Al-Andalus

Al-Āndalus (Arabic الأندلس) was the Arabic name given to those parts of the Iberian Peninsula governed by Muslims from 711 to 1492."Andalus, al-" Oxford Dictionary of Islam. John L. Esposito, Ed. Oxford University Press. 2003. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed 12 June, 2006. It refers to both the Emirate (ca 750-929) and Caliphate of Córdoba (929-1031) and its taifa successor kingdoms.

In 1236 the Spanish Reconquista led to the subjugation of the last Islamic stronghold of Granada under Mohammed ibn Alhamar to the Christian forces of Ferdinand III of Castile . From there on Granada became a vassal state to the Christian kingdom for the next 250 years until January 2, 1492 when the last Muslim leader Boabdil of Granada surrendered complete control of the remnants of the last Moorish stronghold Granada, to Ferdinand and Isabella, Los Reyes Católicos ("The Catholic Monarchs").

As Iberia was slowly regained by Christians fighting from northern enclaves, in the long process known as the Reconquista, the name Al-Āndalus came to refer to the Muslim-dominated lands of the former Roman Hispania Baetica, Hispania Lusitania, and Hispania Tarraconensis, within an ever-southward-moving frontier. See also Andalusia and Andalusia (disambiguation)

History

see also Timeline of the Muslim presence in the Iberian peninsula

Conquest and early years

Prior to the arrival of the Moors, the Visigothic rivals of King Roderic had gathered along with Arians and Jews fleeing forced conversions at the hands of the Catholic bishops who controlled the Visigothic monarchy. The Egyptian historian Ibn Abd-el-Hakem relates that Roderic's vassal, Julian, count of Ceuta had sent one of his daughters to the Visigothic court at Toledo for education and that Roderic had impregnated her. After learning of this, he made his way to Qayrawan and requested the assistance of Musa ibn Nusayr, the Muslim governor in North Africa. Personal power politics may have played a larger part, as Julian and other notable families were extremely discontented with the existing status quo in the Visigothic kingdom. In exchange for lands in Andalus, Julian promised ships to carry Ibn Nusayr's troops across the Strait of Hercules (Strait of Gibraltar).

Main article: Moorish invasion of Iberia

.Under the command of Tariq ibn-Ziyad, a small force landed at Gibraltar on April 30, 711 . After a decisive victory at the Battle of Guadalete on July 19, 711, Tariq ibn-Ziyad brought most of the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim occupation in a seven-year campaign. They moved northeast across the Pyrenees but were defeated by the Frank Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers in 732. The Iberian peninsula, except for the Kingdom of Asturias, became part of the expanding Umayyad empire, under the name of al-Āndalus. In the Archaeological Museum in Madrid, a dinar dating from five years after the conquest (716), has the Arabic al-Āndalus on one side and the Iberian Latin "Span(ica)" on the other — apparently the first mention known.

At first, al-Āndalus was ruled by governors appointed by the Caliph, most ruling for three years or less. However, from 740, a series of civil wars between various Muslim groups in Spain resulted in the breakdown of Caliphal control, with Yūsuf al-Fihri, who emerged as the main winner, being effectively an independent ruler.

The Emirate and Caliphate of Córdoba

The interior of the Cathedral of Cordoba, formely the Mosque of Cordoba which the Umayyad had built on the site of the Saint Vicente Visigoth Christian basilica and was restored to a Christian cathedral in the 13th Century. The mosque, known as the Mezquita in Spanish, was one of the finest examples of Arab-Islamic architecture pioneered by the Umayyad dynasty.

The Age of the Caliphs

When the Umayyad dynasty gave way to the Abbasid in 750, Abd-ar-Rahman I (later titled Al-Dāakhil), an Umayyad exile, established himself as the Emir of Córdoba in 756, ousting Yūsuf al-Fihri. Over a thirty-year reign, he established his rule over the whole of al-Andalus, overcoming partisans both of the al-Fihri family and of the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad, whose title he refused to acknowledge. For the next century and a half, his descendants continued as emirs of Córdoba, with nominal control over the rest of al-Āndalus (and sometimes parts of western North Africa) but with real control, particularly over the marches along the Christian border, varying greatly depending on the competence of the individual emir. Indeed, Abdallah ibn Muhammad, who was emir around 900, had very little control beyond the area immediately around Córdoba.

