when the christian kings conquered toledo in 1085, they introduced what to western christianity?

Introduction

Islamic Spain (711-1492)

The Court of the Lions, Alhambra, Spain ©

Islamic Spain was a multi-cultural mix of the people of iii bang-up monotheistic religions: Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

Although Christians and Jews lived under restrictions, for much of the time the three groups managed to get along together, and to some extent, to do good from the presence of each other.

Information technology brought a degree of civilisation to Europe that matched the heights of the Roman Empire and the Italian Renaissance.

Outline

In 711 Muslim forces invaded and in seven years conquered the Iberian peninsula.

Information technology became one of the great Muslim civilisations; reaching its elevation with the Umayyad caliphate of Cordovain the tenth century.

Muslim dominion declined after that and concluded in 1492 when Granada was conquered.

The heartland of Muslim rule was Southern Spain or Andulusia.

Periods

Muslim Kingdom of spain was not a unmarried menstruum, but a succession of dissimilar rules.

• The Dependent Emirate (711-756)
• The Independent Emirate (756-929)
• The Caliphate (929-1031)
• The Almoravid Era (1031-1130)
• Turn down (1130-1492)

Audio journey

The Alhambra Palace, the finest surviving palace of Muslim Spain, is the commencement of a historical journeying in this audio feature, In the Footsteps of Muhammad: Granada.

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Conquest

The conquest

The traditional story is that in the year 711, an oppressed Christian master, Julian, went to Musa ibn Nusair, the governor of N Africa, with a plea for help against the tyrannical Visigoth ruler of Espana, Roderick.

Musa responded by sending the young full general Tariq bin Ziyad with an regular army of 7000 troops. The name Gibraltar is derived from Jabal At-Tariq which is Standard arabic for 'Rock of Tariq' named later the place where the Muslim ground forces landed.

The story of the appeal for help is non universally accustomed. At that place is no doubt that Tariq invaded Spain, but the reason for it may have more than to do with the Muslim bulldoze to enlarge their territory.

The Muslim ground forces defeated the Visigoth army easily, and Roderick was killed in battle.

After the first victory, the Muslims conquered most of Spain and Portugal with little difficulty, and in fact with little opposition. By 720 Kingdom of spain was largely under Muslim (or Moorish, every bit it was called) control.

Reasons

One reason for the rapid Muslim success was the generous surrender terms that they offered the people, which assorted with the harsh atmospheric condition imposed by the previous Visigoth rulers.

The ruling Islamic forces were made up of unlike nationalities, and many of the forces were converts with uncertain motivation, so the establishment of a coherent Muslim state was not like shooting fish in a barrel.

Andalusia

The heartland of Muslim dominion was Southern Spain or Andulusia. The proper noun Andalusia comes from the term Al-Andalus used by the Arabs, derived from the Vandals who had been settled in the region.

A Gilded Age

Stability

Stability in Muslim Spain came with the establishment of the Andalusian Umayyad dynasty, which lasted from 756 to 1031.

The credit goes to Amir Abd al-Rahman, who founded the Emirate of Cordoba, and was able to get the various different Muslim groups who had conquered Spain to pull together in ruling it.

The Golden Age

The Muslim period in Kingdom of spain is often described as a 'golden age' of learning where libraries, colleges, public baths were established and literature, poetry and architecture flourished. Both Muslims and not-Muslims fabricated major contributions to this flowering of culture.

A Golden Age of religious tolerance?

Islamic Espana is sometimes described equally a 'golden age' of religious and ethnic tolerance and interfaith harmony betwixt Muslims, Christians and Jews.

Some historians believe this thought of a golden age is false and might lead modernistic readers to believe, wrongly, that Muslim Spain was tolerant past the standards of 21st century Britain.

The true position is more complicated. The distinguished historian Bernard Lewis wrote that the status of non-Muslims in Islamic Espana was a sort of second-grade citizenship but he went on to say:

Second-grade citizenship, though 2nd class, is a kind of citizenship. It involves some rights, though not all, and is surely better than no rights at all...

...A recognized status, albeit one of inferiority to the ascendant grouping, which is established past law, recognized by tradition, and confirmed by popular assent, is not to exist despised.

Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam, 1984

Life for non-Muslims in Islamic Spain

Jews and Christians did retain some liberty under Muslim rule, providing they obeyed certain rules. Although these rules would now be considered completely unacceptable, they were non much of a brunt by the standards of the time, and in many ways the non-Muslims of Islamic Kingdom of spain (at least earlier 1050) were treated improve than conquered peoples might have expected during that menses of history.

