al-Andalus

Al-Andalus: a region at the far west. al-Baladhuri reports on the authority of al-Waqidi that Tariq ibn Ziyad, the agent of Musa ibn Nusayr, first invaded it in the year 92 AH. ¹

Ilyan, its governor at the passage, met him and gave him safe-conduct to carry his army over in ships. Then its people fought him, and he took control of it. ¹

al-Baladhuri says that its king, "so they claim", was of the Ashban, whose origin was Isfahan. This is a reported saying, and it is not settled here. ¹

Al-Andalus, or Diyarat al-Andalus, was the term used in the Islamic world until the end of the Middle Ages for the Iberian peninsula, that is modern Spain and Portugal. The name may be connected with the Vandals (al-Andalish), who gave Baetica the name Vandalicia before they crossed to Africa. It appears on a bilingual dinar of 98/716, where the Latin equivalent is Spania. Arab writers always confined the term to Muslim Spain, whatever its extent, which the Christian Reconquista steadily reduced; in the end it denoted only the small Nasrid principality of Granada. Muslim chroniclers also used Ishbaniya (Hispania) and the Arabic forms of the Christian kingdoms: Liyun (Leon), Kashtala (Castile), Burtukal (Portugal), Aragon and Navarre. The ethnic form andalusi and the collective ahl al-Andalus derive from the name. Today the term is kept for the sub-Mediterranean region of Andalusia, from Almeria to Huelva. ²

The peninsula forms a massive, almost pentagonal promontory at the south-west of Europe, joined to the continent by the Pyrenees and washed by the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. It lies between about 43 degrees 24 minutes and 35 degrees 59 minutes north, and 9 degrees 30 minutes west and 3 degrees 19 minutes east, with an area of about 229,000 square miles, of which modern Portugal is less than a fifth. Cut off from the rest of Europe by the Pyrenees, it is separated from Africa only by the narrow Straits of Gibraltar, which gives it an insular character that has long isolated it from influences beyond the Pyrenees while leaving it open to eastern influences by the Mediterranean. ³

Most of the peninsula is a large central plateau, the Meseta, with a mean height of about 1,965 feet, which comprises Old and New Castile and is bounded by high escarpments: the Cantabrian range to the north, the Iberian mountains to the north-east and east, the Sierra Morena to the south, and the tablelands of Galicia and Portugal to the west. Three deep depressions cut it: the Ebro, the Guadalquivir and the lower Tagus. In the south the upheaval of the Penibaetic system forms the mountain mass of Upper Andalusia, with the Sierra Nevada, whose Mulhacen is the highest point. The mean height of the whole peninsula is not less than 2,160 feet, and only about 40 per cent of it lies below 1,645 feet, which made the soil hard to exploit. ⁴

The peninsula has a dry, generally temperate climate, but the high interior has extreme temperatures, with severe winters and torrid summers; the sub-littoral zones, especially the depression of the Guadalquivir, are the exception. The rainfall divides the country into wet Spain, the western Pyrenees, the Basque country, the Cantabrian coast and nearly all of modern Portugal, and dry Spain, which covers nearly two thirds of the peninsula, where the annual rain varies from about 23 inches to under 15 inches and is largely lost to evaporation unless the land is irrigated, as in the Levant around Valencia and Murcia. The north-west and the Atlantic seaboard have mild, humid weather, and the Mediterranean zone from Catalonia to the Andalusian coast has mild winters, high sunshine and clear air. ⁴

The rivers of the peninsula share the character of North African wadis: most run dry for much of the year and are sudden torrents when they flood, with heavy erosion. The rivers flowing west and north are short coastal streams, chief among them the Mino, which forms the northern frontier of Portugal. The Duero, the Tagus and the Guadiana, all drawing the waters of the Meseta, reach the Atlantic, and the Guadiana forms the southern frontier between Spain and Portugal. The most important river is the Guadalquivir, fed by the Genil from the Sierra Nevada, and the only one navigable in its lower course, for the last 75 miles. The torrential wadis of the Levant, the Segura and the Jucar, provide uncertain supplies for irrigation. The Ebro rises in the Basque country, is fed by the southern Pyrenean slopes, and reaches the Mediterranean through a large alluvial delta. ⁴

Dry Spain has three kinds of vegetation, the Mediterranean kind: forests of evergreen oaks and holm oaks or cork-trees, the foothills (monte bajo) and the steppe of scrub and esparto grass. Wet Spain, with its forests and natural meadows, stays green all year. The variety makes Spain a country of great contrasts, where one may pass almost at once from a river valley (vega), lush with vegetation, to a steppe burnt by sun and wind. ⁵

