Andalusia, Islamic Civilization

ANDALUSIA

At the end of the Eighth Century, the whole of Andalusia was the most populous, cultured and industrious land of all Europe, and remained so for centuries. Its trade with the outside world was unrivaled, and in this time of economic expansion, the Jews, who had been virtually eliminated from the peninsula in the seventh century by the Christians, grew once more in numbers and flourished. The following description of their position is to be found in Hume's ‘Spanish People’:

Side by side with the new rulers lived the Christians and Jews in peace. The latter rich with commerce and industry were content to let the memory of their oppression by the priest-ridden Goths sleep, now that the prime authors of it had disappeared. Learned in all the arts and sciences, cultured and tolerant, they were treated by the Moors with marked respect, and multiplied exceedingly all over Spain; and, like the Christian Spaniards under Moorish rule - who were called Mozarabes - had cause to thank their now masters for an era of prosperity such as they had never known before.

This tolerance of the Jews and Christians by the Muslims, characterized the early centuries of Islam in Spain. All the Jews and Christians who accepted the Muslims as the rulers of the country were allowed to retain their possessions and their beliefs and religious practices, and to continue their way of life within the framework of the society despite the fact that both these communities denied the continuance of the prophetic tradition beyond their respective prophets, Moses and Jesus, on whom be peace. The Muslims gave the Christians the freedom to make up their own minds. As long as the Muslims of Spain followed the guidance they had been given, they did not molest the Christians and, writes Gibbon:

In a time of tranquillity and justice, the Christians have never been compelled to renounce the Gospel or to embrace the Qur'an.

As in the time of the reign of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, in Italy, however, the Catholic Church was not content with this arrangement. Its members felt bound to impose the official religion on anyone who would not accept their point of view. In the guidance of Islam, there are provisions for the tolerance and acceptance of the Christians and the Jews, the 'people of the Book'. In the religion of the Official Church there was only intolerance and rejection of any religion other than the one it had formulated. By claiming that God had become man, and died for humanity so that everyone who believed this would go straight to 'heaven', it logically followed that there was no longer any need for a prophet on earth. A man could do what he pleased and still go to heaven provided that he bowed before the cross and said he believed in Christ. The appearance of another prophet after Jesus (pbuh), the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), was therefore very embarrassing for the Official Christians, especially when so many people accepted his guidance. In its attempts to fulfill its claims and aspirations, the Church was bound to try and subvert Islam, and to eradicate the Muslims, in the same way that it had eliminated the Unitarian followers of Jesus before them.

While the Muslims held to the guidance they had been given, they were protected. As with the Arian Goths, the Muslims became vulnerable to the activities of the Catholic Church, once they began to wander from the guidance they had been given; the dynamic process of flowering in which the community of Cordoba bloomed during the ninth and tenth centuries, inevitably meant that the original simplicity of its first Muslim inhabitants was lost. The richer it became the further it departed from the blue-print of the first community in Madina al-Munawwara, which had been richest when its members were most poor. The Prophet said that he did not fear poverty for his community but riches. He also said that every nation has its trial, and that the trial of the Muslims would be wealth.

Al-Mansur was the last of the 'famous' rulers during the first flowering of Islam in Andalusia. He assumed control of the khalifate in Andalusia after the death of Al-Hakam, the son of 'Abdu'r-Rahman III, who had appointed his young son Hisham to succeed him. Allegedly acting on Hisham's behalf, AI-Mansur proceeded to eliminate all those who wished to seize power. He was noted for his decisive actions and vigilance:

The following anecdote has been preserved on the authority of Shu'alah: I said one night to Al-Mansur, perceiving that he was watching, 'I am afraid that our Lord sits up too much at night, and that his body wants more sleep and rest than is allowed to it, and no-one is better acquainted than he is with the ill-effects produced by want of proper rest upon the nerves.' He replies, 'O Shu'alah, kings should never sleep whilst their subjects are at rest; for if I were to have my full sleep, there would be in the whole of this metropolis nothing but sleepers.'

