'Abd al-Rahman III

The First Cordoban Caliph

Maribel Fierro

• Publisher: Oneworld Academic
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781780741871
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

Abd al-Rahman III (891 - 961) was the greatest of the Umayyad rulers of Spain and the first to take the title of Caliph. During his reign, Islamic Spain became wealthy and prosperous. He founded the great Caliphate of Madinat al-Zahra at Cordova and did much in his lifetime to pacify his realm and stabilise the borders with Christian Spain. He died at the apex of his power on Oct. 15, 961.

THE FOURTEEN DAYS OF HAPPINESS OF ‘ABD AL-RAHMAN III (r. 912–61)

‘Abd al-Rahman III, the ruler who gave to the Umayyad dynasty in al-Andalus unprecedented strength inside and influence abroad during the first half of the tenth century (he reigned from 912 to 961), was said to have kept a daily written record of his forty-nine years’ reign. It revealed, after his death, that he had had only fourteen days of happiness. He did not say which ones they were.

Were those days connected with the most successful campaigns against his foes, on which we have so much information? Was one of them the day he received the oath of allegiance as ruler without meeting any opposition from the rest of his family, in spite of his youth? Or the day he returned victorious to Cordoba after the first military expedition he commanded in person? Or the day when Bobastro, the fortress where his enemies the Hafsunids had managed to resist for years, was conquered? Or the day he proclaimed himself caliph, the title borne by his Umayyad ancestors when they ruled the Islamic world from Damascus? Or the days the rebellious towns of Toledo and Zaragoza were finally overcome? Or the day the magnificent hall he built in Madinat al-Zahra’, the town he had founded near Cordoba, was finished? Were those days of happiness connected with his private life, about which we know so little?

Whichever they were, the point of the anecdote is that those days were but few for a man who enjoyed power, authority, wealth, military success, beautiful women, and many children. Were they few because his personality or character precluded him from enjoying life? Were they few because most of his life was spent under the pressure of continuous fighting in order first to maintain the unstable rule he had inherited, then to expand and consolidate it? Or were they few because the responsibility of a ruler, a caliph, was such that happiness, both regarding this life and the other, necessarily became a rarity?

The anecdote, in fact, might just belong to the repertoire of things that are said about rulers and that make the stuff of ancient moral tales and modern soap operas. A hugely successful soap opera that was shown with equal success in Mexico and post-Soviet Russia had the telling title “The rich also cry,” and many in their deprivation took comfort from this. An anecdote telling that a caliph only had fourteen days of happiness was intended to teach that happiness is not dependent on the things one owns, but on the way one lives one’s life. Consequently, the poor man and the rich man have equal opportunities of achieving happiness.

Such an anecdote could have been told about any other powerful man. The fact that ‘Abd al-Rahman III is the protagonist is an indication that he had acquired literary and symbolic dimensions. And this was also helped by the fact that his triumph was closely connected with fall. ‘Abd al-Rahman III’s pacification of al-Andalus, his consolidation of Umayyad rule, and his relationships with such powerful political and religious figures as the Byzantine emperor, the Fatimid caliph of North Africa, and the German emperor, were all achievements destined to be of short duration. Some fifty years after his death, the caliphate he had established was crumbling, never to recover, and Madinat al-Zahra’ was lying in ruins. The fourteen days of happiness might also stand for the brevity of ‘Abd al-Rahman III’s success.

And yet al-Andalus had been changed by him for ever. Among the changes brought by the first Umayyad caliph in the Islamic west, and developed under his successors, a not unimportant one was the impulse given to the emergence of a distinct identity for al-Andalus.

But what exactly was al-Andalus?

AL-ANDALUS BEFORE THE SECOND UMAYYAD CALIPHATE (EIGHTH–NINTH CENTURIES)

WHAT WAS AL-ANDALUS?

Al-Andalus was the name given by Muslims to the Iberian peninsula, and in a more restricted sense, the name given to the territory under Muslim rule. That territory was not always the same.

