pre-Crusades: Church vs. State

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Ruth

We traced earlier how the rise of the Pope’s power was always tied into the military support of Charlemagne’s family. After the land of the Franks broke up for the last time in an inheritance distribution, separate branches of the family ruled in Paris and Aachen. The King of the Germans was by far stronger during the 10th and 11th centuries. Most of the German kings were also separately crowned as King of Italy in Pavia.

The north of Italy was still called Lombardy; Pavia was its capital and they still had their historical “Iron Crown” that was used in each coronation ritual. Any King of Germany and Italy also controlled Rome. Being crowned Holy Roman Emperor was a separate deal; it doesn’t seem to have come automatically but had to be negotiated with the Pope in each generation.

In the years leading up to the First Crusade, the balance of power between King and Pope became a crisis. The key problem was that the church drew its financial support from land ownership; a bishop was not only a “Prince of the Church” but also the secular ruler of fairly extensive lands. Remember that government was managed by means of the pyramid of feudalism; each manor was part of a larger unit, and each of these part of a larger region, all under the king. The Church didn’t rule any particular region, but they owned patches of land all through every county and dukedom. Bishops were technically independent, but in fact they were woven all into the governance of a kingdom.

If the King could appoint bishops in his territory, he could make sure that they were agreeable to his rule. It was easiest to appoint younger sons of the local ruling family as bishops. They were already part of society and its structure of loyalty. It was easiest of all if the King/Emperor could appointed the Pope, too, and several of them did, including the Empress who was regent for her son, the future Henry IV.

The Popes began to see the danger of leaning too much on the Franks. If the Pope was entirely dependent on the kings of France and Germany, the Church would cease to have any real meaning. A new Benedictine monastic movement in Cluny, France insisted that the Church must be separate and higher, to honor God.

In the middle of the 11th century, the Pope’s legal adviser and ambassador, Hildebrand, steered Rome through several smaller crises in which the city had elected a different pope from the one appointed by the German Empress. In 1073, during the previous pope’s funeral rites, the people of Rome formed a mob and demanded that Hildebrand himself should become Pope to fight for Roman independence. Hildebrand wasn’t even a priest, but at popular request he was quickly ordained priest, bishop and Pope. Right around this same time, Henry IV became an adult and took power in his own name as King of the Germans.

The new Pope Gregory VII opposed the German King in every way possible. As his most lasting reform, he set up a separate governance structure, the Roman Curia, to elect popes and appoint bishops. It’s hard for us to understand, from our viewpoint, just how important this was in Europe’s history. We associate the Curia with everything old-fashioned, hidden and authoritarian. But in its creation, it was an institution to maintain distance between church and state. It was part of the long European conflict that finally gave us our modern theory of private religion. The young Henry IV knew exactly what was at stake and opposed everything Gregory VII did.

During Henry IV’s 50 year reign, he deposed the Pope *twice* (appointing his own counter Pope) and was excommunicated (twice). The first time, he was still in his early 20s and found a way to turn his excommunication to strategic advantage. He begged the Pope for forgiveness by standing barefoot for 3 days in the snow, outside the castle where the Pope was staying. It was great religious theater, but it also gave him a reason to keep his army stationed nearby. (His later capture of Rome could only be reversed by the Pope’s allies fighting pitched battles.)

The Pope worked on strategies to weaken Henry IV. German aristocrats were generally willing to rebel against their king, who was usually some kind of relative. Also, there was genuine debate over the Emperor’s control of the church. Pope Gregory’s supporters, many of them powerful Cluniac monks, pointed out how morally wrong it was for the church to become a puppet of any state. Various Counts and Dukes began to ally with the Pope. A noble widow, Matilda of Tuscany, could claim the lands of Tuscany, Lorraine and Swabia against the German king’s wishes, so the Pope supported her in this act of rebellion. The Pope also encouraged and allied with the Norman brothers who were storming southern Italy and Sicily.

Gregory VII believed that the Church should be not just independent, but also higher in authority than even the Holy Roman Emperor. He wrote to some of the newly-converted places, seeking to set up feudal vows to Rome in places like Denmark and Hungary. He also wrote to the Byzantine Emperor, trying to solve the schism of the 1050s. He left a mandate for his successors to try to bring the branches of the Church back together, so that it could stand stronger against kings. Henry IV had actually taken money from Constantinople to undermine Rome, which showed just how dangerous it was for the church to be a house divided.

Last, out of Gregory VII’s troubles came an idea of holy war. This Pope had a vision of how all Christendom could come together under the Rome’s authority and push out the invaders. The church could lead by promising forgiveness of sin in exchange for military service, something the German king could never do. Taifa-riddled Spain was a perfect first proving ground.

