Spain

B

4

Muslim Rule

By 719 Muslims controlled most of the Iberian Peninsula. The Moors, as the Muslim conquerors came to be known, pushed northward into France, where their advance was repelled near Poitiers by Frankish leader Charles Martel in 732. The Moors then retreated south of the Pyrenees, and for the next several centuries they dominated nearly all of Spain.

At first Islamic Spain, or al-Andalus, as it was known, was ruled as part of the Province of North Africa, a division of the caliphate of Damascus. At that time Damascus, in modern Syria, was the capital of the Islamic world and the residence of the powerful Umayyad caliphs (religious and secular leaders). The power of the caliphate in Spain was weak, however, and governors (emirs) appointed by Damascus had little real authority. In 750 the Abbasids deposed the Umayyad ruling family in Damascus and claimed the caliphate.

Abd-ar-Rahman I, a member of the Umayyad family, fled Syria and in 756 established an independent emirate at Córdoba in southern Spain. His Iberian Umayyad dynasty centralized power and ruled al-Andalus for almost 300 years. Córdoba reached its peak under Abd-ar-Rahman III, who established the caliphate of Córdoba in 929. By then Córdoba was one of the largest and most cosmopolitan cities in the Mediterranean world.

Over time ruling elites across Muslim Spain challenged Córdoba, and other Muslim cities became independent. This trend accelerated in 1036 with the death of the last Umayyad caliph. Spain fragmented into a mosaic of small, independent Muslim kingdoms, known as taifas. The most important of these were Córdoba, Seville, Granada, Toledo, Lisbon, Zaragoza, Murcia, and Valencia.

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B4

a

Life in Muslim Spain

Spanish society became increasingly complex under Muslim rule. This is partly because Islamic conquest did not involve the systematic conversion of the conquered population to Islam. Islam restricted the ability of Muslim rulers to tax other Muslims, making it financially advantageous for a ruler to have non-Muslim subjects. At the same time, Christians and Jews were recognized under Islam as “peoples of the book.” Christianity and Judaism shared with Islam the tradition of the Old Testament, and Islam considered Jesus Christ a major prophet. Thus, Christians and Jews were free to practice their religion, but they had to pay a prescribed poll tax. Conversion to Islam therefore proceeded slowly. In many areas Muslim rulers found it easier to rely on the existing Christian network of local authority.

The Roman Catholic Church in Muslim Spain continued to function, although it lost contact with religious reforms in Rome. Muslim Spain came to include a growing number of Mozarabic Christians, people who adopted Arabic language and culture and followed forms of religious service different from those of Rome. In addition, Jews held prominent positions in government, commerce, and the professions under Muslim rule.

The Muslim community in Spain was itself diverse and beset by social tensions. From the beginning the Berber tribespeople of North Africa clashed with the Arabs of Egypt and the Middle East. The Berbers, who were comparatively recent converts to Islam, accounted for the largest share of Moors in Spain and they resented the sophistication and aristocratic pretensions of the Arab elite. Meanwhile, many Christians in Spain, including Visigothic nobles, converted to Islam. Conversion was commonplace among merchants, large landowners, and other local elites. Drawn into the politics of Islamic power, many Christians found that conversion made it easier to maintain their influence. Despite being Muslim, however, former Christians often faced discrimination. These tensions led to struggles between the established Muslim leadership and local lords from once Christian families.

Spain was wealthy and sophisticated under Islamic rule. Mediterranean trade and cultural exchange flourished. Muslims imported a rich intellectual tradition from the Middle East and North Africa, including knowledge about mathematics, science, and philosophy, and they continued to build upon it in Spain. Crops and farming techniques introduced by the Arabs, including new irrigation practices, led to a remarkable expansion of agriculture. In towns and cities the Muslims constructed magnificent mosques, palaces, and other architectural monuments, many of which still stand today. Outside the cities the mixture of large estates and small farms that existed in Roman times remained largely intact, because Muslim leaders rarely dispossessed landowners. The Muslim conquerors were relatively few in number and they generally tried to maintain good relations with their subjects.

Roman, Jewish, and Muslim culture interacted in complex ways. A large part of the population gradually adopted Arabic. Even Jews and Christians often spoke Arabic, while Hebrew and Latin were frequently written in Arabic script. These diverse traditions interchanged in ways that gave Spanish culture—religion, literature, music, art and architecture, and writing systems—a rich and distinctive heritage.

B4

b

Christian Reconquest and the Decline of Muslim Power

The Muslim advance never succeeded in conquering the entire Iberian Peninsula. A remnant of Christian rule survived in northern Spain, even as Muslim power reached its zenith. In the early years of Muslim rule the Christian states fought mainly among themselves. Also, as the Muslims prospered, they lost the incentive for further conquest.

In 718 the Visigothic chieftain Pelayo, a survivor of the Muslim victory at the Battle of Guadalete, founded the tiny kingdom of Asturias in the mountains of northwestern Spain. In an encounter that is based in part on legend, Pelayo’s forces defeated a Muslim army at the glen of Covadonga. This small victory came to be seen as the first decisive action of the Christian reconquest (reconquista), the campaign by Christians to retake Spain from the Muslims.

The reconquest has long figured prominently in stories about Spain’s modern national identity. As such, chroniclers have often portrayed it as a heroic Christian crusade to expel the heretical Muslims intruders. But these accounts oversimplify centuries of intermingling between Christians and Muslims. They also exaggerate the coherence of the reconquest. All told, more than 750 years of intermittent fighting and shifting alliances would pass before the reconquest was complete.

