's roots within the very Umayyad Dynasty of Damascus and hence was a larger threat to the state of Al-Andalus then the 'lesser' problem of the Christian advance in the north.
Another story relates about Umar Ibn Hafsun, in 889, who was a Muslim 'convert' natural of Ronda and descendant of the last Visigoth King Witiza. In face of what he considered classicism and hypocrisy from behalf of the Umayyad Rulers, turned back to his roots as a Christian, of the Arian Unitarian faith. Moreover he formed a rebellion over the midlands mountains of Al-Andalus, 'protecting' nearly all of what was later to be the Granada Kingdom, against the Caliphs tax collectors, defending and promoting a popular class in the form of his own Kingdom. This Christian Kingdom within the Emirate of the Umayyad Dynasty was to last for 40 years until 917. Sources vary as to whether Umar Ibn Hafsun died under the Christian name of Samuel in his local town, Bobastro, or whether he was captured and sent as a mercenary to the North fronts due to his courage.
In 844 the Vikings from Scandinavia and Northern Europe sacked Lisbon, Cadiz and Medina Sidonia, and then captured Seville. However, the Muslims counter attacked and defeated them. The Vikings carried out further raids on al-Andalus but the Muslims fought back effectively. The first navy of the Emirate was built after this humiliating Viking ascent of the Guadalquivir in 844. These and other raids prompted a shipbuilding program at the dockyards of Seville. The Andalusian navy was thenceforth employed to patrol the Iberian coastline under the caliphs Abd al-Rahman III and Al-Hakam II (961 – 76). By the next century, piracy from North Africans superseded Viking raids.
A more dramatic conflict occurred when the Catholic monk Eulogio discovered about the new religion of Islam, in 850 from texts about the new Prophet Muhammad and his revelations. Hearing the news, Christian monks would approach the Emir at Cordoba and after enquiring about the religion of Islam and the prophet Muhammad, insult and defame him publicly and insistingly until AbdelRahman II great-grandson of Abd al-Rahman I, punished them by public execution. This manner of Christian martyrdom became popular for a while until it was condemned as 'suicidal' and improper by the head of the Catholic Church in Toledo. Later Christian acts of these kind where punished with exile.
We have to see this period as a very delicate mosaic in the religious aspect, yet balanced by a central Emir who's duty was to seek justice beyond the veils of Religion. In 817 there had been a revolt in Cordoba where a group of Muslims rose against the Caliph protesting about a general 'religious' laxity and tolerance over the Jews, Christians and new converts to Islam. The Emir at the time, Al-Hakm II, grandson of Abd al-Rahman I and father of Abd al-Rahman II, ordered the exile of the entire rebel area and for the district to be literally 'flattened' forbidding it's reconstruction. This is said to be the origin of the Andalusi Medina within the city of Fez, in Morocco, where the inhabitants of this district fled to.
Al-Andalus was again one united state and continued to be an independent Muslim kingdom, under the blessing of the caliphs in Baghdad. This was the beginning of the Umayyad emirate during which the successors of Abd al-Rahman made al-Andalus the most advanced country in the West.
Striving for the unity of the Iberian Peninsula Abd al-Rahman fought several battles and further declared an Islamic Emirate based in Cordoba. He is since to be remembered as Abd al-Rahman I, the first Umayyad Emir of al-Andalus.
In 756 a ginger haired, blue eyed warrior named Abd al-Rahman, arrived in Spain after some years of hiding in Tunisia. He claimed to be the only survivor of the last Umayyad Dynasty in Damascus. The Umayyads, while out of power were not destroyed completely it seems. The only surviving member of the Umayyad royal family ultimately made his way to al-Andalus!
The Iberian Peninsula is large and holds a complex geography. It's cities well spaced and self governed, it took a great leader to organize and unite them into one nation. Forty years after Musa reaching Toledo in 712, rivalry and instability again swept across the Peninsula.
AL-ANDALUS
- THE UMAYYAD EMIRATE OF
The result was a safe guarded environment and the beginning of a great Civilization. Iberia had stepped from the dark ages to a brighter future becoming a bridge towards a technological and scientific revolution in Europe.
