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

The situation of Christians under Muslim rule in Spain was similar to the presumably “benign” condition of the Greek Orthodox raya under Turkish Muslim rule: in the words of the historians John S. Koliopoulos and Thanos M. Veremis, Greek Orthodox Christians “were tolerated as long as they accepted the inferior status of the raya (flock) and were prepared to obey the ruler who had imposed that inferior status on them.”38

The much-praised “tolerance” of al-Andalus was thus part of Islam’s imperialist system of separation from and subordination of Christians. Christians could practice their religion, but only on Islam’s terms. Islamic clerics and rulers remained effectively in control in matters of religion, and because religion informed everything, they remained effectively in control of everything.

ENDNOTES

1 Middle Ages Colin Smith asked H. Salvador Martínez in the 1980s whether there was any text in which “se definiese y se promoviese el concepto de convivencia entre los varios grupos étnico-religiosos que poblaban la España medieval” (“in which the concept of convivencia among the various ethnic-religious groups that populated medieval Spain was defined and promoted”). Salvador Martínez thought there was none, so he proceeded to write one on a period particularly suited to promoting convivencia. Smith’s request is cited in H. Salvador Martínez, La Convivencia en la España del siglo XIII: Perspectivas alfonsíes (Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo, 2006), 12. An insightful account of the “romantic” vision of Islamic Spain can be found in an article by Pedro Marfil, professor of archaeology at the University of Córdoba, “La visión romántica de la Córdoba Omeya,” Ruta del Califato: Un recorrido histórico-monumental de Córdoba a Granada, ed. Julia Saiz-Pardo de Benito (Granada: Fundación El Legado Andalusí, 2005), 205–12.

2 For the “peaceful pacts” approach, see Alejandro García Sanjuán, La conquista islámica de la peninsula ibérica y la tergiversación del pasado: Del catastrofismo al negacionismo (Madrid: Pons, 2013), where he attacks the “catastrophism” of scholars like Luis A. García Moreno and Serafín Fanjul as well as the “negationism” of Ignacio Olagüe and Emilio González Ferrín. García Sanjuán accepts the idea of conquest, though says it was “largely peaceful.” The peaceful approach was earlier taken to its logical conclusion by Olagüe in his Les arabes n’ont jamais envahi l’Espagne (Paris: Flammarion, 1969), where he argued that there was no conquest but rather a cultural domination of one form of religion (Christian Trinitarianism) by another (Christian Unitarianism). The peaceful approach has been given a different version by the Marxist Arabist Emilio González Ferrín, who argues that there was no conquest but a steady “migration” of Muslims from North Africa, which finally became hegemonic. See his Historia general de Al-Andalus (Córdoba: Almuzara, 2006). Ferrín’s thesis (“negationism,” in the words of García Sanjuán) has been very successful in both Spain and the English-speaking academic world, where denying the idea that there was a conquest facilitates denying the abhorrent idea of a Christian Reconquest. For what García Sanjuán called the “catastrophism” approach, see Serafín Fanjul, Al-Andalus contra España: La forja del mito (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 2000). The more sensible approach is that of the Arabist Felipe Maíllo Salgado, Acerca de la conquista árabe de España: imprecisiones, equívocos y patrañas (Guijón: TREA, 2011).

11 Arabist Francisco Javier Simonet, Historia de los mozárabes de España (1897–1908; rpt. Madrid: Turner, 1983), 1:92. Simonet explains: “The jizya could be imposed two ways: individually and collectively. If individual, the obligation was inherent to the individual and ended with his conversion to Islam or his death. If collective, that is, if it had been imposed on the community of a town or region, the total value of the jizya could not diminish or increase regardless of the reduction or increase of the population subject to the collective jizya; the entire community was responsible for continuing to pay the jizya” (ibid.).

12 Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople, ed. and trans. Bernard Lewis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 2:224. The Islamic State has made use of Umar’s words to justify its exploitation of non-Muslims. See Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali, “My provision was placed for me in the shade of my spear,” in Islamic State publication Dabiq 4 Issue (1435 Dhul-Hijjah), 10–13.

13 Brill Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, “dhimmi.”

14 Among other manuals cited throughout this book, see Soha Abboud-Haggar, El Tratado Jurídico de Al-Tafri de Ibn Al-Gallab: Manuscrito Aljamiado De Almonacid De La Sierra (Zaragoza): Edición, Estudio, Glosario y Confrontación Con El Original Árabe (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1999), 2:564–65; al-Qayrawani, Risala, 37.27; Muhammad b. Iyad, Kitab Ibn al-Mawwaz, cit. Delfina Serrano, “Legal Practice in an Andalusi-Magrhibi Source from the Twelfth Century,” Islamic Law and Society 7, no. 2 (2000): 199–200.

15 Al-Tafri, 566.

16 Muwatta, 43.15.8b; Risala, 37.04.