Most of what is known of al-Andalus in the Middle Ages comes from the Arab geographers, eastern and western. The Road Books (masalik), in de Goeje's Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum, give little space to Spain; those of Ibn Khurradadhbih, al-Ya'qubi, Ibn al-Faqih and Ibn Rusta are so brief that al-Andalus seems to have been little known in the East before the tenth century. After the Marwanid caliphate was restored at Cordova the geographical record became more systematic. Al-Istakhri (d. 322/934) describes fourteen itineraries in the peninsula, with attention to agriculture and commerce. Ibn Hawqal visited Spain himself and brought his information up to date from informants on the road. His pro-Fatimid account is often partial, but it is the first rational, full and coherent description of the Cordovan kingdom. The Palestinian al-Muqaddasi, who did not visit Spain, gives important information on learning, language, weights and measures, and trade. ⁶

The later descriptions, written mostly in the west, depend on the description that the Cordovan historian Ahmad al-Razi (d. 344/955), of eastern origin, placed at the head of his lost history of al-Andalus. Yaqut used it without acknowledgement. Only a Castilian version survives, published by Gayangos in 1852 from a Portuguese version made for King Denis of Portugal (1279-1325). The lost description of Abu 'Ubayd al-Bakri (d. 487/1094) can be largely reconstructed from the notices on al-Andalus in the Rawd al-Mitar of Ibn 'Abd al-Mun'im al-Himyari, who also used al-Idrisi. The al-Maqqari (17th century) in the first volume of his Nafh al-Tib also gives long notices. ⁶

According to al-Razi, al-Andalus lies at the western end of the fourth clime, a land watered by many rivers and sweet springs. Geographers loved panegyric and the Laudes Hispaniae, in the manner of Isidore of Seville. Al-Andalus was imagined as a triangle, each corner marked by a place of Hispanic legend: at the south-west apex the temple of Cadiz (Sanam Qadis); a second corner on the latitude of the Balearics; a third, in the north-west, at the Tower of Hercules near Corunna. Al-Razi saw that western and eastern Spain differ in winds, rainfall and the direction of rivers: the rivers of the west flow to the Atlantic, watered by the westerly winds, and in the east the winds blow from the east and the rivers flow eastwards. Landmarks include Cape St Vincent, 'the church of the crow' (Kanisat al-Ghurab), and the Temple of Venus, Haykal al-Zahra, at Port-Vendres. Coming from Gaul, the traveller crossed the Pyrenees by its passes (abwab, burtat) into the lands of the Gascons (al-Bashkunish) and the Franks (al-Ifranj). The Atlantic was the Sea of Darkness (Bahr al-Zulumat), the green sea or the surrounding sea, where bold sailors traded along the coast with the land of the blacks and the Canaries (al-Khalidat), and the Mediterranean was the great sea, the middle sea, or the Tyrrhenian sea. ⁷

Al-Razi counted only three ranges crossing the peninsula from one sea to the other, none crossed by a river. The first is the Sierra Morena, 'the mountains of Cordova' (Jibal Qurtuba), from the Levantine coast to the Algarve. The second is the Pyrenean range, which crosses Spain obliquely from Tortosa to Lisbon, corresponding to the transverse range al-Sharrat in al-Idrisi. Other ranges include the Serrania of Malaga (Jibal Rayyo) and the mountain called Shulayr. The chief river is the Guadalquivir, the 'great river' (al-Nahr al-A'zam), also called Nahr Baiti after the Baetis, which waters Cordova and Seville in Baetica, the richest part of the peninsula. Its tributaries are the Genil (Wadi Sindjil), the Guadajoz, the Guadalimar (al-Wadi l-Ahmar, from the reddish colour of its water) and the Guadalbullon. The Guadiana, 320 miles long, runs underground for part of its course and reaches the Atlantic at Ocsonoba; the Tagus, 580 miles long, reaches the Atlantic at Lisbon; the Duero, 780 miles long, reaches it at Oporto; and the Mino, 300 miles long, runs east to west through Galicia. Of the rivers flowing to the Mediterranean, al-Razi mentions the Segura. ⁸

The Segura, the one Mediterranean river al-Razi mentions, rises near the sources of the Guadalquivir. The Ebro, Wadi Ibro, rises at Fontibre in Upper Castile and reaches the sea near Tortosa after some 204 miles; its many tributaries include the Gallego (Nahr Djillik), which comes down from the mountains of Cerdagne. ⁸