However, Abdallah's grandson Abd-ar-Rahman III, who succeeded him in 912, not only rapidly restored Ummayad power throughout al-Andalus but extended it into western North Africa as well. In 929 he proclaimed himself Caliph, elevating the emirate to a position competing in prestige not only with the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad but also the Shi'ite Caliph in Tunis — with whom he was competing for control of North Africa.

The period of the Caliphate can reasonably be regarded as the golden age of al-Andalus. Irrigation techniques and crops – for instance, rice, oranges and a variety of other citrus fruits – imported from the Middle East provided the area around Córdoba and some other Āndalusī cities with an agricultural infrastructure well in advance of that of any other part of western Europe. Córdoba under the Caliphate, with a population of perhaps 500,000, was far larger and more prosperous than any other city of the time in Europe, with the exception of Constantinople, and competed on at least equal terms as a cultural centre with anywhere else in the Islamic world. The work of its philosophers and scientists would be a significant formative influence on the intellectual life of medieval western Europe.

Muslims and non-Muslims often came from abroad to study in the famous libraries and universities of al-Āndalus. The most noted of these was Michael Scot, who took Ibn Rushd's (Averroes') works, and his commentaries on many of Aristotle's works as well as the works of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) to Italy. This event was to have a significant impact on the formation of the European Renaissance.

The First Taifa Period

The Córdoba Caliphate effectively collapsed during a ruinous civil war between 1009 and 1013, although it was not finally abolished until 1031. Al-Āndalus now broke up into a number of mostly independent states called taifas. These were however militarily too weak to defend themselves against repeated raids and demands for tribute from the Christian states based in the north and west, which had already spread from their initial strongholds in Galicia, Asturias, the Basque country and the Carolingian Marca Hispanica to become the Kingdoms of Navarre, León, Castile and Aragon and the County of Barcelona. Eventually, raids turned into conquest, and in response, the taifa kings requested help from the Almoravids, the fundamentalist-Islamic rulers of the Maghreb. However, the Almoravids conquered the taifa kingdoms after defeating the Castilian King Alfonso VI at the battles of Zallāqah and Uclés.

Almoravids, Almohads and Marīnids

The Almoravids were substantially less tolerant of Christians and Jews than the earlier Umayyads, and were succeeded in the 12th century by the even more fanatical Almohads, another Berber dynasty, after the defeat of the Castilian Alfonso VIII at the Battle of Alarcos. In 1212 a coalition of Christian kings under the leadership of the Castilian Alfonso VIII defeated the Almohads at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. The Muslims were driven off from southern Spain in the next few decades (from 1212 to 1269) until only the kingdom of Granada remained. Finally, the Marīnids, the last Berber dynasty that attempted to retake control of al-Āndalus, were defeated by the Castilian Alfonso XI at the Battle of Salado in 1340.

The Emirate of Granada

A manuscript page of the Qur'an in the script developed in al-Andalus, 12th century

Granada survived for three more centuries as a vassal state of Castile. It is known in modern times for architectural gems such as the Alhambra. On January 2, 1492, Boabdil, the leader of the Emirate of Gharnatah (Granada), the last Muslim stronghold in Iberia surrendered, in the "Capitulation of Granada," to armies of Christian Spain, recently united under the Catholic Monarchs Isabella I of Castile (Isabel la Católica) and Ferdinand II of Aragon (Fernando el Católico or Ferran el Catòlic). Al-Āndalus ceased to exist.

Aftermath

In 1502, the Capitulation's extension of tolerance was rescinded, and the remaining Muslims were forced to leave Spain or convert to Christianity, as moriscos. They were an important portion of the peasants in some territories, like Aragon, Valencia or Andalusia, until their systematic expulsion in the years from 1609 to 1614. Henri Lapeyre has estimated that this affected 300,000 out of a total of 8 million inhabitants at the time.

