Ibn Tumart’s attacks on anthropomorphism and legalism, combined with his tirades against the Almoravid custom of allowing the women of the ruling family to be seen in public unveiled, put him on a collision course with the ruling regime. He found a responsive audience among his own people, the Masmuda Berbers of the western High Atlas Mountains. They were sedentary Berbers, and traditionally suspicious of the nomadic Sanhaja. Ibn Tumart established a ribat at Tinmal in the foothills of the High Atlas some seventy miles south of Marrakesh and began consolidating his power in the area by subduing rival tribes. He created a genealogy for himself that traced his descent from the Prophet, and he completed his ideological challenge to the Almoravids (and to all other existing political authorities) by claiming to be the expected Mahdi.
Ibn Tumart died in 1130 and was succeeded by ‘Abd al-Mu’min, a Zanata Berber who had gained Ibn Tumart’s confidence. The fact that ‘Abd al-Mu’min was not a Masmuda Berber is significant. It demonstrated that the Almohads were serious about being less clannish and stratified than previous regimes. ‘Abd al-Mu’min, who continued to insist that Ibn Tumart had been the Mahdi, assumed the title of Ibn Tumart’s caliph. ‘Abd al-Mu’min concentrated on taking over Almoravid territory during his thirty-three years as leader of the Almohads. From 1130 to 1147, he conquered Morocco, capturing Marrakesh in 1147 and making the Almoravid capital his own.
‘Abd al-Mu’min’s successes against the Almoravids encouraged the opponents of the Almoravids in Andalus. As early as 1140, some of the cities there were evicting their Almoravid garrisons and becoming independent. As a result, in 1143 the Christian kingdoms began taking advantage of the chaos to lay siege to many of the weak Muslim city–states. The most notable Christian victory of the period was the campaign led by the king of the nascent Portuguese state, who invited a combined force of English, Flemish, and Norman troops to join his Portuguese soldiers in a siege of Lisbon. The city fell to the Christian alliance in 1147. Upon the fall of Lisbon, ‘Abd al-Mu’min invaded Andalus, and the Muslim city–states now faced the prospect of capture by the Christian kingdoms or by the Almohads. Several surrendered to ‘Abd al-Mu’min, and several others put up only perfunctory resistance to him. As a result, during 1147–1148, ‘Abd al-Mu’min came into possession of most of the southwestern quadrant of the peninsula. He then turned to the North African coast, where the Normans and their Berber allies were entrenched from Tunis east to Tripoli. He won Ifriqiya from them in 1160, and his son and grandson captured the Andalusi cities in Murcia and Valencia in the 1170s.
The Almohad regime was at the height of its power from about 1175 to about 1210. The empire was never totally at peace due to Berber rebellions in North Africa and wars against the Iberian Christians, but these disturbances were on the fringes of the empire. Most of the interior enjoyed peace and economic prosperity for extended periods of time. Marrakesh became the capital of a western Muslim empire that stretched from the central Iberian Peninsula to Tripolitania (western Libya). With the wealth derived from its control of the Saharan trade routes, the Almohad regime commissioned several spectacular architectural monuments that still remain, especially in Marrakesh, Rabat, and Seville. Almohad caliphs patronized scholars from Andalus, the Maghrib, Egypt, Syria, and the Hijaz. A literary and intellectual culture flourished in North Africa as never before. It was centered in Fez, but serious learning spread as far south as Sous—south of the Atlas Mountains—for the first time.
The Almohad Empire seemed secure against its divided Christian neighbors, particularly after its decisive victory over Castile and Leon at Alarcos in 1195. For several years after the battle, the Castilian king would not attack Almohad forces even when the latter marched through his territories around Toledo. The line that demarcated Muslim territory from Christian-controlled areas ran from just below Lisbon to just below Barcelona and seemed impregnable to Christian attack. Despite appearances, however, the Almohad empire had little support outside the Masmuda community. Its sudden collapse would toll the death knell of Andalus.
