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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.