Hi! Welcome to Al Muqaddimah, my name is Syawish.
For almost 800 years, the Iberian Peninsula existed as a pocket of Islamic Civilization,
away from the Middle East, in Europe. Islamic Civilization thrived there and connected the
Islamic World to Europe, opening the way for the exchange of ideas. It created not just one but
two golden ages, the Golden of the Caliphate of Cordoba and the Golden Age of the Sephardic Jews.
It was an abode of tolerance and collaboration. Slowly but steadily, the Muslim polities were
pushed off the Iberian peninsula and sent packing to North Africa. After this, the Muslim
population was told to convert, leave or die. This fascinating story is too often told from a
religious point of view, the clash of two great religions, the victory of Christianity over Islam.
However, the story is more complicated than that. Muslims often allied with Christians against other
Muslims and Christians often allied with Muslims against other Christians. While religion certainly
played a part, this conflict should be seen as a conflict between ambitious people coveting
more and more power by any means necessary. Another simplistic view of the collapse of Muslim
Iberia is that the Muslims were too decedent, bogged down by harems full of women
and chalices full of wine. But again, the story is much more complicated than that. So, let’s take a look at some of the reason
behind the fall of Muslim Iberia. ## Sponsorship Okay, so, I know that a lot of you, like myself,
play Crusader Kings III. So, I’m very happy to announce that I’ve partnered with Paradox
Interactive, the people behind Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis, to tell you that a new
flavor pack is coming on the 31st of this month, May. It’s called Fate of Iberia and it deals with
the struggle in Iberia that happened between the Islamic Emirates and the Christian Kingdoms.
As the people at Paradox Interactive always do, they have treated the subject with incredible
historical accuracy and nuance which, I think is, usually lacking from most
discussions regarding the Reconquista. So, if you wanna learn more about the
interactions between the Islamic Emirates and the Christian Kingdoms in Iberia,
you should check out Fate of Iberia. Click the link in the description or in the
pinned comment to check out Fate of Iberia. ## The Problems for the Umayyads Let’s start, like Fate of Iberia does, in
867. At the time, we saw, what I think was, sort of a trailer for the ultimate fate of
Islamic Empires in Iberia. Since 852, Emir Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman had been ruling the
Umayyad Emirate of Cordoba. Ever since starting his reign, Muhammad had had to put out fires left,
right and centre. There were many reasons, most of which stayed relevant from then on to 1492. At the
time, the biggest problem was the discontent among the Muwallad. Muwallad were Muslims of Iberian or
mixed Iberian and Arab or North African descent. Between 800CE and 950CE, a large number of Iberian
locals converted to Islam. Despite popular belief, Muslim Empires didn’t really want non-Muslims
to convert because they extracted extra taxes from non-Muslims so, when they converted to Islam,
the state revenue took a hit. In addition to that, the Muwallad began resenting the ruling
Arab elites. During Muhammad’s reign, there were various rebellions from them as well as
other groups. Taking advantage of the instability, the Christian kings to the north supported
some of the rebels and even allied with them. This was pretty much the first time that on a
large scale, Muslims Emirate in Iberia had faced a challenge from within. Disunity among Muslims
was a big factor in the collapse of Muslim Iberia and this was basically where that started. The
Emirate actually stayed in a state of relative anarchy till Muhammad’s great-grandson Abd
al-Rahman III ascended to the throne in 912CE. The thing with the locals converting to Islam and
then rising up was seen throughout the Islamic World as a reason for the fall of many empires,
from Spain to Baghdad and even India. While Abd al-Rahman III and his son, al-Hakam II were able
to keep things together, the deep-rooted problems didn’t go away. After the death of al-Hakam II
in 976, his young son, Hisham II ascended to the throne. He was only around ten years of age and
he became a puppet. Meanwhile, different Arab, North-African and Muwallad factions at
the court kept fighting to gain influence. This resulted in the fracturing of the Umayyad
Caliphate of Cordoba and its official end in 1031. This was the beginning of the end. The former
Umayyad territory was divided into 10 or so smaller Emirates, some ruled by Arabs, some by
Muwallad, all fighting for control. For this, they often allied with Christian Kings