Al-Mansur was very active against the Christians who, sensing the impending collapse of unity amongst the Muslims in Andalusia, had begun to make their first incursions into the lands ruled by the Muslims. In all Al-Mansur led fifty-two expeditions against the Christians, two each year and in 997, on his fiftieth expedition he took Santiago de Compostela, the alleged burial-spot of St James. When they arrived in Santiago everyone had deserted it, with the exception of one monk, who was allowed to go free. The tomb was not disturbed, but all the buildings were destroyed. Unfortunately Al-Mansur also destroyed other Christian places of worship on his expeditions, and this inevitably resulted in similar acts of retaliation once the Christians began to gain a foothold in Andalusia. Among the meritorious actions of Al-Mansur the following are particularly recorded:

He wrote with his own hand a Qur'an, which he always carried with him on his military expeditions, and in which he used constantly to read. He collected and kept all the dust which adhered to his garments during his marches to the country of the unbelievers, or in his battles with them. Accordingly whenever he halted at a place, his servants came up to him and carefully collected the dust in kerchiefs, until a good-sized bag was filled, which he always carried with him, intending to have it mixed with the perfumes for the purpose of embalming his body He also took with him his grave clothes, thus being always prepared to meet death wherever it should take him. The winding sheet was made of linen grown in the lands inherited from his father, and spun and woven by his own daughters. He used continually to ask Allah to permit him to die in His service and in war against the unbelievers, and this desire was granted. He became celebrated for the purity of his intentions, the knowledge of his own wrong actions, his fear of his Creator, his numerous campaigns against the Christians, and many other virtues and accomplishments which it would take too long to enumerate. Whenever the name of Allah was mentioned in his presence, he never failed to mention it also; and if ever he was tempted to do an act which might deserve the chastisement of his Lord, he invariably resisted the temptation. Notwithstanding this, he enjoyed all the pleasures of this world, which make the delight of kings, with the exception only of wine, the use of which he left off entirely two years before he died.

Al-Mansur fell ill and died while he was on his fifty-second expedition against the Christians. His son, al-Muzaffar succeeded him, but died only six years later. He was no sooner buried than a squabble' over the leadership of the Muslims developed between the family of Al-Mansur, Hisham II, the grandson of 'Abdu'r-Rahman III, who was by now incapable of ruling, and several other contenders, including a man called Al-Mahdi, who eventually seized power:

Al-Mahdi is represented by the historians of the time as a man of depraved morals, a tyrannical ruler and a blood-shedder. Ibn Bassam says that he had a garden in which the heads of his enemies were fixed on stakes sunk in the ground.

Al-Mahdi went the way of all tyrants and was finally deposed and killed by a combined force of Muslims and Christians to whom the Muslims had turned for help. The struggle for power continued and the country was plunged into civil war. The body politic of the Muslims divided and divided again. Within fifteen years of Al-Mansur's death, the whole of Andalusia had been carved up into numerous small kingdoms, each with its own ruler. They fought amongst each other continually often enlisting the aid of the Christians who were only too happy to oblige:

...for whilst they united their forces, and even invited people of distant nations to share in the attack, the Muslim rulers of Andalusia saw with perfect unconcern, perhaps with secret joy the dominions of their neighbors or rivals exposed to all the devastations of the Christian foe.

Those kingdoms which directly bordered on the land occupied by the Christians in the north of the peninsula, having lost their unity were obliged to pay the Christians a yearly tribute in order to maintain their independence. In order to pay this tribute and to maintain the rich lives of their courts, the rulers of these petty kingdoms imposed heavy taxes on the people under their control. These taxes were far in excess of the limits of taxation defined in Islamic law.

Those who fought to maintain or restore the practice of Islam in all its aspects thus found themselves fighting not only the Christians, but also the so-called Muslims. It was a hopeless struggle. They found themselves in a process of collapse and decay which could not be reversed. As long as the Muslims of Andalusia had remained united in their practice of Islam, they had continued to expand. As soon as they divided, their numbers began to diminish, and the Christians were able to commence the business of taking over the country. Furthermore, because of the unfortunate split between the East and the West within the Ummah of Islam, no help from the Muslims in the East was forthcoming. This disunity was one of the fundamental factors which contributed towards the eventual elimination of Islam from Spain, for it was a weakness of which the Christians took full advantage.

Once the Muslims in Andalus had divided, the armies of the Church gained a foothold in the country and, aided by the Christians living within the Muslim domains, who had grown in numbers and flourished under the tolerant Muslim rule, their hold over the country continued to grow. As in the case of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, the atrocities committed by the advancing Christian armies moved the Muslims to take revenge on the Christians within their kingdoms. This only weakened their position in the land, and increased the determination of the Christians to conquer them. Retaliation brought about retaliation. Intolerance bred intolerance. Revenge stimulated revenge. 

Commencing with the Burgundian Crusades of 1017, the precursors of the more notorious crusades to the east, the Christians began to make significant inroads into the Iberian peninsula. The taking of Barbastro in 1064, in which thousands of Muslims were slaughtered immediately upon a long siege having been lifted after the two sides had signed a peace treaty, set off a grim pattern for the reconquest of Andalusia by the Christians:

It was an invariable custom with the Christians, whenever they took a town by force of arms, to ravish the daughters in the presence of their fathers, and the women before the eyes of their husbands and families. But on the taking of Barbastro the excesses of this kind committed by thorn pass all belief; the Muslims had never before experienced anything like it. In short, such were the crimes and excesses committed by the Christians on this occasion that there is no pen eloquent enough to describe them.

