A Third Caliphate in the Umma
The Umayyad dynasty in Andalus experienced the pinnacle of its power in the tenth century. The late ninth century, ironically, provided little hope for that possibility, as the administrative reforms of which ‘Abd al-Rahman II was so proud did little more than provoke uprisings against the attempts to centralize power. As a result, in 912, ‘Abd al-Rahman III inherited an amirate whose authority had shrunk to little more than the environs of Cordoba. By then, regional power was in the hands of many different strongmen, some of the most powerful of whom were local converts to Islam, or muwallads. ‘Abd al-Rahman III was determined to enhance his power, and throughout his long reign he fought almost constantly. During the first half of his career, he concentrated on subduing the rebels in Andalus and challenging the Fatimids in the Maghrib; then, during the second half, he concentrated on the struggle with the Christian kingdoms to the north. By the last decade of his reign, several of the Christian kingdoms were forced to pay him an annual tribute.
In the year 929, he announced that he was not merely an amir, but rather was the true caliph of the Islamic world. He may have claimed the caliphate as a result of Fatimid activity. As we saw before, the Fatimids had seized power in Ifriqiya twenty years earlier and had immediately laid claim to the caliphate. Furthermore, the Fatimids expanded what had been the Aghlabid navy and soon dominated the western Mediterranean. The implicit Fatimid threat to Andalus from the sea was compounded in 922 with the Fatimid capture of Fez. Whereas previous Umayyads might have been restrained from claiming the caliphate for fear of appearing presumptuous, now ‘Abd al-Rahman III could claim it as the true champion of Sunnism, in opposition to the Shi‘ite Fatimids and the remote and weak Abbasids.
The declaration of the Umayyad caliphate in Andalus raises the intriguing question of how many Muslims were in the peninsula by the mid-tenth century. What proportion of the society, after all, would be affected by the new claim? Some historians think that rapid conversion to Islam took place in the country during the first half of the tenth century and that, by midcentury, a Muslim majority existed. According to this view, conversion continued to the end of the eleventh century, by which time eighty percent of the population was Muslim. Other historians assume that Christians always remained the majority.3 The evidence is inconclusive for either position, but ‘Abd al-Rahman’s claim of caliphal status does suggest that Andalus had at least a large Muslim minority, whose numbers, wealth, and power made their cultural hegemony incontestable. Arabic was the lingua franca, both formally and informally; the manners and tastes of the Umayyad court were the arbiters of the social graces; and the transformation of the economy gave the Muslims great legitimacy and prestige.
It is worth noting in this regard that the substantial number of Jews in Andalus became Arabized, as most Jews throughout the Muslim world did. Little is known of them before the tenth century, but from the early tenth to the mid-twelfth centuries, Andalusi Jews experienced a revival of literature, science, and philosophy, and they wrote in Arabic, using Hebrew script. Many of them served as important court figures, the most famous being Hasday ibn Shaprut, the physician to ‘Abd al-Rahman III. His diplomatic services and patronage of the arts made him an important figure. Prior to the twelfth century, Jews throughout the world could hardly hope to live under more favorable circumstances than in Andalus. A pogrom did take place in Granada in the eleventh century, but it was the exception that proved the rule: It was a reaction by the common people against the great influence that Jews exerted at the court.
The extent of Arabization among Christians is unclear. It was once thought that Arabized Christians—Mozarabs—were the most dynamic element within the Christian community. However, no Christian literature in Arabic has survived, in contrast to a large corpus of Latin literature that still exists. The evidence suggests that most Christians could speak Arabic, and in cities such as Toledo, used it exclusively. Moreover, it is clear that many of the Christians who fled as refugees to the north in order to live in Christian societies had Arab names. On the other hand, the frequent, small-scale riots of Christians in the cities of central and southern Andalus, and the absence in the Christian literature of references to cultural developments outside the Christian community itself, suggest a religious community that sealed itself off from Islamic influences. The term, Mozarab, appears to have been an epithet hurled at Arabized Christians by other Christians who considered them to have betrayed their heritage. The Mozarabs did not leave a cultural legacy, unlike the Arabized Jews.
At midcentury, the caliphate of Andalus was in an enviable position. Its two caliphal competitors were on the defensive. The Abbasid caliph had become a puppet first to his own Turkish guard, and then to the Daylami Buyids, and the Fatimid caliph was fighting for his life against the Berber revolt in North Africa. ‘Abd al-Rahman III even contributed to the discomfiture of the Fatimid ruler by supplying several Berber chiefs with supplies and arms. His family’s honor had been reclaimed with the establishment of a second Umayyad caliphate at the very time that the Abbasid usurpers had apparently faded into insignificance. His society was becoming Arabized and Islamized to such a degree that he could reasonably expect it to become the dominant region of the Muslim world within a matter of decades.