Al-Andalus was notable in every period for its many towns, in contrast with North Africa. Almost all the towns of Roman Spain survived the Arab conquest and went on prospering. The new towns founded by the conquerors were numerous, and were nearly always strategic sites or coastal bases meant to check Fatimid ambitions in the western Mediterranean: Murcia, which replaced the old town of Ello, and Almeria, which began as a coastal observation post and became an arsenal and naval station in the tenth century. Most Latin names survived almost unchanged, such as Corduba (Qurtuba), Hispalis (Ishbiliya), Caesaraugusta (Saraqusta) and Valentia (Balansiya), while others were shortened or took new forms: Toletum became Tulaytula, and Ocilis became Madinat Salim (Medinaceli), a name that gave rise to a legendary founder called Salim. Some names came from Arab or Berber tribes settled after the conquest, and in the Valencia region many names were formed with Beni and an eponymous ancestor. ⁹

When al-Razi wrote, Muslim Spain was already separated from the Christian north by a no man's land, bordered by three marches (thughur): the upper, the middle and the lower. Whole regions evacuated under the first pressure of the Reconquista, such as the Hispanic march in the east and the Basque country, had been lost. The expedition of al-Mansur against Santiago de Compostela was only a spectacular raid. The provincial organisation of al-Andalus dated from the eighth century, before the Marwanid restoration. It was based on districts (kura), each with a chief town, governor and garrison; the lists vary, al-Muqaddasi giving 18 names, Yaqut 41, and al-Razi 37. Al-Idrisi's 'climes' (iqlim) have no administrative sense. Reconstructed from al-Razi and al-Bakri, the largest kura was Cordova, bounded to the north by the Fahs al-Ballut (the Llano de los Pedroches), with Ghafiq as its chief place. South of the Guadalquivir lay the kuras of Cabra and Ecija, and to the west the rich districts of Carmona, Seville and Niebla; Ocsonoba, with Silves, was Gharb al-Andalus, the Algarve, and north of it Beja. The south had Meron, Sidona with Calsena, Algeciras, and Takurunna with Ronda; Malaga (Rayyo) had Archidona; Elvira (Ilbira) lay west of Granada; Jaen and Pechina (whose seat moved to Almeria under al-Hakam II). The Levante had three kuras: Tudmir, the old kingdom of Theodemir, with Murcia, Jativa and Valencia, extending to the Ebro delta. Inland, Toledo was a kura, with Santaver and Uclés to its east; the Balearics were probably a separate district; and Merida, Badajoz, Santarem, Lisbon and Murcia completed the list. Nine kuras, the mudun, held privileged fiefs granted in 125/742 to the Syrian djunds brought by Balj ibn Bishr, among them Elvira, Rayyo, Sidona, Niebla, Seville, Beja and Ocsonoba. In the Upper March al-Razi names Tarragona, Lerida, Barbastro, Huesca, Tudela, Tarazona, Arnedo, Calahorra and Najera. ¹⁰

The absence of reliable statistics means that the population of al-Andalus at its greatest extent, at the end of the tenth century, cannot be computed. If the Visigothic population on the eve of the conquest was about ten million, it probably stayed roughly the same, with a higher share of town and village dwellers. The distribution, however, was dictated by the physical environment, altitude, soil, climate and the possibility of irrigation, so the regions that are sparsely settled today were probably sparse then too. Among the Muslims the great body were neo-Muslims, Spaniards who converted after the conquest, mostly spontaneously. Among the immigrants of other races the Berbers were the most important, coming from the nearest parts of the Maghrib, the Moroccan Jibal and the Rif; they were pushed back to the uplands by the Arab immigrants who formed the aristocracy. ¹⁰

The Berbers were the most important of the immigrant groups. They came from the nearest parts of the Maghrib, the Moroccan Jibal and the Rif, in small numbers, and were pushed back into the uplands by the Arab immigrants who held the best land. Ibn Hazm, in his Jamharat ansab al-'Arab, suggests that the Berber colonies held only certain coastal zones and had to settle in the Meseta. They became Arabised quickly. Only at the end of the tenth century did large numbers of Berber mercenaries from the central and eastern Maghrib come in, and they helped to bring down the structure of the caliphate. The Arabs were never more than a minority. They came with the Conquest and after it, reinforced by Syrian djunds and by emigrants at the time of the Marwanid restoration. Intermarriage and the system of wala' made many people claim Arab descent, but the Arabs were a turbulent element, who despised farm work and left the land to share-cropping tenants. Negroes (Sudan) brought by slave traders formed a steadily growing guard of mercenaries and mixed with the urban population, and Slavs (Saqaliba), captured in Europe or in raids on the frontier, became a numerous and influential group in the economy of Cordova in the second caliphate. ¹¹

