The Rise of the Muslims in Andalusia (Spain)- Part1

In 91 AH/710, the great Muslim General Musa Ibn Nusayr triumphantly took over Morocco, and he appointed his Lieutenant, Tariq Ibin Ziyad as a governor of Tanja (Tangier). They came to know that the Visigothic monarchy in Spain were oppressing their people so they decided to conquer Spain and spread Islam there.

Ramadan is a month of victory for the Muslims and so in Ramadan 91 AH (July 710) the first detachment of 400 Muslims sent to reconnoiter landed on the other coast of the Mediterranean . Tariq was given the command of the expedition which encamped at calpe (Jabal Tariq i.e., Gibraltar) and took Cartaja in Rajab 92/spring 711.

King Roderick hastened to Cordova and after gathering an army, advanced towards the Algeciras region. Here Tariq awaited him with 12,000 men. The battle took place on 28 Ramadan 92/ 19 July 711 on the banks of the river Barbate. Tariq was able to advance and took Elija, Cordova, Tobdo, and advanced with irresistible cavalcade as far as Guadalajara and Alcala de Henares.

Tariq asked for reinforcements. Musa landed at Algeciras with 18,000 men and after taking Medina Sidonia, Carmona, and Alcala de Guadaira by assault, captured Seville with no great effort. Only before Merida, where Roderick’s chief supporters had assembled, did he have to keep up a siege of six months. Once he had obtained its submission, he made for Toledo, where he met Tariq and took over from him the treasures of the Visigothic dynasty. He wished to carry on by way of Saragossa to Lerida, but the Umayyad Caliph al-Walid ordered him to present himself with Tariq at Damascus in order to give an account of his conquests.    

Before his departure he completed the subjugation of the sub-Pyrenean region as far as Galicia, and left for Syria at the end of 95/summer 714, handing over the govornorship of Andalus to his son ‘Abdal-‘Aziz, who pacified the whole of south-eastern Spain, and signed a treaty with the Visigothic lord of the Murcia region. He married Roderick’s widow.

In 97/716 he was assassinated at Seville after a short rule of two years. Before his death, the conquest of the peninsula was finished. It seems that Muslims’ garrisons had already been established in the chief towns and that a great number of Hispano-Romans had converted to Islam. These converts on becoming the great majority of the population of Andalus, gradually acquired a very original character, for they combined the culture brought by the Muslims from the Orient with their native characteristics. The Muslims married the local Basques, Galicians and Frankish women.

Dependence on Damascus:    

The period of roughly forty years 716-58, which intervened between the murder of ‘Abd al-Aziz and the establishment of the Umayyad emirate in Spain, is characterized by the rivalry and struggles between the Qaysites and Kalbites in the Iberian peninsula, and by the rapid succession of governors nominated and dismissed by the walis of Qayrawan, or the caliph in Damascus. The collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate in Syria, and the accession of the ‘Abbasid dynasty, finally loosed the bonds which linked Andalus to Damascus .

The Muslims did not balk at the barrier of the Pyrenees, disregarding the danger to their line of retreat, attempted to invade Gaul. In 114 A H /732 Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi, the governor of Cordoba was killed at the Battle of Poitiers. Another expedition commanded by Uqba bin al-Hajjaj was defeated by the Gaulish forces in 120 A H/737. The Gaulish forces finally re-took Narbonne in 133/751, thereby forcing the Muslims definitely to give up the conquest of Gaul.

The Umayyad Emirate of Cordova:

‘Abd al-Rahman Bin Mu‘awiya, grandson of the Umayyad Caliph Hisham, managed to escape from the extermination of his family by the Abbasid , and took refuge in North Africa. Through his faithful mawla, Badr, he made contact with Umayyad clients in Andalus, where he arrived on I Rabi’Awal 138/14 August 755. He entered Seville, and took the road for Cordova, in the neighbourhood of which he achieved a resounding victory, which opened to him the gates of he capital. He was recognized in its mosque as amir of all Andalus.   

In the thirty-two years of his reign (138-72/756-88) he showed his great qualities. Surrounded by a court of Umayyad émigrés, he devoted himself to the consolidation of his power, and to the energetic suppression of the continual uprisings of his subjects, both Arab and Berber.    

These internal complications did not allow him to devote all his efforts to the jihad on the frontier of the little kingdom of Asturias, with which he kept a truce of twenty years form 150/767 to 169/786. In this interval Charlemagne undertook, in 161/778, his celebrated expedition against Saragossa, which ended in his defeat at Roncesvalles. Therefore, he preferred to found the kingdom of Aquitaine to watch and maintain the Pyrenean frontier, and he succeeded, in 169/785, in making the inhabitants of Gerona submit to the Frankish authority.    

‘Abd al-Rahman I preserved and extended the organization which the governors appointed from Damascus had established in the new province. He made Cordova the seat of his government, and refrained from adopting any other title but that of amir. At least at the beginning of his rule, he allowed the khutba to be recited in the name of the ‘Abbasid caliph. About the middle of his reign, he organized an army of Berbers, and Mamluks bought in northern Europe.    

Abd al-Rahman I died in Cordova on 25 Rabi’al-thani 172/30 September 788 before reaching his sixtieth year. He was one of the best rulers of his dynasty. The native population caused ‘Abd al-Rahman I no anxiety, because they had not forgotten Visigothic tyranny and lived on good terms with the central power.   

From ‘Abd al-Rahman I onwards, all the history of the Umayyad emirate of Cordova is influenced, not to say dominated, by the instability of the various ethnic groups – Arab, Berber, neo-Muslim, Mozarab, and Jewish – whose passionate rivalries made impossible the pacification of the country until the time of ‘Abd al-Rahman III .However , Alfonso I and Fruela I would not tolerate Muslim communities within their dominions, and it was not until the beginning of the sixth/twelfth century, that Christian rulers allowed nuclei of Muslims to remain.

(To Be Continued) 

Source: http://www.islamweb.net/ver2/archive/article.php?lang=E&id=2892