Economic Networks
The political and religious fragmentation of the ninth and tenth centuries contrasted sharply with developments in the economy of the Muslim world that were tying the regions together more closely than ever before in history. The Arab conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries had consolidated into one empire many previously hostile states and regions. Under the central administration of the Umayyads of Damascus, these far-flung regions enjoyed rapid communication and participation in a single huge market. The new garrison cities required food, building materials, and other everyday necessities that often had to be brought in from a considerable distance away. These demands stimulated migration, manufacturing, and commerce. Craftsmen, merchants, scholars, soldiers, and adventurers traveled to distant regions of the empire and encountered new foods, tools, implements, and styles of architecture and fashion. They brought home with them new tastes and demands, further stimulating trade. The vast area from the Indus to Andalus became a single economic unit, stimulating agricultural diversification, industrial production, international trade, and urban population growth. Despite the loss of central political control that took place after the overthrow of the Umayyads of Damascus, the economic and communication channels remained remarkably open.
A Single Economy
Agriculture formed the base of the economy almost everywhere. In most parts of the Muslim world, agriculture was dependent upon irrigation. In the Iranian areas, the dominant irrigation system had long been based on qanats, underground canals that might extend from the foothills of mountain ranges into the surrounding plains for as many as thirty miles (although the typical length was one to three miles). Along the Indus, Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile rivers, elaborate networks of basins, canals, and dikes had been in place for thousands of years, employing water wheels, the Archimedes screw, and other lifting devices to move water to where it was needed. As these areas were incorporated into a single economic system, the techniques and the crops that were grown as a result of their use became available to other, distant regions. The most striking illustration of the process was the adoption of the noria, or Egyptian water wheel, in Andalus, and the subsequent cultivation in that peninsula of citrus fruits, sugar cane, and other vegetables and fruits from Egypt and Iraq.
The cities depended on the surplus produced by local farmers so that their inhabitants, in turn, could produce manufactured goods. Like most advanced societies of the period, the Muslim world’s primary manufactured product was textiles. Fars in southwestern Iran was probably the most important center of textile production, but others became famous, as well: Egyptian cottons and linens were in high demand, and Mosul and Damascus became immortalized in the fabrics known as mu
slin and damask, respectively. Damascus and Toledo were famous for their carbon steel, and customers sought out Toledan steel and Damascened sword blades.
Despite the excellent quality of the textile and metal industries, however, the glass industry may have achieved the highest level of artistic and technical sophistication. Glass was first manufactured in southwestern Asia in ancient times, and Muslims continued the tradition of innovation. Glassmakers in Baghdad developed spectacular new styles of relief cutting and decorated their products with the forms of running animals and plant scrolls. Glass makers in Egypt invented luster painting and gilding, in which gold leaf was applied to an object that was then fired to fix the glass.
The most noteworthy feature of the economy of the Muslim world was international trade. Commerce, of course, had taken place among the various regions of Eurasia and Africa for centuries. Rome had traded with Han China and with East Africa, and even the hostile Byzantines and Sasanians had traded with each other. But the fact that Muslims now ruled the huge area from the Indus to the Atlantic resulted in profound changes. Whereas Sasanian–Byzantine commerce had been largely an exchange of luxury goods, the same trade routes by the early Abbasid period carried an astounding variety of goods destined for mass consumption, including textiles, foodstuffs, and utensils. As a result, new crops and new craft techniques spread rapidly across the vast trading network, transforming diets and material culture.
Muslim merchants between the Nile and Amu Darya had regular contacts with Andalus and the Maghrib. In fact, the extent of the travels undertaken by merchants in this period is quite remarkable. Documents describe merchants from Khorasan who accompanied their goods to Andalus and Andalusi merchants who personally sold their goods in the Iranian highlands. Except in winter, ships made regular voyages between the eastern Mediterranean and the Maghrib, both individually and in convoys. Caravans made the route from Egypt to the Maghrib year-round. As a result, the eastern Mediterranean was in contact not only with North Africa and Andalus, but also with West Africa.
Overland Trade
International trade was conducted overland and by sea. Most of the world’s long-distance trade before the advent of the railroad in the nineteenth century went by sea if possible, due to the much lower costs and shorter times offered by sea travel. In the Muslim world, however, overland caravans played a more important role than in many other developed societies. One reason for that was its geographical setting. North Africa sought the goods of West and Central Africa, from which it was separated by the Sahara, and the great land mass of southwestern Asia made it impossible to ship goods by water from, say, Syria to Khorasan. This motive for long-distance overland trade was matched by the means to accomplish it: the domestication of the camel in the first millennium B.C.E. Camels offered a rugged, low-maintenance, “off-road” means of transportation with a quarter-ton cargo capability and an “all-terrain” ability that carts and wagons simply could not match.
