The essential antagonism that might derive from religious difference, which militant ideologies on both sides of the frontiers strove to emphasise becomes increasingly blurred, until it disappears, by political pragmatism and the military interest of each specific context
Francisco García Fitz
University of Extremadura
In the Cantar de mio Cid there is a Muslim character, Avengalvón, who is presented as the governor of Molina and who, throughout the composition, is shown to be a faithful friend of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar. This relationship of loyalty and friendship between the Castilian hero and the Andalusian ruler is explicitly manifested not only in the loyal, kind and solicitous behaviour which he shows to the Cid’s family and vassals when they pass through his lands, but also in the very positive epithets with which, throughout the text, the nature of this relationship is determined: mio amigo natural, amigo sodes sin falla… In one of the characterisations of Avengalvón, when referring to the path that the Cid’s wife and daughters have to follow on their journey to Valencia, Rodrigo mentions passing through Molina and says of his warden «mio amigo es de paz«.
With regard to this last consideration, scholars have pointed out that with this expression the poet alludes to the existence of a pact or political alliance between the Muslim governor of the town and the Cid Campeador. At the same time, Avengalvón would represents a good example of coexistence between Christians and Muslims in the peninsula. Moreover, this example would demonstrate to the audience of the Cantar that there were Muslim political leaders whose behaviour contrasted with the unworthy, disloyal and treacherous behaviour of some Christian nobles, as was the case of the Infantes de Carrión.
The figure of a Muslim leader who maintains a political and military alliance or pact with Rodrigo Díaz is not surprising to anyone with some knowledge of El Cid’s biography: the close relations that El Cid maintained with the Taifa kings of Zaragoza during his exile from Castile between 1081 and 1086, for example, are well known. As a warlord whose services had been hired by the Andalusi rulers, Rodrigo had to contend with various powers, both Muslim and Christian, competing for control of the area: while in the service of Yūsuf al-Mu’tamin of Zaragoza, in 1082 he defeated the Taifa king of Lérida, Mundhir, and his ally, the Count of Barcelona, at Almenar when they sought to conquer the castle. Two years later, he achieved another victory in Morella, once again defending the interests of the ruler of Zaragoza, al-Mu’tamin, against his rival from Lérida and his new partner, the King of Aragon, Sancho Ramírez. On the other hand, between 1086 and 1088, El Cid, now in the name of Alfonso VI of Castile, dedicated himself to the military protection of the Taifa king of Valencia, al-Qādir, which would lead him to clash with both the Taifa of Lérida and the Taifa of Zaragoza, the latter supported by the Count of Barcelona.
In fact, a review of the history of political and military relations between Christian and Muslim powers during the Iberian Middle Ages shows that such alliances between forces that identify themselves and each other with confessional labels —Christians and Muslims— are by no means an exception. The essential antagonism that might derive from religious difference, and which the militant ideologies on both sides of the frontiers strove to emphasise —we are referring to all those ideas related to the notions of holy war, just war, reconquering irredentism, crusade or jihād— becomes increasingly blurred, until it disappears, by the political pragmatism and military interests in each specific context.
It is striking —especially if we take into account the omnipresence of the aforementioned ideological discourses— that in all the historical stages through which these relations passed —from the time of the emirate and the Umayyad caliphate to the last days of the Nasrid sultanate of Granada— it is possible to identify interfaith alliances in which Muslim powers appear as political and military partners with Christian leaders —or vice versa— and that on many occasions the aim of these alliances is confrontation with adversaries of the same religion.
Given the weight borne by the specific context of such cases or by the particular circumstances that led to them, it is very difficult to establish a single explanatory model for all known examples. Sometimes it is clear that the military support given by a Christian monarch to an Islamic power —or vice versa— is in the interest of obtaining economic benefit —often through the demand for tribute (parias) to compensate for the war or for political support given— or to defend a sphere of influence or of future expansion that he considers to be his own against a Christian or Muslim competitor. At other times, the intention is simply to support one power —Islamic or Christian, as the case may be— against another of the same confession in order, in the medium or long term, to weaken them all with a view to neutralising them as rivals or even to a forthcoming annexation. At certain times, models for the political integration in a kingdom or state of powers and communities of different religions were formulated, although always under the sign of subordination, whether vassal or otherwise, of one of them. In others, it is only possible to glimpse the defence of common interests against third parties. In this general framework, the impact of possible ties of personal friendship, loyalty or affection between the leaders of one or the other party is always difficult to gauge. Be that as it may, the fact remains that the confessional nature of power does not always represent an obstacle to the execution or implementation of that power or to the defence of its political, military, territorial or strategic interests.