Until the eleventh century, most of the Iberian peninsula was controlled by Muslims, except for the northern regions, where small Christian kingdoms emerged. That the core of Muslim settlement and rule lay in the south is indicated by the location chosen for the capital of al-Andalus. The Visigoths, the former Germanic rulers of the Iberian peninsula, who had entered from the north, had established their political and religious capital in Toledo, situated roughly in the middle of the peninsula. Toledo fell into Muslim hands when Muslim armies conquered the Iberian peninsula in the second decade of the eighth century and it had a crucial role in frontier politics, being often referred to as the “capital” of the Middle Frontier of al-Andalus. But it was Cordoba, a town further south, that became the seat of the Muslim governors and later of the Umayyad rulers of al-Andalus.

In 1085, Toledo was occupied by Alfonso VI, king of Castille and León, and lost forever to the Muslims. By then, the Umayyad caliphate founded by ‘Abd al-Rahman III in the tenth century had collapsed, and al-Andalus was divided into the so-called Party kingdoms, a division that gave the Christians the opportunity to interfere in their internal politics and more importantly, to extract monetary payments from them. The strengthening of their military capabilities as the Christians established “societies organized for war” ran parallel to the inability of the Muslim inhabitants of al-Andalus to raise competent armies to face the Christian enemies from the north. After the fall of Toledo showed how dangerous their situation had become, the Party kings realized the urgency of looking for help.

Help came from the Almoravids, the Berbers who had managed to found for the first time a unified and solid state in what is now Morocco. The military assistance given by the Almoravid emir to the Andalusi rulers was soon transformed into the latter’s political submission and eventual elimination. By the end of the eleventh century, al-Andalus thus lost its independence as an autonomous state. Almoravid rule was shaken at the end of the third decade of the twelfth century by attempts by the Andalusis to regain local control of their land. The polities started by members of the urban elites, military men, and charismatic saints who seized power in different parts of al-Andalus were, however, destroyed when al-Andalus once more became a dependency of a powerful Berber empire, this time the Almohad empire that had arisen in the south of Morocco. But the Almohads eventually also proved to be unable to stop the Christian military advance. Cordoba fell in 1236, followed by other important towns such as Murcia in 1243 and Seville in 1248.

Christian conquest obliged many Muslims to migrate to Muslim lands across the Straits of Gibraltar, while others stayed, living as a religious minority under Christian rule. Some settled in the only remaining Muslim state, Granada, where an Andalusi military and charismatic leader had succeeded in creating a small state. It survived for almost three centuries (from the mid-thirteenth century to 1492) under the so-called Nasrid dynasty by taking advantage of its enemies’ weaknesses and by making itself useful to them at the same time. The survival of Nasrid Granada had its roots in its adaptability to changing circumstances and in its inherent fragility, reflected so well in the cheap materials used to build the Alhambra, the beautiful palace that has kept alive until today the memory of the last Muslim kingdom in the Iberian peninsula.

During the eight centuries of its existence as an Islamic society, the Muslims who inhabited al-Andalus kept close links with the rest of the Islamic religious community to which they belonged. The religious duty of performing the pilgrimage to Mecca and travelling in order to study with teachers abroad were powerful means through which the Andalusi elites sustained, while transforming and re-interpreting, their own Muslim identity and that of the population they took care of and led as scholars, prayer-leaders, judges, jurists, secretaries, literati, poets, and saints. Along with the feeling of belonging to a universal religious community, they had a distinct, but not static, Andalusi identity that separated them from other Muslims. It was an identity that could embrace the different ethnic backgrounds of those who inhabited the Iberian peninsula under Muslim rule and that could also embrace members of the other two religious communities, Jews and Christians, who were under that same rule. This Andalusi identity is generally considered to have been promoted especially by the Cordoban Umayyad caliphs, beginning with ‘Abd al-Rahman III, as it helped them strengthen their rule. And this had to do with the way al-Andalus had been conquered and by whom, and with the way the Umayyads, dethroned in the east by the ‘Abbasids, established their rule over its Muslim population.

ARABS AND BERBERS, THE MUSLIM TRIBESMEN WHO CONQUERED AL-ANDALUS

Muslim troops first crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 711, and in a few years the former Visigothic kingdom, weakened by internal dissension, was destroyed. Those troops were dependent on the Muslim military command in North Africa and, through it, on the Umayyad caliph who then ruled the Islamic empire from his seat in Damascus. Ethnically, the members of those troops were Arabs and Berbers.