By the late 9th century Christian rulers had gained control of about one-third of the peninsula. Under the rule of Alfonso III the kingdom of Asturias expanded greatly, reaching across much of the northwest and as far south as the valley of the Douro (or Duero). The territorial gains of Asturias came at the expense of Christian and Muslim rulers alike. Several new Christian kingdoms began to emerge in the northeast, including Navarre in the Pyrenees and, farther to the east, Aragón. Frankish rule also extended into northern Spain and included several counties in Catalonia.

With the collapse of the caliphate in Córdoba and fragmentation of Muslim Spain into small and independent kingdoms, Muslim regions became increasingly vulnerable to Christian expansion. In the 10th and 11th centuries, Christian forces gradually moved south, bringing central Spain under Christian rule.

The northwestern kingdom of Castile and León, which included the former kingdom of Asturias, gained the greatest share of lands reconquered from the Muslims. Castile and León captured the Muslim kingdom of Toledo in 1085, annexed its lands, and pushed the frontier of Christian Spain south beyond the Tagus River. The Muslim lands annexed by Castile and León became known as New Castile. The capture of Toledo—the ancient capital of Visigothic Spain—marked the first time a major city in Muslim Spain had fallen to Christian forces, and it served to sharpen the religious aspect of the Christian reconquest. In subsequent centuries this dimension of the conflict would grow stronger.

Christian expansion was slowed at first by new Muslim forces entering Spain. In the early 11th century, a large part of northwestern Africa was under the control of the Almoravids, a fundamentalist Muslim movement led by Yusuf ibn Tashfin, a Berber chieftain. The fall of Toledo alarmed many Spanish Muslims and prompted several Muslim leaders to invite Yusuf and the Almoravids to Spain. The Almoravids invaded Spain in 1086, conquered numerous Muslim kingdoms, and pushed back the Christians. But the advancing Muslims failed to retain control of the kingdom of Valencia, which was captured by Spanish hero El Cid in 1094. El Cid became legendary as the one Christian leader who defied the Almoravids. After El Cid’s death in 1099, however, Valencia returned to Muslim control.

A second conservative Muslim movement from North Africa, the Almohads, entered Spain and attacked the Almoravids. By the 1140s the Almoravids’ power had disintegrated. Once again Muslim Spain became a mosaic of small taifas. Over the next half century the Almohads established control in Andalucía and recaptured much of New Castile. Christian kingdoms, however, gradually learned to collaborate. In 1212 the Almohads suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of Christian forces in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, on the plains of Toledo. Muslim power collapsed, opening the heart of Andalucía to Christian attack.

The Christian kingdoms of Castile and Aragón continued to expand into Muslim territories, and by 1230 Christian armies had captured most of Andalucía. Only the wealthy kingdom of Granada remained Muslim. Muslims maintained control of Granada until 1492, when Castile, with the help of Aragón, conquered the kingdom, ending centuries of Muslim rule in Spain.

C

The Late Medieval Period

After the mid-13th century Muslims no longer posed a serious challenge to the Christian kingdoms, whose rulers began to establish centralized political control. A period of dynastic struggles and civil wars ensued. Castile and León (permanently joined in 1230) and Aragón emerged as the most powerful kingdoms in Spain. By 1400 Castile and León had a large army and navy and it controlled Spain’s Atlantic trade. Aragón, meanwhile, dominated the western Mediterranean. By the 1460s its empire included the region of Aragón, Catalonia, Valencia, Mallorca, Minorca, Sardinia, Sicily, and southern Italy. Aragón’s influence also reached into northern Africa, especially Tunisia. The kingdoms of Castile and Aragón each had its own interests, and each was important in 15th-century Europe.

Medieval Christian Spain was organized around several key institutions. Warfare preoccupied the Christian monarchs, and royal institutions evolved to fight and pay for wars. The medieval monarchies collected few taxes until after 1100. They maintained their authority and ability to wage war through a combination of cash income from tolls and commercial taxes, income from the king’s own estates, and the ability to grant jurisdictional rights to nobles in return for military service. In a predominantly agricultural economy, grants of jurisdictional rights over farming towns or districts provided soldiers with a source of income; peasants working the land paid rent and provided services to their masters.

As the economy became more complex, the crown exacted more revenue in the form of taxes. Kings had little bureaucracy to collect these taxes, so they signed contracts with nobles and town governments to collect the taxes for them. As taxation increased, however, wealthy families and representatives from the towns forced the monarchies to consult with them in parliamentary assemblies known as cortes.

C

1

Major Institutions

C1

a

Parliamentary Assemblies

The development of parliamentary assemblies, or cortes, served to check the power of the monarchs and royal officials. The cortes in Castile were relatively weak compared to those that developed in Aragón. The Castilian cortes originally had three houses, one each for clergy, nobility, and the towns. However, after the monarchy stopped convening the first two, the cortes consisted solely of representatives from the towns. The Castilian monarch often deferred to the cortes, and needed its approval to collect taxes, but assertions of royal power were largely unchallenged.

In Aragón the cortes had four houses, one each for clergy, upper nobility, lower nobility, and the towns. Consent of the Aragónese cortes was needed for all significant legislation; it could veto royal initiatives and determine the royal succession. In addition, power in Aragón was more decentralized than in Castile, which had a single royal government. Each of Aragón’s provinces had its own cortes, and a general cortes composed of all of the provincial assemblies occasionally convened. These arrangements forced the monarch in Aragón to negotiate with more groups to get what he wanted.

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