The Disintegration of the Almohads and of Andalus
The Almohad regime was not popular in Andalus, and it was the target of continuous revolts by Berbers and Arabs in its distant hinterlands in the Maghrib. Almohad doctrine was never successfully implemented. The teaching that Ibn Tumart had been the Mahdi seemed blasphemous to some, and the rejection of all the schools of Islamic law was not what the advocates of legal reform had in mind. They wanted to bring Maliki law into line with the methodological consensus of the other madhhabs, not to abolish it altogether. Moreover, to be without law proved to be impossible in the reality of everyday life. Even within Almohad ruling circles, the teachings of the founder came into question. In 1229, the Almohad caliph al-Ma’mun (1229–1230) proclaimed that there was no Mahdi other than Jesus. He also officially reintroduced Maliki law, naming members of the reform movement to positions as qadi.
In 1212–1213, the Almohads suffered almost simultaneous attacks from the north and the south. Throughout the whole period of their occupation of Andalus, they had benefitted from quarrels among the Iberian Christian kingdoms that made it impossible for the Reconquista to resume. With the accession to the papacy of Innocent III (1198–1216), that changed. Using both persuasion and the threat of excommunication, he organized a truce among the Christian kingdoms, emphasizing the peninsula’s special status as a crusading zone. Moreover, a powerful new Christian kingdom had emerged during the first half of the twelfth century. Aragon, heretofore merely a province of Navarre, subsequently incorporated Catalonia and its great city of Barcelona. With Innocent’s active financial support, in 1212 Alfonso VIII of Castile led the combined Christian forces at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, some seventy miles east of Cordoba. The battle shattered the army of the Almohads, although the victors fell to squabbling among themselves and did not take advantage of their opportunity to seize Andalus.
The following year the Almohad caliph died, leaving no adult son. In Marrakesh, disputes flared over the succession, and a Berber group known as the Banu Marin, or Marinids, took advantage of the confusion to advance into the empire. The Marinids, pastoralists who lived in southeastern Morocco on the edge of the Sahara, had never submitted to Almohad control. Now they replicated the Almoravid and Almohad pattern of piecemeal conquests of the Maghrib and, in 1269, achieved the capture of Marrakesh. The Marinids moved their capital to Fez, and their leader took the title of caliph in the early fourteenth century. They remained the dominant power in Morocco until 1465.
In the wake of the devastation of the Almohad army at Las Navas de Tolosa, the Christian kingdoms were afforded the luxury of being able to quarrel for over a decade, secure in the knowledge that Almohad attention was focused on the Marinid threat. With the reunification of Leon and Castile in 1230, however, the foundation was laid for the definitive end of Muslim rule in the area. In the absence of the Almohad army and with the city–states fighting each other again, Castile conquered Cordoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248 (the latter with the aid of five hundred men sent by the king’s vassal, the Muslim ruler of Granada!). The Muslim inhabitants of the two cities were then expelled and forced to find new homes in the area. When Aragon took the city of Valencia in 1238 after a two-year siege, the Muslims there, too, were expelled, leaving a practically empty city for Christians from Aragon to settle.
Over the next two decades the rest of the province of Valencia was systematically absorbed, and in 1266 Murcia fell. Meanwhile, between 1234 and 1249, all the lands south of Lisbon and west of the Guadiana River were brought under the authority of the Portuguese crown, and that country took on the shape that it would have to this day. Of the former territory of Andalus, only Granada remained as a Muslim province, and throughout its remaining history of two-and-a-half centuries it was rarely independent. Most of the time it was a vassal of Castile and was required to pay tribute; when it failed to do so, it suffered punitive raids.
Of all the regions won by the Umayyad co
nquests of the seventh and eighth centuries, Andalus was the only one to be lost permanently from the Dar al-Islam. The Frankish Crusaders had tried to take western Syria, but that goal had been unrealistic. The Franks’ supply lines were overextended, and their neighbors were wealthy and populous Muslim regions whose retaliation for the almost unbounded aggression of the Frankish military culture could only be a matter of time. Very different conditions obtained in the Iberian Peninsula. The Muslims had established a vibrant economy and culture, but they could never transcend their ethnic and kinship rivalries, despite their shared religious values. By creating a myriad of belligerent city– states, they replicated the experience of the Greek city–states of the mid-fourth century B.C.E., which were absorbed by a less sophisticated, but more unified and motivated, Macedonia.