It is not possible in a contribution limited in space and with an informative character such as this one to make a detailed account of all the documented cases or to enter into an in-depth analysis of each one of them, so we will limit ourselves to outlining some which, we believe, are sufficiently significant and represent different types of relationship, in chronological sequence, trying to ensure that all the major historical phases of the relations between al-Andalus and its northern neighbours are included.
Although chronological accounts stress the confessional nature of the opposing sides —Muslims versus Christians —the fact is that from the first moment of the Islamic presence in the Iberian Peninsula, Muslim leaders were supported by certain forces that were classified as Christian. Recall, for example, that the Berbers and Arabs who led the conquest of al-Andalus from 711 onwards were assisted by Visigothic —and therefore Christian— nobles who were disaffected with their monarchy: although the accounts are late and the versions differ considerably, the allusions to the treachery of Count Julian or that of Witiza’s sons point to alliances between the conquering Muslim forces and part of the Visigothic nobility, designed to put an end to King Rodrigo’s rule, without which the effective exercise of power and the occupation of the territory by the former would probably not have been possible or would have been much more difficult and costly.
Not even at times when Muslim political power developed an intense propaganda campaign to legitimise its exercise, based on the systematic exploitation of the idea of jihād, was the alliance with the Christians of the north discouraged when it was considered convenient in military or political terms: It should be remembered, for example, that one of Almanzor’s most ideological and propagandistic war expeditions, the one that culminated in the destruction of the church of Santiago de Compostela in 997, was supported by several Christian counts who placed themselves at the service of the Cordoban ḥājib. This confluence of interests is by no means strange in this context: a decade and a half before the events of Santiago, Vermudo II of León had come to power following a rebellion against Ramiro III whose success depended to a large extent on the support given to him by Almanzor, who in return not only received tribute but also placed Muslim garrisons in certain castles in León to strengthen Vermudo II’s position against his internal rivals.
Undoubtedly, the political fragmentation of al-Andalus after the disintegration of the Caliphate of Córdoba and the clashes between the Taifa kingdoms that arose at that time —from the fourth decade of the 11th century onwards and throughout this century— was a particularly favourable breeding ground for the proliferation of interfaith alliances. In order to face both competition with other taifa kingdoms and growing military pressure from the Christian centres in the north, the various Muslim kings did not hesitate to establish alliances and seek the military support of some of the latter in exchange for large sums of money, either as payment for military services or in the form of tribute with a greater degree of institutionalisation and permanence —the parias. For example, in 1043 the border rivalry between the Taifa of Zaragoza and that of Toledo led to the military involvement of the Castilian monarch in favour of the former and the Pamplona monarch in support of the latter. A decade later, the Taifa of Lérida would count on the warlike support of the Catalan counts in the face of the expansionism of Zaragoza, while the latter resorted to an alliance with Pamplona to stop Aragonese pressure on its borders and to annex Lérida. And in around 1059 it would be the Castilian monarch, Ferdinand I, who would replace Pamplona in the alliance with Zaragoza, a pact that logically involved the active military participation of the Castilians in defence of their Andalusi partners against other Christian aggressors. This was the case before the walls of Graus, where in 1063 the Aragonese monarch —Ramiro I— lost his life when he tried to take the town from the Zaragozan Taifa, who on this occasion included Castilian contingents under the command of the infante Sancho – the future King Sancho II. These examples could be multiplied, so suffice it to recall that in 1074 Alfonso VI of Castile managed to impose parias on the Zirid king of Granada thanks to the military collaboration of the Sevillan Taifa, or that in 1080 al-Qādir of Toledo was restored to his throne by Alfonso VI of Castile after he was ousted by the Aftasid monarch of Badajoz and that, moreover, he was able to remain in power for a time in the face of internal discontent thanks also to Castilian military support.
The arrival of the Almoravids on the peninsular political scene and the subsequent reunification of al-Andalus at the end of the 11th century put an end to this state of affairs. Later, in the third decade of the 12th century, the decline of North African power and the sharpening of differences between the Muslim population of the peninsula and their Berber rulers made it easy for some of the Andalusi leaders of the fight against the Almoravids, in particular Zafadola, to resort to a political and military alliance with the Castilian-Leonese monarch, Alfonso VII, to put an end to the Berber presence in al-Andalus.
