by Emmet Scott
The above meager list contrasts sharply with the hundreds of sites and structures from the Visigothic epoch - a comparable time-span - mentioned in the same place. (It is impossible to be precise about the Visigothic period, since many sites, such as Reccopolis, contain literally hundreds of individual structures. If we were to enumerate the Visigoth structures by the same criteria as we did the Islamic remains above, then the Visigoth period would reveal not hundreds, but thousands of finds). And it needs to be stressed that most of the above Islamic finds suffer from a problem highlighted by Richard Hodges and David Whitehouse in regard to finds from other parts of Europe during the Dark Ages: an almost unconscious attempt to backdate material of the tenth century into the ninth and eighth in order to have something to assign to the latter epoch. Look for example at the fortress of Guardamar. Although an inscription dates the completion of the edifice to 944, we are told that “elements” in its construction have led to it being dated to the ninth century. What these elements are is not clear; yet we should note that such defended mosques, being essentially fortresses, must have been raised very quickly - certainly in no more than a decade. Why then are we told that this one took fifty or perhaps seventy-five years to complete? Bearing this in mind, we can say that there is scarcely a single undisputed archaeological site attributable to the first two centuries of Islamic rule; whilst there are, to date, hundreds of rich and undisputed sites linked to the Visigothic epoch! The first real Islamic archaeology in Spain occurs during the time of Abd’ er Rahman III, in the third or fourth decade of the tenth century (when the Guardamar fortress was completed.
The same poverty of material remains and signs of occupation is found throughout Islamic North Africa between the mid-seventh and mid-tenth centuries, and Richard Hodges and David Whitehouse speak of an Arab-created “Dark Age” in the region during those years.[3]
What could all this mean? Whatever interpretation we might put on it - and there are several possibilities - one thing is very clear: The opulent and refined Islamic civilization which up till now has been placed alongside and contemporary with a dark, ignorant and impoverished Christian Europe of the seventh to tenth centuries, is a myth. When Islamic cities do appear, in the middle of the tenth century, they are very comparable, in terms of size and level of culture, to the contemporary cities of Christian Europe. Our entire understanding of European and Middle Eastern history during the seventh to tenth centuries needs a radical rethink.
So, irrespective of what the textbooks tell us, the real history of Islamic Spain seems to begin in the tenth century. In that epoch, it is true, there existed a powerful Muslim society, one that, in the words of Stephen Runciman, “represented a very real threat to Christendom.”[4] Under Abd er-Rahman III (912-961) the followers of Islam found a leader who promised to repeat the successes of the eighth century. His forces battled the Christians to the north, and the boundary between the two religions was marked by the battles he fought. The most decisive of these were at Simancas (939), between Salamanca and Valladolid on the Duoro River, where he was stopped. These were areas that had been overrun by the Muslims two centuries earlier, though the Christians had apparently retaken them in the interim. And this new conquering impulse continued under Al-Mansur (980-1002), whose career was to see Muslim power once again enveloping all of Spain, including the far north. He burned Leon, Barcelona and Santiago de Compostela, and, copying his Muslim predecessors almost three centuries earlier, advanced over the Pyrenees. We are told that in Al-Mansur’s time, “Never had the Christians found themselves in such a critical position.”[5]
It was the attacks of Al-Mansur that finally roused Christian Europe into undertaking the Reconquista, which commenced with the campaigns of the Norman Baron Roger de Tony in the 1020s.
It was indeed during this epoch that Islamic Spain experienced its real Golden Age. Never before and never again would the Iberian Caliphate enjoy such wealth, prosperity and splendor. Science and the arts were encouraged and a spirit of tolerance (so we have been told now for many decades), prevailed. It was of this epoch that Robert Briffault wrote: “Under absolute religious tolerance, Christians enjoyed complete freedom. … From all parts of Europe numerous students betook themselves to the great Arab seats of learning in search of the light which only there was to be found. … The famous Gerbert of Aurillac brought from Spain some rudiments of astronomy and mathematics, and taught his astonished students from terrestrial and celestial globes.”[6] Furthermore, “The Jews shared under the complete tolerance of Moorish rule in the cultural evolution of the Khalifate; and as they scattered over Europe, especially after the Almohadean conquest, became carriers of that culture to the remotest barbaric lands.”[7] The humane and luxurious culture that prevailed in Islamic Iberia began, we are told, to improve the manners of their Christian neighbors to the north:
“The lustre of Moorish elegance circulated unimpeded throughout the [Iberian] peninsula and the South of France. … Rude, illiterate robber-barons gave place to men who delighted in poetry and music, and foregathered in tournaments of song. Loose woolen gowns and leather jerkins were exchanged for close-fitting braided pourpoints, first known as gipons (Ar. jubba) and mantels of shimmering silk, the fashion for which gradually extended to Northern Europe. Women joined as equals, as in Moorish Spain, in the intellectual interests and artistic tastes of men.”[8] Again, “An Arab author, Ibn Jabair, thus describes the appearance of the women of the period: ‘They went forth clad in robes of silk the colour of gold, wrapped in elegant mantles, covered with many-coloured veils, shod with gilt shoes, laden with collars, adorned with kohl and perfumed with attar, exactly in the costume of our Muslim ladies.’”[9]
Music and poetry, says Briffault, flourished in the caliphate: “Song and music, which filled the rose-gardens of Andalusia, where every court rang with the sound of romances and quatrains, where poets and musicians formed part of the retinue of every Moorish prince and every Emir, where skill in versification was counted an indispensable accomplishment of every knight and every lady, spread to the adjacent lands of Castile, Catalonia and Provence.”[10]
The above lines were written in 1919 and were at the time considered rather controversial. Since then however such opinions have become mainstream and more or less the default mode of thinking.[11] Along with major works published by tenured professors, every year sees the publication of quite literally hundreds of papers in academic publications and the popular media on a similar vein, as well as the appearance of numerous like-minded television documentaries. These are supplemented by countless lectures and symposia expounding an identical viewpoint. As just one example among many we may mention the paper delivered in April, 2010, in London by Dr. Peter Adamson, professor of ancient and medieval philosophy in King’s College, London. The title of the lecture, “How the Muslims Saved Civilization: the Reception of Greek Learning in Arabic,” speaks for itself.