On the other hand, within the newly named al-Andalus, in spite of Islam becoming the official religion of the new state, no one was forced to convert. On the contrary, Christians and Jews where allowed to practise their religions and even Muslims shared churches with the old Christians before building their own mosques. A minority of Catholics also remained, mostly religious clerics and monks.
From these independent Kingdoms in the north of Spain and in a parallel manner to the Crusades in the rest of Europe, the Catholic Kingdoms of Spain initiated the so called 'Reconquista': A series of battles spread over 800 years whereby the Kingdoms of Aragon, Navarra, Castilla and Leon supported by the Church of Rome, steadily gained land over the 'arabized' Spanish Muslim state.
A famous battle in Covadonga in Asturias, was to later symbolize the resistance of a Catholic-Christian north Spain by the hands of the Asturian King Pelayo. Much in the same manner the battle of Tours in Poitiers 732 E.C, is generally remembered as: when Europe was saved from the Islamic advance, by merit of French Charles Martel. Though there remain many historical paradoxes, some say the battle was simply one of many battles between northern and southern Gales, each accusing the other of being 'heretic'; in a time when Spain and France were effectively 'one same land'.
It is paradoxical that the latest of the Councils of Toledo, number XVIII from 712, has been removed from the safely preserved Church archives and nothing is know of it. There is obvious speculation over what this Council document contained since this was the year when coins where cast in Toledo and the new independent state of al-Andalus was formed.
Musa, a charismatic figure himself, freshly invigorated by the cultural revolution in the east and moreover by the spirit of a newly revealed religion, would enter into Iberia in 712 C.E. further establishing an independent state from Rome. This was celebrated by the casting of new coins in Toledo stating the Quranic verses ''There is no god but The God'' (la ilaha illa Allah), ''He was not borne nor does he beget'' (lam yalid wa lam yulad). These first Quranic verses casted onto Iberian coins where to express the one common thing between the three subsequent cultures living in al-Andalus. One same God worshipped by three cultures: Christian (mostly Unitarian), Muslim and Jew. Al-Andalus was born.
An example of such agreements is that of a Visigoth duke, Theodomiro from Murcia, who could continue to govern in his territory – which was to be newly named Tudmir – after his agreement with the Muslims.
The Muslims made a pact with noble Visigoths helping them to enter the peninsula, respecting their property, status and privileges. In just 3 years a mixed army of some 3 to 12 thousand men took power over the peninsula up to Zaragoza, and in one more year the entire peninsula was under Muslim government. Many towns opened their doors to the Muslims offering no resistance and in fact welcoming them as their rescuers, others surrendered through advantageous agreements.
What conclusively explains such a speedy penetration into the peninsula, as well as the later permanence of Muslims in Spain, is the fact that the Unitarian Visigoths where much closer to eastern cultural revolution and the new Muslim faith, than to the alternative Roman Catholic Church. Hence they would give support to the allied army as they moved swiftly through the Peninsula from city to city.
Another element that historians give importance to is the discomfort in the Jewish communities, many of which lived in exile around Tingitania, north of current Morocco. Many refugees from Iberia, both Jewish and Visigoth lived in Ceuta and many are likely to have joined the famous ''Arab invador'' troops into the Iberian Peninsula.
It is not known how many Muslims went into Spain, some say only 400, others 7000, others 12.000 troops. The prior more likely and whoever they were, they were only relatively new Muslims since the new Prophet, Muhammad, had revealed the religion of Islam only 50 years before.
History tells us that in 711, Don Julian, Count of Ceuta, helped the Islamized Berber Tariq, the Lieutenant Colonel of Musa across the strait from Morocco to Spain. The sons of Vitzia, archbishop Oppas and other Gothic noblemen summed to a small group of Muslim troops which where commanded by Tariq. Since then the name given to the rock is Gibraltar, or JablTarr, Arabic for 'Mountain of Tarr(iq)'.
Returning to the political state of affairs, it is at this point when the sons of Vitzia decided to seek help from the nearby Muslims to dethrone Rodrigo. The Archbishop of Seville, Oppas, uncle of Aguila - the dethroned son of Vitzia - asked his governor Count Don Julian of Ceuta to negotiate with the governor of North Africa under the Umayyad Dynasty of the Caliph Al-Walid I of Damascus, Musa Ibn Nusayr.