The largest group was the Spanish neo-Muslims, the muwalladun, Spaniards who had adopted Islam during or after the Conquest for a better status than that of the dhimmi. Their rapid Arabicisation, which they embraced with real attachment, is remarkable. They soon filled the ranks of Andalusian society, and the rulers used them well to make up for the shortage of old Muslim emigrants. Many lost the memory of their Iberian or Gothic origin, though they often bore Romance names, and bilingualism, with Arabic and the Romance tongue (al-'ajamiyya) on the same footing in daily life, eased the fusion. ¹²

The Muslim population came to form social classes like the rest of the Islamic world: the khassa, the great noble families, often hereditary grantees, and the 'amma, the commoners. The middle class of merchants and small landowners became an urban bourgeoisie without charters. The plebs in the towns and above all in the countryside were a mass under severe pressure from authority; there was a rural proletariat of day labourers tied to the soil. ¹²

The tributaries (mu'ahidun) were Christians and Jews. The Christians, the Mozarabs, were the Spaniards who refused to give up their faith at the Conquest. In Cordova, Seville and Toledo their communities were organised under the Muslim authority, with a leader called comes (kumis), or defensor, who exercised police powers and collected taxes, assisted by a judge for the Mozarabs (qadi al-'ajam). Up to the end of the tenth century the peninsula kept the ecclesiastical divisions of the Visigoths: three metropolitan provinces (Toledo, Lusitania and Baetica), each with an archbishopric and several dioceses; al-Bakri preserves them in what he calls 'Constantine's partition'. The Mozarab community of Cordova is the best documented. The Jews had a quarter in every town (harat al-Yahud). In the eleventh century, especially in the Zirid kingdom of Granada, Jews served as excise officials and treasurers; the Banu l-Naghrila family was important, and the pogrom in Granada followed the murder of the crown prince Buluggin. The Jewish community of Lucena formed most of its population. The Jews may have played an active part as counsellors and envoys and controlled the main trade between al-Andalus, Europe and the Muslim East, a question on which the Cairo Geniza may throw light. ¹³

The geographers are the main source for the way the soil was cultivated and its vegetable and mineral resources exploited. The article then turns to agriculture, crafts and trade in the Umayyad and later periods. ¹⁴

The agronomic works of al-Tighnari, Ibn Wafid, Ibn Bassal, Ibn Luyun and Ibn al-'Awwam, and the Cordovan Calendar of the year 961, attributed to the chronicler Arib ibn Sa'd, are the main technical sources; they say little about farming methods or leases. Dry land (bal) was reserved for cereals, but poor soil and climate meant that Andalusia often had to import North African wheat in famine years; the Toledo wheat was especially famous, and mills were worked by horses or by water. Olive groves covered Andalusia and the Aljarafe, and oil was often in surplus and exported. Vines were grown widely, and wine was tolerated and its sale regulated. The Andalusians excelled in irrigated crops. Their channels (saqiya, acequia) criss-crossed the Murcia and Valencia plains, with water rights fixed by a patriarchal custom still in use. On higher ground and in the valleys of the Guadiana, Tagus and Ebro, pumps, the na'ura (noria) and the saniya (aceña), raised water for vegetables and trees. Geographers praised cherries, apples, pears, almonds, pomegranates and figs, and sub-tropical crops such as sugar cane and bananas in sheltered coastal strips. Plants for dyes and cloth, safflower, cumin, coriander, madder and henna, were grown, and silk flourished between Granada and the Mediterranean. Horses were bred in the lower Guadalquivir, and Andalusian mules were famous by the time of Ibn Hawqal; cattle, sheep, goats and bees were kept on thin pasture. The forests supplied charcoal, pine timber and ships' masts, and the south-east steppe supplied dwarf palm and esparto. ¹⁵

Gold was washed from the sands of some rivers; silver and iron were mined north of Cordova; cinnabar was worked at Almaden and Ovejo; copper came from the pyrite mines of Huelva; alum, iron sulphate, lead and galena were also extracted. Muslim Spain was known for marble and precious stones. Many hot springs still carry the name Alhama (al-hamma). Rock salt and sea salt at Cadiz, Almeria and Alicante were a flourishing industry. Fishing used string nets and tunny nets (al-madraba), and sardines and tunny were taken in large quantities. ¹⁶

