Finding El Cid

What a joy!

After a year of almost exclusive focus on Napoleonics I am now returning to the promiscuous reading selection of old. One of the books I had been saving up for this moment was Richard Fletcher's The Quest For El Cid. My interest in The Leader was aroused by my visit to Spain two years ago.

The beauty of the book is that it not only describes the life of The Cid, about whom there is only a limited amount of hard evidence, but also the Spain that he lived in, and also the Spain that turned him in to a crusader saint later on.

The age of El Cid was a fluid one, with disintegration of the old Muslim Caliphate into successor states that were unable to maintain themselves against Castilian expansion. So many of them became dependents, riven apart by internal struggle to be exploited by rising Christian states in the north. However, those fought amongst themselves as well.

Christians, Jews and Muslims lived among each other, just like Spanish born were mixed with Arab and Berber immigrants and descendants. Not that it was a multicultural paradise, but at least a period of relative tolerance (see my discussion of that topic earlier on this blog).

Spain in 1086, just before the coming of the Almoravids

But that was about to change during The Cid's lifetime. On the one hand hard line Christians were starting to build a vision of reconquest, while from the North and South of the Sahara the strict Almoravid sect made rapid progress toward the Mediterranean.

The Cid was always more his own man than a courtly insider after he lost his royal patron early in life. He wasn't particularly liked and easily made enemies, but his skill at leading troops made him very useful to the leaders of his age. He served the king of Castile but also the Muslim leader of Zaragoza. And late in life he primarily served his own interest, capturing Valencia to rule himself.

In the last chapter Fletcher shows how the legend was built on this, partly from a need to attract pilgrims in monasteries and later from a need to build a reconquista ideology, and finally in the modern ago, the need to create a unifying myth for Spain.

Highly recommended, therefor

And yes, this is a perfect setting for a megagame.

Warfare in Al-Andalus

It took me a while to finish this last part of the Al-Andalus project because I needed to sit down and have a look at the books again.

My reading list for Andalusia

These three books are  bound together by the author and illustrator and this results well researched books, which draw their strength from David Nicolle´s good knowledge of Arabic sources and the in beautiful paintings of Angus McBride. But there´s also a broad variety of photographs and maps that add to the text without overlap between the books.

The weakest of the three books is El Cid and the Reconquista, 1050-1492. Spanning four and a half centuries, it suffers from bad organisation. By splitting up the discussion of the armies over different periods, any sense of continuity of change is lost. There is quite a lot of emphasis on equipment at the expense of other subjects, which feel rather general.

This is the only book of the three giving much detail on the armies of the Christian kingdoms. They relied on royal retainers, military religious orders and later urban militias to expand to the south. Their equipment and tactics were heavily influenced by their Arabic opponents.

One of the important lessons is that it is hard to talk of Christian or Muslim armies, because both sides employed warriors of both faiths and many different ethnicities: Spanish born, but also Arab and Berber Muslims, and Spanish as well as French Christians, not forgetting renegades. El Cid’s story is the best known of these soldiers fighting on both sides.

A model showing the Gibralfaro and Alcazaba of
Malaga and the double walls connecting them

Much better is the Moors, where the development is much better explained. Organisation, equipment, architecture and naval warfare are all better structured. It details the change from a Ummayad caliphate based on Spain to Almoravid and later Almohad empires that were both rooted in North Africa. These were seen, by the Muslims as well as the Christian, as foreign invaders. Their fundamentalist teachings meant that they remained separated from the Spanish elites.

Interesting is that these invasion always followed on fragmentation of the previous Muslim empire. Encroachment by Christian kingdoms then forced the Spanish Muslims to call for help from the south. They would have rather remained masters of their own fate.

The walls of Ronda served the town well, but the town
surrendered after its water supply was compromised

Granada 1492. The Twilight of Moorish Spain, on the last campaign is well structured, but has the advantage of a limited period of time with relatively few changes in equipment and organisation. It rolls like a narrative of the campaigns, with good analysis of the strategic considerations on both sides.

The war was pretty one-sided due to the infighting among the Granadese pretenders, although the financial burden of the war would have set limits on the Spanish side had it lasted longer. On the other hand, the quick progress was probably a factor in the ability to gain new loans.

The walls of the Alcazaba of Malaga
One of the few fortresses to stand up to Spanish cannon

But it was not only the internal strife on the Granadese side that won the Spanish the war. This war was about raid and sieges. And while the Granadese gave as good as they received on the first count, the Spanish enjoyed a marked advantage in the latter department. Although there was some artillery in the forts, the Spanish had more and better. Most sieges against smaller towns were therefore resolved quickly. Only Malaga and Granada could put up prolonged resistance. 

Having seen the terrain around Malaga and Ronda, I got the impression that the war in Al-Andalus was a struggle over valleys, with fortification providing control over the areas. This suited the Spanish well as fortifications could be taken at ease most of the time.

The church door of Alozaina commemorating the capture
of the town by Spanish troops on June 21st 1484

Looking at the long term, Granada’s long survival had only been obtained by bending its knees deeply to the Christian kingdoms, war among the Christians and support from North Africa. When these points were resolved in the late 15^th century with the unification of Castile and Aragon, and the loss of connections to Muslim rulers across the Straits of Gibraltar, the days of a Muslim state on the Iberian peninsula were marked.

One minaret remains of the mosque of Ronda

Check out my earlier post on the struggle between Christians and Muslims from the perspective of the other side of the Mediterranean, that is from Rhodes.

Struggle over the Legacy of Al-Andalus

The eight centuries of reluctant cohabitation by Christians, Jews and Muslims on the Iberian peninsula have acquired new relevance in an age of mass migration of Muslims into 'Christian' Western Europe. For some the level of harmony which was acquired can be taken as an indicator of our future ability to live together.

Luc Corly's De Spaanse conquista en reconquista 711-1492 tries to tackle this complex and tricky subject, in itself a brave thing. In my opinion, Corluy writes a pretty robust political and military history of the period, but falls short in providing lessons for the present and future.

One of the advantages of going to Antwerp in January was visiting a Belgian bookstore, which is different from going to a Dutch one, not least in the availability of books by Belgians (cultural imperialism means you find lots of Dutch books in Belgium but fewer Belgian books in the Netherlands). This book was advertised as the first account of the Muslim presence in Spain in the Dutch language and I bought this book in the knowledge that I would be visiting Andalusia in May.

Corluy describes the general political and military history of the peninsula, despite his insistence in the introduction that he wants to offer a broader picture. I’d say that over three quarters of his book still focus on this narrow topic. There is some explanation of the social order, and there are interesting side stories on the Celtic church and monastic orders. But there is no sense of the economic history, only a hint on the demographic trends and very little on how Christians, Jews and Muslims actually lived together or even apart. 

Personally, I love military history and I easily waded through war upon war upon invasion upon revolt. It’s given me one brilliant setting for a megagame (the fall of Toledo and the Almoravid invasion around 1085. Yes, this is also the period of El Cid) and provided a nice background to my visits to Ronda and Malaga. But the lack of social and economic context provides a problem for the conclusions he draws in the final two chapters.

Okay, I bought one book in Spain, a historical atlas. This is the situation in 1086

Corluy shows convincingly that the cohabitation of the three religions in Spain was no multicultural paradise. Whether the Christians or Muslims were in charge, the minorities were always treated a second or third rate people (see appendix). The quick expulsion of Muslims and Jews after 1492 shows that how fragile even that tolerance was. 

But at least during the 800 years before that, forced conversion or expulsion were the exception, not the rule. And if there wasn’t a harmonious convivencia, at least Christian and Muslim leaders co-operated against their co-religionists when it suited them politically. Also, when Christian and Muslim leaders felt it was useful (and they weren’t restricted by more fanatical co-religionists) they allowed greater freedoms to their minorities.

The Jews were obviously better off under Muslim rule. Biblically inspired anti-Semitism reappeared every once in a while in the Christian territories and especially in the 14^th and 15^th centuries. But Jews were in a sense indispensible as intermediaries between rulers and other minorities.

Regrettably, there is no comparison to the rest of ‘Christendom’ or ‘Islam’. Was life for religious minorities any better there than in Spain? Did the French treat the Albigensian heretics better than the Muslims were treated in Christian Spain? Was the dhimmi system in Spain tougher or more tolerable than in the Balkans or North Africa?

Surprisingly, for a supposedly scholarly work there is no source material included and no reference to literature in Arabic. This weakness is most evident in the last chapter, which is meant to wrap up the discussion about the possibility for Christians, Jews and Muslims to live together harmoniously.

Although I don´t dispute the quotes showing Muslim arrogance and sense of superiority (Christian mostly had the same attitude towards the Muslims), it is more than worrying that his main source is Bernard Lewis, without any opposing voice. Likewise, can the discussion between Spanish scholars on the islamic influence on Spanish culture be seen without any reference to the ultra/catholic tendencies of the Franco regime?

I fail to see the lust for plunder of the Muslims in Spain as excessive, as Corluy claims. There were times of increased importance of religion as a legitimation of warfare, under Al-Mansur and the Almoravids and Almohades. In the first case religious fervour was a way to compensate for the lack of legitimacy of Al-Mansur’s regime, and in the latter two cases it was inherent in the movements. But likewise the Castilians had their linea dura shortly after the capture of Toledo. The religious absolutism on both sides was more a sign of the premodern world view than with inherent aspects of those religions.

Lessons for the future?

Finally, I think that it is difficult to draw too many lessons from the past for the present. The Islam of today is not the same as that of five centuries ago, just like Christianity has changed. Also, the Muslims of today have not come as a small, conquering elite, but as a mass of powerless and uneducated immigrants.

Western society has much greater influence on their values now than it had in the age of reconquista: education, work, mass media and systems of political representation are very powerful means of socialisation. Even though small miniorities of Muslims might reject western society, many more accept it in broad lines. Even many orthodox slowly come to accept western concepts of individual liberty.

The main argument of Islamophobes (as opposed to people critical of current manifestations of Islam, for which there is ground enough) is that Islam is in some way unchanged and unchangeably aggressive and intolerant of other religions. The history of Islam shows that there is such a diversity of experiences there that
belies that argument. Just as the Crusades, inquisition, pogroms, savage wars of religion are matched by charity, lay devotion, truce of god etc. And that is even before Christianity is transformed (I'd almost say domesticated) by humanism and enlightenment and subjected to higher standards of humanity as it is today..

On the one hand mass immigration of Muslims into Western Europe is a thrilling opportunity to set an example of how different religions can live peacefully together, without one being subjected to the other. On the other hand, it could still go wrong. But the first step to success is to admit that Islam is able to change (like any other monotheist religion).

I hope this incites some of you to comment!


Appendix:On the social make up of conquista Spain

It is helpful to have an idea of the main groups in the population of Spain at this time, because there's more to it than just three religious groups. The small ruling class in Muslim Spain descended from the Syrian and Arab invaders of the early 8^th century. The North African Berbers had also played an important role in the conquest of Spain but had been forcibly kept from political power by the Arabs. They formed a group separate from the other Muslims and Christians. 

There was a considerable Jewish population in both Christian and Muslim territories. They could occassionally rise to important positions in Muslim administrations, but tended to remain marginalised in Christian states. Their lives seem to have been better generally in Muslim territories under the dhimmi system than in Christian areas.

The mass of Christian population worked the land in a servile state (which originated in the Roman/Visigoth age) with a small urban proletariat. In Muslim territories they retained the right to worship in their own way, but they were required to pay higher taxes under the dhimmi system and their rights were easily infringed upon when it seemed opportune. In the Christian territories at least they had more freedom to worship (within the restrictions of the church!) and a lower tax burden. There must have been a Christian middle class of some sort, even tough small.

Below them was the class slaves. In Muslim territories these were Christians and heathen, often captured from the Christian territories in the North or brought from Africa. In the Christian territories the slaves were captured Muslims.