The 'Moors' in Iberia and Sicily

Moor, of course, is a Spanish name for the Islamic invaders and refers to the darker colour of the skin of the invaders from the South and East. The Arab and Berber Islamic conquest of most of the Iberian Peninsula began in 711 or 712 and continued under Umayyad rule with the capital of Cordova after the ‘Abbasids took over the caliphate in the East of the Islamic world. Around the time the Fatimids declared their realm to be a Caliphate and made its capital Cairo, the Umayyads followed suit at Cordova, which had become a major centre of learning. In the period from 1008 to 1031, the Cordovan Caliphate began to disintegrate and from around 1085, the Christian rulers in the north began the so-called “reconquista” of the Iberian Peninsula. This “reconquest” had papal support as did the roughly contemporaneous “Crusades” in the East. The reconquest was completed with the fall of Granada in 1492 as the Ottomans were expanding into Eastern Europe. Large numbers of Muslims and Jews were expelled (mainly to North Africa). Throughout the nearly 800 years of Arab Islamic rule, al-Andalus (the Arabic name for Islamic Iberia) generally traded freely with ‘Christian’ Europe as well as the other regions of the Islamic world.

The main languages spoken by all the people of Arab and Berber Spain, Muslim, Christian and Jew, to some extent were Classical Arabic and an Andalusian dialect of it. Indigenous languages were, of course, continued, especially among the less educated and less ambitious.

Probably until the 10^th Century the majority would have been Christian; that was before the influence of the lure of the status of Islam took firm hold. The Christian liturgy and advanced formal education of Christians was conducted in Latin but by the 9^th Century most Christians were probably more fluent in Arabic than Latin as suggested by the complaints of one contemporary bishop. Hebrew was also spoken by most Jews and Arabic has been found written in Hebrew characters there.

The elites were the original Arab and Berber Umayyad settlers from both North Africa and Syria/Lebanon and their families. Other Arabs and Berbers who settled from time to time (to ensure the continuation of Islamic rule among other reasons) held a similar status. Some senior Jews and Christians, especially those who took part in Islamic government, were also in this elite class.

A second class (mualladun) came from a group of families who converted to Islam relatively early as a result of mixed marriages between mainly Muslim males and Christian women.

Finally the lowly class of mozarabes (probably from the Arabic musta’rib meaning Arabicised) completed the social class picture.

As the reconquest occurred, the process of conversions and language usage naturally also reversed. The classes were now mudejars (usually early, and usually voluntary, Christian converts up to around the conquest of Toledo) and the Moriscos who were usually forced converts to Christianity and usually after 1492 when ‘Christian’ control was fully restored to the Peninsula. In the process, a new language, aljamiada, developed which mixed languages and scripts.

Among the families forced to return to North Africa there continued to be a sense of a golden age and also of loss for many generations (it continues to an extent even today). Many crops including eggplant and citrus fruits and agricultural and irrigation methods had found their way to Europe via Spain in this period.

Arabic “loan words” continued in the Spanish language and also later found their way to other languages of Europe. Many North and West Europeans learned Arabic in the Middle Ages in order to discover the secrets of the learning of the Arabs in al-Andalus and eventually translated Greek works that many centuries before had been translated into Arabic in Baghdad (when the Arabs were themselves the students of a valued civilisation). Words like canal, arsenal and admiral all derive from Arabic roots and words for cloths like muslin and damask indicate their origin in the Arab Islamic world (in Mosul and Damascus (Dimashq)).

The lute (al ‘ud) which became the staple of the courtly troubadours in Europe was originally an Arabic instrument and the ideals and poetry of courtly love and chivalry may well owe something to Arabic influence. The al-Hambra palace and the Cordova Mosque (now a cathedral) also remain monuments to the brilliant architecture and aesthetic influence on Spain of the doomed Islamic project in al-Andalus.

Similar Arab Islamic influences could be found in formerly Islamic Sicily that continued for some time even after it came under Norman rule.

My next post will be a brief examination of those events in the East of the Islamic world that are usually known as "the Crusades" in our standard Western history.