Just as irrigation systems were designed to compensate for the arid climate in most parts of the Muslim world, so international trade was valued most for filling the region’s chronic need for timber and most metals. The purchase of timber and basic metals in the central Islamic lands was made possible by the abundant supplies of gold and silver that became a feature of the first three centuries of Muslim history. The Iranian plateau had ample supplies of silver, but the new Muslim regimes made special efforts to obtain control of trade routes with access to sources of gold. The main gold mines that supplied the Muslim world were in West Africa and were linked to the Muslim world by caravan routes across the Sahara. The trade with West Africa was immensely profitable, for the Muslims were able to exchange cheap products such as beads and metal pans for gold.
The Sahara is so large (the size of the United States), hot, and dry that it is easy to assume that it is a trackless waste. In fact, however, several caravan routes wound their way for a thousand miles through the desert, following water holes and funneling a lucrative trade in gold and slaves from the south. North African states had long competed for control of these routes. The most westerly route linked the gold mines of Ghana with Sijilmasa, which quickly became the largest North African market for gold and slaves. Tahart, Qayrawan, and Tripoli were other major distribution points for the trans-Saharan trade. The commodities arriving at these points might be destined for ships or for other caravans that followed well-established routes along the North African coast. (Qayrawan gets its name, in fact, from qayrawan, the Arabic word from which we derive caravan.)
From these and other caravan cities, Muslim merchants embarked upon trading ventures that might take them away from home for months, or even years, at a time. Other merchants sent agents to be permanent representatives in sub-Saharan towns. These merchants were emissaries of a flourishing urban civilization and received favored treatment at the hands of West African rulers. Their literacy in the Arabic language—the diplomatic and commercial language of North Africa—made them doubly valuable to the rulers, and they and their families increasingly served the royal courts as secretaries and interpreters. Because many of them were Ibadis in the early centuries of Islam, it is probable that the earliest converts in West Africa were also adherents of Ibadi Islam. By the tenth century, Muslim merchants and officials occupied separate quarters of several West African towns along the upper Niger River and the Senegal River, and several rulers of the area had become Muslim. Rarely did West African rulers attempt to impose Islam upon their subjects. On the contrary, almost all of them were sufficiently astute politically to make a point of displaying the rituals of the traditional religion at court while patronizing Muslim scholars and merchants. As a result, Islam had little impact on the countryside until several centuries later.
Because the large cities of the Muslim world were confident of obtaining regular supplies of gold, the gold dinar (derived from dinarius, the standard unit of Byzantine currency) became the standard unit of Muslim coinage, usually worth ten silver dirhams (a term derived from the Greek drachma). The high-quality gold and silver coins minted by Muslims meant that the cities of the region could obtain the goods they needed from anywhere in the known world. A particularly dramatic demonstration of the utility of the coins is seen in the caches of thousands of silver dirhams (struck in Samanid Bukhara) that have been discovered in northern Europe, attesting to the large volume of trade between the far north and the Muslim world. Russians and Scandinavians were too primitive to be able to use the scientific instruments, fine fabrics, paper, and ceramics that Muslims had to offer. Thus, when Muslims purchased timber, amber, honey, wax, furs, and white slaves from northern Europeans, they paid in gold and silver.
A Commercial City in the Mediterranean
The expanding networks of trade facilitated the flow both of goods and people. Scholars, merchants, and missionaries traveled extensively. During the tenth and eleventh centuries, several Muslim geographers became immortalized by virtue of their trenchant descriptions and analyses of what they saw during their long journeys. Ibn Hawqal (ca. 920–ca. 980), a native of northern Iraq, explored from Khorasan to Andalus. His Surat al-Ard is a particularly good source for comparing the means of production in both agriculture and manufacturing across the Muslim world. In the excerpt that follows, he describes the market layout in Palermo, Sicily, which served as a conduit of goods between Europe and North Africa. He admired the landscape and architecture of Sicily, but he was quite critical of its inhabitants, whose character he believed to suffer from overconsumption of onions!
Among the countries in the hands of the Muslims, Sicily, by virtue of its fine situation, may be put in the same class as [Andalus]. It is an island in the form of an isosceles triangle, with its apex to the west. Its length is seven days’ journey; its width, four … Sicily consists mainly of mountains, castles, and fortresses. Most of its soil is inhabited and cultivated. The only famous city is Palermo, the capital …, which is on the seashore. It consists of five quarters, adjoining and not
separated by any distance but with their boundaries clearly marked.
… Palermo is surrounded by a huge stone wall, high and strong. It is inhabited by merchants. There is a great cathedral mosque, which was built as a Christian church shortly before the Conquest. … Facing Palermo there is a town called Khalisa, with a stone wall inferior to that of Palermo. Here live the Sultan and his entourage. There are two public baths but neither markets nor inns. There is a small cathedral mosque, the Sultan’s garrison, a naval arsenal, and the administrative offices. It has four gates in the north, south, and west, but in the east there is the sea and a wall without a gate. … The quarter known as the Quarter of the Slavs is bigger and more populous than the two cities I have mentioned. In it is the seaport. There are springs which flow between this place and [Palermo], and the water serves as a boundary between them.
A History of the Muslim World to 1405: The Making of a Civilization Page 19