Vikings, Caliphs and the Slave Trade

Posted on March 9, 2022 by Ruth

Conditions during the 8th century prompted a growing shift in the Northern lands from farming and fishing, to raiding. We start to see “Viking” raids in the Irish, English and even Spanish records at the end of the 8th century.

Emir Hakam, grandson of Abd al-Rahman I, created an African slave army to insulate his power base from the rival powers around him. The use of slaves in al-Andalus grew during the next centuries, and eventually, at the end of the Middle Ages, the use of African slaves on sugar plantations came out of Portuguese and Spanish practice. But during the early Middle Ages, slavery was not at all about race.

Vikings raided remote Irish and English ports and monasteries, and they also acted as pirates on the open sea. They chained up able-bodied men and women, then took them off to the slave-trading markets. Some of these markets were along European rivers, where inland and sea-faring goods met. Since Vikings traveled on shallow-keeled ships, they could easily go up rivers to Cologne, Verdun or Mainz. They also carried their northern slaves south to al-Andalus. They took more slaves in unguarded spots along the southern coast and traded them at Italian ports.

Meanwhile, other slavers were capturing Slavs from all along the Baltic coast and inland from the Mediterranean. Eventually, the Latin-speaking town of Ragusa (now Slavic-speaking Dubrovnik) became a big slave market. The Slavs were easy prey because it took a long time before they had strong political organization. Slavs served in the cities of Italy, but many of them crossed the Sea to al-Andalus, where the Emirs were always looking to buy. Just as the Emirs didn’t pay attention to race in their dynastic marriages, neither did they care about it in building their armies.

Early Medieval Spain, Roger Collins.

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The Basin of Mercury: Quicksilver Diplomacy

Posted on March 9, 2022 by Ruth

In the 9th century, the Emirs of Andalusia established so much independence from Baghdad that by the early 10th, Abd al-Rahman III called himself a Caliph, not an Emir. Emir means something like Prince; it implies high but subordinate rank. Caliph was the top: claiming the status of a companion of Mohammed.

As Andalusia became its own western Caliphate, its rulers received ambassadors and kings at the palace complex outside Cordoba. Medinat al-Zahra was an enclave of luxury. Visitors of the time have left some impression of how it contrasted with the rest of the world in the 9th and 10th centuries.

As we’ve already noted, Cordoba was well-supplied with water from Roman aqueducts, so it was a splash of green in an arid place. Naturally green places are often rainy; if you’ve ever traveled around the Big Island of Hawaii, you know what I mean. The dry side of the island is really desert-like except in the resorts where water has been brought in. There, all of the tropical plants from the rainy side can be maintained, but the rain never falls. It’s always a perfect day for golf on the dry side, as long as imported water keeps the grass green. Medinat al-Zahra made exactly that impression: it was a triumph of engineering over nature, creating an artificial paradise. Fountains large and small channeled the water to public and private gardens.

In the reception hall of the Caliph, visitors saw two astonishing wonders. First, the hallways leading to the hall were carpeted with Persian rugs. The notion of a cloth on the floor, just to walk on, was entirely new to Northern Europe, though I am not sure if Constantinople had ever used carpets. It’s possible that they didn’t; it’s possible that carpeting was one of the genuine innovations of the desert tribes who now ruled. Their tents had long used carpets to distinguish indoor from outdoor; with temporary houses, they had put their effort and money into rich carpeting and cushions, not into stone walls or windows. When they placed their thick, soft, brightly patterned carpets along the floors of a pillared stone hall, two traditions of wealth met.

In the reception hall itself, the Caliph had a large silver or gold basin placed as a fountain, but filled instead with mercury. Both Persia and Spain had natural deposits of cinnabar, the red ore of mercury. Since ancient times, it had been crushed and smelted to separate pure mercury from its red pigment. Vermilion was always in demand for paint and dye. Mercury didn’t have as many practical uses then; they knew that it was highly toxic, but it was a fascinating thing to play with. Its modern chemical symbol, Hg, stands for Greek hydra-gyrum, “silver water.” It’s also been called quicksilver, where “quick” means alive. Mercury moves as if it’s alive; it looks like water but has entirely different properties. A cannonball can float in it.