 

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Pilgrims to the Holy Land

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Ruth

In the century before the First Crusade, a number of regions had adopted Christianity: Norway, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Bulgaria. During this same time, an abbey of Benedictine monks at Cluny, in Aquitaine, encouraged many people to go on pilgrimages. The newly-converted should go; the guilty should go. Some judges even sentenced aristocrats to go on pilgrimage to atone for murder. The first Christian king of Norway, Olaf Tryggvason, went to Jerusalem as a pilgrim.

In the 11th century, pilgrim travel was at first easier, because they could travel safely in Hungary and Byzantine Anatolia. The first Christian king of Hungary established a hostel for pilgrims in Jerusalem and moved his administrative capital to be near one of the chief pilgrim roads. This gave him a great deal of contact with other Europeans, important since the Huns had been invading barbarians, themselves, and Stephen wanted to rebrand.

Anatolia had established pilgrim hostels, guides and shrines. It had been solidly Roman and Christian for a long time; some of its cities are cited in the Bible. When the Seljuk Turks took over Baghdad in 1055, next they invaded the Armenian mountain kingdom. By 1080, there was an Armenian refugee kingdom in Anatolia, along the coast.But Armenians had been among the earliest converts to Christianity, so they were friendly to pilgrims. It wasn’t so bad at the border with Syria, either. Although the crazy Caliph al-Hakim had torn down Constantine’s basilica in Jerusalem, the Fatimids generally favored pilgrim travel.

The other route to the Holy Land was by sea. In Roman times, it was easy to get a ship from Rome to Alexandria or Jaffa. For a long time, Constantinople’s warships kept piracy at bay, but after the Muslim invasion it was harder. By the 11th century, the eastern Mediterranean was also served by Venice, which was nominally under Constantinople. For pilgrims, Venetian ships were the only option. Venice provided some armed protection and charged high fees.

During the late 11th century, both eastern Anatolia and all of Syria/Palestine fell into anarchy and civil war. Pilgrims who made it back to Hungary left warnings for others. With the overland route becoming impossible, only the sea route was left, so its expenses skyrocketed.

This entry ends up being rather frustrating to write, because every source assures me that there were wild rumors and horror stories about dangers to pilgrims, but none cite any actual stories. When the Seljuks took over Jerusalem and realized that rich foreigners had this odd idea that it was their right to cross Turkish lands and visit a Turkish-ruled city, they saw it first as an unwelcome spy op or invasion. Some pilgrims were turned away; others were harassed by robbers and could not get any help from soldier outposts. At other times, the Seljuk governors of Jerusalem permitted pilgrims but made them pay outrageous fees to enter. The Seljuk governors of Jerusalem were often at war with the chiefs of other nearby cities like Aleppo and Damascus.

Some of the horror stories came from Anatolia’s new status as a war frontier.  As the Seljuks and their allies, the Pechenegs, pressed against the Muslim-Byzantine border, Anatolia was no longer peaceful. With armies and battles come plunder, fires, robberies and outlaw bands. Monasteries and churches in Anatolia were burnt and  plundered. Travelers were robbed.

That’s the most detail I’ve been able to muster. If you know any specific claims of pilgrim persecution, please post as comments.

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Turkish Syria

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Ruth

Countdown to the First Crusade:

In 1055, Seljuk Turks took over governance of Baghdad. The Abbasid Caliphate was utterly gone. Seljuk rulers spoke Persian and sometimes Arabic, and often they used Arabic names like Mohammed. However, the old Arabic titles of office shifted to Persian and Turkish. (The common people never stopped speaking Seljuk-dialect Turkish, which is the direct ancestor of modern Turkish.) From this point, we hear of Sultans, Shahs, Beys, and Atabegs, in addition to the old Emirs and Caliphs.

The first Seljuk Sultan was named Toghril Bey, a colorful guy. His foster brother seized power until Toghril not only defeated his army, but also strangled him personally with a bowstring. Then Toghril settled the legality of rule by marrying the last Abbasid princess. After his death, his sons and nephews began to murder each other until “Alp Arslan” (Heroic Lion) became Sultan in 1063.

Alp Arslan went to war against the Byzantine Emperor; both men led their own armies into Armenia, to the Battle of Manzikert (1071). In this battle, the Turks used the tactic of constantly falling back to draw the Byzantine Army into a long ragged line in a valley, then encircling it and attacking.

The Greek Emperor became a personal captive of Sultan Arslan. The story goes that the Sultan asked, “What would you do to me if I were your captive,” and the Emperor replied truthfully, “I’d kill you, or parade you through the streets.” Sultan Arslan humiliated the Emperor by promptly freeing him without harm. From this time, Seljuk Turks owned more and more of Anatolia: it *began* to become “Turkey.” It wasn’t their homeland yet, though; Alp Arslan was buried in Turkmenistan, and Anatolian farmers still spoke Greek.

Alp’s son became Sultan Malik Shah I; at this time, the Turkish Muslims consolidated power over all of the eastern and northern Muslim lands, pushing out some Egyptian rulers from the Holy Land. Malik’s brother Tutush ruled in Damascus; a warlord named Artuk became governor of Jerusalem. The Turkish Beys appointed to govern Aleppo, Jerusalem, Antioch and Damascus fought against each other. Chiefs with names like Radwan, Daquq, Ilghazi and Sokmen staged internecine battles in farm fields around these cities.

When a little boy, Malik’s baby son, became Sultan in Baghdad in 1092, there was a free-for-all power grab. A second Arslan declared independence for Turkish Anatolia, while Tutush (the baby’s uncle) did the same in Damascus.

The Muslim Empire, the Ummah, had fallen into near anarchy. Islam had been based on central rule by Mohammed; now it had broken into at least 3 pieces that might not ever get back together. The Fatimids in Egypt were still sending out secret preachers/spies into the Persian and Turkish region. Sunni fundamentalists were ruling much of Africa and Spain.

During this whole period, pilgrims from Europe continued to attempt to visit and kiss holy relics in Jerusalem. At times, the city was besieged or sacked by some Turkish warlord; in 1096, a Fatimid Sultan swung north to conquer it. It was extremely dangerous to live in, or travel to, Jerusalem.

Now the stage is set for the First Crusade; that’s the land they’ll be invading: Syria devoured by Turkish invaders. Next, the characters and the plot motive. I have to swing the camera back to Europe for a bit, to catch up with the Popes and kings.

 

 

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Rome vs. Eastern Rome: 1054

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Ruth

Countdown to the First Crusade: Church schism

By the beginning of the Middle Ages (6th cent.), Christians had a general understanding that all theological disputes should be solved by representatives of the five major Christian regions: Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople and Rome. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Constantinople considered itself the Roman government in exile. When Popes began crowning Carolingians as Holy Roman Emperors in the west, it was a direct assault on Constantinople’s claims. Around the same time three of the five Patriarchates fell under Islam’s rule: Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch no longer had secular power, though they could still send theologians to a council. The power struggle between Rome and Constantinople had no mediating parties: it really came down to Eastern Rome vs. Actual, Resurgent Rome.

When the Franks and other Europeans converted to Latin Christianity, they learned a form of the official creed that included a word not used in Byzantine churches. Rome didn’t officially adopt this version until 1014, when it was sung at the coronation of Henry “the Fowler” as Holy Roman Emperor. During the 800s and 900s, it was a football to kick around, a negotiating point while Rome and Constantinople bickered over other forms of power. At first it seemed collegiate enough: the Byzantines politely informed the Latins that they had deposed their Patriarch, only to find that Rome sent an inquiry team as if it was their business. Approvals, disapprovals, legates and ambassadors went back and forth as if Rome and Constantinople were siblings. As disgruntled as they got, there was no open breach for a long time.

At missions frontiers, Greek and Latin missionaries clashed. Russia went Greek; Poland went Latin. Hungary went Latin. Bulgaria was a battleground with both kinds of missionaries, but by 1020, Byzantium was in military and theological control of Bulgaria and Serbia.

When Normans began to take over southern Italy, they appointed Latin bishops who used the Western creed form. Italy shared the peninsula with Rome, but southern Italy (mostly Mediterranean coast with shipping ties to the east) had always answered to Constantinople. Southern Italians were confused. Who was in control? Was it a collegiate matter for a church council, or had there been conquest? Was Rome now higher than a sibling? Yes: the “Bishop of Rome” now claimed to have theological hierarchy over all other regions, based on Jesus’ comment to Peter (who died in Rome).

The Patriarch of Constantinople retaliated against Rome’s abuse of power by closing Latin churches still operating in his city in 1052. In 1054, a legate from the Pope walked into Hagia Sophia Basilica and laid on the altar an order of Excommunication against the Patriarch. For a few decades, Patriarchs had often “forgotten” to list Popes in their official church hierarchy list; on their side, the Popes often “forgot” to notify Constantinople of their ordination. Now they were openly declaring each other powerless and illegitimate. The excommunicated Patriarch ignored the Papal Bull and issued his own edict denouncing the heretical Latin creed formula.

So what happened next? Not much. In a way, the Great Schism mattered less in its own time than it does now. At the time, Greek-speaking Anne of Kiev was queen of France and then regent over her son Philip. The Holy Roman Emperor didn’t come around arresting Byzantine relatives at the Parisian court just because Rome had issued an edict. And one generation later, in 1081, the western (German) Holy Roman Emperor was himself besieging Rome in a dispute with the Pope. It wasn’t even clear if the Pope was his own man.

What we can learn from it, coming up to the Crusades, was the fluidity and uncertainty of relationship between Rome and Constantinople. We all know as a point of general information that the First Crusade happened because the Pope sent help at request of the Byzantine Emperor. We’ll get there shortly, as the 11th century closes. But think about the geopolitical significance of what amounted to a Latin military invasion of Byzantine territory. At the same time that Normans were oppressing Greek monks in Italy, the Greek Emperor was forced to invite more Normans right into Jerusalem to do the same. Imagine the delight of the Pope, after two centuries of power plays against Byzantium: now, he had the ability to summon a chain-mailed horde to the rescue.

We tend to look back in history and assume that Rome was always dictating to Europe; but instead, we see here that a process of elimination (Islam taking over competitors) and long rivalry led to that point. Until that point, it wasn’t clear that Rome was really going to become All That. The Bishop of Rome was just a church official in a city among others. But the First Crusade was a master stroke of sibling domination. It was the first reply to Stalin’s much later question: How many divisions does the Pope have? 11th century answer: more than the Patriarch, anyway.

 

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Anti-Semitism begins in Europe

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Ruth

Part of the countdown to the First Crusade…

Before the year 1000, there’s no clear evidence of anti-Jewish actions. A small community of Jews had settled along the Rhine River in Roman days; there were some other small historic communities in parts of Roman France. Most of Europe’s Jews before the turn of the millenium were merchants, though some were farmers and wine-makers.

A particular group of merchants are known to history as Radhanites. Their home base in Europe was in the Rhone Valley; they traveled back and forth to China, at times by way of the Jewish-convert Khazar kingdom on the Black Sea. (It’s possible that contact with Jewish traders encouraged the Khazar king to learn more and then convert.) Some of their routes used the sea, but going to China invariably entailed a long overland journey. The Radhanites were remarkable for being able to speak most of the languages along the way, including Slavic and Persian. They carried European furs and slaves eastward, returning with spices. Before 1000, they were the main spice suppliers to the Carolingian kings.

As we’ve seen, the region of Europe and Asia was destabilized in the late 900s. The Abbasid Caliphate was nearly gone: North Africa became Sunni fundamentalist; Egypt became Shi’ite evangelical; Persia was filled with Turkic nomads. China was not stable after the Tang dynasty fell. And just before the Kievans converted to Orthodox Christianity, they sacked the Jewish kingdom of Khazaria. For a while, even skilled Jewish merchants could not work the Silk Road. During the 11th century, the price of spices shot up. French and German kings had no good reason to protect Jews now that they weren’t spice sellers.

When (1009) the crazy Fatimid Sultan al-Hakim of Egypt tore down the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the Christian world was shocked. Al-Hakim ordered all non-Muslim places, both monastery and synagogue, torn down. But somehow, as word spread, Jews became connected with the destruction. Rumors spread saying that the Jews had incited Fatimid demolitions. “Anti-semitism” is a modern word, and it’s clumsy at times because Arabs are “Semites” but are not included in it. Back at that time, they were: Jews and Arabs were viewed as very similar. They were all “Levantine” and Saracens.

King Robert II in Paris and Duke Richard II of Normandy began formal oppressions of their Jewish populations. They began by insisting on conversion, but of course when conversion was refused, they started killing (many despairing Jews killed themselves, often by drowning). A Jewish scholar in Normandy was able, with difficulty, to journey to Rome and appeal directly to the Pope for relief, which the Pope provided as possible. But it was never safe to be Jewish in France again. In Spain, as the kingdom of Andalusia splintered into taifas, the Christian kings who sacked frontier towns did not distinguish between Jew and Muslim. Jews were seen as collaborators, spies, and foreign. Popes never supported Jewish persecution, but it continued.

During this same century, one of the greatest Talmud scholars ever lived in Troyes, France. Troyes was the site of large international trading fairs several times a year. Perhaps it was a safer place since Jews had an economic role in the fairs, or perhaps Rashi just managed to squeeze his lifetime in between persecutions. It helped that Troyes was well outside Normandy.

I can’t imagine that it was any fun to be a Jew in Sicily or southern Italy when the Normans invaded there. The Norman worldview was deeply anti-Jewish. The Jews had cultivated scholarship, diplomacy, languages and merchant skills to survive in the post-Roman world. Norman lords despised all of these skills.  In the last essay I described their partial conversion; their Viking attitudes and Odin-cult bloodlust took many centuries to wear down. They didn’t value literacy; they were the first European aristocracy to scorn earning money through work and especially through trade (as opposed to blackmail, which they favored). They were culturally allergic to Jews. Even without rumors about Jews inciting demolition of churches, the international ascendancy of Normans was bound to be bad news for Jewry.

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Normans on the world stage

Posted on February 23, 2014 by Ruth

 

You’ll remember that one of the early steps to pacifying the North was the deal the Franks made with Rollo the Dane to have land in exchange for peace. The Northmen who settled in Normandy were probably warriors who took local wives, because their descendants were speaking French within one generation. Their names, especially for boys, remained North Germanic; their version of French had a Danish accent. But their identity as Normans was more French than Danish.

The Normans were still distinctly different; they were the most aggressive ethnic group in Europe. They seem to have had the worst case of military-themed Christianity, although the Anglo-Saxons shared this theology and may have helped spread it among the Normans. In their minds, Jesus was the leader of a war band. He came to earth as an act of aggression against Satan, the rival (and rebel) king. They didn’t find it strange that he died on a cross as an act of war, since Northern mythology was full of mysticism about death. In the Anglo-Saxon poem “The Dream of the Rood,” the cross reminisces about how frightening it was when the young, strong warrior leaped onto it to give his life. Being a Christian meant loyalty to Jesus as warrior-king, which easily included acts of aggression against Christ’s enemies.

Norse culture did not value literacy, scholarship, or peaceful negotiation. The Norman aristocrats could be extremely pious and ignorant at the same time. They cared deeply about their faith, but simply did not (could not) read the parts of the Gospels that might disabuse them of their militant notions. Faith was about rituals, vows, and loyalty to God’s heavenly Hall. Wanton killing might be murder, therefore a sin; but much killing was lawful, and it was generally justified if the warrior was as careless of his own life as he was of others’.

You’ll remember, too, that the Normans followed primogeniture inheritance customs. Oldest sons inherited the estate and all its income; younger sons inherited a solid education (in the arts of war) and a network of family relationships. It’s not surprising that Normandy became the backbone of the Frankish feudal system, and at the same time a great exporter of arrogant, pious, callous knights. Younger sons had to seek their fortune through conquest.

Normans on pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem discovered that southern Italy was often attacked by Saracens. Nobody was firmly in control of southern Italy; it was nominally Byzantine, but often at civil war with Lombards. Sometimes there were joint Byzantine-Roman attempts to defend the coast or take back Sicily, but the overall effect was a power vacuum that the Normans happily filled. First as pilgrims, then as mercenaries, then invaders, they began to control the region. Ironically, the most violent Normans were most likely to be on pilgrimage doing penance for the sin of murder. And as devout Catholics, they had the Pope’s blessing to begin dominating Arab and Byzantine parts of Italy and Sicily.

Norman lords became Counts in southern Italy beginning in 1038. In 1061, the Pope appointed Robert Guiscard to be “Duke of Sicily.” It was an empty title, but Robert and his brother Roger set out to make it real. The brothers spent the rest of their lives conquering Arab Sicily town by town. By 1091, Roger was Count of all Sicily for real; in the same year he reconquered the island of Malta. The language of Malta remained Arabic at the core, with borrowed Norman words. Eventually Sicily became a Norman kingdom, often including parts of southern Italy. Normans set up new titles for themselves, including Robert’s son Bohemond as Prince of Taranto. (Bohemund became a Crusader.)

The Byzantine Emperor was not pleased to have Sicily and Italy under Norman control, even if they were nominally Christians. They had no historic fondness for Constantinople (as Charlemagne did) and they were loyal only to the Pope, the Emperor’s rival. Norman dominance in the Mediterranean did not contribute to regional peace; if anything, it was another early step toward the Crusades. The most aggressive strain of Christianity was now at home in the heart of the Mediterranean world, directly challenging Byzantine and Arab power.

 

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Ideology takes over the Caliphate

Posted on February 22, 2014 by Ruth

I’ve taken a week off writing about medieval Islam, so I want to review before going on. After about 950, the nature of the Muslim world began to change profoundly. Each region had its own type of change. In Persia, there were nomadic Turks moving in, converting, ruling various regions, and often moving on toward the Middle East. In Egypt, formerly pragmatic rulers were replaced with the very ideological Ismaili Fatimid dynasty. Instead of concerning themselves mainly with tax collection and frontier security, the Fatimids sponsored an aggressive conversion outreach, the ministry of Dawa.

In Muslim Spain (Andalusia), Islamic rule had been perhaps the most pragmatic and least ideological. Under the central rule of Cordoba, there had been a high degree of co-existence of non-Muslims and Muslim factions. But when the last real Caliph of Cordoba’s power went to a vizier who squandered it, Cordoba fell into civil war in 1009. Its scholars and cultural elite fled to other cities. These cities formed militias and became city-states, called taifas. The taifas went to war against each other, trying to regain central power. Some of them were dominated by Arabs, others by Berbers, others by native Iberians who had converted to Islam.