The number of Arabs among the first Muslim conquerors was small compared with that of Berbers, but they enjoyed a privileged status as Arabs. The link between being Muslim and being Arab was at the time still very powerful. The Arabs had been the first converts to Islam, a religion revealed in the seventh century to an Arab prophet and contained in a sacred book written in Arabic. Until the mid-eighth century, conversion to Islam by those who were not Arabs entailed adoption of the status of client (mawla, pl. mawali) of an Arab tribesman or of another convert already endowed with a patron. Freed slaves likewise became clients of their former masters. Islamicization, the adoption of the new religion and of the new social and political norms and patterns upheld by it, went hand in hand with Arabicization, involving a new sacred language and often, in the long run, loss of the mother tongue.

The Arab element among the Muslim conquerors of al-Andalus increased after 739, the year when a Berber rebellion broke out in North Africa. The Umayyad caliph in Damascus sent a powerful army to put an end to it, but the resistance of the Berbers was strong. The Syrian troops were defeated in 741. With what was left of the army, the commander Balj ibn Bishr al-Qushayri took refuge in Ceuta, a town separated from the Iberian peninsula by a short distance across the sea. The military governor of al-Andalus sent ships so that the Syrians could cross the Straits of Gibraltar. In exchange, Balj helped the governor fight those Berbers who had followed the rebellion of their North African tribesmen and were causing trouble to the Arabs in the Iberian peninsula. But cooperation between the two Arab commanders did not last long. Balj eventually got rid of the military governor and took his place. Arabic sources refer to Balj’s troops as the “second wave” of Muslim conquerors who settled in the Iberian peninsula.

Much information is given in the sources about the tribal alignments of the Arabs who conquered the Iberian peninsula and settled there. The main division was that between Northern (Qays) and Southern (Yemen) Arabs, a division that was imported to al-Andalus from the east. How we should understand the fights between Qays and Yemen in the history of the first two centuries of the Islamic world has been a hotly debated issue. Were they real tribal fights showing that tribalism could not only survive but be an integral part of the new socio-political order? Did they indicate deep political and social divisions, so that tribes were actually acting as political parties in that new order? Or were they the language through which factions of the conquerors gave expression to the allegiances of their constituencies? The latter seems to have been the case, both in the east and in al-Andalus. Here, the memory of battles fought elsewhere and of old grievances bitterly resented served as fuel to warm up old divisions and to cook new ones among the conquering elite.

The tribal and military structure of the Arab population of al-Andalus was functional for some time. The organization of the army was somewhat different from elsewhere. For the most part, Arab-Muslim armies were settled in newly established garrison towns, such as Kufa in Iraq, Old Cairo in Egypt, and Qayrawan in North Africa, where the Muslim minority could preserve its identity and military organization, and where the distribution of the soldiers’ pay took place. No such garrison towns were founded in al-Andalus.

The patterns of military settlement followed in al-Andalus had important consequences for the relationships between the conquerors and the conquered and also for the imposition of a central authority. The first wave of Arabs and Berbers who conquered the Iberian peninsula, called in the sources the baladiyyun, settled all over the land and became landowners. They appropriated lands without regard for the fifth to which the state was legally entitled, an issue which caused embarrassment in later times. Under the governor al-Samh ibn Malik, an attempt was made to secure for the Muslim state a fifth of the conquered lands, but apparently with limited success. In any case, fiscal control was extended and systematized in al-Andalus during the years of al-Samh’s governorship (719–21) and those of his successors.

The different regiments (junds) that made up Balj’s Syrian army (and which were named according to their geographical provenance) were settled on the land, without being granted ownership of it, according to an arrangement devised in 743. The junds were assigned to specific districts: the jund of Damascus was settled at Granada (this region was known at the time as Elvira), the jund of Hims at Seville and Niebla, the jund of Jordan at Málaga, the jund of Qinnasrin at Jaén, the jund of Palestine at Algeciras and Sidonia, and the jund of Egypt at Beja and Tudmir. The junds received a third of the taxes paid by Christians in the districts in question. They were probably put in charge of collecting them, too, thus obtaining fiscal control over the territories to which they were assigned and becoming involved in their administration. After appropriating a third of the payments made by Christians, the junds were in principle obliged to turn over the rest to the central government. They were also obliged to pay tax to the governor or representative of the Umayyad administrative apparatus on income they retained for their upkeep. However, the hold of the central government over the Muslim population of al-Andalus decreased after the governorship of Abu l-Khattar, while the influence and power of the Syrian regiments increased. When the first Umayyad emir, ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu‘awiya, rose to power in al-Andalus, his policy was directed, as we shall see, at countering the political dominance acquired by the junds.