A basin of mercury was an opulent show of wealth. People from barbarian places had never seen it; if they had ever seen even a little of it in a bottle, they had certainly never imagined a wide basin full of silver water that moved as if it were alive.

The reception hall was luxurious in many ways; it had gold and silver fixtures, it was richly carpeted, and it had a raised platform where the Caliph sat on cushions. When an ambassador or other guest walked in, a servant tapped the basin of mercury so that it began to move. Reflected light danced all over the room, like the effect of a disco ball. In the 9th and 10th centuries, there was nothing like it.

All this display had a practical purpose, as well as being fun for the Caliph to own. In the 9th and 10th centuries, alliances were fluid. They were not based in religion; the Crusades were still unimagined. Constantinople sought to ally with Cordoba against Baghdad, at one point. The descendants of Charlemagne just as often allied with Cordoba as fought against it. The frontiers were filled with ambitious cut-throats who needed to be over-awed by Cordoba’s power. As long as the basin of mercury was backed by the Spanish Caliph’s private mercenary armies of Slavs and Africans, it served to knock a lot of nonsense out the heads of upstart warlords in Barcelona, Marseille and Zaragoza.

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Ziryab, the first Fashionista, 789-857

Posted on March 9, 2022 by Ruth

The court at Baghdad was doubtless much more urbane than upstart Cordoba’s. Baghdad was based in ancient Persian culture: its customs, food, musical instruments, poetry, and textiles. Even Abd al-Rahman, coming from Damascus, wasn’t as steeped in Persian luxuries as the Abbasids became. But help was not long in arriving, though too late for Abd I. Eventually, insider pushing and shoving in Baghdad sent one court musician flying: and he went straight to Cordoba.

His name was Ziryab. We have multiple accounts of who he was: Persian? Arab? Kurd? Other? He was a polymath with an outstanding education; he knew music, astronomy, languages, poetry, and mathematics. When he arrived in Cordoba in 822, he caused a sensation and, in many ways, left a permanent mark on European fashion. He was hired as the chief court musician, but his influence went beyond music.

Ziryab was the most fashionable thing anyone in Cordoba had ever seen. His haircut was copied by everyone, leading to the first fad for “bangs.” His clothing, speech, and all of his habits were copied. Cordoba had many newly-rich families who were looking for ways to compete with each other.

Ziryab brought the latest in dining fads from Persia; for several centuries, Ziryab’s innovations stayed only in Spain, but eventually the Spanish-Ziryabian style caught on all over. First, the use of white tablecloths as an ostentatious display of textile wealth. We know that by the High Middle Ages, all of Northern Europe’s aristocracy used white tablecloths, but in 850, they probably didn’t yet. Second, Ziryab brought in the idea of drinking from glass utensils. (Before this, the aristocratic cup of choice was silver or gold). Glassmaking industry in Spain grew to keep up with demand; it took Northern Europe a very long time to move from pottery cups to glass, even among the upper classes.

Third, Ziryab served food in set courses: soup, main course, dessert. Not only had Arabs never served food this way, nobody in Northern Europe had ever imagined it. Grand castle feasts required courses, just to serve enough food to a large crowd; but each “course” had the same kinds of things. The idea of differentiated courses became standard in Andalusia but did not move north until a number of Spanish princesses had married into England and France, bringing the fashion with them.

Ziryab also changed clothing fashions. Until his time, people tended to have robes, cloaks or tunics without regard to season. Ziryab brought the idea of having a lightweight outfit for summer and a heavier, warmer one for winter. Now I’m not going to claim that the Byzantines hadn’t thought of this first, and once again we run into the problem of biased sources: anyone paying attention to Ziryab at all is probably biased toward puffing his resume. However, that’s among the claims. They also say he influenced the weaving industry toward stripes.

