The rise of the Umayyad dynasty in Spain

UNESCO Courier, Dec, 1991 by J. Derek Latham

In the year 93 of the Islamic era--the Hijra--and 711 of the Christian era, the great Muslim Arab empire was ruled from Damascus in Syria by al-Walid I, sixth caliph of the House of Umayya. From Kairouan in the country now called Tunisia, al-Walid's governor, Musa ibn Nusayr, was pursuing a policy of westward expansion spearheaded by his Berber freedman Tariq, commander of some 7,000 Berbers from North Africa. Before the end of the spring of 93 Tariq was on the rock from which Gibraltar takes its name--Jabal Tariq, "Mount Tariq".

Tariq's landing was the first step on a long, hard road which led 200 years later to the establishment of the caliphate of Cordoba by a scion of the House of Umayya. The second step was the conquest of the lands beyond Gibraltar. With his Berber troops, greatly reinforced from North Africa, Tariq soon defeated the Visigothic King Rodrigo, already harassed in the north by the Basques. The tottering, unpopular Visigothic regime was now doomed. The fall of its capital, Toledo, to the north was followed in October 711 by the capture of Cordoba in the south.

July 712 saw Musa himself in the Iberian peninsula, Gruding his freedman the glory of conquest, he had crossed the Straits of Gibraltar with some 18,000, mainly Arab, troops. His relationship with Tariq was strained, but this did not prevent them from pursuing their common objective of conquest. By 714 Musa and Tariq had conquered all but the most inaccessible parts of the peninsula and gained for the Umayyad crown in Damascus a jewel of impressive resplendence. To this new, rich province the Arabs gave the name "al-Andalus", which is thought to derive from "Vandalicia", the name the Vandals gave to the old Roman province of Baetica in southern Spain. In English, "al-Andalus" is often translated as "Andalusia", but in its strict sense it designates Muslim Spain.

Like Rome, the Cordoba of the Umayyad caliphate was not built in a day. The glitter of that golden city did not materialize like Aladdin's genie at the rub of a magic lamp. It was born of the Umayyad emirate, and behind its glitter there lay a long and complex history.

The establishment of

the Umayyad emirate in Spain

In 750 the 'Abbasid revolution in the east swept away the Syrian Umayyad caliphate and savagely butchered its princes. Miraculously, one of the latter, 'Abd al-Rahman, grandson of the caliph Hisham, cheated his hunters of their prey and embarked on a perilous odyssey that took him to Morocco, where he won the protection of his mother's Berber tribe. After careful thought he decided to go to Spain, banking on support from elements owing loyalty to the Umayyads. Once on Andalusian soil, he played his hand and won--despite some militant opposition to his cause. In May 756, his final battle won, he entered the provincial palace of Cordoba. There, in the city's mosque, he led the Friday prayer and was proclaimed emir of al-Andalus. A young man in his mid-twenties at the time, he was to reign for over thirty years as the first of five Umayyad rulers of Spain to bear the name 'Abd al-Rahman.

The establishment of the emirate was only the start of a gruelling climb to power whose complexity is explained by the pattern of Andalusian society at that time. Al-Andalus was a country in which Arab and Berber immigrants had, at different times and under differing conditions, settled among the great mass of the Hispano-Roman population. Many Hispano-Romans had converted to Islam and, as neo-Muslims (muwalladun), become completely Arabized. Yet there remained a large Christian Hispano-Roman community of Mozarabs--a term taken from the Spanish form of an Arabic word meaning "Arabizer". As well as their own language, the Mozarabs spoke Arabic and adopted many Arab customs. Finally, there were the native Iberian Jews.

The Mozarabs and Jews caused 'Abd al-Rahman no trouble. They were only too glad to be rid of Visigothic tyranny and to live in peace. The Arabs, however, were to turn any dreams of peace he may have cherished into something of a nightmare born of tribal feuds, jealousies and grievances, which led to sedition, armed conflict and open rebellion. Moreover, the Berbers resented not being treated as equals by their Arab fellow-Muslims, whose traditions and culture were quite different from their own.

And so, the prospect of revolts and uprisings was very real. The emir perceived the risk of siding with any single group within al-Andalus. He could count on unselfish loyalty from no one, not even from his Umayyad relations and clients. And so he recruited a highly disciplined professional army of Berber mercenaries and slave troops from Europe north of the Pyrenees. This was the only answer to internal turmoil and external danger from the Christian north.

'Abd al-Rahman was a Syrian, and the administrative system he created in Muslim Spain was in the Syrian Umayyad tradition. At its centre he made his own office of emir a unifying symbol, and in the provinces he appointed loyal and capable governors.