A common mistake is to think Northern Africa as being Berber in the modern understanding of the term, by the 8th Century. At this point Modern Morocco was indeed nothing but an extension of the Visigoth Kingdom, where population had been stirred in excess through increasing desertification of more Southern areas (Modern Sahara). In any case, the monotheistic vision of Islam, a newly revealed religion, had already reached these lands along with a wave of cultural and scientific achievements from the more developed cities of Egypt and Damascus. These where Eastern cities which thrived ahead of their time in a cultural revolution, later to become the Islamic Golden Age.
As the post of the throne was not hereditary but by appointment, the main noble families rivalled against each other to achieve it. Kings where frequently assassinated by members of the noble class who aspired to take the throne. This struggle ended weakening the Visigoth Kingdom. In this state of affairs, the king before last, Vitzia, tried to make the crown hereditary. As it happened, when he passed away, his young son Aguila was proclaimed king, but part of the noble class refused to accept him and put the charge onto a noble man named Rodrigo, duke of the Betic region, who was Catholic. In spite of his efforts, Rodrigo couldn't avoid a civil war breaking throughout the country. The sons of Vitzia had decided to get back in throne to whatever effect. From here the story becomes unclear and there are many elements of legend in it.
Towards the beginning of the VIII Century, the Visigoth kingdom who's capital was Toledo, was in the midst of a political and social crisis provoked by the impoverishment of economy, frequent droughts, hunger in the lower classes, lack of prestige of the monarchs and how not, a rivalry in the noble class.
AL-ANDALUS.
- THE DECADENCE OF THE VISIGOTH KINGDOM AND THE FORMATION OF
Immediately after their victory Abu al-'Abbas as-Saffah sent his forces to North Africa, where only as late as 789, Idris I, direct descendants of the Prophet and his nephew Ali was to become the ruler of the newly Islamized Berber population.
In this state of affairs, Muslims had already gained influence and control over the Maghreb in the late 7th century. By 682 Musa ibn Nusayr had defeated the Byzantines at Kairouan in what is now Morocco. By the 8th century the Maghreb had become home to a number of Muslims fleeing from the Abbasid rule.
Baghdad was established on the Tigris River in 762. A new position, that of the vizier, was also established to delegate central authority, and even greater authority was delegated to local emirs. Eventually, this meant that many Abbasid caliphs were relegated to a more ceremonial role than under the Umayyads, as the viziers began to exert greater influence, and the role of the old Arab aristocracy was slowly replaced by a Persian bureaucracy.
The first change the Abbasids made was to move the empire's capital from Damascus, in Syria, to Baghdad in Iraq. This was to both appease as well to be closer to the Persian mawali support base that existed in this region more influenced by Persian history and culture, and part of the Persian mawali demand for less Arab dominance in the empire.
During the reign of Marwan II, this opposition culminated in the rebellion of Ibrahim the Imam, the fourth in descent from Abbas. Supported by the province of Khorasan, Iran, he achieved considerable success, but was captured in the year 747 and died in prison; some hold that he was assassinated. The quarrel was taken up by his brother Abdullah, known by the name of Abu al-'Abbas as-Saffah, who defeated the Umayyads in 750 in the Battle of the Zab near the Great Zab and was subsequently proclaimed caliph.
The Abbasids also distinguished themselves from the Umayyads by attacking their moral character and administration in general. According to Ira Lapidus, "The Abbasid revolt was supported largely by Arabs, mainly the aggrieved settlers of Marw with the addition of the Yemeni faction and their Mawali". The Abbasids also appealed to non-Arab Muslims, known as mawali, who remained outside the kinship-based society of the Arabs and were perceived as a lower class within the Umayyad empire. Muhammad ibn 'Ali, a great-grandson of Abbas, began to campaign for the return of power to the family of Muhammad, the Hashimites, in Persia during the reign of Umar II.
The Abbasid descended from Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib (566 – 662), one of the youngest uncles of Muhammad, because of which they considered themselves the true successor of Muhammad as opposed to the Umayyads. The Umayyads were descended from Umayya, and were a clan separate from Muhammad's in the Quraish tribe.