The Moorish domination of parts of the peninsula had a profound effect on language, art and culture, especially in the south. Examples include the many Arabic or Arabic-influenced words in Spanish, and architecture such as Granada's Alhambra.

The name of today's Andalusia (Spanish Andalucía) comes from al-Āndalus, as this southern province was among the last territories to pass from Moorish to Spanish Christian hands.

Society

Jewish Soldiers fighting with the forces of Muhammed IX, Nasrid Sultan of Granada, at the Battle of Higueruela, 1431.

The society of the Al-Andalus was made up of three main groups: Muslims, Christians and Jews. The Muslims, though united on the religious level, had several ethnic divisions, the main being the distinction between the Arabs and the berbers. Mozarabs were Christians that had long lived under Muslim domination and so had come to adopt many Arabic customs, art and words, while holding onto old Christian rituals and their own Latin derived languages. Each of these communities inhabited a separate part of the cities.

The Arabs settled in the fertile lands of the south and in the Ebro Valley in the north east, while the Berbers, the bulk of the invaders, lived in the mountainous regions of what is now the north of Portugal and the harsh and infertile Meseta Central, before the great revolt of 741, when a great number returned to North Africa, decrying Arab duplicity. The Jews worked mainly as tax collectors, in trade or as doctors or ambassadors. At the end of the fifteenth century there were about 50,000 Jews in Granada and roughly 100,000 in the whole of Islamic Spain.Wasserstein, 1995, p. 101.

Non-Muslims (Dhimmi) under the Caliphate

See also: Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain

Tolerance or Repression

The treatment of non-Muslims in the Caliphate has been a subject of considerable interest from scholars and commentators, especially those interested in drawing parallels to the co-existence of Muslims and non-Muslims in the modern world. Some argue that - for at least part of the history of al-Āndalus - Jews were treated significantly better in Muslim-controlled Spain than in Christian Northern Europe. However, the exact extent and nature of this period of tolerance (sometimes called a "Golden Age") has become a subject of debate and is often used to back personal or political agendas.

Bernard Lewis states::The claim to tolerance, now much heard from Muslim apologists and more especially from apologists for Islam, is also new and of alien origin. It is only very recently that some defenders of Islam have begun to assert that their socety in the past accorded equal status to non-Muslims. No such claim is made by spokesmen for resurgent Islam,' and historically there is no doubt that they are right. Traditional Islamic societies neither accorded such equality nor pretended that they were so doing. Indeed, in the old order, this would have been regarded not as a merit but as a dereliction of duty. How could one accord the same treatment to those who follow the true faith and those who willfully reject it? This would be a theological as well as a logical absurdity.In Chapter 1 on page 4 of his book The Jews in Islam.

Princeton University Professor Mark Cohen, in his 1995 book on the subject,Under Crescent and Cross discusses how the belief of a so-called "Golden Age" of peaceful co-existence in al-Āndalus (between Muslims and dhimmis, especially Jewish ones) was bolstered in the nineteenth and twentieth century by two sources. On one side, Jewish scholars like Heinrich Graetz used the story of tolerant Al-Andalus to draw contrasts to the increasing oppression of Jews in mainly Christian Eastern Europe; European intolerance of Jews did eventually lead to the Holocaust. On the other side, Arab scholars who wanted to show that modern State of Israel shattered a previously existing harmony between Jews and Arabs in Palestine under the Ottoman rule (see History of the Jews in Turkey) pointed to the supposed utopia of the Golden Age as an example of previous relationships. Cohen argues that the image is overstated, but that the "countermyth" of persecution is also an oversimplification.

The debate about the conditions of non-Muslims continues however. For example, María Rosa Menocal, a specialist in Iberian literature at Yale University, has argued that "Tolerance was an inherent aspect of Andalusian society".The Ornament of the World by María Rosa Menocal, Accessed, 12 June, 2006. Menocal's 2003 book, The Ornament of the World, argues that the Jewish dhimmis living under the Caliphate, while allowed fewer rights than Muslims, were still better off than in other parts of Christian Europe. Jews from other parts of Europe made their way to al-Āndalus, where they were tolerated - as were Christians of sects regarded as heretical by various European Christian states.

