Abd al-Rahman I and the Emirate of Cordoba

Part oneThe prince who escaped

In 750 the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus and hunted down the family. One young man got away. Abd al-Rahman ibn Muawiya, born around 731, was a grandson of the caliph Hisham. He was about twenty. He fled with a few relatives and a freed servant, and at the Euphrates he watched Abbasid horsemen catch up with his younger brother.

He lived the next five years as a fugitive. He crossed Palestine and Egypt, made for the west, and found shelter among his mother's Berber relatives in North Africa. The Abbasid governors there were looking for him, so he could not stay. He turned his eyes to al-Andalus, which was far from Baghdad and badly divided. Settlers from Syria lived there, and many of them still felt loyal to the Umayyad house.

He sent messengers ahead, and in 755 he landed on the south coast, at Almunecar. Supporters came to him. In May 756 he defeated the governor outside Cordoba and entered the city. He took the modest title of emir, meaning commander, and not the title of caliph. He still answered to no one above him. Within a year the Abbasid caliphs were no longer named in the Friday prayer. A prince with nothing but his name had founded a state.

Baghdad made one serious attempt to take the province back, in 763, and it failed. The caliph al-Mansur is said to have been relieved that a sea lay between him and his rival. In 778 Charlemagne crossed the Pyrenees at the invitation of some local Muslim governors. He turned back from Zaragoza, and his rearguard was ambushed in the pass of Roncesvalles by Basques, an event later retold in the French Song of Roland.

Abd al-Rahman ruled with the help of Syrian settlers and freed servants of the family, and he built up a strong army of paid soldiers. He spent the rest of his reign, until 788, bringing the unruly regions to order, and he began to build. He started the Great Mosque of Cordoba in about 785 on a site shared with the city's Christians, and it was agreed that he would buy their half. Its builders reused columns from older Roman and Visigothic buildings and set double-tiered arches above them, a design that gave the hall height and light. He also laid out a country estate that he named al-Rusafa, after his grandfather's estate in Syria. Tradition holds that he planted a palm tree there and wrote verses to it, a homesick man talking to the only other stranger in the garden.

Part twoReform, rebellion and near collapse

His successors were uneven. Hisham I (788 to 796) was known for piety and for the Maliki school of law, which Andalusi scholars adopted and which took deep root in the west. His son al-Hakam I was harder and put down a revolt in the suburbs of Cordoba in 818, after which many of the rebels were exiled. Some of them settled in Fez and Alexandria.

Abd al-Rahman II (822 to 852) ruled in a calmer age. He reorganised the administration on the Abbasid model, built mosques, and welcomed scholars and artists. The inventor Abbas ibn Firnas, remembered for an attempt to fly with wings of silk and feathers, belonged to this age. The musician Ziryab arrived from Baghdad at his court and became famous for his songs, and later for the fashions and table manners he brought with him. In 844 eighty Viking ships sailed up the Guadalquivir and attacked Seville. The emir's army drove them off after some weeks.

Not all was calm. In the 850s a small group of Christians in Cordoba began publicly insulting the Prophet ﷺ, which was a capital offence under the law of the time. Several dozen were executed. Many church leaders also opposed the movement. Most Christians and Jews were left in peace to keep their faith, and they paid the tax that went with that arrangement.

The long reign of Muhammad I (852 to 886) was the beginning of the real crisis. Many Christians were becoming Muslim, and they were known as Muwallads. They resented the Arab ruling families, who kept the best posts. Their discontent turned into revolt in the cities of the frontier, and the northern kings were happy to encourage it. After Muhammad, the emirate came close to breaking up. His son Abdullah (888 to 912) was a withdrawn man who held little beyond the capital and its surroundings.

The most dangerous rebel was Umar ibn Hafsun, who held out from the mountain fortress of Bobastro from about 880. In 899 he announced that he had become a Christian, and many of his Muslim supporters left him. The emirate survived. When Abdullah died in 912 he left the throne to his grandson, a young man of twenty-one named Abd al-Rahman. The best years of Cordoba were about to begin.

A prince with nothing but his name had founded a state.

WatchThe lecture for this chapter

Lecture Al MuqaddimahThe Umayyad Emirate of Cordoba, Part 1 (750-788) (opens on YouTube)

The mapWhere it happened

• Damascus
• the Euphrates
• Almunecar
• Cordoba
• Seville
• Bobastro

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter