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Volume 27, Number 5September/October 1976

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The Golden Caliphate

Written and photographed by Tor Eigeland


As they had since the beginning of the century of rapid Islamic expansion, the Muslims, although looking on the conquest of Spain as a jihad, or holy war, did not exert pressure on Spanish Christians or Jews to embrace Islam. This policy, which dates back to the lifetime of the Prophet, is summed up in an injunction in the Koran. "Be courteous when you argue with People of the Book, except with those among them that do evil. Say: 'We believe in that which is revealed to us and which was revealed to you. Our God and your God is one. To Him we surrender ourselves.'"


"In the name of Allah, the Clement, the Merciful! a letter addressed by 'Adb al-'Aziz ibn Musa ibn Nusair to Tudmir (Arabic for the Visigothic name Theodemir) ibn 'Abdush: This last obtains peace and receives an engagement, guaranteed by Allah and His Prophet, that nothing will be changed in the position of him and his; that his right of sovereignty will not be contested; that his subjects will not be killed, nor reduced to captivity, nor separated from their children and wives; that they will not be burned, nor despoiled of their holy objects; and that this will hold good as long as they satisfy the charges we impose. He is accorded peace subject to the surrender of the following seven towns: Orihuela, Baltana, Alicante, Mula, Villena, Lorca and Ello... He and his subjects will each year pay a personal tribute amounting to a dinar in money, four bushels of wheat and four of barley, four measures of musk, four of vinegar, two of honey and two of oil..."

The policy of tolerance extended to the practice of religion too. The Great Mosque of Cordoba, for example, was built on the site of a Visigothic church, but at first the Muslims shared the church, then bought it—at a good price—so that they could build a proper mosque. And whenever that occurred the Christians were allowed to build new places of worship. Indeed, during the first half century of Moorish rule in Spain, the Muslim conquerors experienced considerably more difficulties with each other than with the Spanish as the' mixed armies—Berbers and North African and Syrian Arabs—broke into factions.

In Damascus, meanwhile, the Umayyads—then the rulers of the Islamic empire—were also facing unrest, which in an unexpected way was to transform Cordoba and al-Andalus. In 750, the Abbasids of Baghdad overthrew the Umayyads and replaced them as the ruling dynasty. Only two members of the Umayyad family got away—young Abd al-Rahman and his even younger brother. The escape was described in Abd al-Rahman's own words in the Akhbar Majmu'a, a contemporary chronicle:

"Joined by my freed man, Badr, we reached the bank of the Euphrates, where I met a man who promised to sell me horses and other necessities; but while I was waiting he sent a slave to find the Abbasid commander. Next we heard a noise of the troop approaching the farmhouse; we took to our heels and hid in some gardens by the Euphrates, but they were closing in on us. We managed to reach the river ahead of them and threw ourselves into the water. When they got to the bank they began shouting 'Come back! You have nothing to fear.' I swam and my brother swam..."

The brother was caught and killed but Abd al-Rahman—poet, warrior; tall, red-haired, one-eyed, with shrunken cheeks and a mole on his forehead—survived still more adventures and eventually made his way west to al-Andalus. There, only 26 years old, he went triumphantly to Cordoba and claimed his position as surviving head of the Umayyads. His claim did not go unchallenged—either in Cordoba or in Baghdad—and Abd al-Rahman had to quell rebellions and cope with intrigues for more than 20 years before he consolidated his power as leader of the Cordoba emirate, with roughly three-quarters of the Iberian Peninsula, including present-day Portugal, under his control. At one point his personal militia totaled some 40,000 warriors, mostly Berbers and Slavs.


Cordoba's prosperity, and its era of splendor, began in the reign of Abd al-Rahman II. By then the hospitable climate and fertility of Andalusia had begun to mellow the tough desert warriors and a love of books, poetry and music began to replace their infatuation with intrigue and battle. Ziryab, for example, a musician from Baghdad, founded the Andalusian school of music and also brought a taste for fashion with him when he arrived from the East. He prescribed brightly colored silk robes for spring, pure white clothing during the hot season and fine furs and quilted gowns for the cold weather. Ziryab also prescribed hair styles and, some say, even ran a hairdressing salon.