The work of Menocal and other such scholars has been the subject of criticism from commentators such as Robert Spencer and Andrew Bostom, who regard Menocal's description of al-Āndalus as a myth that ignores the realities of dhimmi life. These critics cite Muslim restrictions on dhimmis: they could not build new churches or synagogues or repair old ones, they had to practice their faiths quietly and privately, and they were not to proselytize. Dhimmis were required to wear an identifying belt called the zunnar, which was easily recognized because of its color - blue for Christians and yellow for Jews. Dhimmis were also prohibited from employing Muslims and had to pay a poll tax (jizya). They were also forbidden from holding public office. According to David Wasserstein of Tel Aviv University, however,

In economic life there were scarcely any real restrictions on Jews, or dhimmis, qua Jews or dhimmis. In religious life real constraints on Jewish practice were minimal and relatively unimportant... In literary activity, there was scarcely any discrimination against Jews, and indeed it may be argued, with great force, that, at least in literary terms, the Jewish encounter with Arab Islam was highly productive, and especially so in al-Andalus.Wasserstein, 1995, p. 103.

Other proponents of the "tolerant Andalusia" theory point out that there were many examples of dhimmis holding state offices, despite the technical prohibitation. One notable Andalusian example among these is that of Hasdai ibn Shaprut (915-990), a prominent Jew who controlled the customs (among other duties) in Córdoba, but other Jews served as Viziers or court physicians. Proponents argue that dhimmis enjoyed considerable autonomy within the Islamic state; in matters of family law and religious practice, they were governed by their own authorities. These authorities collected the poll tax and mediated between the state and the dhimmi community. Within their allotted bounds, the dhimmis had a certain freedom, yet were always second-class citizens when compared to Muslims.

However, it must be noted that non-Muslims were treated with much more tolerance in Islamic Spain than non-Christians or even non-Catholics (Arians) were in the rest of Europe at the time, as well as for many more centuries to come.

Rise and Fall of Tolerance

Image of a Jewish cantor reading the Passover story in al-Āndalus, from a 14th century Spanish Haggadah.

The Caliphate treated non-Muslims differently at different times. The longest period of tolerance began after 912, with the reign of Abd-ar-Rahman III and his son, Al-Hakam II where the Jews of Al-Andalus prospered, devoting themselves to the service of the Caliphate of Cordoba, to the study of the sciences, and to commerce and industry, especially to trading in silk and slaves, in this way promoting the prosperity of the country. Southern Spain became an asylum for the oppressed Jews of other countries.

Christians, braced by the example of their co-religionists across the borders of al-Āndalus, sometimes asserted the claims of Christianity and knowingly courted martyrdom, even during these tolerant periods. For example, forty-eight Christians of Córdoba were decapitated for religious offences against Islam. They became known as the Martyrs of Córdoba. Many of the Christians executed deliberately courted martyrdom by publicly declaiming against Islam inside mosques, insulting Muhammad and making declarations of Christian religious beliefs considered blasphemous in Islam. These deaths played out, not in a single spasm of religious unrest, but over an extended period of time; dissenters who were fully aware of the fates of their predecessors chose what amounted to suicide as a form of protest against the Islamic state.Orthodox Europe: St Eulogius and the Blessing of Cordoba, Accessed 12 June, 2006.

With the death of al-Hakam III in 976, however, the situation worsened for non-Muslims in general. The first major persecution occurred on December 30, 1066 when the Jews were expelled from Granada and fifteen hundred families were killed when they did not leave. Starting in 1090 with the invasion of the Almoravids, the situation worsened further. Even under the Almoravids, however most Jews prospered. With the defeat of the Almoravids in 1148 by the Almohads, however, many Jews were forced to accept the Islamic faith; the conquerors confiscated the property of many and sold them into slavery. Some Jewish educational institutions were closed, and synagogues destroyed.

