kuniga.me > Books > Moorish Spain

Moorish Spain

This book covers the history of Spain and Portugal during the Moorish period, from around 700 (conquest by the Umayyad Caliphate) to about 1500 when the last Muslim kingdom (Nasrid dynasty) of Granada fell.

Here I share some detailed notes on this book, from selected chapters.

Chapter 2 - The Secret of Tower

This chapter focuses on the Muslim conquest of the Visogothic Iberian peninsula. The secret of the Tower is an allusion to a legend around king Roderic (Visigoth) about the downfall of the Visigoths (Christian), which was a convinent narrative for both Christians (escapegoating) and Moors (legitimacy) to explain the Muslim conquests.

The Goths were originally outsiders to the Roman empire but were let in as refugees fleeing from the Huns. The Goth Alaric served in the Roman military but dissatisfaction eventually led him to form the Visigoth kingdom. As king, Alaric sacked Rome in 410 and the Visigoths settled in Toulouse in 418 after a treaty. Later they invaded Spain under Euric in 466-84 and had their capital in Toledo. They had been under Roman cultural sphere for 100 years, for example having adopted Christianism, so the change from Roman to Visigoth wasn’t drastic.

Meanwhile, the Arabs (from the Arabian peninsula) had been conquering North Africa, including the Maghreb, home to the Berber people. The name “berber” comes from barbarian, used by the Romans to designate outsiders. Somehow the word berber stuck with these people only.

An army of Arabs and Berbers invaded Spain, under Musa ibn Nusayr who conquered Toledo and Zaragoza. He was soon recalled by the Umayyad caliph back to Damascus, but put his son Abd al-Aziz in charge, who took over the rest of the Iberian peninsula.

The Berbers were the majority of the population but the ethnic Arabs had more priviledges. The book mentions that the population of Spain was 4 million by then, and the Moors settlers around 200k. In 750 de Abbasid dynasty took over from the Umayyads, partly from resentment of locals towards the ethnic Arab elite and they moved capital from Damascus to Baghdad.

Adb al-Rahman, a member from the Umayyad royal family, fled the Abbasids to Cordoba and established the Umayyad control there, making Andalus independent of the caliphate in Baghdad. He shifted capital to Cordoba (from Toledo) and was involved in the construction of the Mosque of Cordoba.

A lot of the Christian fled North to the Asturias region, while the Muslims settled on the South.

Chapter 3 - The Curve of Conversion

Focuses on the 9th century, when people starting to convert to Islam.

Christians living under Muslim rule were called Mozarabic (meaning Arabised). Those who converted were called Muwallad.

Under Islamic rule, only non-Muslims didn’t have to pay taxes, so authorities had disincentive to convert non-Muslims because they were the only ones providing revenue to the government!

One interesting way to estimate the conversion of the population was to look at the name registry, and see having more Muslim names.

Chapter 4 - The Caliphate of Córdoba

Chapter focuses on the 10th century, a period of relative peace and economic growth, and thus the peak of Moorish rule under the Caliphate of Córdoba.

The most successful ruler as Abd al-Rahman III. Interestingly, he had blue eyes and red hair, and was only 25% Arab. Abd al-Rahman III build the palace Madinat al-Zahra which is in ruins today.

Around this time, the Austurian kingdom moved the capital to Leon and Castille was its eastern offshoot. Barcelona was an independent kingdom with ties to the Franks. In the Basque country it was Aragon and Navarre.

The Jew Hasday Ibn Shaprut was the primary physician of the al-Rahman III and eventually was his minister of foreign affairs. He dealt with alliances between Cordoba and other kingdoms including the German Otto I and the Byzantines. From the Byzantines he obtained the work of Dioscorides on herbal medicine and helped translating it to Arabic.

Abd al-Rahman’s son al-Hakem II continued the patronage of science and arts. One notable astronomer was Maslama al-Majriti.

After the death of al-Hakem II, an official, Almanzor, took over power (the son of al-Hakem II, Hisham II was a Caliph but held no de-facto power) and won many battles against Christians. Under his command, they didn’t expand their territory, but just plundered for the money to keep up with expenses (in part due to military expansion). His son Abd al-Malik continued his legacy but died early in 1008.