It seems more certain that Ziryab influenced Cordobans toward not stinking. “Talc” is another of those Mozarabic words; Ziryab tried to get people to use deodorant. If their clothes were lighter weight in the summer, perhaps they sweated less, but he wanted them to try powders and perfumes.

Ziryab’s formal influence on Spanish music was considerable, of course. We’ve already done a general review of how many Eastern musical instruments came to Europe via Andalusia; Ziryab is often given personal credit for the oud, which came into English as the lute.

Overall, his influence made Cordoba into a cosmopolitan place, not a regional administrative center. This makes a difference, even if it seems like merely a cosmetic change. Once a city becomes known for its culture, it draws more cultured people. Ziryab’s fashions contributed much to making Cordoba into a center for mathematics and science in the 9th and 10th centuries.

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More Mozarabic Export Words

Posted on December 23, 2021 by Ruth

The Arabic way of life in Spain introduced some traditional musical instruments that hadn’t been part of Europe before. Names of musical instruments were far from standardized in the Middle Ages, perhaps because they were rarely enough seen. Whatever a particular minstrel called his thing, that’s what everyone called it. The ones who had learned to play in Spain or southern France often used Arabic-based words. (During the Cordoba period especially, Arabs contended with Franks to control the southern French coast.)

Both the guitar and the lute came from Arabic. Al-oud became “a lute;” the oud is still an Arabic form of stringed instrument. Another, played with a bow and perhaps borrowed from Byzantine or Persian culture, was the rebec. The Arabic word for drum is “tabl,” which came into medieval Europe as something like “tabor” or “taber.” It became the word for a particular type of drum; another type was the naker, from Arabic nakara, which hung as a pair of small drums at the player’s belt. Trumpets came to Europe from Asia, via Arabic travelers; the earliest trumpet name was Arabic al-nafir, in Spanish añafil. They were straight and long, like the brass instruments in paintings of heralds. The earliest oboe/clarinet type of instrument, at the time called the shawm, also came to Europe via Andalusia.

A favorite type of book during the Middle Ages was an encyclopedia of exotic animals, typically called a bestiary. It’s amusing to see how badly artists drew foreign animals or what types of nonsense they believed about them. For example, when the Doge of Venice kept lions for public viewing and the lioness actually gave birth in captivity, it was the first proof the reading public had that bestiaries were wrong in claiming that lion cubs are born dead and then licked into life.

Of course, both India and Africa were rich fields for bestiary writers. Many of the animals they reported were imaginary or compiled, but they included some real ones. Some African animals came to Europe through Arabic reports. The name “giraffe” is probably a native name borrowed into Arabic as “zarafa.” Gazelle came from Arabic “ghazal.” (Most of the other major animals had already entered Latin bestiaries via Greek or some other channel.)

One of our favorite fish is named from Arabic, but not in a way that’s immediately visible because it came to us from Spanish. In the Atlantic, they caught al-tun, and especially the really fat kind that looked like a milk cow, al-bakora. In Spanish, al-tun became atun, and then albacore tuna in English.

The sirocco wind, blowing up from Libya across the Mediterranean toward Europe, was named in Italian after Arabic shoruq, the east wind. The wind also carried sea birds, al-qatraz, whose name came into Spanish as alcatraz, the cormorant. Of course, that’s the name of our former prison island. But the word came into English in another form, too. Adjusted to match Latin “alba” (white), it became the sailors’ favorite sea bird the albatross.

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Mozarabic Exports: and more Arabic words in Spanish

Posted on December 23, 2021 by Ruth

Spanish Andalusia got involved in Europe’s international markets in completely new ways. In the early Middle Ages, trade operated mostly through fairs. Near to major highways, rivers and harbors, certain places had a traditional time during the year when people could expect to find international merchants set up. Fairs generally lasted three days, but could last up to three weeks. An international trader just needed to know which Catholic saints’ days were reserved by which fairgrounds in order to plan an itinerary. The big fairs were wholesale markets; local traders bought in bulk and sold locally, perhaps reselling at smaller fairs or taking things by donkey pack into the rural areas.