During these successive waves of violence against non-Muslims, many Jewish and even Muslim scholars left the Muslim-controlled portion of Spain for the then-still relatively tolerant city of Toledo, which had been reconquered in 1085 by Christian forces. Some Jews joined the armies of the Christians (about 40,000), while others joined the Almoravids in the fight against Alfonso VI of Castile.

Culture

Philosophy

One of the most significant contributions made in al-Āndalus was to the advancement of theological philosophy.

From the earliest days, the Umayyads wanted to be seen as intellectual rivals to the Abbasids, and for Córdoba to have libraries and educational institutions to rival Baghdad. Although there was a clear rivalry between the two powers, freedom to travel between the two Caliphates was allowed, which helped spread new ideas and innovations over time.

The historian Said Al-Andalusi wrote that Caliph Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Rahman had collected libraries of books and patroned men to study medicine and "ancient sciences". Later, al-Mustansir (Al-Hakam II) vastly improved this by importing philosophical volumes as well as varying series of books on diverse subjects, including medicine and music from the East to his new university and libraries in Córdoba. Under his reign Córdoba had become one of the worlds most important cities for medicine and philosophical debate.

However, when his son Hisham II took over, his real power was ceded to the hajib, al-Mansur Ibn Abi Aamir. Al-Mansur was a distinctly religious man and disapproved of the sciences of astronomy, logic and especially astrology, so much so that many books on these subjects, which had been preserved and collected at great expense by Al-Hakam II, were burned publicly. It was not long, however, after the death of Al-Mansur (1002) that interest in philosophy sparked up again. Numerous scholars came to the forefront, including Abu Uthman Ibn Fathun, who wrote and taught extensively on a wide variety of subjects including Music and Grammar but whose masterwork was the philosophical treatise "Tree of Wisdom". Another outstanding scholar in astronomy and astrology was Maslamah Ibn Ahmad al-Majriti (died 1008), an intrepid traveller who journeyed all over the Islamic countries, and beyond, and who kept in touch with the Brethren of Purity. Indeed, it is said to have been him who brought the "Epistles of the Brethren of Purity" to al-Āndalus and who added the compendium to these 51 epistles, although it is strongly possible that this was added later by another of the name al-Majriti. Another book believed to be his is the Ghayat al-Hakim "The Aim of the Sage", a book which dealt with varying philosophical ideas including a synthesis of Platonism with Hermetic philosophy. Its use of incantations led the book to be widely dismissed in later years, although the Sufi communities did keep studies of it.

A prominent follower of al-Majriti was Abu al-Hakam al-Kirmani, who aside from the studies of philosophy was also a particularly keen scholar of Geometry. A follower of his was the great Abu Bakr Ibn al-Sayigh, known to most Arabic Speakers as Ibn Bajjah, known mostly to the west as Avempace.

Jewish philosophy and culture

With the relative tolerance of al-Āndalus and the decline of the previous center of Jewish thought in Babylonia, al-Āndalus became the center of Jewish intellectual endeavors. Poets and commentators like Judah Halevi (1086-1145) and Dunash ben Labrat (920-990) contributed to the cultural life of al-Āndalus, but the area was even more important to the development of Jewish philosophy. A stream of Jewish philosophers, cross-fertilizing with Muslim philosophers, (see Joint Jewish and Islamic Philosophies) culminated in the most important Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages, Maimonides (1135-1205), though he did not actually do any of his work in al-Āndalus, as, when he was 13, his family fled persecution by the Almohades.

Etymology of al-Āndalus

The etymology of the word al-Āndalus is uncertain. The word is popularly thought to be derived from the Vandals, the Germanic tribe who settled in southern Iberia and Northern Africa. However, scholars are by no means in agreement. The notion of it originating with the Vandals, who supposedly devastated southern Spain so severely in a mere twenty-two years of tenure (407-429) as to leave their name forever imprinted on it, gained in popularity over time and survives - but it is a theory put forth without much basis, bolstered perhaps by homophony. Three possible etymologies have been advanced in recent times. The first, the Vandal link, is largely disregarded now, and the question of the origin of the Arabic name, given to the entire peninsula, is still open to debate. It should be noted that there is no documented source which supports theories pointing to a pre-Islamic origin of the name Al-Andalus. Some scholars and etymologist believe the word is drived from Arabic meaning The Land of the Vandals specificaly referring to the Moors who occupied the Iberian peninsula.