who were also looking at the opportunity to expand south. There was no unified Muslim
power to resist Christian advances and Toledo fell in 1085 to King Alfonso VI of Castile. This
marks a very important point in the struggle between the Muslims and the Christians. Toledo
gave Castile a foothold in Muslim territory across the Tagus River. Islamic Polities
on Iberia were now on borrowed time. ## Help from Across the Strait The ruler of the Emirate of Seville appealed
to the Almoravid Sultan across the strait of Gibraltar. There, the Amazigh empire of
the Almoravid and their ambitious ruler, Yusuf Ibn Tashfin, had made a name for themselves
by quickly conquering almost all of North-Western Africa from Algeria to Ghana. Yusuf ibn
Tashfin invaded but instead of helping the Emirates, he conquered them. For around
a century, the Almoravid ruled Muslim Spain until they were overthrown by the Almohad in
1147. Almohad were also an Amazigh Empire and they also conquered Iberia. Between the Almoravid
and the Almohad, there was another period of small emirates fighting for control while the Christians
pushed South. Independent Emirs often allied with Christians to obtain more power. The Almohad
themselves began declining and were pushed off the Iberian Peninsula in the 1210s and
20s. Cordoba fell in 1236 and Seville in 1248. The only Islamic Emirate left on the peninsula
then was the Nasrid Emirate of Granada. ## On Borrowed Time From around 1230 to 1492, the Nasrid Emirate of
Granada kept shrinking. The biggest reason was that it was terribly unstable. You might get an
idea of that from the fact that in just around 250 years, they had 13 rulers named Muhammad
alone. During this time, the Nasrid were often allied with the Castilians or the Aragonese. They
also tried to expand by taking advantage of the Christian Kingdoms fighting each other but that
didn’t really work very well. Finally, in 1482, the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella
started the final push against Granada which ended with the fall of Granada in 1492, ending Muslim
political presence on the Iberian Peninsula. ## Military Weakness So, let’s now take a look at why exactly Muslim
Emirates failed to defend against the Christians in Iberia. The first problem was that
after the fall of the Umayyad Dynasty, both the Almoravids and the Almohad, didn’t think
of their Iberian holdings as the core of the empire, for them Morocco came first. That’s not
to say they didn’t try to defend Muslim Iberia, they did but they had significant problems. They
didn’t draw any large number of soldiers from Morocco to defend Muslim Spain. For
that, they relied on local soldiers, of which, there weren’t many. Due to reforms
by the Umayyads, locals were excluded from the military which mostly relied on Amazigh soldiers
from North Africa and the Saqaliba, likely Slavic, slave soldiers. Hugh Kennedy best
summarized this as the following: > This [situation] meant that there was a large
non-military, civilian population in Al-Andalus, untrained in warfare and unequipped. They relied
on the professional soldiers to defend them and when, with the collapse of the caliphate, the
Almoravids or the Almohads, these professional soldiers were no longer available, the local
people could not mount a successful resistance. Along with this concentration of military power
in a caste of professional soldiers went the concentration of political power in the hands
of the rulers. Under the Umayyads, the lords of the Marches had considerable autonomy and the
power to lead defensive and offensive campaigns on their own initiative. Under the Almoravids
and Almohads, such local initiatives ceased to be possible. This is especially true under the
centralised Almohad caliphate when the prolonged absences of the caliphs effectively paralysed both
offensive and defensive war efforts... Christian Spain and Portugal during this period have been
described as a 'society organised for war'. The Christians seem to have been able to mobilise
a much higher proportion of their populations for warfare, in royal armies, in the armies of the
military orders and in the armies of the towns. The gulf between the military castes and the rest
of the population did not exist. Furthermore, there were many different centres of command. Not
only were there three or four frontier monarchies but there were military orders, nobles' followings
and town armies with their own command structure, capable of independent action. Muslim society
had no equivalent of an adventurer like Giraldo Sempavor or military forces like the aggressive
and effective militia of Avila in the second half of the twelfth century. If royal power
was enfeebled by minority or civil war, as in Castile after 1157, there were others
who could and did assume a leadership role.
