the troubled shores of al-Andalus: Tradition holds that the momentous disembarkation occurred on the beach at Almunecar.
Zaragoza took care of the Franks: The story of Zaragoza (or Saragossa) is slightly more baroque. In fact, the Zaragozans first solicited Charlemagne as an ally against Abd al-Rahman. It was only when the Christian king arrived in Iberia that they had a sudden change of heart. Charlemagne was forced to lay siege to the city, which he quickly raised when he learned of a revolt against him in Saxony. He decided, fatefully, to return home via Ronces-valles.
set off with the severed heads salted away in his baggage: Evariste Levi-Provencal, Histoire de VEspagne musulmane: La conquete et VEmirat hispano-umaiyade 310—912 (Paris: Mason-neuve, 1950), 1:110—11. Although subsequent scholarship has questioned some of Levi-Provencal's findings, this monumental work is fundamental to our knowledge of al-Andalus. It was, to twentieth-century understanding of Muslim Spain, what the work of Rein-hart Dozy (Histoire des Musulmans d'Espagne, jusqua la conquete de VAndalousie par les Almoravides) was to the nineteenth century. For Dozy, Abd al-Rahman I was "un despote per-fide, cruel, vindicatif et impitoyable." Whatever the truth, Dozy gets expertly skewered by Edward Said in Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979), 151.
a majority of the populace of al-Andalus until about 950: Richard Fletcher, in Moorish Spain (36-37), summarizes the argument laid out by Richard W Bulliet's Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979). Pierre Guichard (Al-Andalus) disagrees with these conclusions and estimates that Muslims were in the majority by the mid—ninth century.
n his head, as delivered to Salome: In the Syrian rivalry for the location of the head (there are other candidates elsewhere), Damascus comes out the better, for the Umayyad Mosque has an impressive shrine in its interior. Aleppo, however, also lays claim to the head of Zachariah, John the Baptist's father. He has his own prominent shrine within the walls of that city's Great Mosque, which is sometimes called Jami Zachariye (the Mosque of Zachariah).
the monastic vineyards in the suburbs became destinations of choice: There was even a wine market in Secunda, the mawali (or as Andalusi usage has it, muwallad) suburb of Córdoba, that was razed after its revolt in 818.
Sefarad, hence the term sephardic: The word originally comes from the Bible. Obadiah 20 reads: "This company of Israelite exiles who are in Canaan will possess the land as far as Zarephath; the exiles from Jerusalem who are in Sepharad will possess the towns of the Negev." See Holy Bible, New International Version (London: Hoddard and Stoughton, 1973). Sepharad was eventually taken to mean "Spain."
Shmuel HaNagid: Although it is outside the subject matter of this book, mention should be made of a superb new translation of this man's work, which opens a window onto Andalusi life of the time. See Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid, trans. Peter Cole (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996).
a garden of earthly regrets: Abd al-Rahman's nostalgia for the country of his youth is expatiated upon with great sympathy in the chapter entitled "The Mosque and the Palm Tree" in Maria Rosa Menocal's scholarly love letter to al-Andalus, The Ornament of the World (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002).
"In the midst of Rusafa a palm . . . " Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid, trans. Peter Cole (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), xxvi.
some of the crops the Arab immigrants brought to Spain: For a brief discussion of the cornucopia of al-Andalus, see Syed Imamuddin, Muslim Spain: 314—1492 A.D.: A Sociological Study (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 84-94. See also Fletcher, Moorish Spain, 62—64.
One wonders what the Visigoths ate: This, of course, is unfair. The great Isidore of Seville, polymath and primate of Visigothic Spain in the early seventh century, supplied the answer in the prologue to his History of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi (624 C.E.), wherein he sang the praises of Iberia: "Of all lands from the west to the Indies, you, Spain, O sacred and always fortunate mother of princes and peoples, are the most beautiful. . . . Indulgent nature has deservedly enriched you with an abundance of everything fruitful. You are rich with olives, overflowing with grapes, fertile with harvests. You are dressed in corn, shaded with olive trees, covered with the vine. Your fields are full of flowers, your mountains full of trees, your shores full of fish. You are located in the most favourable region in the world; neither are you parched by the summer heat of the sun, nor do you languish under icy cold, but girded by a temperate band of sky, you are nourished by fertile west winds. You bring forth the fruits of the fields, the wealth of the mines, and beautiful and useful plants and animals. Nor are you to be held inferior in rivers, which the brilliant fame of your fair flocks ennobles." Translated by Kenneth B. Wolf, in Olivia Remie Constable, ed., Medieval Iberia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 3.