"...intoxicated with Arab eloquence they greedily handle, eagerly devour and zealously discuss the books of the Chaldeans (the Muslims), and make them known by praising them with every flourish of rhetoric, knowing nothing of the beauty of the church's literature, and looking down with contempt on the streams of the church that flow forth from Paradise; alas! the Christians are so ignorant of their own law, the Latins pay so little attention to their own language, that in the whole Christian flock there is hardly one man in a hundred who can write a letter to inquire after a friend's health intelligibly, while you may find a countless rabble of all kinds of them who can learnedly roll out the grandiloquent periods of the Chaldean tongue. They can even make poems, every line ending with the same letter, which displays high flights of beauty and more skill in handling meter than the gentiles themselves possess."


In the 10th century, during the reign of Abd al-Rahman III (912-61), probably the greatest ruler of Muslim Spain, this richly diverse society reached a memorable level of affluence and culture. And Cordoba, the most sophisticated city in Europe, was its center. As al-Idrisi, the great medieval geographer, wrote:



The most impressive buildings, of course, were the mosques—especially the Great Mosque, which still stands in Cordoba. Begun by Abd al-Rahman I, it was enlarged and improved by successive rulers. Abd al-Rahman III contributed the magnificent minaret which was later imitated in Seville as well as in Rabat and Marrakesh in Morocco.

In al-Andalus, as in most of the Arab world, the mosque was a center of education as well as worship. But in Cordoba education flowered elsewhere too as the fame of its writers, philosophers, poets, astronomers, physicians and other scientists spread throughout Europe. Indeed, Andalusian intellectual life was years ahead of the rest of contemporary Europe. There was a university in Cordoba and some 70 libraries in which not thousands, but hundreds of thousands, of volumes were amassed. Al-Hakam II's library contained some 400,000 books. And though philosophers of the time complained of the lack of opportunity for the development of women's talents, there were female poets, librarians and book copyists and other women were involved in teaching, law and medicine.


"...the most advanced in science and most zealous in piety... They have won fame for the purity of their doctrine, the rigor of their honesty, the formality of their customs in regard to dress, riding accoutrements, elevation of feeling in assemblies and gatherings and finally in often exquisite taste as regards food and drink; add to all this great amiability and perfect manners."

Then, as now, the citizens of Cordoba loved music and song passionately. At times people reached a state called tarab, a state of physical pleasure attained through music. According to the famous Spanish Arabist Emilio García Gómez, "Spain, that stronghold of ancient forces, still keeps the tarab in its cante jondo, an inner room in an Andalusian tavern; glasses of golden wine, a guitar, a voice..."

Outside Cordoba, the countryside was lush with Spain's traditional olives and wheat and also the sugarcane and oranges imported by the Muslims. As a Mozarab bishop, Recemundus, described it in March 961:




Initially successful, he organized what he called the "Omnipotent Campaign," in which, at Valladolid, he led 100,000 men into battle with the combined forces of the kingdoms of Navarre, Castile, and Leon—and nearly lost everything. Abd al-Rahman himself barely escaped with his life, apparently losing a golden suit of armor and his precious personal Koran in the confusion. But as the Christians rarely seemed to follow up their victories, and turned to internal feuding not long after, Muslim forces soon returned to the attack. Before long, as a result, the three Christian kingdoms of Navarre, Castile and León were again paying annual tribute to the Cordoban Caliphate, Abd al-Rahman III reigned supreme and Muslim power reached its zenith in Europe. Ambassadors from throughout the known world came to pay their respects at his court (See box).

Abd al-Rahman's successor, however, was to be the last of the great Andalusian rulers. This was the caliphate's greatest warrior and minister, al-Mansur, the Conqueror, who came to power in 976. Ambitious and ruthless, he established military rule, introduced secret police, employed large numbers of mercenary troops and, although warring constantly with Christian kings, married two of their daughters.


During the battle the city was sacked and the church of Santiago de Compostela was destroyed. Out of respect for Christian beliefs, however, al-Mansur left the tomb of Santiago itself alone and placed a guard around it. He also spared the life of an old monk found sitting next to the tomb. Al-Mansur asked what he was doing there and the monk replied simply: "Praying to St. James (Santiago)." "Then pray on," said al-Mansur, and gave orders to leave him in peace.



As no strong ruler succeeded al-Mansur in Cordoba, and as his military rule had made his reign unpopular, Cordoba itself rebelled and civil war engulfed al-Andalus. Within 20 years the caliphate—previously the emirate—which had lasted nearly 300 years, collapsed. By 1031 it was over, the occasion marked by a riot in the capital.


This article appeared on pages 12-16 of the September/October 1976 print edition of Saudi Aramco World.

