The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall (17 page)

tax base.

As in Britain, the impact of romanization in the Iberian countryside is diffi cult to measure, and it is unclear as to what extent commoners retained local identities or became Hispano-Romans. The

Basques and other peoples of the northern highlands, who had withstood Roman assimilationist pressure, certainly maintained identities

that were distinct from the more settled south. The medieval chroniclers who provide most of the information on Visigothic Spain were

concerned primarily with the doings of nobles and high churchmen

and paid almost no attention to common Iberians. It seems likely that

villagers, peasants, herdsmen, hill folk, and slaves probably distrusted

their Roman and Visigothic rulers equally, and the common thread

that runs through the Roman, Visigothic, and Umayyad eras was the

domination and exploitation of local peoples by succeeding ancient

and medieval imperial powers.

At the elite level, a common aristocratic culture in Iberia was

taking shape at the time of the Umayyad invasion as the HispanoRoman aristocracy made their peace with Visigothic rule. But it is

Muslim

Spain 85

not clear how the majority of Iberians identifi ed themselves during

this period. As in the wider medieval world, Christianity was a common reference point, but the Visigoths’ embrace of Arianism divided

them from their Catholic subjects until the Council of Toledo created

a single Iberian church in 587. Nevertheless, the role that Catholicism

played in the everyday lives of common Iberians is uncertain. Christianity was synonymous with romanization under the late empire,

but, as in Britain, it is diffi cult to determine its infl uence beyond the

Hispano-Roman aristocracy. The veneration of St. Eulalia of Merida,

popular throughout the peninsula, probably drew on a pre-Roman

fertility cult. Although this suggests indigenous local beliefs shaped

Spanish Christianity, it is not necessarily evidence that the church

had a large popular following. Iberian values may have infl uenced

its beliefs, but the Catholic Church was also one of the largest slave

owners in the seventh century, and its close ties to the Visigothic elite

probably circumscribed its popular infl uence.

The Visigoths’ embrace of Catholicism was certainly a disaster

for Iberian Jews. The Arian kings had denied them a range of rights,

but the Visigoths’ conversion subjected the Jews of Iberia to the full

weight of the horrendous anti-Semitic laws that had become the

norm in the rest of Catholic Europe. Although there is no evidence

that it went into force, a 694 law actually enslaved the entire Jewish population of the peninsula. This systematic oppression led to

unfounded suggestions that the Jews actively abetted the Umayyad

invasion. Nonetheless, institutionalized anti-Semitism was certainly

a small part of the wider oppressive and extractive policies that alienated common Iberians from the Visigothic state.

It therefore comes as little surprise that the Visigoths received

scant help from the general population when Tariq invaded in 711.

Roderic’s problems were both personal and systemic. Coming to

power after winning one of the bitter succession disputes that plagued

the Visigothic monarchy, he was hard pressed to mobilize his fellow

nobles against the invaders. Furthermore, falling agricultural yields

and declining tax revenues undermined the Visigoths’ military capacity. By 711, their manpower shortages were so serious that Roderic

resorted to arming slaves.

This is why it took the Umayyads only four years to overrun most

of the peninsula. By some reports, southern cities such as Córdoba

86 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

and Zaragoza resisted, but the Hispano-Roman elite seems to have

remained relatively neutral by retreating to their rural estates. Some

of the surviving Visigothic nobles apparently buried their treasure

and withdrew to the north on the assumption that the invasion was

just another short-term raid. Overall, the invaders appear to have

faced relatively little popular resistance, which suggests that common Iberians did not consider the Muslim conquest particularly catastrophic despite the story of Hercules’s Tower.

Nonetheless, the Umayyad victory was impressive. By comparison, it took the Romans nearly two centuries to conquer Iberia. The

Muslims had the advantage of being able to exploit many of the

infrastructure and administrative systems that Rome bequeathed the

Visigoths. Just as Leovigild kept the Roman administrative machinery running, the Umayyads now stepped into the Visigoths’ shoes as

Rome’s imperial heirs.