The conquerors of the first wave, those who came in 711 and shortly afterwards, were mainly Berbers, the indigenous population of North Africa, a region recently incorporated into the Islamic empire, so they were recent converts to the new religion.

Most of them settled in tribal groups in rural areas, especially along the emerging frontier of al-Andalus, leading a mostly autonomous life difficult to recover from obscurity, although archaeological research is now illuminating certain aspects of it (for example, certain patterns of irrigation might reflect Berber tribal organization). Their existence is revealed in the written sources when they became involved in armed conflict with the Cordoban ruler or his representatives. Sometimes, this armed conflict assumed a religious form, characterized by leadership of a charismatic figure associated with messianic expectations. The military resources provided by Berber tribal organization allowed some of their leaders to become rulers of Party kingdoms in the eleventh century, after the collapse of the Umayyad caliphate. The sources are almost completely silent regarding the survival of Berber languages.

Unlike the Berbers who settled in rural areas, those who lived in urban settlements, having entered the state administration or become scholars, reached a higher degree of Arabicization and Islamicization. Most of them appear as clients of the Umayyads. As ‘Abd al-Rahman III was keen to remind his Berber allies, the conversion to Islam of the Berber population of North Africa had taken place when the Islamic world was being ruled by his ancestors, the Umayyad caliphs of Damascus, thus implying that the Berbers as a people were clients of the Umayyad family.

THE CONQUERED POPULATION AND THE PROCESS OF CONVERSION

When al-Andalus was conquered, the Hispano-Roman population of the Iberian peninsula had been ruled for two centuries by the Visigoths. That population was Christian. There was also a small Jewish community whose existence under Visigothic rule had often been under threat; it was therefore said to have welcomed the new rulers. The legal regulations of the new Muslim rulers involved discrimination against the members of the other two monotheistic faiths, but not persecution, and so the Jewish community was able to live in peace and to thrive. Jews and Christians became dhimmis, or protected groups, in the new political order. Being the “people of the book” who had preceded the Muslim community, they were not forced to convert to the new religion. They could maintain their religious authorities, perform their cult, and solve their conflicts under their own legal ordinances, unless those activities were considered to interfere with the rights of the ruling religious community. Jews and Christians had their survival legally ensured under a discriminatory tolerance. But protection of the law was not a guarantee for long-lasting survival. They were always threatened by conversion and occasionally by persecution.

By the eleventh century al-Andalus was overwhelmingly Muslim, and by the end of the twelfth century there were no noticeable surviving Christian communities. The tenth century is generally considered to have been the period when the balance between a ruling Muslim minority and a Christian majority started to shift to a Muslim majority. The pull towards the rulers’ religion and culture, the adoption of which gave or enhanced social status and prestige and which could involve a reduction of taxation, went together with the push represented by the local church’s inability to cater effectively for the religious needs of the Christian population.

In al-Andalus, as elsewhere in the early Islamic post-conquest period, the Muslim ruling elite did nothing to favor the conversion of the dhimmis, because of the financial losses it would have meant for them. The Muslim Arabs were military elites who depended for their privileged livelihood on the existence of a mass who, as neither Muslim nor Arab, were not entitled to the same privileges. The reluctance to increase the number of converts must h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Foreword
• 1 THE FOURTEEN DAYS OF HAPPINESS OF ‘ABD AL-RAHMAN III (r. 912–61)
• 2 AL-ANDALUS BEFORE THE SECOND UMAYYAD CALIPHATE
• 3 THE COLLAPSE OF UMAYYAD POWER AND ITS RECOVERY BY ‘ABD AL-RAHMAN III (912–28) 29
• 4 CALIPHATE AND CONSOLIDATION (929–61)
• 5 THE CALIPH’S FAMILY AND HIS MEN
• 6 BUILDING THE CALIPHATE: STICK, STONES, AND WORDS
• 7 ‘ABD AL-RAHMAN III’S LEGACY
• APPENDIX: How do we know what we know about ‘Abd al-Rahman III?
• Bibliography
• Index