The article divides the history of al-Andalus into nine periods, from the conquest to the fall of Granada. The conquest of al-Andalus was the fastest of the Arab conquests of the first century, and the accounts are brief and legendary. The Visigothic kingdom was in decay, and many Spaniards helped the Arabs, eager to shake off a yoke that had become unbearable. The opportunity came when Arab power had just taken north Morocco, and the governor of Ifriqiya and the Maghrib was Musa ibn Nusayr, whose lieutenant Tariq ibn Ziyad shares the glory. Musa seems to have decided on the new venture before referring to the Caliph in Damascus, on promises of support from the exarch of Ceuta, the Count Julian, Byzantine still though Carthage had fallen. A raid by the Berber officer Tarif on the island that bears his name (Tarifa) in Ramadan 91 (July 710) prepared the way. In Rajab or Sha'ban 92 (April-May 711) Tariq landed near Gibraltar (Jabal Tariq) with some 7,000 men, carried by Julian's ships. A few weeks later, on 28 Ramadan 92 (19 July 711), the decisive battle against the Visigothic king Roderic, probably near the Guadalete, ended in Visigothic disaster. Cordova was taken early in 93 (October 711) by the freedman Mughith, and Toledo fell without resistance. Musa, anxious not to leave all the prestige to Tariq, crossed in Ramadan 93 (June 712) with 18,000 men, mainly Arabs, took Seville and Merida in Shawwal 94 (June-July 713), joined Tariq at Toledo and was marching on Saragossa when the Caliph al-Walid ordered both to return to Syria. They left Spain, almost wholly conquered, and never returned. ¹⁷

After Musa left for the East, a line of governors (wali) followed, delegates of the central authority at Damascus or of the nominal governor at Qayrawan. It was an obscure period, marked by rivalry between the Arab clans, the disputes of the Syrian and Yemeni djunds and the struggles of Berber and Arab leaders. ¹⁷

After the conquest the governors, from 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn Musa, who was assassinated in 97/716, to Yusuf ibn 'Abd al-Rahman al-Fihri, who lost the country in 138/756, had to contend with the rivalry of the Arab clans, and their campaigns carried Muslim raids into Gaul: Barcelona, Gerona and Narbonne were taken, the Narbonnaise and Toulouse were raided in 100-102/719-721, and in 725 an expedition reached the Rhone valley as far as Burgundy. The last large expedition, under 'Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi, who was killed, was defeated by Charles Martel at Balat al-Shuhada', the battle of Poitiers (Ramadan 114/October 732). ¹⁸

The Umayyad refugee 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu'awiya reached Spain, rallied the clients of his family, and defeated the governor Yusuf near Cordova; he was proclaimed amir on 10 Dhu 'l-Hijja 138 (15 May 756). The amirs who followed were: 'Abd al-Rahman I (138-172/756-788), Hisham I (172-180/788-796), al-Hakam I (180-206/796-822), 'Abd al-Rahman II (206-238/822-852), Muhammad I (238-273/852-886), al-Mundhir (273-275/886-888) and 'Abd Allah (275-300/888-912). The Maliki school was introduced under Hisham I. Revolts came from the Marches, from Berbers, Arabs and muwalladun, and al-Hakam I faced the revolt of the Suburb. Christian pressure grew, and the Reconquista gained ground. 'Abd al-Rahman II fought the Franks, the Gascons and the Banu Qasi of the Ebro valley, crushed the Mozarab revolt at Cordova (850-859), threw back the Norsemen who landed at Seville, and organised the state on the 'Abbasid model, breaking with the Syrian tradition. Under Muhammad I came the revolt of 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Marwan al-Jillīqī and the rising of 'Umar ibn Hafsun in southern Andalusia, which lasted through the following reigns, and under 'Abd Allah fighting between Arabs and muwalladun in Elvira and Seville. ¹⁹

'Abd al-Rahman III al-Nasir ruled for fifty years, from 300/912, and restored the Cordovan Caliphate. He was the high-water mark of Marwanid rule and of the Muslim history of al-Andalus. He died on 22 Ramadan 350 (4 November 961), and was succeeded by al-Hakam II, a man of letters and a bibliophile, whose Cordova, in the words of the Saxon poetess Hrotsvit, was 'the ornament of the world'; Christian Spain sought his arbitration. When he died in 366 (976) he left a child, Hisham II, born in 354 (965) of the union of the Caliph with the Gascon woman Subh. Muhammad ibn Abi 'Amir, the future al-Mansur, a major-domo who had risen by palace intrigue, ruled as a dictator. He led the djihad against the Christian kingdoms, took and destroyed the sanctuary of Santiago de Compostela in 387/997, and died on return from a campaign into north Castile at Medinaceli on 27 Ramadan 392 (9 August 1002). He kept the forms of the Caliphate for Hisham II, and his son 'Abd al-Malik, called al-Muzaffar, held power after him until his death in 399/1008. His brother 'Abd al-Rahman, called Sanchuelo, succeeded in disorder, and the caliphate was lost. ²⁰