At the ground level, Musa’s son Abd al-Aziz, the fi rst Umayyad

governor of Al-Andalus, had no choice but to continue his predecessors’ imperial strategy of ruling indirectly. The conquest of Iberia cost

the Umayyads approximately three thousand men, and Abd al-Aziz

did not fully trust his father’s Berber auxiliaries. Lacking administrative manpower and expertise, he and his successors co-opted RomanoVisigothic governing systems and reached an accord with prominent

local Iberians. Following the Umayyad practice of guaranteeing the

rights and property of enemies who acceded peacefully to Muslim

rule, Abd al-Aziz initially did little more than impose the
jizya
(poll

tax) on cooperative Christians and Jews.

Many Visigothic nobles considered this an attractive arrangement. In 713, Theodemir (Tudmir), whom the chroniclers described

as a count and governor, won Umayyad recognition of his reign

over seven cities near Seville by agreeing to pay the annual
jizya

of one dinar plus measures of grain, vinegar, honey, fruit juice, and

olive oil for each of his subjects. In return, Abd al-Aziz made a

promise:

We will not set special conditions on him or for any among his men,

nor harass him, nor remove him from power. His followers will not be

killed or taken prisoner, nor will they be separated from their women

and children. They will not be coerced in matters of religion, their

Muslim

Spain 87

churches will not be burned . . . [so long as] Tudmir remains sincere

and faithful.13

Initially at least, elites such as Theodemir were thus able to keep

their property and position. The Umayyad governors found land for

their men by seizing the holdings of resisters and nobles who fl ed

north. They also took the royal Visigothic estates that probably had

once belonged to the Roman emperors. Per Umayyad practice, the

new Arab masters of these lands were obliged to surrender one-fi fth

of their revenues to the caliphate.

Abd al-Aziz further cemented his ties to the Visigothic aristocracy

by marrying Roderic’s widow, Egilo, which most likely set a precedent

for Arab soldiers with little chance of fi nding Muslim brides. Similarly, Witiza’s granddaughter Sara the Goth traveled to Damascus to

convince Caliph Hisham to reward her family’s assistance during the

conquest by restoring their estates. Hisham agreed and married her

to an Umayyad nobleman, who returned with her to Spain. Sara converted to Islam, but, interestingly, her brothers became high-ranking

Catholic clerics, thereby demonstrating that the Iberian church did

not immediately suffer under Muslim rule.

The realities of empire eventually derailed these initial compromises. Estimates of the size of the initial Arab/Berber invasion force

range from a conventional army of thirty thousand men to a full-scale

armed migration consisting of two hundred thousand soldiers, families, clients, and slaves.14 The fi rst estimate is more likely, but in either

case, the victorious Muslim troops settled as colonists and expected

privilege, plunder, and land. The more infl uential Arabs took the cities and the fertile Guadalquivir and Ebro river valleys and left the

arid mountainous regions to the Berbers. The actual impact of these

settlements on local Iberian communities depended on the size of the

invasion force. If the lower estimates are accurate, then it is likely

that the seventh-century demographic collapse under the Visigoths

would have left plenty of land for Muslim colonial settlement, but

accommodating more than two hundred thousand migrants would

have placed a considerable burden on their unwilling Iberian hosts.

Either way, even the most cooperative Visigothic elites found it diffi cult to hold on to their estates as Muslim settlement increased over

the course of the eighth century.