Chapter 5 - The Party Kings

This chapter focuses on the desintegration of the Cordoba caliphate into independent kingdoms (taifas), in the 11th century.

After the death of Abd al-Malik there was a struggle for power, which led to the weaking of the Caliphate and the creation of party kings or taifa, including Zawi ibn Ziri of Granada, Abu al-Qasim Muhammad ibn Abbad of Seville Sabur al-Saqlabi of Badajoz (including Lisbon); and Mujahid al-Amiri of Denia (including the Balearic Islands). This desatabilization was known as the first fitna.

Seville was the most powerful one (Abbadid dynasty) and conquered some of the other taifas including Cordoba itself.

During this period, taifas often fought with each other and hired Christian kingdoms as mercenaries for help. A famous mercenary of the time was Rodrigo Díaz, from Castille, and better known as El Cid. He initially worked for Alfonso VI (king of Castille-Leon) but later became a rich independent mercenary fighting against both Christians and Muslims and eventually settled as ruler of Valencia.

The taifa kingdoms continued the support for religious or scientific learning seen in the Cordoba caliphate. A prominent scholar was Ibn Hazm. He was not patronized by any taifa leader because he had allegiance to the fallen Umayyads, but nevertheless published influential works such as The Ring of the Dove (a treatise on love) and the Book of Sects, a book described as comparative religion but which the author says is misleading since its goal is to assert the rightness of Islam over other religions.

Chapter 6 - The Moroccan Fundamentalists

This chapter describes the Almoravids and Almohads from Southern Morocco who eventually conquered Andalucia and were later defeated by Christian rulers who conquered most of Andalucia (except Granada) around 1250.

Almoravids

Ibn Yasin was a fundamentalist Muslim who built a community around the Sanhaja people in Southern Morocco. They eventually invaded Northern Morocco and founded the city of Marrakech. The Almoravids thought the Abbadids in Seville were corrupted because they paid tribute (paria) to Christians, which goes against Sharia law.

Ribat is a religious community of Islam, analogous to a Christian monastery. The city of Rabat is named after this word. Members of a ribat are called murabitun. Almoravid is a latin corruption of al-Murabitun.

The king of Castille-Leon, Alfonso VI, was expanding its territories, for example conquering Toledo in 1085. The taifa kings of Andalucia got desperate and allied themselves with Almoravids to defeat Alfonso in 1086, but the Almoravids ended up conquering the Taifa kingdoms and unified Andalucia again and stopped paying tributes to Christians. The Almoravids were less tolerating of other religions so Christians fled to northern kingdoms or were exiled to Morocco.

French nobles started flocking to Alfonso’s kingdom to fight against Muslims and getting counties. An example was Henry of the House of Burgundy, who was given control of, then county, Portugal. The author claims that this pattern of Christian nobles traveling to fight against the Muslims in Spain was the seed to the Crusades.

The son of Henry of Portugal, Afonso, conquered Lisboa and asked pope to recognize it as an independent monarchy in 1143, inaugurating the Kingdom of Portugal.

Almohads

Ibn Tumart was a Muslim Berber religious scholar and founded a movement as a reaction to a flailing Almoravids. His followers were known as al-Muwwahidun (people who believe in one god), from which Almohad is named. One of this followers, Adb al-Mu’min, founded the Almohad dynasty and started by defeating the Almoravids in Morocco.

The Almohads transferred the capital from Córdoba to Seville and built a mosque there in 1198. The Seville’s cathedral was eventually built in its place but the minaret still stands as the Giralda tower.

The Almohads also built the Torre del Oro in 1220 which still stands though it has been rebuilt.

Reconquista

Castille found allies from the east and inflicted a decisive victory on the Almohads in Las Navas of Tolosa (1212). The Christians did not have cohesion to take advantage of the situation though.

However, internal disputes due to the succession of the Almohad caliph led to the weakning of the caliphate, which focused their attention and military force in Marrakesh.

