Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Matthew Carr
Granada.
Such tolerance was not constant or universal. In 1066 as many as three thousand Jews may have been massacred in Granada in a popular pogrom whose causes have never been clear. There was a great difference between the way Jews were treated in tenth-century Córdoba and their subsequent treatment under the stricter and more conservative Almoravids and Almohads during the taifa period, when they were discriminated against and sometimes obliged to wear yellow badges as a mark of their second-class status. But even under the most repressive Muslim rulers, there was no systematic attempt to eradicate Judaism or Christianity from Iberia. Nor was the Iberian Church subjected to the destructive onslaught described by the anonymous authors of the thirteenth-century chronicle Estoria de España (Chronicle of Spain):
The sanctuaries were destroyed, the churches demolished, the places where God was praised with joy now blasphemed and mistreated. They expelled the crosses and altars from the churches. The chrism, the books, and all those things that were for the honor of Christianity were broken and trampled upon. The holidays and celebrations were all forgotten. The honor of the saints and the beauty of the church were turned into ugliness and vileness. The churches and towers where they used to praise God, now in the same places they called upon Mahomat. 6
This picture of barbaric conquest owes more to the propaganda narratives of the Reconquista than to historical accuracy. In the first centuries of Islamic Spain, Muslims were a minority in the kingdoms they ruled, and it was not in their interests to wreak such havoc even if they had wanted to. Muslim power in Iberia was established through negotiated agreements as well as military force, and local Christian rulers were offered religious autonomy in exchange for their political submission to the new order. A treaty signed between the Muslim ruler Abd al-Aziz and Theodemir the Visigothic ruler of Murcia in 713 specifically states that the local Christians “will not be coerced in matters of religion, their churches will not be burned, nor will sacred objects be taken from the realm,” provided that they swore fealty to their new rulers and paid their taxes. 7
With the consolidation of Muslim rule in Iberia, large numbers of Spanish Christians converted to Islam, either out of conviction or convenience, and became known as muwallads . The remaining Christian communities, a subordinate minority in the midst of a dominant Arab/Islamic culture, became known as mozarabes or “Arabized” Catholics. Like all minorities, the Mozarabs faced the risk of the long-term erosion of their distinctive religious and cultural features through continuous contact with the culture of a dominant majority. Though some Muslim rulers included Christians in their courts, social mobility and high office were generally reserved for Muslims and Arabic speakers—a tendency that undoubtedly increased the temptation to convert to Islam. Even Christians who chose not to convert were not immune to the Muslim culture that surrounded them. As their name suggests, many Mozarabs spoke Arabic as well as Latin, and the Mozarabic Church even incorporated Arabic into the liturgy—a development that was not taken well by Christians outside Spain, who regarded the Spanish Church as dangerously heterodox.
To the Spanish Church, therefore, the main threat to the faith stemmed not so much from overt religious repression, but from its prolonged exposure to an Arabic/Islamic secular culture that many ordinary Christians found seductive, appealing, and even liberating. In ninth-century Córdoba, the Christian author Paul Alvarus lamented the popularity of Arab poetry and literature among Christian youth and complained that
The Christians love to read the poems and romances of the Arabs; they study the Arab theologians and philosophers, not to refute them but to form a correct and elegant Arabic. Where is the
Such tolerance was not constant or universal. In 1066 as many as three thousand Jews may have been massacred in Granada in a popular pogrom whose causes have never been clear. There was a great difference between the way Jews were treated in tenth-century Córdoba and their subsequent treatment under the stricter and more conservative Almoravids and Almohads during the taifa period, when they were discriminated against and sometimes obliged to wear yellow badges as a mark of their second-class status. But even under the most repressive Muslim rulers, there was no systematic attempt to eradicate Judaism or Christianity from Iberia. Nor was the Iberian Church subjected to the destructive onslaught described by the anonymous authors of the thirteenth-century chronicle Estoria de España (Chronicle of Spain):
The sanctuaries were destroyed, the churches demolished, the places where God was praised with joy now blasphemed and mistreated. They expelled the crosses and altars from the churches. The chrism, the books, and all those things that were for the honor of Christianity were broken and trampled upon. The holidays and celebrations were all forgotten. The honor of the saints and the beauty of the church were turned into ugliness and vileness. The churches and towers where they used to praise God, now in the same places they called upon Mahomat. 6
This picture of barbaric conquest owes more to the propaganda narratives of the Reconquista than to historical accuracy. In the first centuries of Islamic Spain, Muslims were a minority in the kingdoms they ruled, and it was not in their interests to wreak such havoc even if they had wanted to. Muslim power in Iberia was established through negotiated agreements as well as military force, and local Christian rulers were offered religious autonomy in exchange for their political submission to the new order. A treaty signed between the Muslim ruler Abd al-Aziz and Theodemir the Visigothic ruler of Murcia in 713 specifically states that the local Christians “will not be coerced in matters of religion, their churches will not be burned, nor will sacred objects be taken from the realm,” provided that they swore fealty to their new rulers and paid their taxes. 7
With the consolidation of Muslim rule in Iberia, large numbers of Spanish Christians converted to Islam, either out of conviction or convenience, and became known as muwallads . The remaining Christian communities, a subordinate minority in the midst of a dominant Arab/Islamic culture, became known as mozarabes or “Arabized” Catholics. Like all minorities, the Mozarabs faced the risk of the long-term erosion of their distinctive religious and cultural features through continuous contact with the culture of a dominant majority. Though some Muslim rulers included Christians in their courts, social mobility and high office were generally reserved for Muslims and Arabic speakers—a tendency that undoubtedly increased the temptation to convert to Islam. Even Christians who chose not to convert were not immune to the Muslim culture that surrounded them. As their name suggests, many Mozarabs spoke Arabic as well as Latin, and the Mozarabic Church even incorporated Arabic into the liturgy—a development that was not taken well by Christians outside Spain, who regarded the Spanish Church as dangerously heterodox.
To the Spanish Church, therefore, the main threat to the faith stemmed not so much from overt religious repression, but from its prolonged exposure to an Arabic/Islamic secular culture that many ordinary Christians found seductive, appealing, and even liberating. In ninth-century Córdoba, the Christian author Paul Alvarus lamented the popularity of Arab poetry and literature among Christian youth and complained that
The Christians love to read the poems and romances of the Arabs; they study the Arab theologians and philosophers, not to refute them but to form a correct and elegant Arabic. Where is the