Andalusia shipped a lot of dried fruit such as plums, figs, and dates. As possible without spoilage, they also shipped citrus fruit: lemons, limes, and oranges. They also traded preserved olives and oil, probably in jars: as noted before, the simple English word “jar” is actually the clay pot al-jarrah.

But the first major Arabic influence on international markets was with the exportation of al-qutun: cotton. The cotton plant itself was from northern India, but it grew well in Egypt and other parts of the Islamic empire, including Spain. Cotton was first exported in raw form, unspun.

Its early use was in quilting, but not usually blankets as we may imagine. Cotton quilting was for winter coats and for armor. It was especially important in the time of mail armor, or chain mail as we usually call it. Plate armor was late medieval; for most of the period, armor meant mail. A mail shirt minimized sword and spear cuts in battle, but it was heavy and it chafed the skin badly. Wool or linen cloth with cotton padding helped a lot. Early horse armor, too, was mainly quilted cloth.

Our word “mattress” seems to come from Arabic al-matrah, a sleeping mat. This suggests the next use of cotton: stuffing sleeping mats. Arabic culture generally used mats and carpets more than northern Europeans did, perhaps from Bedouin tent culture in which carpets covered sand and rock. Cotton was an expensive import at first, and it’s not likely that many mattresses were stuffed with it when straw would do just as well. Carpets, as covering for floors, didn’t make it to England until the 1200s when King Edward I married a Spanish princess who brought her own set of carpets to cover wood and tile floors, astonishing the court. (Carpets didn’t become normal until much later, after the Middle Ages.)

Arabic traders mostly carried fabric and things related to it: leather, dyes, decorations. Sometimes the names tell us the history: Cordovan leather was from Cordoba; muslin was woven cotton from Mosul; thickly woven silk from Damascus was known as damask. A woven-stripe cloth called tabby also took its name from Arabic, as did taffeta (Persian originally) and mohair; and it’s possible that “gauze” was a French adaptation of al-qazz, Arabic for silk. The words “sequin” and “sash” are also Arabic.

English got a few color words from the Mozarabic dye trade. Arab conquerors of Persia traded lapis lazuli, the bright blue stone found only in Iran. Its place of origin became its name in Arabic: lazaward. Coming to fairs in France, its name eventually became the color of bright blue, but the L was treated like a definite article in French. So the word became l’azure and then azure in English. The best red dye came from insects that fed on the kermes oak tree in Spain, and from this came the English word crimson.

Eventually, by the late Middle Ages, Spain traded in merino wool too. Northern Europe had plenty of wool, but Spanish breeders had created a very hardy sheep that needed little water and could walk long distances. The merino’s skin and wool were distinctly different, providing an extremely fine, soft yarn.

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Mozarabic Culture in Andalusia: Arabic words in Spanish

Posted on December 23, 2021 by Ruth

Spanish natives who converted to Islam were known as Muladi; those who remained Christians or Jews but just dressed and talked in an Arabic manner were Mozarabs. Mozarabic culture left a huge imprint on Spain; it was the majority culture for about 500 years.

In the last entry, I talked about irrigation and imported plants, like artichokes, spinach, and oranges. Arabic words were in everyday use for all of these things; their word for a water-mill is still at root an Arabic word: Noria. (The noria is particularly a wheel that lifts and moves water, instead of using water for power.) Many more Arabic words were adopted for plants, and some have come into English: jasmine, sandalwood, and camphor.

Many Spanish words for parts of government and the legal system are also Arabic. This isn’t surprising; the same thing happened in English when the Normans ruled as foreign invaders. A lot of our words relating to law and prison are of not only Latin, but specifically French origin. (“Prison” refers to being “taken,” from the French verb prendre.) So the same thing happened in Spanish: words for notary, will, invoice, judge and jailor were all Arabic. One of the words, tariff, came into English. They also kept some terms of abuse and insult, and a few of these came into English via Spanish: loco, mulatto and marrano. (There are lots more, mostly curses shouted at lazy workers.) It’s possible that the famous cry of “Olé!” came from Arabic “Wallah!” If a Spaniard says, “oh, I wish!” with the term “Ojalá,” it may be a relic of Inshallah.