The Christian kingdoms of Northern Spain took the opportunity to pick them off one by one during the middle of the 11th century. The Reconquista might have taken just a generation or two, instead of several centuries, if nothing more had changed. But to the south, in Africa, fundamentalist Islam was stronger than ever, conquering more and more regions of black Africa. Its Berber capital was Marrakesh, in Morocco. Some of the more powerful taifa kings sent invitations to Marrakesh asking for military help against the Christians. The Almoravid fighters, wearing blue Tuareg face veils as a uniform, crossed over in 1086.

It’s easy to take this alliance for granted, since we live in a world with sharp ideological distinctions. But this is not how Spain had been during the 9th and 10th centuries. There had often been alliances between Muslim Emirs and Christian kings; Charlemagne’s one sally into Spain had been at the invitation of a rebellious Muslim. There had been a great deal of intermarriage, too; records suggest that Abd al-Rahman III had blue eyes from a Christian-born mother or grandmother. The last powerful vizier of Cordoba named his son Abd al-Rahman, but history knows him as Abd al-Rahman Sanchuelo: “little Sancho”, nicknamed for his Christian grandfather. It seems possible, in hindsight, that Spain’s 11th century civil war could have resolved some other way, with regional cross-religious alliances.

If that had been a possibility, it was no longer possible after the fundamentalist Almoravid fighters crossed into Spain. Religion began to matter much more. First, the alliance was made on specifically religious grounds. As Almoravid generals took over Spanish cities, they instituted a stricter interpretation of Sharia. They evicted many of the non-Muslims who had achieved positions of wealth and status.

Second, the Almoravids were Berber nomads, infamously hostile to city life. They didn’t care about the Houses of Wisdom, book-copying scribes, musical instruments, three-course meals, white tablecloths, deodorant, fashions or fountains of Cordoba and its satellites. When they didn’t outright destroy these things, they neglected them. Many of the new Taifa kings were illiterate; they didn’t value Hebrew or Latin scholarship, they only valued Quran memorization and their own school of Sharia interpretation.

One of the most famous Jews of the period was Samuel, known as haNagid (“the prince”). He was one of the Cordoban scholars who fled civil war; he started a shop in Malaga, a coastal town. Even before the main Almoravid invasion, Malaga’s taifa had a Berber king who was illiterate. When the king heard that one of his servants had found a man from Cordoba who could write letters, he directly hired Samuel as his chief scribe. Samuel’s education quickly elevated him above all other staff, and he became the Grand Vizier. He even led armies against other taifas.

When Samuel haNagid died in 1056, his son took his place. His son was only in his 20s, and although he too was educated, he was not canny enough to maneuver in Berber politics. In 1066, a fundamentalist mob rioted against Jews, particularly against the young Jewish vizier. After killing him, they went on to kill about 1500 others, most of Granada’s Jewish community. This was the first anti-Jewish violence in a land where Jews had welcomed and helped the Muslim conquerors.

 

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Kievan interlude

Posted on February 18, 2014 by Ruth

To take note of today’s news of fiery uprising in Kiev, I’m going to duck to one side of the Islamic developments I’ve been tracking, and instead look at Anne of Kiev, a Queen of France.

Anne’s grandmother may have been the Byzantine princess who very reluctantly went off into the deep woods to marry Prince Vladimir of Kiev. It’s not clear if Anna, sister to the Byzantine emperor, had children or if she was just the Princess consort as Vladimir’s children were growing up. Kiev’s new alliance with Constantinople was centrally important, and whether she was the natural mother and grandmother to his descendants, she was the greatest influence.

Russia, or Rus as it was often called in medieval times, had been a Swedish colony of sorts. It wasn’t directly ruled by Sweden, but Swedish war parties and traders dominated the Slavic foresters and farmers along Russia’s rivers. They had been intermarrying for several centuries already, so it’s not surprising that Vladimir’s daughter was married to the King of Sweden. Not only that, he also contracted for the Princess of Sweden to come marry his oldest son, Yaroslav.

Yaroslav’s daughter Anne was raised as an Orthodox Christian, probably under the tutelage of priests from Constantinople. But her parents had barely been baptized for one generation. Both Sweden and Rus were barbaric places compared with Constantinople; they were even barbaric compared with Aachen and Paris. Neither of them actually minted money at that time; they used fragments of silver bars for barter. Swedish kings still preferred their silver to be formed into arm rings, not coins.

On the other hand, young Anne’s pedigree included the past Emperors of Eastern Rome, and her father was at that time in control of vast areas of frontier forest. Kiev had rapidly modeled itself after Constantinople’s buildings and customs. Five-course Byzantine dinners, using forks, were typical at Yaroslav’s palace. Greek and Latin scholarship was imported as quickly as possible, too. There was a high contrast between palace life and the Kievan countryside.