Al-Mansur had brought into Spain a large number of North African Berber mercenaries, who became a centre of agitation against the Andalusians and the Slav bloc. The crisis came when 'Abd al-Rahman Sanchuelo sought designation as heir by Hisham II in 399/1008; he was executed by the supporters of the Umayyad pretender Muhammad ibn Hisham ibn 'Abd al-Jabbar near Cordova on 3 Rajab 399 (3 March 1009). From then on the caliphate suffered pretenders and counter-pretenders, backed by Berbers or against them, until it fell. ²¹

After al-Mansur's death the caliphs were puppets and pretenders. Hisham II was replaced in 400/1010 and restored in 403/1013; then came Muhammad II ibn Hisham, Sulayman, 'Abd al-Rahman IV al-Murtada (408/1018), 'Abd al-Rahman V al-Mustazhir (414/1023-24), Muhammad III al-Mustakfi (414-416/1024-25) and Hisham III al-Mu'tadd (420-422/1029-31). The Hammudids, 'Ali ibn Hammud (407-408/1016-18) and al-Qasim ibn Hammud (408-412/1018-23), also took the title. ²¹

The caliphate's collapse split al-Andalus into many small states, most of them short-lived, and only a few large blocs emerged: the 'Abbadids of Seville, the Aftasids of Badajoz, the Dhu 'l-Nunids of Toledo and the Hudids of Saragossa. The taifa history of the eleventh century is one of turmoil, rivalry and constant disputes, in which Andalusians fought Berbers and Slavs fought both. There was no hope of restoring the caliphate, and each state's weakness made the Christian kings more greedy: Alfonso VI levied heavy tribute and, by skilful diplomacy, took Toledo peacefully in 1085 and made himself arbiter among the taifa kings (muluk al-tawa'if). The danger became so great that the taifa kings sought help from the Almoravids. ²²

North African troops led by the amir Yusuf ibn Tashfin defeated the forces of Alfonso VI at Sagrajas (al-Zallaqa) on 22 Rajab 479 (2 November 1086). Yusuf, soon tired of the disunity of the Andalusian kings and of their compromises with the Christian monarch, deposed them one after another and annexed most of al-Andalus to his dominions. From then on Muslim Spain was a vassal of the Maghrib. ²³

The harvest row for AL-ANDALUS ends in the middle of the section on the taifa kingdoms and the Almoravids, with a bibliography that refers to the separate articles ABBADIDS, AFTASIDS and DHU 'L-NUNIDS. The later sections (the Almohads and the progress of the Reconquista, the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, Islam in al-Andalus, literature and culture, art, and Spanish Arabic) are not in this text, so they are not written here. ²³

The Almoravid occupation of Muslim Spain was completed by the recapture of Valencia in 495/1102, which had fallen to the Cid Rodrigo Diaz in 478/1085, and by the surrender of Saragossa, the Hudid capital, on the death of al-Musta'in in 503/1110. Under the Almoravids al-Andalus had several decades of prosperity under the domination of the jurists, with the victory of Uclés in 502/1108, but they could not retake Toledo, and Saragossa fell to Alfonso I, the Battler, in 512/1118. Christian pressure grew as 'Ali ibn Yusuf, threatened in Morocco by the Almohads, could not answer the revolts on every side. The time was ripe for another change of masters. ²⁴

After some thirty years of new petty kingdoms (the taifas) in the middle of the twelfth century, al-Andalus submitted to the Mu'minid dynasty of Morocco, the Almohads, who held what remained of the Muslim peninsula for nearly a century with growing difficulty. The Reconquista gained ground each year. In Catalonia Ramon Berenguer IV took Tortosa and Lerida; Alfonso VIII of Castile (1158-1214), the chief architect of the Reconquista, took Silves, Evora and Cuenca. The Almohad victory at Alarcos (al-Arak) on 8 Sha'ban 591 (18 July 1195) had no lasting effect. Less than fifteen years later a Christian coalition of Castile, Leon, Navarre and Aragon crushed the Muslims at Las Navas de Tolosa (al-'Iqab) on 15 Safar 609 (17 July 1212), and Ubeda and Baeza fell. Cordova fell in less than a quarter of a century, Valencia to James I of Aragon in 636 (1238), and Seville to Ferdinand III in 646 (1248). ²⁴