Vandalícia

Reinhart Dozy (1820-1883), Dutch author of the famous History of the Muslims of Spain (4 vols., Turner, Madrid, 1984), advanced the theory according to which the name of al-Āndalus is an Arabic rendition of Vandalicia or Vandalucía, on the assumption that the Roman province of Hispania Baetica (southern Spain) could have acquired and retained this name-association, not in Iberia itself, but among the Arabs of the Maghreb. The possible reason may be the existence of a Vandal kingdom in southern Spain before its conquest by the Visigoth kingdom centered in Toledo. Escaping from them, the Vandals invaded North Africa and established a new kingdom in Carthage.

Miguel de Cervantes, in his Don Quixote, attests the use of Vandalia in the XVII century as a cultivated synonym of Andalusia: a would-be knight errant searching for a poetic name for his dame, one Casilda from Andalusia, chooses Casildea de Vandalia.Don Quijote de la Mancha, Accessed 12 June, 2006.

Atlántida

The Spanish philologist Joaquín Vallvé Bermejo, in his The Territorial Divisions of Muslim Spain (CSIC, Madrid, 1986), is of the opinion that Al-Andalus, as in Jazirat al-Andalus, translates pure and simply as "Atlantis" or "island of the Atlantic":

Arabic texts offering the first mentions of the island of al-Andalus and the sea of al-Andalus become extraordinarily clear if we substitute this expressions with "Atlántida" or "Atlantic". The same can be said with reference to Hercules and the Amazons whose island, according to Arabic commentaries of these Greek and Latin legends, was located in jauf al-Andalus — that is, to the north or interior of the Atlantic Ocean.

Landahlauts

An etymology was advanced by Halm in "Al-Andalus und Gothica Sors".In Welt des Orients, vol. 66, 1989, pp. 252-263, and drawn upon by Marianne Barrucand/Achim Bednorz in Arquitectura Islámica en Andalucía, Köln, Taschen, 1992, pp 12-13. Halm dismisses any links with the Vandals, an association he finds without foundation, and offers instead an interesting explanation. According to him the name "Al-Andalus" is simply an Arabic rendition of the Visigothic name given to the Roman province of Baetica. The Visigoths, following the custom of their Germanic predecessors, parcelled out the conquered territories by drawing lots, and the allotments to anyone, with their corresponding land, was called "Sortes Gothicae". Contemporary texts, still written in Latin, refer to the Gothic kingdom as a whole as "Gothica sors" (singular). It is reasonable to suppose then that the corresponding Gothic designation "Landahlauts" (allotted, inherited, drawn land), in its phonetic form — "landalos" — became easily and spontaneously, to Arabic ears, "Al-Andalus".
*Lôt (Gothic hlauts): allotment, inheritance; cf. Old High German hlôz, modern German Los, which passed into French as lot and Castilian as lote; whence "lottery," "loterie," "lotería," etc.

Footnotes

References

*Cohen, Mark (1995). Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages Princeton University Press. ISBN 069101082X
*Collins, Roger (1989). The Arab Conquest of Spain, 710–797, Blackwell. ISBN 0631194053
*Kennedy, Hugh (1996).Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus, Longman. ISBN 0582495156
*Kraemer, Joel (Jul, 1997). Comparing Crescent and Cross. The Journal of Religion, 77(3), pp. 449-454. (Book review)
*Omaar, Rageh, An Islamic History of Europe. video documentary , BBC Four: August 2005.
*Sanchez-Albornoz, Claudio (1974) El Islam de España y el Occidente. Madrid.
*Wasserstein, David J. (1995). Jewish élites in Al-Andalus. In Daniel Frank (Ed.). The Jews of Medieval Islam: Community, Society and Identity. Brill. ISBN 9004104046

External links

* The routes of al-Andalus (from the unesco web site)
* Muslim contributions to Andalus
* history and influences of Andalusian music

Al-Andalus: Encyclopedia BETA

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