Almohads power weakened and the Chrstian kings took advantage. King James I of Aragon conquered land from Almohads including Balearic islands (1232) and Valencia (1238). Fernando III of Castille conquered Cordoba in 1236 and then Seville in 1248. King Sancho II and his son Afonso III expanded the borders of Portugal to its today’s border.

My thoughts

A very interesting parallel exists between the Moroccan Berbers conquering the Iberian Peninsula and the Central Asia Steppe people conquering China. The conquerors were largely nomads and were able to conquer a larger, more advanced civilization that was sedentary.

Not only that, there was a cycle of conquerors settling down and adopting the sedentary culture and then being conquered by a new wave of nomads from the region they came from. In Spain this happened with Berber + Arabs, then Almoravids and then Almohads, until the original culture claimed it back. In China it was the Khithans, the Jurchens, Mongols and Manchus [1].

Chapter 7 - Convivencia

This chapter talks about the Muslims and other religions living along Christians after the reconquista.

A Muslim living under Christian rule was called Mudejar (counterpart of Mozarab, a Christian under Muslim rule). While Muslims were allowed to remain in Andalucia and even practice their religion initially, there was a culture of apartheid and the conversion of Mosques into Churches eliminated one of the main places for building social cohesion.

Repoblación

Repoblacion was the goal of in-migration of Christians to the south. However, plague and famine reduced available people for resettlement, so immigrants from France but also Italy (Genoa) and even England were invited.

Cultural and Intellectual

Arabs acquired knowledge of Greek works from their invasion to the Levant and it made back into Europe through the Moors. One example cites is the abbacus.

Knowdge from Greek also came to Europe from Norman Sicily, but in this case without Arabic as intermediary.

Religion

Contrary to intellectual knowledge (which mostly flowed one way), there was little exchange between Christians and Muslim in terms of religion.

Chapter 8 - Nasrid Granada

This chapter focuses on the last presence of Muslim power in the Iberian peninsula, the Emirate of Granada (as a province not just the city, so it included other cities such as Malaga and Almeria). It also describes the end of “Convivencia” period, with the expulsion of the Muslim population from Spain.

Yusuf ibn Nasr was the founder of Nasrid dynasty in 1237 and it lasted until 1492. He was able to come to power with the demise of the Almohads and kept it by paying tribute to Castille.

Granada was economically weak, didn’t have fertile lands and relied on silk exports. It paid half of its income as tribute to Castille. It was also not very polifically stable: instead of a unified state it was a loose federation of tribes that had to be continuously tended.

Another reason Granada was left alone was because in the 14th century Castille was busy with other issues including the 100 year war, and wars with Portugal and Aragon.

The Nasrids built the Alhambra Palace and was built on top of from fortifications of the Granada taifa.

Eventually Fernando of Aragon and Isabel from Castille married (los reyes Católicos or the Catholic kings) in 1469 and unified their quarelling reigns. This enabled them to focus on conquering Granada for once.

Muslims were initially allowed to stay as were those in Castille but king Charles V forced everyone to convert. The converts (even if secretely still Muslims) were known as Moriscos.

Due to fears of association with Tunisians and Turks (following the Ottoman empire conquest of Constantinople) roaming the mediterranean, the Moriscos were forced to disperse through Castille and later were expelled completely during the reign of Philip III.

Epilogue

The author dismisses the romantic narrative that Moorish Spain was all good and Christians destroyed it. He provides some possibilities for this narrative:

• Colonizer’s guilt from the Enlightenment. This is perhaps from the generalization of the colonization of the new world by Europeans.
• There are surviving texts of Muslims mourning their lost lands.
• It comes from Protestant writers who were biased against Catholics.

My review

I bought this book for my trip to Andalucia in Spain and the Algarve in Portugal and found it a really good source for historical context. It’s particularly relevant for Cordoba, Seville and Granada.

I really liked how the author simplifies the more complex details and provides a readable overview. I had trouble summarizing the book since it is so dense in content!

Overall 5/5.

References

• [1] Imperial China: 900 - 1800