Charlemagne’s empire had been divided in 887; although boundaries continued to change with each generation, it remained basically “Germany” and “France” from then on. While his descendants named Otto were crowned Holy Roman Emperors, the western Franks were also seeking a foothold to rise in power.

Since their new close alliance with Rome had made Charlemagne’s descendants pay attention to the strictest marriage rules, it was getting harder to find royal wives. One well-researched reference book on early medieval marriage said that the French and Germans misunderstood Rome’s rules. Rome counted “degrees” of relationship differently; when they intended to ban a man from marrying his 2nd cousin, it looked to the northerners like the ban prevented him from marrying even his 4th cousin. Among the aristocracy, nearly everyone was related to someone.

Kiev’s ascendancy came just in time. When Henry I of France was left widowed, his ambassadors could not find any European bride who wasn’t too closely related. They finally went to Kiev and negotiated with Yaroslav. Henry I married Anne in Rheims Cathedral in 1051.

Anne spoke Greek as a native tongue, and she could read Greek, Latin, Slavic, and at least two other languages. She was far better educated than anyone she met in Paris. Her husband, Henry I, was illiterate in spite of his ancestor’s insistence on literacy. He was so impressed with her intelligence and education that he made her an active part of his governing council. Some of his decrees (signed only with a cross, for his name) had an added inscription “with Anne’s consent.”

Anne’s oldest son was given a Greek name, Philip. Subsequent children had European names: Hugh, Robert, and Emma. There’s no record of the name Philip in Europe before Anne’s son, who became Philip I.

When Henry I died, Anne of Kiev became the Queen Regent for her son Philip. There are still some medieval Latin documents containing her name written in Cyrillic characters. This, too, is odd; for it was not until several centuries later that names counted as legal signatures in Europe. If a scribe wrote her name, why not in Latin? It appears that Anne herself chose to authenticate documents with her signature, and that her name in Slavic letters remained her identity.

 

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North African Puritans

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Ruth

When the Ismaili Shi’ites were looking for an accepting, protective tribe distant from Baghdad’s central power, they found it in the Kutama tribe of Berbers. With this base, they took over the Mediterranean strip of North Africa, and on across Egypt into Palestine and Syria. But when, eventually, a counter-reaction to Ismaili evangelicalism developed, it came from the very same place.

Unlike Persia, North Africa did not have a deep tradition of either scholarship or tolerance. If Islam’s first mutation came from settling into Persian culture, its second and third mutations came from Berber intolerance. After the eastern Berbers took up Ismaili-Fatimid evangelicalism, the western Berbers were left discontented. What was left for them? A Puritanical, fundamentalist, legalistic reaction that was just as fervent and even less tolerant.

Sunni Islam had mostly been focusing on interpretation of the Quran and Sharia law during the past few centuries. Each of its competing schools of thought was dominant in some region, so that the customs of this theological interpretation turned into cultural norms. It was one of these movements, the Maliki school of thought, that now came to the western Berbers.

Sheikh Malik, the founder of Maliki theology, was a Yemenite whose family moved to Medina when they converted to Islam. He lived in Medina during the 700s, the period when Islamic conquest was expanding rapidly.  The Companions of Mohammed had died by then, but they were still close enough in time that some of young Malik’s teachers may have known the Companions. Their interpretation of the Quran leaned heavily on “original intent,” as we call it in constitutional studies. What was written mattered, but what the original Muslims of Medina believed and practiced mattered *more.* The Maliki school questioned every hadith, custom or issue by asking: What Does Medina Do?

By the 1000s, when Maliki Islam spread to North Africa, there was a tradition of legal books in Medina. The huge library at the trading city of Timbuktu was the African base for Maliki scholarship. However, the use of Medina as a conversation-stopper meant that Maliki Islam lent itself well to illiterate use and dogmatism. A scholar might know what the competing legal philosophies thought about a question, but the right answer was all that really mattered. One of the founding principles of Maliki Islam was “Closing the Door,” a step where once the right things had been looked at (Mohammed’s life, Sheikh Malik’s books, Medina custom), the question had to be closed. It was not at all a value to keep a question open just for discussion.

Maliki Islam also preserved Mohammed’s Medina-era determination to conquer Arabia for the faith. Where Ismailis were looking for conversions to esoteric belief, Malikis were told to go out and conquer. After Ismaili faith moved eastward to Cairo, Maliki faith settled in its place and firmly became the dogma of North Africa. As far as I know, it still is. There’s a Sufi mystical branch associated with it.

Marrakech in Morocco was built as their ruling capital. Then Maliki Tuareg fighters fanned out across northern and western Africa. Over the 11th century, they conquered all of the desert tribes in modern Mali, Chad and Sudan. They defeated the Kingdom of Ghana, forcing its conversion in 1075. Along the West African coast, in the thick jungle, traditional African religions persisted, but inland, where the Maliki warriors could reach, they were all converted to Islam. That’s why northern Nigeria is the Muslim part.