88 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

Struggles over the spoils of empire also strained the early

Andalusi administration. Suspicions that Musa had embezzled

the caliphate’s fi fth of the Iberian plunder led al-Walid to recall

him to Damascus, and caliphal agents may have been behind the

assassination of his son Abd al-Aziz in 715. Popular accounts held

that Abd al-Aziz’s Christian wife had convinced him to make a

Caesar-style grab for power by donning a Visigothic crown, but

it is more likely that the Andalusi governor was the fi rst victim

of the vicious infi ghting that was endemic during the fi rst four

chaotic decades of Umayyad rule in Iberia. All told, Al-Andalus

had twenty governors between 716 and 756, of which only three

served for more than fi ve years and more than a few died in combat or at the hands of fellow Arabs.

Ensconced safely in the remote westernmost corner of the caliphate, the original Andalusi Arab colonists, who became known as the

baladiyyun
, guarded their autonomy jealously. Having won the peninsula by force of arms, they conspired to keep its wealth for themselves. In this sense they were no different from later conquistadors

and imperial “men on the spot” who reaped the immediate rewards

of empire. The
baladiyyun
paid no tribute on their new estates even

though the caliphate insisted that formerly Christian lands remained

subject to taxation. Their intransigence was probably a factor in

Caliph Umar II’s plans to withdraw from Spain. He did not, and his

successor Hisham strove to impose more stringent taxation, a centralizing move that undermined
baladi
loyalty to Damascus.

Hoping that new sources of plunder would defuse these tensions,

several Andalusi governors resumed the invasion of western Christendom. Muslim forces consisting primarily of Berbers under Arab

leadership overran most of southern France until the Frankish ruler

Charles Martel stopped them at Poitiers in 732. The Andalusis lingered in Provence until the expansion of Frankish power under Charlemagne later in the century drove them out. Their retreat to Iberia

dried up the
baladiyyun
’s access to loot. Although they acknowledged

the Umayyad caliphs in their Friday prayers, these Andalusi Arabs

asserted their independence from Damascus in substantive matters

such as land settlement and tribute.

The Umayyads’ hold on Al-Andalus became even more precarious after the mass Berber revolt in 739. Angered by Arab discrimina-Muslim

Spain 89

tion in the division of land and wealth, the Andalusi Berbers joined

their North African kinsmen in open rebellion and laid siege to the

main cities of southern Iberia. While the Berber uprising appeared

to threaten the Arabs’ hold on power, the insurrection was also an

opportunity. It allowed the
baladiyyun
to ignore Damascus until the

Syrian expeditionary force in North Africa, which was largely cut

to pieces by the Berbers, took refuge in Spain. The result was an

Arab civil war between the
baladiyyun
and the more recent Syrian arrivals. After three years of strife and broken truces, the Syrian

military commander al-Sumayl ibn Hatim massacred most of the

baladi
leaders and ran Al-Andalus as an independent state until the

refugee Umayyad princeling Abd al-Rahman arrived on the peninsula in 755.

Backed by wealthy Umayyad
mawali
clients among the Syrians,

Abd al-Rahman deposed al-Sumayl’s pet governor within the year

and forced all of the Arab factions to recognize him as the ruler of

Al-Andalus. To consolidate his power he divided al-Sumayl’s base by

exploiting the divisions between the Yaman and Qays cliques that

had so weakened the Umayyads in Syria. Abd al-Rahman then had

the Syrian leader arrested and strangled in prison. He kept the
baladi-

yyun
, who resisted his demands for the one-fi fth caliphal share of

their revenues, in check by raising a new force of Umayyad loyalists,

Berbers, and slave soldiers. The Umayyad prince then consolidated

his power by subduing and fortifying the main Iberian cities.

Iberian Christians were initially bystanders to this second

Umayyad occupation, but the land-hungry Syrians encroached on

their estates, abrogating the earlier arrangements that the
baladi-

yyun
had made with elites such as Theodemir. Lacking suffi cient land

reserves to give the Syrians their own colonial holdings, the Andalusi

governors revived the
foederati
system by settling the various Syrian
ajnad
on Christian estates and allotting them one-third of their

revenues. Abd al-Rahman retained this arrangement, thereby placing

the burden of supporting the Syrians on subject Iberians.