- THE ABASSID CALIPHATE
Muawiya became caliph of the entire Muslim empire moving the capital from Arabia to Damascus in Syria, thus beginning the period of the Umayyad caliphate.
Meanwhile, in Syria Muawiya refused to pay Ali allegiance. The two men confronted each other with their armies at Siffin in early 657, where Muawiya called for an arbitration. The arbitration solved nothing, but it did serve to delegitimize Ali in the eyes of some of his supporters, who deserted Ali's army and withdrew to Nahrawan, east of the Tigris. The Syrians acknowledged Muawiya as caliph, and he was able to take control of Egypt later that year. In 658, the secedes in Nahrawan, known as Kharijites, were decimated by Ali's army. By this time Ali's rule had been reduced to central and southern Iraq; he was murdered by a Kharijite in 661.
Uthman was also murdered, at the hands of discontented Egyptians in 656, and the notables of Medina selected Ali b. Abi Talib, the Prophet's nephew, as Caliph. His failure to punish Uthman's assassins quickly generated outrage. Civil war broke out under the leadership of Talha and Zubayr, two of Ali's former supporters, and Aisha, former wife of Muhammad and daughter of Abu Bakr. The rebellion was suppressed near Basra at the famous Battle of the Camel, so-called because Aisha watched the battle from her palanquin atop a camel.
Uthman attempted to retain the unity of the empire by appointing members of his own clan, the Umayyads, to governorships; in particular, the governorship of his kinsman Muawiya was enlarged to include the whole of Syria and northern Iraq.
The peace treaties concluded under Umar allowed the conquered peoples to retain their land and religion; they were given the status of "protected peoples" (dhimmi) and were required to pay a special tax, known as the jizya. Abandoned lands were confiscated to supply income for the treasury. Umar was murdered in 644.
In 636 the Muslims defeated the Persians at Qadisiyya in a battle which proved to be decisive. Thereafter the Persians continually retreated; the Muslims quickly conquered northern Iraq and moved into western Iran. After the battle at Nihavand in 642, the Persians could offer no more resistance and the remainder of Iran was left open to conquest. The last Sassanid king fled to Khurasan and was assassinated in 651. The offensive against the Byzantines in Syria continued. The Muslims reached Damascus in 635 but were forced to withdraw to Yarmuk; there they defeated the Byzantines decisively and thus faced little resistance in occupying the remainder of Syria and Palestine. The troops then marched into northern Iraq and Armenia, and into Egypt. The Byzantines relinquished Egypt to the Muslims under a peace treaty in 641.
After the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, there where already divisions during the succession of his four 'righteous Caliphs', his companions: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali.
Politically speaking, the scene in the East was not entirely different. Islam, the new Abrahamic religion revealed through the prophecy of Muhammad, was already divided after it's first century.
- THE FOUR RIGHTEOUS CALIPHS
- THE MIDDLE EAST, THE RISING OF ISLAM:
The climate in the VII century didn't get any better. The clergy and the two main Visigoth noble families, that of Wamba and Chindasvinto, where divided into Arian (Unitarian) and Catholic (Trinitarian). An interesting characteristic of the Visigoth kingship is that the crown was not hereditary, but through appointment by council of clerics. The king before last, Vitzia, was of an Arian Christian profession as was his inheritor Aguila. After Vitzia's death, Aguila took the throne but however, shortly after, it was given to Rodrigo who was Catholic. This is thought to be the straw that broke the camel's back.
During the Council celebrated in 589, the division in Christianity was officially solved through the conversion of King Recaredo to Catholicism in 587 and Arianism was condemned as a 'heresy'. From here on the documents have a constant mention about Christian 'heretics', through which we learn that they where 'Unitarian Christians', followers of Ario. This and other descriptions of the Arian doctrine which are issued in the Councils, where otherwise completely wiped out during the later 'Inquisition'.
In this state of affairs it shouldn't surprise anyone that there where XVII Councils in Toledo from 325 to 694-712, reflecting the needs for the Church to adapt and to solve the problems throughout the Peninsula.