> Both the Almoravid and Almohad came from the
desert and were hardened warriors. They could face anyone in the open field but they couldn’t
lay siege to castles and cities. They simply didn’t have the infrastructure to supply prolonged
sieges. They would have to draw resources from Morocco which itself wasn’t exactly popular for
its agricultural produce. So, after the fall of Toledo in 1085, with minor exceptions here and
there, when the Muslim lost a city or castle, they simply couldn’t recover it. As a result,
valuable strategic assets were lost forever. ## Doomed by Geography When the Muslim initially conquered Iberia in
711CE, they had pushed the Christian Kingdoms to the Northern Mountains. Then, a border was agreed
upon where everything south of the Ebro and Tagus rivers belonged to the Umayyads while everything
north belonged to the various Christian Kings. These borders were sustainable and easy to
protect for the Muslims but once Toledo fell, the Castilians were inside Muslim territory. It
could’ve been reversed if the Almoravids had the ability to lay siege and take Toledo but well, the
Almoravids just couldn’t do that. From then on, the Christian Kingdoms kept chipping away city
by city, fort by fort, with no way to stop them. ## Lost Talent Another major curse on Muslim Iberia
was that from around 1100CE or so, Muslim Iberia was haemorrhaging people. The
increased instability and Christian threat led to those who could afford to
leave, leaving. This included many prominent families like the Banu Khaldun, the
ancestors of the famous scholar, Ibn Khaldun. They had ruled Seville at one point but had
left Iberia probably in the early 1200s to settle in Tunisia. These skilled immigrants
boosted the Almoravid and Almohad Empires while contributing to the decay of Muslim Iberia. The
Almohad even encouraged immigration to Morocco. As a result, there weren’t many people left
to fight for and administer Muslim Iberia. # Conclusion So, to summarize, in my opinion,
Iberia was simply too different than the Middle East for the Arabs to rule
properly. Arab rule had largely relied on an elite military class which existed, at some
social distance, from the general population. In the East, Muslims Empires were able
to keep the military elite class supplied with a constant influx of slave soldiers. In the
west, that wasn’t possible on as large a scale as was needed. After the collapse of the Umayyad
Caliphate, the smaller emirates simply didn’t have the resources to muster up the military force that
they needed to defend against Christian north. Also, Muslims weren’t exactly used to ruling a
dense urban population. While the Arab Umayyads got used to it, the Almoravids and the
Almohad never really did. As a result, they weren’t able to prop up good
bureaucratic systems that were suited for an urban population. In the east, the Arabs
solved this problem by learning from the Persians who had had urban empires for centuries.
The Turks did the same. The Iberians didn’t. The fact that there was only one major
Muslim empire, at any given point, was also quite a curse. The Christians to
the north had various frontier kingdoms like Castile, Aragon and Leon.
Even if one was weak or unstable, the other two would have the stability to attack
the south but when the Umayyads, the Almoravids or the Almohad became unstable, there was no other
Muslim Emirate to keep the Christians in check. The fall of the Umayyad Caliphate had something
of a snowball effect. As instability became more commonplace, people started leaving which
just made things more unstable. As someone who was educated in Pakistan and moved to
the West, I feel very guilty right now. At the end of the day, there were too many major
and minor factors that contributed to the collapse of Muslim Iberia. If you can think you could
have done better, like I mentioned before, you can try your hand at it with Crusader Kings
III’s upcoming flavor pack, Fate of Iberia. Link’s in the description and in the pinned comment.
May Allah guide you and watch over your Emirate. See you next time. Don’t forget to subscribe and press
the bell icon. On the screen right now, you can see the names and tiers of the Patrons.
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