The intensity of the ideological discourse of the contemporary chronicles emanating from the court of Alfonso VII, strongly tinged with the notion of holy war against Islam and the ideology of crusade, did not prevent him from resolutely providing military support for Zafadola’s pretensions to destroy Almoravid power and become the king of a unified al-Andalus, nor did he hesitate in accepting Zafadola as his vassal, on the same level as other Castilian-Leonese nobles, thus conferring on him a political status that was intended to be permanent.
This lack of congruence between ideology and political pragmatism, which we had already seen in the time of Almanzor and which we now see on the other side of the border, in the court of Alfonso VII, was to be repeated on many occasions: despite the power of the jihad argument employed by the Almohad movement. When the time came, the North African leaders allied themselves with Ferdinand II of León to consolidate their dominion over the territory of what is now Extremadura and the Portuguese Alentejo, and the León monarch certainly did not hesitate to undertake a military operation in 1169 in favour of the Almohads against Gerard Sempavor and Alfonso I of Portugal when the latter tried to evict them from Badajoz. In this case, León’s strategic plans, which were aimed at ensuring its future territorial expansion to the south and preventing Portuguese interference in the area, took precedence over the fact that, in the short term, they contributed to consolidating the Almohad presence and weakening their co-religionists.
The crisis of the Almohad empire, clearly visible from 1224 onwards, and the new political division of al-Andalus into what has come to be known as «the third Taifas», once again led the Christian powers of the north to exploit the differences between the North African Muslims and the Andalusis, as well as the latter’s internal confrontations, fomenting these quarrels, demanding large sums of money in exchange for peace or military support and, of course, taking advantage of the weakness of all to extend their conquests. The figure of Ferdinand III of Castile-Leon, whose image as a «crusader king» and saint was based, among other things, on his armed activity against Islam, is paradigmatic. The ideological and sacralised account of his campaigns against the Muslims is not incompatible with the fact that he gave political and military support to an Almohad caliph and to certain Andalusi leaders, one of whom, the first Nasrid sultan, he would end up accepting as his vassal, thus granting, in practice, a charter of nature and solidity to the kingdom of Granada.
Finally, the last two centuries of the Hispanic Middle Ages, when the only Islamic state in the Peninsula was the Nasrid sultanate, were no stranger to these interfaith alliances either. Remember, for example, that the three most important Taifa kings of the mid-13th century —Ibn Maḥfūẓ of Niebla, Muḥammad I of Granada and Ibn Hūd of Murcia— were vassals of Alfonso X andsigned their diplomas in this capacity, with all that this implied in terms of submission, but also of political recognition. Or that from 1282 this same Castilian-Leonese monarch received military support from the Merinid emir during the civil war that pitted him against his son, the future Sancho IV, who in turn allied himself with the king of Granada to confront his father. And it is significant that the last attack Cordoba suffered at Muslim hands, the siege of 1368, took place in the context of the Castilian civil war, so that when the Nasrid troops of Muḥammad V surrounded the city, they were in fact fighting for a Christian king, Pedro I, and against a pretender to the throne of Castile-Leon, Enrique II. By supporting Boabdil’s claim to the Alhambra throne, therefore, the Catholic Monarchs were merely continuing a well-established political tradition.
As this brief review of specific cases has shown, it seems that the confessional nature of political power did not represent an insurmountable barrier to the establishment of political and military alliances. Of course, this is not to say that when historians present the conflicts between the political centres of the northern peninsula and al-Andalus in terms of «Christians versus Muslims», we are «inventing» a reality, since it is in such terms that they were presented by contemporaries. On the other hand, it is clear that the political projects implicitly or explicitly included in the ideological narratives of a crusader, reconquest or jihadist nature —projects which in some cases involved the dismantling of Muslim powers in the Peninsula and in others the defence of Islam in al-Andalus— gave ultimate meaning to their respective political and military actions. The point is that the religious or legal justifications on which they were based were often nuanced or contradicted by political pragmatism, and that these circumstances must be taken into account if we are not to offer a simplistic and distorted view of that collision.
Further reading:
- Barton, Simon. Conquerors, brides, and concubines: interfaith relations and social power in medieval Iberia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.
- García Fitz, F. (2002): Relaciones políticas y guerra. La experiencia castellano-leonesa frente al Islam. Siglos XI-XIII, University of Seville, Seville.
- Ladero Quesada, M. Á. (2002): Las guerras de Granada en el siglo XV, Ariel, Barcelona.
- Manzano Moreno, E. (2006): Conquistadores, emires y califas. Los omeyas y la formación de al-Andalus, Crítica, Barcelona.