The Muslims who now found themselves to be subjects of Christian kings, however, were in a much more difficult position than were the Greeks under Philip II’s Macedonia. How, they wondered, would they be able to be good Muslims in the Dar al-Kufr? Many devout Muslims believed that they had an obligation to emigrate (perform “hijra”) from the lands of unbelief, while others convinced themselves that the situation might be only temporary, for God would not allow His work to be undone. Voluntary emigration is a hard choice to make, and under the circumstances of the time, it was not a popular one. The Muslim community may well have constituted the majority of the population in the Ebro and Guadalquivir valleys, as well as in the provinces of Valencia and Murcia, where the Muslims were almost certainly the majority. Very few individuals found the situation so unbearable that they felt compelled to leave for an unknown destination. Moreover, the kings of Castile and Aragon were intent on developing their new territories, and were not interested in deporting some of their most valuable subjects. Muslims had a reputation as skilled artisans and farmers, while the Jews were known as able administrators, physicians, and merchants.
The Muslims who remained under Christian hegemony eventually came to be known as Mudejars, a term derived from an Arabic word (mudajjan) which can mean “permitted to remain,” but which also suggests “domesticated” or “put to use.” The experience of the Mudejars differed from kingdom to kingdom and even among regions of the same kingdom, but in general during the thirteenth century their status was similar to that of the dhimmis under Muslim rule. Just as the first generation of Muslim conquerors had turned some churches into mosques, now in many cities the major mosques were seized by Christians and turned into churches. Most mosques were left untouched, however, and Muslims were allowed to continue practicing their religion. The call of the muezzin still rang out, the faithful observed the daily prayers, the state recognized tax exemption for properties supporting religious purposes, religious schools stayed open, pilgrims were allowed to go to Mecca, and Islamic marriage and burial practices continued unchanged. Shari‘a courts continued to function, and the qadis became even more important than before in their role as interpreters of the godly life. When Muslims testified in Christian courts, they were allowed to swear on the Qur’an.
On the other hand, the Mudejars had to contend with restrictions on their freedom which reminded them that they were second-class citizens. The most shocking was the experience of the Muslims in about six cities who were expelled from their homes and had to take residence outside the walls. Otherwise, their experience once again echoed that of the dhimmis in the Dar al-Islam. In many places they had to wear distinctive clothing which set them apart from Christians; they were subject to certain annual dues and taxes paid to the crown and they had to pay tithes to the Church for property they bought from a Christian; in some cities they lived by compulsion in separate quarters of their own; city authorities often set aside separate days for the use of municipal bath houses by Christians, Jews, and Muslims; Christian families were not allowed to employ Muslim or Jewish girls as caretakers for their children; sexual relations between Christians and members of the other two groups were punished savagely; Mudejars were expected to abstain from work on Sunday; Muslim proselytizing was strictly forbidden, and in both Aragon and Castile Christian converts to Islam were executed; and a Mudejar who mocked the doctrine of Jesus as the Christ or who took the name of the Virgin in vain would be whipped for the first two offences and have his tongue cut out for a third.
Realignment in the East
While the condition of Muslims in the western Dar al-Islam was taking a turn for the worse, major developments were transforming the east. On the positive side, the Saljuqs of Rum achieved their pinnacle of culture in the first half of the thirteenth century, and the Nizaris achieved a peaceful modus vivendi with the Sunni world. Among the negative developments in the region, the Great Saljuqs collapsed in the face of revolts from their own Oghuz people. A new Muslim power, the ruler of Khwarazm, took the place of the Great Saljuqs. Like many other high achievers who have won their success quickly, the new ruler of Khwarazm tended to be arrogant in his dealings with others. Unfortunately for him and millions of other Muslims, he offended a man named Chinggis Khan.
MAP 7.1 The Western Muslim World, 1100–1260
The Cifte Minareli madrasa in Erzerum, constructed by the Saljuqs of Rum.