Arabic gave Spanish most of its words for horses. Spain had some Latin words, but the Arabic rulers were horse specialists who needed particular words for parts of horse anatomy, gear, and stabling. Two Spanish color words, used only for horses and cows, came from Arabic.

The Arabic rulers were ambitious builders. Spain until this time had been more of a farming society with fishing and shipping towns on the coast. The Umayyad line established by Abd al-Rahman was intent on creating an Andalusia that was not only independent of Damascus and Baghdad, but just as splendid or better. Nearly all Spanish words for construction methods, architecture and urban planning (neighborhood, sewer) are from Arabic.

A few of these words came into English, for example “alcove,” which came from Arabic al-qubba, an arch. Spanish “adobe” is not only from Arabic, it’s an adaptation of a Coptic word (to-ome, the clay). Al-makhzan, a storage area, came to us as French magasin (a store) and English magazine (first storage of weapons, then a collection of literary items). Arsenal meant in Arabic a factory; its name came into European use first as the name of the shipbuilding yard in Venice.

Most of the Arabic borrowings start with “a,” because their word for “the” was “al,” and it often got blended into the word itself when borrowed. But some of the city and building words don’t start with A. We have both divan and sofa from Arabic, although divan came later, via Turkish. It’s actually a Persian word for a book, because the divans made in Turkey were modeled after the padded benches used in Baghdad’s reading rooms.

Some other ordinary daily words came from Mozarab culture. Lacquer is from al-lacca, a resin they imported from India. Kohl, a word for early eyeshadow, is Arabic. So is talc, and the rook in chess. Most surprising to me was Jar. Yes, the ordinary jar. Most of our stubby little words are from Anglo-Saxon or Danish, but this one was borrowed from al-jarrah, a clay container. Spanish also used al-tazzah, a cup, which we see (via French) in the word “demitasse.”

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Greening Up Arid Spain with Arab Water Tech

Posted on December 23, 2021 by Ruth

Spain and Portugal share a peninsula that is mostly a high, arid plateau. Portugal’s western coast receives most of the rain. The capital cities of Muslim Andalusia were clustered on the arid plateau; Cordoba gets about 7 inches of rain annually, compared to 28 inches for Lisbon and much higher rainfalls for other Portuguese towns. Northern Spain gets snow, as well; the Christian kingdoms and the city of Barcelona were blessed with rain averages in the range of 40 to 60 inches. Toledo and Madrid? about 15 inches. (documentation for rainfall in our time linked here)

Farming technology was limited before the Muslim period. The new rulers based in Damascus could import water engineers who were used to dealing with scarcity. They also imported new plants that were well-adapted to the climate.

Portugal’s much higher rainfall made it the obvious place to grow tropical plants, so they planted groves of oranges, lemons and limes. These words are from Arabic, though “lemon” in Arabic was probably borrowed from Chinese “limung.” “Orange” came from a Persian root, naranja, via Arabic. Portugal became the tropical-fruit garden of Europe, exporting apricots, plums, and citrus fruits. “Apricot” too is from Arabic, though curiously its original source is a Latin word that meant “early ripening.” English received these fruit names from Spanish and Portuguese importers; apricot trees were able to grow farther north, in the south of England, but the citrus remained a southern export.

Abd al-Rahman particularly missed the date palms of Damascus. He may not have had to send messengers far to find date palm seeds; perhaps they went to Tunis or Carthage. Palm trees were planted in all of the Arab-dominated places; dates became an exported fruit of the arid Spanish plateau.

