Prof Eduardo Manzano Moreno, Spain’s leading historian on Al-Andalus in the Middle Ages, delivered a lecture on the subject “the Umayyad Caliphate that was Cordoba” at the Mohatta Palace in Karachi on Monday evening.
The lecture being second in the series was organised by the Mohatta Palace Museum in collaboration with the Lahore Literary Festival. Manzano said that after the Abbasid revolution of 750, the Umayyads were hunted down. “The Abbasids… massacred all the members of the family,” he said, adding that they even “desecrate[d] the tombs of the Umayyad caliphs.”
“Very unexpectedly, no one really expected the Umayyads to take over power,” Manzano explained. But Abd al-Rahman I, fleeing the slaughter, reached the western edge of the Islamic world. In 756, he proclaimed himself independent ruler in Al-Andalus.
“In 929, his descendant, Abd al-Rahman III, decides to take the title of caliph,” he said. The timing was critical. In 909, the Shiite Fatimids had established a rival caliphate in Ifriqiya. “The proclamation of the Fatimid caliphate in 909 was a big shock throughout the whole Arab Islam,” Manzano said. “Suddenly, for the first time, the Shiites seemed to be able to take over power.”
“So the Fatimids in Ifriqiya were dangerously close to Al-Andalus. They made no secret that their intention was to try to expand throughout the whole part of Islam, not only in Ifriqiya but also to the Middle East and eventually also to Al-Andalus.”
He said that by the 10th century, Al-Andalus had become “a society that had become deeply Arabized.” “For many years, the idea was that Islam in Spain, in Al-Andalus was a very superficial phenomenon. A Spanish scholar called it like a little drop of red colour in water. You change the colour, but the water remains the same.”
“Nowdays, we know that this was not the case. I mean the impact of the Arabization and Islamization processes in al-Andalus were extremely strong,” he said. “Arabization basically was the adoption of the Arab language in Al-Andalus.”
He said that a 9th-century Christian writer from Córdoba complained bitterly that young Christians preferred Arabic poetry to Latin scripture. “For everyone who can write a letter in Latin to a friend, there are thousands who can express themselves in Arabic with elegance, and write better poems in this language than the Arabs themselves.”
Conversion to Islam began early, Manzano said, and its scale is visible in stone. The Great Mosque of Córdoba grew through successive expansions until it covered 20,000 square meters. “We calculate that they might lodge about 10,000 people just praying at the same time.”
“Some writers say that in Córdoba in the 10th century there were like 400 mosques. I have haven’t been able to check this number but I have been able to document 100 mosques in Córdoba, which is an awful lot.”
“Islamization process in Al-Andalus also went hand in hand to social change.” “It changed in the sense that it became more urban. It became much more expanding craftsmanship, trade instead of agricultural areas. Not that they were neglected, but that the dominant activities were the urban activities, the activities of artisans and the activities of traders. This was the backbone of the Al-Andalus society. It was a urban society. Not a rural society, as it had been previously, or as it was in the north of Spain, in the Christian kingdoms.”
Andalusi scholars meticulously recorded intellectual life in biographical dictionaries, he said. Modern databases compiled from these works identify just over 11,500 scholars across eight centuries. “These people… managed to create the culture of Al-Andalus,” Manzano said. “So the impact of these 11,000 people is quite remarkable.” Scholars travelled as far as Central Asia, importing manuscripts and ideas. “The Andalusians were extremely keen on the idea of bringing back knowledge to Al-Andalus,” he said.