It is well known about this period that Iberia, just as the rest of Europe lived a severe 'dark age' in which human rights where abused on a regular basis by the Clerics, wealth and work were taxed at will by local Monarchs and epidemics where frequent. It was also a time when Iberia lived a profound religious crisis. Religion was divided within Christian faith itself and further, there was discomfort within the Jewish communities who where submitted to a miserable condition close to slavery.
The need for finding a unifying criteria in the diverse picture of Christian religion during the early middle ages forced the Church to form regular local Councils. The Councils where frequently gathered in order to adopt the necessary means to regulate constant abuses taken by the cleric and noblemen over the lower classes, as well as to learn about and eradicate 'heresies'. The Councils where formed by select bishops and took place in Toledo. From Toledo the issues treated where taken to the supreme Council in Nice for further consensus by the Church in Rome.
AND NICEA:
- THE COUCILS OF TOLEDO
The Catholics where an aristocratic minority of only around 12% including clerics who held much corruption and confusion at this time, weak knowledge and lack of a consensus or any religious criteria. Moreover, they where opposed by a mass of what they considered as 'heretic' Christian movements throughout the entire peninsula. Within the Visigoths there weren't only Arian Christians but also Priscilian, following another old Unitarian Christian, Priscilio, with similar views to Ario.
The global picture of Europe until then had been very divided, religious views within Christianity not being an exception. In the peninsula, thousands of slaves, many of whom were Germanic, joined with their kin, who had become the real masters of Spain. In this equation we must not forget about the large population of Jews which spread out through Europe and the Iberian Peninsula. The further the aristocratic power changed from milder Arianism to Catholicism, which was completing itself by the 8th century, times got worse for the Jews.
Because of the size and geography of the Iberian Peninsula, there has always been many different 'pockets' of population. These pockets where extended around the country in a very decentralized and disperse manner. As to religion, the Visigoths where Arian – followers of Ario – a form of Christianity which had extended throughout the Roman Empire during the 4th century and which negated trinity, considering it a form of polytheism. Though there weren't confrontations with the so called 'orthodox Christians', the majority of Hispano-Roman population was Catholic, defenders of the idea of three personalities of one same God.
2.2.- RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY IN THE IBERIAN PENINSULA, ARIANS AND TRINITARIANS
In the 5th century, the Germanic Suevi tribe "scorched the Galician earth, in a 60 year terror". The Suevi took over a great part of the North from the nominally Roman Peninsula, reaching across until Zaragoza around 438. It was at this point that Rome asked for support to the Visigoths and in 456 the Visigoth troops crossed the Pirinees drawing the Suevi back to what we know today as Galicia. The rest of the peninsula became part of the Visigoth Kingdom of Tolosa, with it's capital in Toulouse, France.
The Visigoths, Western branch of the Goths, had a kingdom in France from 418 to 507. They had converted to Christianity half a century before they crossed the Pirinees into Spain in 456, though following the Arian tradition, which cast doubt on the divinity of Jesus and considered the concept of the Trinity as a dilution of strict monotheism.
Elsewhere, early in the 4th century, all Romans became officially Christian by royal fiat of Emperor Constantine I, called "the Great" (ruled 324-337), who also named Constantinople as the new capitol of Rome. The Church, who never fully trusted the Roman aristocrats because they considered them to have strong Pagan predilections, allied with Rome and it's army. Though there where still powerful theological differences and intense hostilities in Europe.
Prior to conquest by the Romans in the III Century, the population of the Iberian Peninsula was formed by Iberian Celts and Iberians of Phoenician descent. In fact, many of Spain's major ports and coastal cities even today were founded by the Phoenicians and were a part of the subsequent Punic culture, against which the Romans fought so viciously. By the VI century the old Roman middle class had almost disappeared along with the fine Roman engineering of roads, sewers, aqueducts, etc., the country falling into disrepair. A caste system had been established by to impose "stability" by ordaining that the occupation of the father would be the occupation of his sons, but stability was far from achieved, hunger, raids and riots frequent.