Spain’s landscape grew much greener under Umayyad rule. Many of the Arabic words that came into Spanish are about irrigation technology. Syrian and Egyptian engineers created a system of canals in Spain to make the most of the water they had. In the ancient world, they had long since created water-lifting mechanisms, but these were new to Spain. The main canal brought water into a place central to various farms, and water-lifting mechanisms poured water into farmers’ personal canals. Spanish water use became sophisticated, including timed canal-gates that opened and closed to permit each farmer a fair share. Spanish words for all of these things came directly from Arabic.

Several other new crops came from the Middle East. “Spinach” is an Arabic word; all of the chard plants, those dark green bitter leaves, were from the East. “Artichoke” comes from Arabic al-kharshoof, via Spanish. They also imported melons, though the word “melon” is not Arabic. “Sandia” is the Spanish for “watermelon,” an Arabic word that just didn’t make it into English. They began to plant rice in Spain, too.

Many of these crops moved out of Andalusia and into the rest of the Mediterranean world. Italy, in particular, had a record of taking whatever it received from Spain and turning it into an industry. Rice only became common in Europe when Italy took over its cultivation. During the Middle Ages, rice was an exotic food that the wealthy used as sustenance for sick people.

A number of herbs came from Al-Andalus: tarragon, carraway and carob are all Arabic words. The Arabic word for yellow gave us both saffron and safflower; saffron, an Arabic import, was soon grown all over Europe. Most importantly, sugar cultivation, learned from Muslim India, came to Spain and Portugal. It was named in Arabic “al-sukkar.” The word had already come into English but the product was very uncommon until the Portuguese became to grow it. Arab rulers had a definite sweet tooth and set up sugar refineries on some of the islands in the Mediterranean. Our word “candy” comes straight from Arabic. Two other sweets, syrup and sherbet/sorbet, come from Arabic “sharab.”

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Christians in Early Muslim Spain (Andalusia)

Posted on December 23, 2021 by Ruth

One of the big questions people ask about the medieval years when Islam was ascendant is, “Is it true that they were much more tolerant of Christians and Jews? Was it a “golden age” of co-existence?”

Part of the answer to this question lies in the way Abd al-Rahman I chose to structure Andalusia. Before his arrival at the head of a Berber army, Muslim Spain was governed on the same principles as anywhere: Arabs were at the top of the social pyramid, and anyone similar to Arabs came next. Arabs were the biggest threat to every sitting government and had to be pacified. One of the cheapest ways to pacify even unsuccessful Arabs (or Yemenis, or Muslim Syrians) was to make sure they felt better than their non-Muslim neighbors. “Unfunded mandates” that restricted what Christians and Jews could do, build, wear and buy were the easiest way to make sure Arabs always felt superior.

But Abd al-Rahman changed that dynamic. He came into a territory that was seething with potential revolts; each city governor was setting up on his own and striking deals with Christian neighbors. He moved quickly to replace as many governors as possible with his own surviving relatives. It was soon apparent to him that the baseline cause of division was that units of the Muslim army were loyal to their own tribes: Yemenis, Berbers, Syrians, Arabs, Persians and many others. Pacifying them was impossible and wearying. So he raised his own standing army out of tax receipts. They were all imported from Yugoslavia or black Africa. Captured as young men and trained rigorously as fighting units, they were loyal only to him. They successfully put down an Abbasid-inspired rebellion in a major battle, and from then, al-Rahman’s power grew more secure.

During his reign, the old regional nobles lost much power and some of them went home. Many Berbers disliked farming and also went home. Additionally, Abd al-Rahman only permitted one school of thought on Islamic law to become established. Andalusia was the only Muslim territory that was not torn by sectarian strife.

Some Christian Visigoths had converted to Islam immediately and had now spent several generations working their way into government. The majority of the farmers and townsfolk were still Christians, and with more of the foreign invaders drifting back to their homelands, land again opened up to the native Christian farmers. While the dhimmi laws remained on the books, they don’t appear to have been enforced as much as in other places. The jizya non-Muslim tax had to be paid, but churches were not forced into dilapidation and Christians often served in the Emir’s army. Abd al-Rahman and his descendants were simply pragmatic, not dogmatic. They wanted maximum tax revenues. Cooperation clearly worked better.