A tenth-century Iraqi visitor . . . gives an assessment of Andalusi prosperity: Ibn Hawkal, an itinerant merchant who traveled the length and breadth of the Mediterranean. We shall meet him again in Palermo. The passage from his work is quoted in Richard Fletcher, The Quest for El Cid (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 18.
Another traveler in al-Andalus: The poet al-Shaqundi. Although he is a much later source (thirteenth century), his marveling at al-Andalus is nonetheless useful in understanding the sophistication of the place. Al-Shaqundi is credited with saying that the destruction of the caliphate and the creation of the taifa states was "the breaking of the necklace and the scattering of the pearls."
the cultural commissar of the city: Fletcher, in Moorish Spain, calls Ziryab an "Andalusi Beau Brummel." I have relied on Munoz Molina's colorful evocation, Córdoba, de los Omeyas, chap. 5.
the game of chess: The jury is—and probably always will be—out over whether it was Ziryab who brought chess to Europe. It is plausible but not proven. A Dutch grandmaster has written an interesting essay on his inconclusive search to find out the truth: Ree Hans, "Ziryab the Musician," in The Human Comedy of Chess: A Grandmaster's Chronicles (Russell Enterprise, English Algebraic Notation, 1999).
Nicholas worked with a committee of local notables: Thomas Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), 256.
Andalusi Arabic poets were ringing changes on the classical form: Salma Jayyusi, "Andalusi Poetry: The Golden Period," in Jayyusi, ed., The Legacy of Muslim Spain (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 1:326-27, 359.
"the last flowering . . .": Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (New York: Warner Books, 1991), 194.
"For the first time since the age of the Scripture . . .": Peter Cole, The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950—1492 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).
literary cottage industry still thriving: Anyone wishing to enter this lush jungle of polemic would be well advised to start at either www.answering-islam.org.co.uk or www.answering-christianity.com.
Abd al-Rahman III is said to have dyed his hair dark: Marilyn Higbee Walker, "Abd al-Rahman, Caliph of Córdoba,," in E. Michael Gehl, ed., Medieval Iberia: An Encyclopedia (London: Routledge, 2003), 6.
"My fellow Christians love to read the poems and romances of the Arabs . . .": Quoted in Fred James Hill and Nicholas Awde, A History of the Islamic World (New York: Hippocrene, 2003), 74.
"What madness drove you to commit yourself to this fatal ruin . . .": Paul Alvarus, Life of Eulogius (859 C.E.), in C. M. Sage, Paul Albar of Córdoba,: Studies on His Life and Writings (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1943); reproduced in "Eulogius and the Martyrs of Córdoba,," in Constable, Medieval Iberia, 54.
The story goes that their leader, on disembarking, gave his men twelve full days: John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Apogee (New York: Penguin, 1993), 37. Norwich states forth-rightly: "According to a venerable tradition—supported by both Byzantine and Arabic sources—their leader Abu Hafs gave them twelve days to plunder the island, after which they were to return to the harbour; on doing so, they fou
nd to their horror that he had ordered the destruction of all their ships."
fearing punishment for having had his dastardly way with a nun: The fellow in question was Euphemius of Sicily; his paramour, Homoniza. Norwich, Apogee, has Euphemius eloping with her (38). Euphemius' great schemes came to naught; he was slain by the Byzantines at Enna in 828. As for the conquest of Sicily, the Muslims had effective control of the island after the fall of Syracuse, even if minor strongholds held out here and there. Lovely Taormina fell only in 901.
Mazara del Vallo: Near the southwestern extremity of the island, Mazaro today very much retains its Ifriqiyan flavor, being the home of a large Tunisian immigrant population that works on the fishing fleet based in the port. Their neighborhood is called the Casbah. As for the town's name, Vallo is a corruption of the Arabic wall (province), of which Mazaro was the capital.