The Collapse of the Great Saljuqs
While Christians and Muslims at both ends of the Mediterranean were involved in clashes that increasingly came to be seen as holy wars, the Saljuqs of Esfahan were preoccupied with their own affairs. As we have seen, the Great Saljuq, Muhammad, tried to organize resistance to the Crusaders from 1110 to 1115, but he became disgusted with his cousins who ruled Damascus and Aleppo when they stood with the Crusaders against him. From that time on, the Great Saljuqs had little to do with affairs in Syria. After Muhammad’s death in 1118, in fact, the Saljuqs of Esfahan had little influence over affairs even in Iraq and western Iran. Family members ruling in those areas were embroiled in constant conflict with each other and deferred to Muhammad’s brother Sanjar, who ruled Khorasan, as the Great Saljuq.
The turmoil in the western part of the empire resulted in a shattered economy. When cities were seized, they were stripped of their wealth, peasants routinely were subjected to confiscation of crops and livestock, and combatants often pursued a scorched-earth policy to deprive their opponent of provisions. By midcentury, the western capital was moved from Esfahan to Hamadan, but the Saljuqs were increasingly overshadowed by other provincial rulers and even by a revived Abbasid caliphate. Growing assertiveness by caliphs who took advantage of Saljuq divisiveness was capped by the career of the Abbasid caliph al-Nasir (1180–1225). He was able to brush off Saljuq control entirely, and he carved out a small province in Iraq over which he was supreme military and political ruler. In 1194, Tughril, the Saljuq prince of Hamadan, tried to reestablish his family’s control over Baghdad, but al-Nasir sought assistance from the ruler of Khwarazm. In the ensuing battle at Rayy, Tughril was killed, bringing an end to the Great Saljuq presence in western Iran.
By contrast, the Sultanate of Rum recovered from its loss of Nicaea to the Crusaders and established its capital at Konya in 1116. Hemmed in by the Crusaders to the west and by Turkish rivals to the east, it was weak for several decades. By 1141, however, its chief Turkmen rivals had collapsed, and Konya’s power began to increase. In 1176, the Byzantine Empire made the mistake of attacking the sultanate at Myriokephalon, resulting in a defeat almost as spectacular as that of Manzikert a century earlier. The victorious sultanate now had access to ports on the Aegean again, and within a few decades, Konya took over ports on the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, as well. Relations with the Byzantines soon improved. The Fourth Crusade in 1204 had Egypt as its announced goal, but its “armed pilgrims” sacked and captured Constantinople instead. As the Byzantine government relocated to Nicaea, it and the Sultanate of Rum once again became natural allies, united in their opposition to the Europeans and to the Armenians.
The sultanate continued to expand, and by the second quarter of the thirteenth century, it encompassed almost the whol
e of Anatolia. At its height, from 1205 to 1243, the sultanate impressed visitors by its economic vitality, its high level of urbanization, its impressive architecture, its generous patronage of the sciences, and its religious toleration. Of particular interest was this Turkish dynasty’s conscious appropriation of Persian culture. The rulers of the period all had Persian names, and the chancellery used the Persian language in its documents.
Far to the east, in Khorasan, Sanjar ruled longer than any other Saljuq in history. His older brother had appointed him governor of Khorasan in 1097 when he was only about twelve years old. As the Great Saljuq after the death of his other brother Muhammad in 1118, he was an active military leader. Under his rule his capital city of Merv became a center of the arts and the intellect. In 1141, however, the Mongol tribe of the Qara-khitai defeated Sanjar’s Qara-khanid vassals in Transoxiana, and Sanjar was unable to retake the province. In 1153, some of his own Oghuz troops revolted against him and held him captive for two years. The Oghuz engaged in an orgy of violence, during which many Khorasani cities were sacked and the great library at Merv was burned. Sanjar was released in 1155, but he was broken in health and died the next year. Oghuz chieftains and Saljuq amirs took advantage of his capture and his death to assert their own power, and Khorasan fragmented into a patchwork of competing principalities, much as Syria had done after the death of Malik-Shah over half a century earlier.
A History of the Muslim World to 1405 Page 33