It’s during this time that the term “Mozarab” described Christians who dressed and talked like Muslims but worshiped in churches. There were many mixed marriages and children grew up exposed to both religions, as well as to Latin-Spanish and Arabic in a bilingual way. Christians and Jews wrote Arabic poetry and scientific treatises. The general movement was toward Muslim conversion; to most people in all times, religion is not about personal belief as much as about group identity. It was easy to convert during this easygoing time, and for those who didn’t convert, the Christian and Jewish hierarchy tried to support the al-Rahman dynasty’s policies.

Several generations after Abd al-Rahman I, the first major Christian revolt occurred. It may have been spurred by seeing more and more of their children growing up Muslim. It was a civil disobedience movement: walk into public and denounce Muhammad. Capital punishment was the official law, but at first the Qadi (Islamic judge) was reluctant to impose it; that’s not really what Andalusia was all about. Then martyr after martyr was beheaded, his body disgustingly displayed for birds to pick at. First it was a few men, then some women, then more men and more women. We don’t know the total; it was more than ten but probably less than fifty. It was enough to keep the city in an uproar during the 850s. Full Christian rebellion seemed possible; identity became a sharper-focused issue with corpses on display.

The Islamic judges refused to change the law of death for blasphemy. The government began to enforce the dhimmi laws more harshly. Christians serving in the army were fired; so were Christian officials. Churches couldn’t be remodeled or rebuilt. Christian businesses began to fail. There was widespread concern that the whole arrangement might fall apart. The official Church condemned deliberate martyrdom, both by turning suspected leaders in and by an official ruling.

Things were never quite the same after that. Andalusia continued to be a place where dhimmis did not need to be sacrificed to pacify Yemeni pride. It was still probably a much better place to be a religious dissenter than anywhere else. But Christians were never again trusted in the same naive way. During the rest of the (over 200) Umayyad years, it was a bit harder to be a Christian. Jews had not participated in the martyrdom movement and did not lose status as much. While nominal Christians continued to convert to Islam in each younger generation, a hardened core of the Church began to dream of someday not being ruled by foreigners, and the seeds of the eventual Reconquista were planted.

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Emirs of Cordoba, 756-822

Posted on December 22, 2021 by Ruth

“Emir” or “Amir” means prince in Arabic. It acted as a general title for a ruler who wasn’t claiming to be the successor (Caliph) to Muhammad. Abd al-Rahman was probably too busy actually winning a kingdom for himself to think much about titles. He just was an Emir.

Emir Abd al-Rahman had at least four sons, though it’s not clear who their mothers were. They were probably high-class Umayyad Arab girls living in Toledo and Cordoba, but they could have included a Spanish princess, as later Emirs certainly married girls from the Christian kingdoms. The son who inherited from him, Hisham, may have had a Spanish mother. Thus began the trend in which the Umayyad Emirs of Andalusia sometimes had blue eyes and red hair, sometimes the darker skin of North Africa. They didn’t seem to pay any attention to “race” as such, just to ruling family power.

Emir Hisham came to the throne in Cordoba in 788 at about age 30. Charlemagne was 46 years old and busy fighting the pagan Saxons, and Harun al-Rashid was in his mid-twenties. Hisham’s two brothers at first refused to accept his accession.

In 793, Hisham decided to renew war against the northern Franks, who had claimed authority over “the Spanish March,” a section of norther Iberia. The King of Asturias had boldly begun building up his small Christian kingdom, and both were pushing the borders south town by town. Hisham called on his city governors to join in sending men, and they attacked Narbonne, Carcassonne, and Girona. These cities were in the area the Romans had called Septimania, along the Mediterranean coast. They defeated the Duke of Toulouse at Carcassonne, where they carried off loot to enrich Cordoba’s Mosque building project.

