User:Saggy/Sandbox of Islamic Spain book: Difference between revisions

This book aims to demystify Islamic Spain by questioning the widespread belief that it was a wonderful place of tolerance and convivencia of three cultures under the benevolent supervision of enlightened Muslim rulers. As the epigraphs throughout this book illustrate, the nineteenth-century romantic vision of Islamic Spain has morphed into today’s “mainstream” academic and popular writings that celebrate “al-Andalus” for its “multiculturalism,” “unity of Muslims, Christians, and Jews,” “diversity,” and “pluralism,” regardless of how close such emphasis is to the facts. Some scholars of the Spanish Middle Ages have even openly declared an interest in promoting these ideas.1

Demythologizing this civilization requires focusing a searching light on medieval cultural features that may seem less than savory to modern readers and that perhaps for this reason are seldom discussed. The first two chapters of this book examine how Spain was conquered and colonized by the forces of the Islamic Caliphate. Some scholars have argued that the Muslim takeover was accomplished largely through “peaceful pacts”; some even refuse to call it a “conquest,” preferring to call it a “migratory wave.” Other scholars argue that the conquest was carried out by force.2 Neither side is entirely right. The Muslim conquerors used force to defeat the resistance of the Christian Visigoth kingdom, a nascent civilization. But they also granted pacts to those Visigoth lords and Christian leaders who saw it as advantageous to accept the offered “peace” and become dhimmis (those Christians and Jews living in sub­altern status in Islamic lands) rather than face the consequences of resisting. Behind the “peaceful pacts” was always the threat of brutal force. The remaining chapters of this book examine fundamental aspects of Islamic Spain that are rarely highlighted: religious and therefore cultural repression in all areas of life and the marginalization of certain groups—all this in the service of social control by autocratic rulers and a class of religious authorities. …

Muslims in medieval Spain considered Islam the final and most perfect form of divine revelation. They also believed that the “People of the Book”—Christians and Jews—had strayed from the teachings of their Bible in various ways that rendered them religiously inferior to Muslims, who had kept the true faith. Given this conviction of superiority, Islam in medieval Spain could hardly be said to be “tolerant” of other religions. To prevent other faiths from contesting the religious and therefore political, social, and cultural supremacy of Islam, rulers and clerics endeavored to keep every type of hegemony over the “People of the Book.”

Of course, in some circumstances Christian dhimmis assumed positions of varying authority even while remaining outsiders. The Muslim regime sometimes enlisted skilled Christians to serve as bureaucrats or soldiers for the same reason it enlisted skilled Jewish functionaries: they would be loyal to the Muslim ruler and to nobody else because they had no allegiance to potential Muslim rivals and in fact owed only to the ruler their improved condition; and a given ruler who lacked strong religious convictions might also turn to a Christian for whom he had personal sympathy. This “success” is often presented as evidence that Christian life under Islam was favorable. But as was the case with Jews who assumed positions of authority under Muslim rulers, such “success” involved only elites and did not extend to the masses. Moreover, it occurred in spite of—and in direct opposition to—Islamic injunctions, and it created resentment among the ulama and the Muslim population.

Those Islamic injunctions, and the assumption of Islamic superiority from which they followed, are the crucial matters to understand when considering the condition of Christians in Islamic Spain. To be sure, Islamic law was not enforced everywhere, every time; as in any other legal system, expediency, necessity, favoritism, bribery, inefficiency, politics, and other factors could alter an outcome. But the plain fact is that Islamic law in medieval Spain imposed humiliating conditions on Christian dhimmis to ensure that absolute power remained in the proper hands. Those restrictions were quite successful in their purpose, at least for several centuries.

Under the Islamic institution of the dhimma (writ or contract of “protection”), the Christian dhimmis of al-Andalus must pay a special tax, the jizya, for a “protection” intended, as Maliki legal texts make clear, to remind them of their submission. Malik’s Muwatta declares, “Zakat is imposed on the Muslims to purify them and to be given back to their poor, whereas jizya is imposed on the people of the Book to humble them.”10 Therefore the jizya ought to be paid in a humiliating manner:

The dhimmi, standing, would present the money to the Muslim collector who would be sitting higher up on a sort of throne; this Muslim bureaucrat would hold the dhimmi by the throat telling him “Oh dhimmi, enemy of Allah, pay the jizya that you owe us for the protection and tolerance we grant you”; the other Muslims present would imitate the collector, pushing around the dhimmi and whoever other dhimmis accompanied him. To this amusing spectacle should be admitted any Muslim who wanted to enjoy it.11

As part of the dhimma system, a Muslim “officer of protection” regulated all affairs related to Christians.

The dhimma system, then, was a gangster-like “protection racket” (pay “protection” or else) that was quite profitable for the Muslim rulers. Muhammad’s father-in-law, companion, and second caliph, Umar (a caliph so just and pious that he was known as al-Farooq, “one who distinguishes between right and wrong”), made clear that this was a profitable system of extortion: dhimmis were even more productive for Muslims than slaves and therefore should be kept “protected” as dhimmis rather than parceled out as slaves precisely because Muslims could live off them much better. After citing the verses from Quran 9:29 (“Fight against those who do not believe in God nor in the Last Day, who do not hold forbidden what God and His Apostle have forbidden, who do not practice the religion of truth but are of those to whom a Book has been given, until they pay the poll tax from their hand, they being humbled”), Umar admonished his followers (bracketed material is the translator’s):

Have you considered, if we take them [as slaves] and share them out, what will be left for Muslims who come after us? By God, the Muslims would not find a man to talk to and profit from his labors. The Muslims of our day will eat [from the work of] these people as long as they live, and when we and they die, our sons will eat their sons forever, as long as they remain, for they are slaves to the people of the religion of Islam as long as the religion of Islam shall prevail.12