2.1.- EARLY MIDDLE AGE:
- CHRISTIAN EUROPE:
The mystery surrounding the introduction of Islam in Spain can further be seen in new theories of modern, free thinking investigators like Ignacio Olagüe or Emilio Gonzalez Ferrín. After thorough research through the remaining historical and geological documentation of the era, these historians maintain that the Spanish Inquisition has hidden and re-written more than the modern 'official historians' would like to admit. Ignacio Olgagüe even sustains through research into the Church's historical archives and the above mentioned Councils of the 4th-7th Century, that no Arabs ever 'invaded' Spain! Both follow that it would actually be an Arian Christian (Monotheist) movement of defence against the Roman Catholic (Trinitarian) armed repression of the Bishops and Monarchs, who had been allied to Roman military force since the Council of Nice 400 E.C.
Still today when we mention the expulsion of the last Moriscos, one century after the period of the Reconquista was over, we tend to do so as if there where strange people or foreigners. But people who have lived together for centuries leave their own print which cannot be erased.
Except for specialized historians, no one has taken the trouble to investigate how the Andalusi civilization was, from the other side of the Christian-western border. A country that spoke other languages, had other customs, thought, dressed and behaved differently.
Al-Andalus has been presented for centuries as a Spanish territory occupied over centuries by foreigners. However, we must never forget that the base of the population in al-Andalus was Muslim of a Hispano-Gothic origin. There was in any case a very diluted component of Arab origin profoundly integrated into the peninsular population. The inhabitants of al-Andalus where Spanish all the way, although of Muslim faith, as where others who professed the Jewish religion.
However this history has traditionally been depreciated in Spain, due to a religious, cultural and racial rooted prejudice. Until no less then two decades ago, school books merely mentioned al-Andalus as a reflection of the so called 'Reconquista' a series of battles spread over 800 years whereby the Kingdoms of Aragon, Navarra, Castilla and Leon steadily gained land over the 'arabized' Spanish Muslim population of Al-Andalus.
The historical study of al-Andalus reveals that the period was indeed one of the richest periods of a complex historical evolution, converting a great part of the Peninsula into a nation ahead of it's time, a centre of knowledge that shone across Europe and was a means to the scientific, literary and artistic phenomenon initiated in Italy in the XIV century called the Renaissance. More over, history reveals the transcendence that this long historical period had over Spanish culture, enriched by the diverse mix. The story of al-Andalus is that of a people that merged their blood, faith and ideas forming an extraordinary civilization, al-Andalus.
On our tour in Andalusia, through the most diverse yet typical Spanish landscapes, you will be able to 'read history' directly, having glimpses of places' past as we approach our destinations, the greatest cities of al-Andalus.
As a reminder and also for the sake of accuracy and objective questioning of what we may hear or know upon the subject, we present an exclusive insight into the history of Al-Andalus. Through the different accounts you will be able to see how still today, there is some mystery involved around the story of Islam in Spain. In fact, the greatest motivation in our work is to research and promote an unbiased historical view. We intend to continue our work on this section until we have a well balanced equation and illustration of the History of Al-Andalus, though this booklet guide, however many pages and contrasting views that takes!
- INTRODUCTION:
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Email: az@alandalus-experience.com
Welcome to Andalusia, any time.
Project Manager
- -
Ahmad Zaruq Summers
Regards and Salãm, from Andalucía, Spain.
Thank you for your interest and support.
We will appreciate any help from you towards our development and promotion of our causes.
Finally we use our website platform to update subscribers on Events in Andalusia, such as an Andalusi Festival which we are organising on a yearly basis in July, Summer camps for children and other local initiatives advertised through our groupspaces calendar: http://groupspaces.com/alandalus-experience/calendar which you may also subscribe to.
Our interest in al-Andalus has taken us to also promote local artists & craftsmen to organize a series of Workshops in order to open a door to the continuity of these arts, a door through which anyone can access Traditional Andalusi Arts & Crafts such as: Ceramics, Leather Crafts, Islamic Calligraphy, Decorative Arts, Geometry in Nature & Art, Andalusi Garden Design, Traditional Olive Cultivation and Oil Extraction, Tajueed (Quranic recitation) and other Traditional Andalusi and Islamic studies. Our workshops can be weaved into any of our tours or booked as a group along with any other of our services. Likewise, field trips, excursions or any of our other services can be scheduled into the workshop timetables resulting in very atractive weekly schemes. We hope this section to be of special interest to independent travellers as well as Educational Institutions and organisations.