For two and a half centuries the kingdom of Granada, despite successive losses, remained the only Muslim state in the peninsula. It was bounded by the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Almeria and did not extend inland beyond the mountain massifs of Ronda and Elvira. Its founder, Muhammad I al-Ghalib billah, the Banu l-Ahmar, took Granada in 635 (1237-8), organised the fortress of al-Hamra, the Alhambra, as a royal palace, and became a tributary vassal of the Castilian kings Ferdinand III and then Alfonso X. The policy of the Nasrid rulers was a precarious balance between the Christians and the Marinids of Morocco, who intervened militarily in al-Andalus and held points such as Tarifa; Moroccan help proved illusory. ²⁰

The Nasrid kingdom was defeated by Abu l-Hasan at the Rio Salado in 741 (1340), but Granada kept the prestige of a capital through its monuments and literary gatherings, in which men like Lisan al-Din ibn al-Khatib were prominent. In the next century the Catholic Kings, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, co-ordinated the Christian offensive: Loja fell in 1486, Velez-Malaga, Malaga and Almeria in 1487, Baza in 1489, and Granada surrendered to the Catholic monarchs on 2 Rabi' I 897 (3 January 1492). Muslims who stayed after the Reconquista became the Moriscos. ²¹

As a generic term 'Andalusian' in North Africa denotes the part of the Muslim population that derives from Spain. The Andalusian element is visible from about the end of the fifteenth century, but it had roots earlier. From the middle of the twelfth century, when Muslim disasters in western Andalusia sent emigrants to Ksar al-Kabir, emigration grew; with the decline of Islamic Spain it went on sporadically until the fifteenth century, and after the fall of Granada it became a diaspora, so that by the end of the sixteenth century Andalusian exiles in the Maghrib formed an important minority. The general expulsion of the Moriscos in the seventeenth century sent many to Fez and Tlemcen, where many were killed or robbed by Arab tribes; many others joined their compatriots at Algiers and in Tunisia, where Uthman Dey actively encouraged immigration. In seventeenth-century Tunisia the Andalusians formed an organised and exclusive community under a shaykh al-Andalus, and their silk industry gave the amin al-shawwasha, the head of the silk trade, a place as the commercial magistrate. In the fertile north they applied their irrigation and horticulture skills, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the raw silk trade and the manufacture of stuffs and embroidery were largely in their hands. In Morocco the Sa'dis mainly used them as a military force. ²²

Malikism was the school of al-Andalus from the beginning, the centre of orthodoxy, and it gained a monopoly under the Marwanids, who gave it official support; the Kharijite and Shi'i tendencies were suppressed in their early stages, and the Andalusians kept to taqlid, the following of authority, in their legal works. In the third and fourth centuries of the hijra a slight infiltration of the Shafi'i and Zahiri schools appeared; the Zahiri was represented by the qadi Mundhir ibn Sa'id al-Ballluti (d. 355/966) and found its standard-bearer in Ibn Hazm. Mu'tazilism also spread at certain periods, linked to a revival of philosophy whose chief figure was the Cordovan Ibn Masarra. After the fall of the caliphate jurisprudence was more respected than before, and the fuqaha' often formed the most influential group, especially under the Almoravids. Al-Andalus was scarcely affected by Almohad doctrine, and Malikism reigned supreme up to the end. ²³

The article refers the reader to the separate article on Arabic literature for this section. ²³

The Iberian Peninsula, at the western end of the Mediterranean and largely Mediterranean in character, received Oriental influences from ancient times, and the common religion and language, with the pilgrimage to Mecca, strengthened the ties. Art forms reached it from the East over eight centuries, and some were developed further in Spain than in their homeland; echoes of Byzantium, Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt and Ifriqiya are present. The transition from Visigothic Spain to Islamic rule is poorly documented, and many gaps must be filled by guesswork. The art of al-Andalus nevertheless has its own character. Between the second/eighth and the ninth/fifteenth centuries it produced monuments that exist nowhere else in the Muslim world: the mosque of Cordova, with its complex construction and rich decoration; the palaces of Madinat al-Zahra, whose magnificence has never been surpassed; the Aljaferia of Saragossa, which is being reconstructed; the Giralda of Seville, one of the most beautiful minarets in the Islamic world; and the Alhambra of Granada. ²³

The oldest part of the Cordova mosque was built by 'Abd al-Rahman I in 168-170/784-786, three quarters of a century after the conquest, and was finished under his son Hisham I (172-180/788-796). The mosque is a rectangle with stone walls, divided into eleven aisles that run north to south, perpendicular to the qibla wall, with a wider central aisle. The aisles are separated by marble columns taken from Roman or Visigothic buildings. Square impost blocks and rectangular piers carry two tiers of arches: the lower horseshoe arches, suspended, and above them semicircular arches springing from the imposts to carry the walls. This method allowed a large building on slender columns, with a good view of the imam for the faithful. ²⁵