To retail all the raids conducted: This statement should be qualified. Georges Jehel, in L'ltalie et le Maghreb au Moyen Age (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001) manages to avoid numbness altogether (13—36). I have relied on his account and chronology to reconstruct these eventful years.
the scene of endemic feuding among local Lombard lords: Southern Italy was a mess at this time. The Carolingian Franks, allies of the papacy, had pushed the Lombards down into the Mezzogiorno. Since there was no overarching, recognized authority governing the petty dukedoms that sprang up, a permanent free-for-all took place. Much of the action was centered on Naples, Salerno, and the duchy of Benevento. Matters became further confused when the Byzantines arrived to reestablish their claim to the area.
The next pope, Leo IV, closed the barn door behind them by building a string of fortifications: The area enclosed is still called the Leonine City. And the pope had something of the lion in him: in 849, three years after the raid, he personally led a fleet of Christian vessels and inflicted a stinging defeat on the Muslims off Ostia. He would be the last competent pope for more than a century. See Paul Hetherington, Medieval Rome: A Portrait of the City and Its Life (New York: St. Martin's, 1994), 13.
every woman and child of Genoa was ensnared in an Andalusi slaving dragnet: The histo-riographical controversies surrounding this episode—it is mentioned in several Arab chronicles—are discussed in Jehel, L'ltalie et le Maghreb, 30 (and notes).
prominent churchman Mayeul, head of the vigorous Burgundian monastic movement: Interestingly enough, more than a century later Pope Urban II prayed at the tomb of Mayeul in Souvigny before going on to Clermont to give his famous speech that would launch the era of the crusades. Did he swear to avenge Mayeul in his prayers? Piers Paul Read, The Templars (New York: St. Martin's, 1999), 68.
La Garde-Freinet was, literally, a thorn in the side of Mediterranean Christendom: Emmanuel Dufourcq's La vie quotidienne dans I'Europe medievale sous domination arabe (Paris: Ha-chette, 1978), 26-27. Dufourcq relies on the chronicle of Liutprand of Cremona (page 7 of the 1839 edition of Monumenta Historica Germanica). The area remains a thorn in the side of conservative Christendom: it overlooks the hedonist goings-on in the Bay of St. Tropez.
The German monk-ambassadors were placed under house arrest for three full years: It was the invaluable Hasday ibn Shaprut who managed to spare their lives until the letters could be rewritten.
Madinat az-Zahra: Popular wisdom holds that the city-palace (it housed twelve thousand) was named after the caliph's beloved wife, Zahara. It has many transliterations, the one used by the modern Spanish government being Medina Azahara.
the ruling families of north Africa: The Aghlabids.
founded in 973 . . . by the Fatimid caliph: Caliph al-Mu'izz.
twelve thousand loaves of bread: Every historian of the Umayyads seems to love this statistic, though only Richard Fletcher quips, "Perhaps the loaves were extremely small." See Moorish Spain, 66. Otherwise his evocation of the Madinat is admirable.
it was discovered in a library of Fez, Morocco, in 1938: The discovery was made by the great historian Evariste Levi-Provencal. See Munoz Molina, Córdoba, de los Omeyas, 211.
Medinaceli's Roman arch of triumph: Admirers of the arch can take some solace that its silhouette is familiar even to the most oblivious modern, as it is used as a logo throughout Spain on road signs indicating monuments from antiquity.
City of Salim: Salim ibn Warghamal al-Masmudi was a Berber leader during the eighth-century Muslim conquest of Iberia.
Algeciras: From al-Jazeera al-Khadra, "the Green Island."
the unfortunate poet: Al-Ramadi. See Munoz Molina, Córdoba, de los Omeyas, 230-31.
Almanzor undertook, at one count, fifty-two campaigns: The figure is Ibn Khaldun's and is widely accepted.
"Gone was her radiant beauty . . .": Ibn Hazm, The Ring of the Dove (eleventh century), trans. A. J. Arberry (London: Luzac and Co., 1953); reproduced in "On Forgetting a Beloved" in Constable, ed., Medieval Iberia, 79.