Hisham seems to have been a pious man who lived austerely, trying to emulate the old stories of Caliph Umar rather than the more recent stories of his Umayyad grandfathers in Damascus. When Hisham died in 794, he named his son Hakam as his successor, but Hisham’s brothers were still alive, and again contested the succession. In Arab tradition, they should have inherited as brothers. One of the brothers even went to the court of Charlemagne to intrigue against Hakam. In the end, their rebellions were defeated.

Emir Hakam spent his reign, until 822, putting down other rebellions. There were Christian Visigothic kingdoms and many Arab or Berber city governors such that at any given time, someone was contesting the rule of Hakam. One of his responses was to create an elite army of African mercenaries; they were not Berbers but came from farther south, perhaps all the way from Sudan. Oddly, the first commander of his personal bodyguard was a Visigoth—which goes to show how unpredictable alliances were.

One rebellion was against the new taxes needed for his small professional army. Following its suppression, 15,000 rebels were expelled from Cordoba. Their uprising was motivated by strict Medinan Islamic values, so when a number of them settled in the new city of Fez, Idris’ kingdom gained scholars. That they were scholars may be why they were exiled, not executed.

Perhaps during the reign of Emir Hakam, Bishop Theodemir of Iria Flavia in the northern kingdom of Asturias announced that he had discovered the body of Saint James, brother of John, disciple of Jesus. This began the tradition of Christian pilgrimage to the tomb of St. James at Compostela. How were Christians doing at this time? Let’s look at that next.

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Charlemagne and the Caliph, 797

Posted on December 22, 2021 by Ruth

With Abd al-Rahman’s power increasing in Andalusia, the new Frankish kings, Pippin and his son Charlemagne, found that they had a common interest with the Caliphs in Baghdad. Baghdad was too far away to feel like a threat to Frankland. The Abbasid Caliphs would have liked nothing better than seeing the upstart Umayyad Emir crushed without their having to do anything.

During the 760s, ambassadors visited. At that time, ambassadors stayed for a few years, brought gifts, established a working knowledge of the people and the land, and then returned home. The embassy from Baghdad probably accompanied the Frankish embassy group back to Aachen, then stayed three years as had the Franks.

The Northern Europeans saw alliance with Baghdad as a way to join the Silk Road market. The Franks accepted Arabic gold dinars, and even in the more distant kingdom of Mercia, in England, King Offa was so eager to participate in trade that he struck his own coins to look like Arabic dinars. Europe had furs, timber, iron and slaves to trade to Baghdad. What didn’t Baghdad have to trade back? Silk, spices, gold, and gems came from the far east and may have stocked the Frankish capital for later creation of crown jewels.

The two kingdoms also shared common antipathy to Constantinople. Rome was pulling away from Constantinople as their prelates vied for higher authority. Charlemagne and Haroun al-Rashid might have contemplated a joint assault on Byzantine territory, although it never happened.

In 797, a number of embassies went back and forth. First, Charlemagne sent Isaac the Jew, who was from Narbonne and probably had many Mediterranean travel contacts. Isaac may have spoken some Arabic, too. With him went some Frankish nobles, but we know less about them, since they died while abroad. Isaac was sent home with an Asian elephant named Abul Abbas. They traveled through Egypt and North Africa, sailing from Kairouan to Genoa. In spring 802, they took the road over the Alps to arrive at Aachen. Surprisingly, the elephant made it.

The Royal Frankish Annals catalogued gifts received from Caliph Haroun al-Rashid. They included a tent with finely-woven colored curtains, ivory chessmen, perfume, silk, a brass candelabra, and a clock. The clock ran by water, using gravity and the size of holes and pipes to measure time. It struck cymbals on the hour, while also twelve little horsemen twirled.

Charlemagne also sent embassies to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who was of course living under Abbasid rule. The King paid for the construction of the Church of St. Mary, and some monks came to Aachen as ambassadors. Caliph Haroun al-Rashid offered Charlemagne custody of the holy places, but he died before it could be worked out. Embassies continued after the deaths of the two kings, their successors trying to keep up good relations.

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