A further aspect of our work is our collaboration with the 'Instituto Halal' official halal certifying agency in Spain in creating awareness and solutions towards the Muslim travel and tourism market, within the local Spanish providers. It is our pride as a Muslim organisation to provide Halal solutions to Muslim travellers. We like to promote our activities and excursions to an intercultural public, such as the one which originally inhabited Al-Andalus, hence fulfilling our aim to be a 'Cultural Bridge' throughout lifetime experiences in Spain.
Al-Andalus Experience is our main project front towards developing, promoting and coordinating services. Through this project we provide professional and quality services in Spain towards: family tours, VIP travellers, travel agency group trips, incentive company events or activities, school study or excursion trips as well as university study field trips and related solutions. After all the effort invested in the project since 2008, we are very happy to have developed a satisfactory platform of collaborating services towards unique experiences in Spain, as well as a very satisfied bag of clients specially in the Western and Middle East.
- Provide a doorway for the world to come to know the Islamic Golden Age of al-Andalus and in so offering friendly halal services to Muslim travellers.
- Develop and promote spaces or centres where the activities towards these objectives and the derived projects can be carried out under optimum conditions.
- Support and promote local development as well as healthy activity and cultural formation by assisting in the development of local cultural projects and profesional formation courses related to these objectives, providing administration, bureaucratic & legal assistance, research & documentation, training & formation, materials, I. T. & multimedia and promotional assistance.
- Promote tolerance between people through finding a common denominator, focusing on the similarities which unite us rather than on the differences that separate us, hand in hand with healthy activities and crafts towards a culturally diverse public.
- Revive Andalusi traditions in the people of the modern society.
- Analyse and compare the different historical periods, cultural conflicts, times of more and less tolerance, wars, cultural, scientific and material development and other fields, in order to draw conclusions and reflect upon our diverse modern society and how we can implement this knowledge to benefit today.
- Research and collect historical revisions, including modern discoveries and hypothesis around the historical period of al-Andalus in search for an unbiased conclusion of what happened in the Iberian Peninsula from 600 E.c. until 1.600 E.c. in order to understand the period's influence on modern Spain.
The 'Círculo Nazarí de Granada' and all our partner projects are aimed to:
We invite the world to participate in the memory and cultural heritage of al-Andalus and also help you actively to discover and enjoy it through historical and cultural tours, workshops and events.
Unfortunately there is a general miss culture which has lead to offering the worldwide public a 'historical pantomime' going as far as to bend history into a series of fables and chronicles which in many cases pay little tribute to reality and leading us to the wrong historical conclusions. This is well known to modern Spanish historians and researchers, we know exactly where the mistakes or 'black holes' lye in both the popular and official account of history. As an organisation we work with researchers and historians as well as publishers and editors. It is our intention to rediscover the true history of al-Andalus and we are supporting several projects in this line.
The scope and interest of al-Andalus in modern culture is immense. It was in fact in al-Andalus where the first monarchic democracy was established in Europe in the IX Century, to enable just ruling over Muslims, Christians and Jews, each holding diverse traditions. What was a stable nest of enforced social tolerance within the immense diversity in the population of medieval Muslim Spain, was to rise as a new Islamic civilisation in the West, al-Andalus. Through brief but fragile periods of stability, the civilisation given in al-Andalus has since been considered a crucial foundation stone for European development and the modern world as we know it.
Through tours , workshops and events, we help you to discover Al-Andalus, its heritage and tradition.
Al-Andalus Experience is a partner project of 'Circulo Nazarí de Granada'. Together with other local Cultural Foundations, organisations and professional service providers, we defend, research and promote the legacy and traditions of al-Andalus in Spain. We welcome travellers from all over the world to come to discover the secrets of Muslim Spain and it's influence upon our world today.
It is our pleasure to present to you our local initiative Muslim organisation in Andalucía Spain.
- FOREWARD:
Events within select settings of Andalucia. Resources and solutions to your service.
Workshops in traditional arts & crafts scheduled towards your group tour or event.
Al Andalus Tours, carefully planned out and scheduled for families and organizations.
www.alandalus-experience.com
Al-Andalus Experience.
Compiled and edited by
A HISTORICAL REVISION THROUGHOUT THE PERIOD OF AL-ANDALUS 711-1600