But a very different picture of the Spanish Caliphate has been painted by other writers. Consider for example the statement of Richard Fletcher, an author very well-disposed to Islam and its culture: “Moorish Spain was not a tolerant and enlightened society even in its most cultivated epoch.”[12] Indeed! One would never suspect from the descriptions of Messrs Briffault, Lewis, and many others, that Islamic Spain was the center of a vast slave-trading empire whose rulers believed it was their religious duty to wage ruthless war against their Christian neighbors to the north on an annual or even twice-yearly basis.
There is no question of course that during the tenth and eleventh centuries Islamic Spain was a wealthier society than contemporary Christian states; it could scarcely have been otherwise, as it had inherited the most prosperous and most populous province of the western Roman Empire. This native wealth was further augmented by the plunder of Christian communities, their churches and their lands, from Egypt to France. There is no question either that Islamic Spain maintained a high level of learni
ng at this time. Again, it could scarcely have been otherwise: when Islam first appeared, in the seventh century, Europe was a rural backwater, whereas the House of Islam came into possession of the very centers of high civilization in Persia, Syria, and Egypt, with their universities, academies and libraries. Contemporary Europe was almost devoid of such things. But does that mean that, at the dawn of the High Middle Ages, the attitudes of Islam in the Iberian Peninsula were enlightened and humane? In the above passages Briffault extols the tolerance displayed by the Moorish emirs to Christians; other writers however beg to differ. In an essay entitled “Andalusian Myth, Eurabian Reality,” Bat Ye’or and Andrew G. Bostom note that, “Segregated in special quarters, they [Christians] had to wear discriminatory clothing. Subjected to heavy taxes, the Christian peasantry formed a servile class attached to the Arab domains; many abandoned their land and fled to the towns. Harsh reprisals with mutilations and crucifixions would sanction the Mozarab (Christian dhimmis) calls for help from the Christian kings. Moreover, if one dhimmi harmed a Muslim, the whole community would lose its status of protection, leaving it open to pillage, enslavement and arbitrary killing.”[13]
But surely, the reader might plead, the Jews at least were well treated by Islam. That is certainly the idea conveyed by Briffault and like-minded writers. Briffault characterizes Islamic rule as one of “complete tolerance” and notes how the Jews “especially after the Almohadean conquest,” became “carriers of that [enlightened] culture to the remotest barbaric lands [of Europe].” It is impossible however to read this sentence without the suspicion that its author is involved in deliberate deception. Briffault is well aware of the ferocious persecution of both Jews and Christians which occurred in Spain in the thirteenth century during the rule of the fanatical Almohads. Why else would the Jews leave Spain at this time? Yet he refrains from mentioning the word persecution at all. Furthermore, as an extremely learned man he cannot have been unaware of the fact that the Jews suffered persecution long before the time of either the Almohads or their equally fanatical predecessors, the Almoravids, who caused havoc in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Elsewhere, Briffault mentions the fact that a number of Spanish Jews accompanied William the Conqueror to England in 1066, where they constructed the first stone burgher houses in London.[14] Again, the author cannot have been unaware of the fact that these Jews left Spain in the first place because of an appalling pogrom which had occurred earlier that year in the city of Granada, when about five thousand of them were slaughtered in an unprovoked attack.[15] At this time no pogroms against Jews had ever occurred in Christian Europe. But even the massacre of 1066 was not the first: in 1011 a similar slaughter had taken place in the city of Cordoba.[16]
The real story of tenth and eleventh century Cordoban Caliphate is one of wealth and prosperity enjoyed by a privileged few and squalor for the many. An army of slaves and eunuchs, mainly from northern Europe, known as the Saqaliba, propped up the administration. Behind the walls of his palace, the caliph might enjoy music and poetry and his numerous wives and concubines might live in some form of caged luxury, but to claim that women enjoyed equality with men is laughable. Equally absurd is the notion that Christians and Jews suffered no discrimination, or that young men from Christian Europe flocked to the Caliphate to partake of their learning. A few Christians such as Gerbert of Aurillac did indeed enter the House of Islam, but they generally did so in disguise and at considerable personal risk. Massacres of Christians, even those living under the caliph and therefore theoretically dhimmi or “protected” were frequent, and massacres of Jews, though less frequent, also occurred. The annual raids of the caliph into the Christian lands of the north invariably involved massacres and slave-raiding.
