Download PDF | Hugh Kennedy - Muslim Spain and Portugal_ A Political History of al-Andalus-Routledge (1996).
359 Pages
Introduction
This book is intended to provide an account of the political history of al-Andalus, the parts of the Iberian peninsula under Muslim rule, between 711, the date of the first Muslim invasion, and 1492 when the last independent Muslim power, the Kingdom of Granada, was destroyed .
By political history I do not simply mean the narratives of rulers and battles, though these are of course important, but also the understanding of the structures which lie behind political events and decisions. The most obvious of these structures were the ruling dynasties, where they came from, who their most powerful supporters were and how they attempted to secure a justification and legitimacy for the exercise of power. The most important function of a pre-modern Islamic state was the raising and paying of the military forces.
This determined the composition of the elite, the system of taxation and revenue raising and ultimately the success or failure of the regime. The structure of the military is an essential part of political history. Another concern is the reach and range of government and the extent to which the rulers in Cordoba, Seville or Granada were able to make their authority felt throughout al-Andalus. This in turn leads to the examination of local elites and pressure groups and to the consideration of their origins, nature and power.
This is not a history of the Reconquista. Of course the Christian powers to the north always affected the history of al-Andalus, and from the eleventh century onwards they became a threatening and dominant presence, but the struggle against the Christians was only one, and not always the most important, concern of the rulers of al-Andalus: maintaining their own authority in the Muslim-held areas was usually the first priority, and the affairs of North Africa were often as pressing as those of the Christian frontier. This work attempts to see al-Andalus as a Muslim political society among others like it. Its rulers and administrators were always keenly aware that their land was part of a wider Muslim commonwealth and it was to this commonwealth, rather than to their northern neighbours, that they looked for contacts and political ideas. The ultimate failure and extinction of al-Andalus should not be allowed to overshadow the whole of its 800-year history.
This book is not an intellectual and cultural history of al-Andalus. This is not because these things are unimportant, or that the Muslims of al-Andalus did not make a major contribution in these fields, but simply because they lie beyond the scope of this study except in so far as they affected, or illustrate, political developments. Similarly, there has recently been much fascinating work on such topics as rural settlement, landscape, irrigation technology and cuisine, but none of these are treated here. There is a certain unavoidable inconsistency of texture in this work. At some periods we are comparatively well informed about political events and the scope and operations of government. At other periods our sources are much more limited and we can only discern a bare outline.
Nor is it true that more recent parts of the history of al-Andalus are better known than the earlier ones: we are well informed, for example, about the reign of al-Hakam II (961-76) because of the survival of al-Razi’s court chronicle, but the period 1184-1210 is an almost complete blank. Any broad-brush history of this sort is bound to be heavily dependent on the works of others. For the history of al-Andalus we have two major political histories which are classics and remain the basis for all future research: E. Levi-Proven^al’s celebrated Histoire de lEspagne Musulmane, which covers the centuries when Cordoba was the capital (711-1031), and Ambrosio Huici Miranda’s much less well known Historia Politica del Imperio Almohade. To these two can be added J. Bosch Vila, Los Almoravides, and Rachel Arie’s LEspagne Musulmane au temps des Nasrides (1232-1492).
The last two decades have seen a massive increase in the scope and intensity of research, which has meant that in many ways the history of al-Andalus is better known and understood than the history of any other part of the pre-modern Muslim world, and methodologies for treating some important aspects, prosopography and archaeological evidence for example, are more developed. It is perhaps invidious to single out individuals, but mention should be made of some of the main advances. The period up to 1031 has been the subject of intensive study in Spain and the works of E. Manzano Moreno on political structures, and Pedro Chalmeta and M. Barcelo on administrative and fiscal history, are fundamental. Also of major importance are the five volumes of the Estudios Onomastico-Biograficos de Al-Andalus edited by Manuela Marin and others which have added a whole new dimension to our understanding of the Umayyad regime.
The period of the Taifa kings in the eleventh century has recently been superbly covered in Los Reinos de Taifas: Al-Andalus en el Siglo XI, edited by M.J. Viguera Molins as vol. viii of the Menendez Pidal, Historia de Espana. In contrast, the periods of the Almoravids and Almohads have been studied more by French historians. The work of V. Lagardere has greatly increased our understanding of the Almoravid movement itself, while P. Guichard’s Les Musulmans de Valence is an outstanding work of regional history. The archaeological evidence in its broadest context has been studied in A. Bazzana, P. Cressier and P. Guichard, Les Chateaux Ruraux d ’al-Andalus.
There has been less recent work on the Almohads and Nasrids, but important contributions have been made in R. Arie, Nasrides, L.P. Harvey, Islamic Spain, 1250-1500, and R. Manzano Rodriguez, Los Benimerines. Numerous other authors, whose works are cited in footnotes and in the bibliography, have increased our understanding of the history of al-Andalus and I am dependent on and grateful to them all. If this work succeeds in providing an overview of the subject and recent research and introducing it to others, be they Orientalists, western mediaevalists or interested general readers, then it will have succeeded in its purpose.
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