al-Hakam I ibn Hisham

Al-Hakam I ibn Hisham, the fourth of the Umayyad amirs in Cordoba, who ruled between 180 and 206 AH. Al-Maqqari says he was the first to recruit soldiers in al-Andalus and to take mamluks, until they reached five thousand, of whom three thousand were horsemen and two thousand on foot. He is said to have resembled Abu Ja'far al-Mansur in the severity of his rule. ²

In his time came the Rabad incident in Cordoba. Al-Maqqari says that the people of learning deposed him there, and he fought them and demolished their houses and mosques, and they fled to Fez, Alexandria and then Crete. ³

The Franks attacked Barcelona and took it in 185 AH, and in 196 AH al-Hakam himself marched and took the frontier posts and fortresses. ⁴

He favoured the jurist Ziyad ibn Abd al-Rahman Shabtun. In the year of famine, 197 AH, he gave much to those in need. His ring was engraved: "In God al-Hakam trusts and is protected." ²

He was born in 154 AH, and died at the end of 206 AH, after twenty-seven years of rule. ⁵