Islam in most parts of Africa, then, took the form of a dogmatic, unscholarly (excepting Timbuktu), expansive and aggressive faith. Islam in Nigeria is Maliki, and it still is dogged by illiteracy and aggression. For this reason, ISIS has found recruiting in Africa very easy.

Ansar al-Dine was affiliated with Al Qaeda when it destroyed saints’ tombs in Timbuktu, in 2012. Al Qaeda is not Maliki but Salafi; but AQ’s vision of true Islam matched the original Maliki customs very well. Boko Haram in Nigeria was also founded by AQ-related Salafists, and now considers itself part of “the Islamic State.” The anti-intellectual, anti-liberal beliefs of Arabian Salafists found an easy connection with the traditional Malikis. They may have felt ashamed for neglecting the Medina mandate of jihad and expansion. AQ and ISIS gave them outside money and weapons, recharging the mission.

At the same time, to the traditional Maliki imams in Nigerian towns, the loss of their young men to Salafism is also a crisis. Salafism has its puritanical narrowness and aggression in common with the original Malikis, but it is not based in Medina customs. They must have very mixed feelings about this new school of thought and its costly jihad. But without a scholarly tradition, they can’t really challenge it.

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End of Cordoban power

Posted on February 15, 2014 by Ruth

In 976, around the same time that Fatimids were building Cairo, the last powerful descendant of Abd al-Rahman died in Cordoba. He left a 12 year old son, Hisham II, with Hisham’s mother as regent.

As so often happened, this proved a calamity for the nation. Al-Manzur, a powerful vizier, controlled the queen regent’s decisions and isolated the boy in a palace prison. Al-Manzur repeatedly went to war against the Christian kings of Castile and Leon. By 1000, he was ruler over the largest territory of Spain that any Emir or Caliph had ruled yet.

The Fatimid/Ismaili controversies stayed out of Andalusia for the most part. There was no visible sign of trouble in 1000.

Yet at the same time, the vizier al-Manzur was not building a state that could last after his death. After the boy Caliph died, Manzur married the daughter of Sancho king of Navarre as if he were the king himself. He even named his own son Abd al-Rahman, as if they were the real line of Umayyad princes. But he neglected and even ruined some of the traditional Cordoban institutions, such as the library. And in order to win more northern territory, he imported more Berbers as mercenaries.

The Caliphs never seemed to learn the lesson about dangerous mercenaries—or else they really had no other choices. Unlike the Franks, they did not have a feudal tradition with deep loyalty and kinship ties running down through ranks. Frankish kings could count on loyal troops as long as they maintained their traditional duties within feudalism.

Muslim lands didn’t seem to have this social structure. Probably this was due to their being immigrants who were not related to each other, let alone to the farming population. They ruled at the top, collecting tribute. Extended families might build up power and loyalty within a city, but it didn’t extend to the next city. It was pretty easy for loyalties to be changed, too. What’s based on money can be bought.

After al-Manzur’s death, neither of his sons was able to hold onto power. They were too dependent on North African mercenaries, who weren’t actually loyal once “Strongman Daddy” was gone. After 1009, Andalusia was in chronic civil war.

Cordoba had been the central power since Abd Al-Rahman made it his capital in the late 700s. But in 1012, it was ransacked by rebellious Berbers. There must have been so much gold and silver loot in the city to tempt nomadic fighters. The city never recovered in medieval times, and was never again the capital. Scholars fled, perhaps taking with them what books they could carry.

By 1030, Andalusia had no central power. Each city pulled together their local defenses against outside invasion. The strongest leader became a local king. In Arabic, these little city-states were called Taifas. There were at least 30 of them at the start, all fighting and pushing against each other.

More powerful taifas tried to recreate central power. Seville may have had the greatest success, forcing neighboring towns into its tribute/tax structure. Gradually, there were fewer separate taifas, and the map started showing larger mini-kingdoms. But their boundaries were extremely volatile.

Andalusia was ripe for the Reconquista to begin. The Christian kingdoms in the north had sometimes been forced to pay tribute to Cordoba. Now the power balance was reversed. Castile, Leon, and Navarre began to take back town after town. Some taifa rulers paid them tribute in order to stay in power.

Disarray and civil war are always invitations for invasion. But it took about 50 years for a real invasion to happen, so for now, we’ll leave the taifas struggling along like a jigsaw puzzle, with Castile and Leon always growing, pushing southward. Andalusia is no longer part of the regional power balance. This is a shame because it was one of the most successful regional powers while it lasted. When people talk about the way Muslims were more tolerant and cultured than Christians, they are almost always talking about the Cordoban kingdom of the Abd al-Rahman line. RIP, 755-1012.

 

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