Under the leadership of Alfonso VI, town after town fell into the hands of the Christians, and by the 1072 he was the ruler of Leon, Castile and Portugal. His activities culminated in his capture of Toledo after a seven year siege:

...for finding his own power increased through the extinction of the Khalifate, and perceiving the weak and helpless state to which the Muslims had been reduced by their wrong actions, he overran and plundered the flat country and so pressed Al-Qadir that he obliged him to surrender his capital, Toledo, in the year 478 AH (1085 AD), on Condition, however, that he should assist him in gaining possession of Valencia, which he did. There is no power or strength but in Allah, the Great!, the High!

After the capitulation of Toledo, Alfonso VI proclaimed himself emperor of all Spain, and within a very short space of time was exacting annual tributes from virtually all the Muslim petty kingdoms or 'tazfa' as they were called.

Toledo, the ancient capital of the Visigoths, subsequently became a great centre of learning, in which many philosophical works, which had been rediscovered or written in Muslim Spain, were translated into Latin and other European languages, and from there percolated through the rest of Europe. These works were largely based on the Greek philosophers, especially Plato and Aristotle. Because of this, the last century especially has seen a concerted drive by the Christian 'scholars' to discredit Islam by attempting to 'prove' that Islam derives from the teachings of the ancient Greek philosophers, and can therefore be dispensed with, since it logically follows that, if this were true, it has no primary source of its own. However the Qur'an has, of course, survived up to the present day uncontaminated by human interference and we know too much about the Prophet Muhammad (s) for their arguments to be convincing in the least. The truth is that the Muslims, basing themselves firmly on the Qur'an, breathed new life into the philosophical tradition whose effects arc visible up till the present day.

Al-Qadir agreed to surrender Toledo to Alfonso VI on condition that the latter helped him to gain control of Valencia. The 'Christian' King kept his promise, and Al-Qadir gladly took over the rule of a city:

whose inhabitants were then untrained to war and as little used to the hard life of scamp as to the handling of the spear and the sword. They were, on the contrary plunged in pleasure and sloth, and thought of nothing but eating and drinking.

Al-Qadir retained his position as ruler of Valencia by paying an annual tribute to the notorious El Cid, who was busy establishing Roman Catholicism in the east of Andalusia whilst Alfonso VI concentrated on the centre and the west of the country.

El Cid's small kingdom in eastern Andalusia had developed largely as a result of his having been exiled by Alfonso VI. He began his exile by acting as a mercenary who hired out his help to one Muslim ruler who wished to conquer another. The results of his activities thus helped to divide the Muslims. He always kept his word, however and did not lose himself in sensual pleasures. In this respect he was more just than the tyrants whom he either helped to overthrow or from he exacted tribute. He thus enjoyed a grudging respect from many of the Muslims who suffered under their own tyrant leaders.

It is clear, however, that El Cid was only prepared to administer justice as long as he remained in power. When, at the end of the eleventh century a new breath of Islam swept into Andalusia from North Africa with the advent of the Muslims known as the Almoravids or Murabits, he dealt very harshly with all those who responded to this new awakening. The coming of the Murabits not only united El Cid with Alfonm VI once more, but also exposed the true nature of his activity which, once stripped of its glamour involved the removal of the practice of Islam, and the institution of the Roman Catholicism in its place. Indeed it was the success of the Christians in this, their principal activity which caused the Muslims of Andalusia to unite once more, and to seek the help of their brothers across the Straits of Gibraltar. 

Allah:  Allah is the proper name in Arabic for The One and Only God, The Creator and Sustainer of the universe. It is used by the Arab Christians and Jews for the God (Eloh-im in Hebrew). The word Allah does not have a plural or gender. Allah does not have any associate or partner, and He does not beget nor was He begotten. SWT is an abbreviation of Arabic words that mean 'Glory Be To Him.'
s or pbuh:  Peace Be Upon Him.  This expression is used for all Prophets of Allah.

  Major Events in the Life of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)

Copyright © 1996, 1997  Dr. A. Zahoor
All Rights Reserved
Excerpts from Ahmad Thomson's book on the subject of Islam in Spain, 1989.
"Islam in Andalus," Revised Edition by A. Thomson and M. Ata'ur-Rahim, Ta-Ha Publishers, London, 1996.

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