And if things were grim under the caliphs, they became even worse under the Almoravids and Almohads during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The Almoravids were a fanatical dynasty, or more accurately warrior confraternity, of North African Berber origin, who crossed over to Iberia in 1086 at the request of the Muslim princes of Al-Andalus, to defend their territories from the encroachment of Alfonso VI, King of León and Castile. They were “puritans, ascetics, zealots. They saw their role as one of purifying religious observance by reimposition where necessary of the strictest canons of Islamic orthodoxy.”[17] Under their leader Ibn Yusuf (Yusuf ibn Rashfin), the Berbers inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Christians at the Battle of az-Zallaqah (or Sagrajas). They were prevented from following this victory up by trouble in Africa, which Ibn Yusuf chose to settle in person. In 1090 he returned to Iberia and immediately attacked his Spanish Muslims allies, whom he accused of moral laxity and religious indifference. Some were killed, others sent as prisoners to North Africa. It should be noted that Ibn Yusuf's actions in this regard were fully supported by Muslim religious leaders in Spain and by others in the east, most notably, al-Ghazali in Persia and al-Tartushi in Egypt, who was himself an Iberian by birth. These clerics issued a fatwa declaring that Ibn Yusuf was of sound morals and had the right to dethrone the Spanish princes. By 1094, the Almoravids had annexed most of the major Muslim principalities (taifas), with the exception of the one at Saragossa. They did not however reconquer much territory from the Christian kingdoms, except that of Valencia (the Cid’s domain), though they seem to have hindered the progress of the Spanish Reconquista by uniting al-Andalus.
It goes without saying that a man like Ibn Yusuf, who would attack his co-religionists for being lax in the faith, would be ruthless against those of other faiths. Historians of an earlier generation told this story quite unadorned by euphemism. As might be expected however modern academics have been somewhat less straightforward, choosing to disguise barbarities under the most prosaic understatement. Consider for example the words of Robert Fletcher: “We hear of the destruction of a church at Granada by the Almoravids in 1099. A stray surviving papal letter of 1117 addressed to the Christian community of Málaga reveals that its bishop, Julian, had been imprisoned by the Almoravid authorities for the previous seven years. In the winter of 1125-26 Alfonso el Batallador of Aragon led a train down the Levantine coastline to the region of Granada and persuaded large numbers of the Christian inhabitants to return with him to Aragon to escape Almoravid persecution – and to colonise the lands captured by the Aragonese in the Ebro valley. By way of reprisal the Almoravid amir Ali, the son of Yusuf, in 1126 forcibly removed many Andalusi Christians to Morocco.”[18]
The impression conveyed by the above passage is that Almoravid persecution was not really so bad. The destruction of a single church, plus the imprisonment of a single bishop, doesn’t seem so severe by the standards of the time (or of any time for that matter). Even the deportation of the Christians of Andalusia was only a “reprisal” for an earlier Christian raid. Observe however how the same series of events is reported by Louis Bertrand, writing in 1945, before the epoch of political correctness: “From the outset of the Almoravid invasion the destruction of Christian churches had begun. Among them was destroyed a very old and very curious basilica in the neighbourhood of Granada, the church of Gudila. The faquis commenced to persecute the Christian Mozarabs [Christians under Muslim rule] so intolerably that they begged the King of Aragón, Alfonso the Warrior, to come and deliver them. The Aragonese did not succeed in taking Granada. When they retreated, the faquis avenged themselves on the Mozarabs in the most merciless fashion.
“Already ten thousand of them had been compelled to emigrate into the territory of Alfonso to escape their enemies’ repression. The remainder were deprived of their property, imprisoned, or put to death. Many of them were deported to Africa. They were established in the neighbourhood of Salé and Meknes, where oppression of all kinds compelled them to embrace Islam. Ten years later there was a fresh expulsion. The Christians were again deported to Morocco en masse.”[19]
In spite of their initial successes and their brutality the Almoravids failed to stop the progress of the
Christian Reconquista. Christian Europe, and along with it Spain, was experiencing, from the early eleventh century, a great expansion in population, and therefore in wealth. The Islamic world, by contrast, seemed to be either stagnant or even declining demographically. The resources of the Christians were greater, and Al-Andalus soon found itself under renewed pressure from the north. For this reason, by the mid-twelfth century, the Spanish Muslims again called in the support of their co-religionists across the Straits of Gibraltar; and once again the call was answered by a dynasty of fanatical bigots who were to impose a reign of terror upon both their Spanish Muslim allies and, even moreso, the Christians and Jews of the region.