The Cordova mosque was enlarged three times. Its earliest part was built by 'Abd al-Rahman I in 168-170/784-786, finished under Hisham I; 'Abd al-Rahman II (206-238/822-852) extended it southwards from 218/833, and Muhammad I completed the work in 241/855. 'Abd al-Rahman III built a square minaret in 340/951. The Madinat al-Zahra, the royal city built below the Sierra from 326/936 and worked on until 365/976, shows stone palaces, reception halls with horseshoe arches and columns, and surfaces carved in vegetal relief by craftsmen from the eastern Mediterranean. Al-Hakam II enlarged the mosque from 350/961 (principal part finished 355/966), with four vaults of intersecting arches, polychrome arabesques and mosaics made by Byzantine-trained workers. Al-Mansur's third enlargement (377-380/987-990) repeated the earlier work without novelty. Scholars note the double-tier arches as a unique invention of Cordova. ²⁶

The taifa princes built palaces of clay and brick rather than stone, with plaster decoration and wooden columns, and introduced running water and plants into their courts; the palace of al-Muqtadir ibn Hud at Saragossa (441-474/1049-1081) is the most characteristic. Under the Almoravids and Almohads Andalusian art spread into the Maghrib. The Almoravid mosque of Tlemcen was decorated in Andalusian style under 'Ali ibn Yusuf (500-537/1106-1143), the Qarawiyyin of Fez was enlarged about 529/1135, and the Kubbat al-Barudiyyin in Marrakesh (514-526/1120-1130) is a small Andalusian work of great richness. The Almohads, with their austerity, reduced ornament to simple lines on plain grounds; the Great Mosque of Seville, completed under Ya'qub al-Mansur (572-594/1176-1198), suggests richer decoration in Spain, and the Torre del Oro in Seville (617/1220-21) is the first known glazed ceramic exterior decoration in Spain. ²⁷

The last Muslim state, the kingdom of Granada, was founded a little before the middle of the seventh/thirteenth century, and its palaces, above all the Alhambra, are not earlier than the eighth/fourteenth century: the Comares tower, the Gate of Justice, the Court of the Lions and the Court of the Alberca, with stalactite vaults, alicatados (tile mosaics), and plaster panels of vegetal and geometric motifs and inscriptions. Public buildings included a fundaq, the Alhondiga nueva, a madrasa completed in 750/1349 and a maristan (767-768/1365-1367). The article calls the art of Granada the last brilliant phase of Islam in Spain, and notes that by the first half of the ninth/fifteenth century, without new impulses from the East, it had become a sterile formula that survived in the Maghrib almost to the present day. ²⁸

Trade, mainly in Jewish and Syrian hands, spread Eastern luxury goods through al-Andalus. Under 'Abd al-Rahman II and Hisham I, Cordova developed a taste for refined luxury and manufactured textiles, jewellery, ivory and ceramics, furniture and imitations of imported work, so faithful that it is sometimes impossible to say whether an object was made in Egypt, in the 'Abbasid lands or in al-Andalus. The Kingdom of Granada kept the industrial arts at a last magnificent peak, and its exports helped support a population that had to pay heavy tribute to the Castilian king. Wooden minbars were the most admired furniture: the minbar of the Cordova mosque, made under al-Hakam II, and the minbar of the Kutubiyya, made at Cordova in 534-538/1139-1143 in marquetry. Ivory caskets and jars were among the greatest artistic glories of the caliphate. ²⁹

Spanish Arabic, the dialect of Arabic spoken in al-Andalus, is known from usages cited by writers of classical Arabic, from the Vocabularies of Valencia and Granada, from the Andalusian poetry of Ibn Quzman, and from the Arabic-script Romance (aljamiado) texts of the Moriscos. It seems to have ceased to be a spoken language towards the end of the tenth/sixteenth century, and the Moriscos who reached Tunisia and Morocco about 1610 seem to have spoken Spanish. The dialects of Seville, Cordova and Granada differed from those of Valencia and Murcia and of the Marches, but Spanish Arabic seems to have been homogeneous in its urban forms; the rural dialects are less documented. Its phonology shows lost interdental sounds, the palatalisation of long a, the reduction of short vowels, and an indefinite article (as in wand-al-faras, 'a certain horse'), negative copulas derived from laysa, and a 'contingent' tense (kan with the imperfect) used as conditional and optative. The lists of Arabic words used in Spanish and Romance, and the 'Andalusian' songs (zadjal), survive in writing. ³⁰