CHAPTER 4: MANZIKERT 1071
what would you do if our positions were reversed: In Edward Gibbon's words: " 'And what,' continued the sultan, 'would have been your own behaviour had fortune smiled on your arms?' The reply of the Greek betrays a sentiment which prudence, and even gratitude, should have taught him to suppress. 'Had I vanquished,' he fiercelysaid, 'I would have inflicted on thy body many a stripe.'" See The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (New York: Random House, 2003), 3: 404—05. The historical sources, though their wordings are different, essentially concur about this exchange. For the Greek side, the invaluable contemporary account is that of Michael Attaliates, whose Histories detail the travails of Byzantium from 1039 to 1074. He was a friend of Romanus and accompanied him on the Manzikert campaign. The memoir of a grandson and namesake of Romanus' principal general, Nicephorus Bryennius, is the other principal source for this encounter. While Bryennius (the grandson), in his own Histories, may have been repeating old family rationalizations for the defeat, his is nonetheless an important account. Interestingly, his wife was the consummate memoirist, Anna Comnena. The twelfth-century Armenian Matthew of Edessa (Chronicles) borrows heavily from these two Greeks, although he is, given his nationality, less than charitable to the Byzantine aristocrats who had impoverished his country in the eleventh century. A contemporary, John Scyl-itzes (Breviarum Historicum), is similarly indebted to Attaliates and Bryennius. All can be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byiantinae (Bonn, 1829—97), with various English or French translations signaled in the bibliographical notices of Alfred Friendly's The Dreadful Day: The Battle of Maniikert, 1031 (London: Hutchinson, 1981). As for the Muslim sources—less reliable since they were composed several centuries after the event—they are best studied and compared by the grand old man of early Turkey studies, Claude Cahen. His findings for Manzikert were summarized in "La Campagne de Manzikert d'apres les sources musulmanes," which appeared in Byiantion 9 (Brussels, 1934), 628—642, but they can be read, along with a collection of Cahen's groundbreaking work on the region, in the one-volume Turcobyiantina et Oriens Christianus (London: Variorum, 1974). The best discussion I have seen on the reliability of the various sources occurs in the work of Speros Vryonis, Jr. The title of the volume in which Vryonis discusses Manzikert should tell the reader where to go to find related material on the battle's aftermath: The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamiiation from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971). I have relied on Vryonis and Cahen for background and, like Norwich in his study of Byzantium, on Friendly for a reconstruction of the battle.
an exquisite medieval monastery: The church in question is the Holy Cross, which dates from about 921. Constructed during the halcyon years of Armenian independence under King Gagik, it is adorned with bas-relief sculptures of biblical scenes that have few peers anywhere in the world. The church's tawny red stone, set off against the blue of Lake Van and the snowcapped mountains, make this an Armenian monument of the highest order. Perhaps in recognition of its beauty, the subsequent peoples wh
o inhabited the area did not deface it. For the sadder fate of other Armenian churches, consult William Dalrymple's extraordinary From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium ( London: Flamingo, 1998).
rode only geldings and mares into battle: Erik Hildinger, Warriors of the Steppe: A Military History of Central Asia, 5oo B.C. to 1300 AD. (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 1997), 18. The other details of nomad life in this chapter derive from Hildinger and from Archibald R. Lewis, Nomads and Crusaders: AD. 1000-1368 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).
"white mantle of churches": Radulf Glaber, Histories, II: 1,4. The famous passage goes: "One could have said that the very world . . . was stripping off its old raiment and reclothing itself everywhere with a white robe of churches. At that time [ca. 1000] almost all churches in the episcopal sees, those of the monasteries dedicated to all kinds of saints, and even the little village chapels, were rebuilt by the faithful to make them more beautiful." Quoted and discussed in Georges Duby, L'An Mil (Paris: Gallimard, 1980), p. 248.
led by a warrior named Seljuk: Saljuq is a frequently seen variant.
Buyids . . . from near the southern shores of the Caspian Sea: Also spelled Buwayids. The dynasty was founded by three brothers, Ali, Hasan, and Ahmad, from Daylam, to the southwest of the Caspian. The Buyid ascendancy coincided with that of the Fatimids of Egypt. The tenth century may be seen as the zenith of shia power, before the removal of the Buyids by the Seljuks (1056) and the Fatimids by the Ayyubids under Saladin (1171). Sicily and the Maghrib thew off the shia version of the faith in the middle of the eleventh century.
"King of the East and West": Friendly, Dreadful Day, 54.
Sea of Faith Page 42