• they were non forced to alive in ghettoes or other special locations
• they were not slaves
• they were not prevented from following their faith
• they were not forced to convert or die under Muslim dominion
• they were not banned from whatever particular means of earning a living; they often took on jobs shunned by Muslims;
  • these included unpleasant work such equally tanning and butchery
  • just also pleasant jobs such as banking and dealing in aureate and silver
• they could work in the civil service of the Islamic rulers
• Jews and Christians were able to contribute to gild and civilisation

The culling view to the Golden Age of Tolerance is that Jews and Christians were severely restricted in Muslim Spain, by being forced to alive in a land of 'dhimmitude'. (A dhimmi is a not-Muslim living in an Islamic land who is non a slave, but does not have the same rights as a Muslim living in the same country.)

In Islamic Spain, Jews and Christians were tolerated if they:

• acknowledged Islamic superiority
• accepted Islamic power
• paid a tax called Jizya to the Muslim rulers and sometimes paid higher rates of other taxes
• avoided irreverence
• did not effort to catechumen Muslims
• complied with the rules laid down by the authorities. These included:
  • restrictions on clothing and the need to wear a special badge
  • restrictions on building synagogues and churches
  • not allowed to deport weapons
  • could not receive an inheritance from a Muslim
  • could non bestow annihilation to a Muslim
  • could not own a Muslim slave
  • a dhimmi man could non marry a Muslim woman (just the reverse was acceptable)
  • a dhimmi could not give evidence in an Islamic court
  • dhimmis would go lower bounty than Muslims for the same injury

At times there were restrictions on practicing one's faith too obviously. Bong-ringing or chanting as well loudly were frowned on and public processions were restricted.

Many Christians in Espana assimilated parts of the Muslim civilization. Some learned Arabic, some adopted the same wearing apparel as their rulers (some Christian women even started wearing the veil); some took Arabic names. Christians who did this were known as Mozarabs.

The Muslim rulers didn't give their non-Muslim subjects equal status; as Bat Ye'or has stated, the not-Muslims came definitely at the lesser of gild.

Society was sharply divided forth ethnic and religious lines, with the Arab tribes at the top of the hierarchy, followed by the Berbers who were never recognized as equals, despite their Islamization; lower in the scale came the mullawadun converts and, at the very bottom, the dhimmi Christians and Jews.

Bat Ye'or, Islam and Dhimmitude, 2002

The Muslims did not explicitly hate or persecute the non-Muslims. As Bernard Lewis puts information technology:

in contrast to Christian anti-Semitism, the Muslim attitude toward non-Muslims is one non of detest or fright or envy but simply of contempt

Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam, 1984

An example of this contempt is found in this 12th century ruling:

A Muslim must not massage a Jew or a Christian nor throw away his refuse nor clean his latrines. The Jew and the Christian are meliorate fitted for such trades, since they are the trades of those who are vile.

12th Century ruling

Why were non-Muslims tolerated in Islamic Espana?

In that location were several reasons why the Muslim rulers tolerated rival faiths:

• Judaism and Christianity were monotheistic faiths, so arguably their members were worshipping the same God
  • despite having some wayward behavior and practices, such equally the failure to have the significance of Muhammad and the Qur'an
• The Christians outnumbered the Muslims
  • so mass conversion or mass execution was non practical
  • outlawing or decision-making the beliefs of so many people would take been massively expensive
• Bringing non-Muslims into government provided the rulers with administrators
  • who were loyal (considering not attached to whatsoever of the diverse Muslim groups)
  • who could exist easily disciplined or removed if the need arose. (One Emir went and so far as to take a Christian every bit the head of his babysitter.)
• Passages in the Qur'an said that Christians and Jews should exist tolerated if they obeyed certain rules

Oppression in later Islamic Espana

Non all the Muslim rulers of Spain were tolerant. Almanzor looted churches and imposed strict restrictions.

The position of non-Muslims in Spain deteriorated substantially from the heart of the 11th century as the rulers became more strict and Islam came under greater pressure level from outside.

Christians were non immune taller houses than Muslims, could not utilize Muslim servants, and had to requite way to Muslims on the street.

Christians could non display any sign of their faith outside, not even carrying a Bible. There were persecutions and executions.

One notorious event was a pogrom in Granada in 1066, and this was followed by farther violence and discrimination equally the Islamic empire itself came under pressure.

As the Islamic empire declined, and more territory was taken back past Christian rulers, Muslims in Christian areas found themselves facing similar restrictions to those they had formerly imposed on others.

But, on the whole, the lot of minority faith groups was to become worse later on Islam was replaced in Espana past Christianity.

The Court of the Lions, Alhambra, Espana ©

There were also cultural alliances, peculiarly in the architecture - the 12 lions in the courtroom of Alhambra are heralds of Christian influences.

The mosque at Cordoba, at present converted to a cathedral is nonetheless, somewhat ironically, known equally La Mezquita or literally, the mosque.

The mosque was begun at the cease of the 8th century past the Ummayyad prince Abd al Rahman ibn Muawiyah.

Under the reign of Abd al Rahman Iii (r. 912-961) Spanish Islam reached its greatest ability equally, every May, campaigns were launched towards the Christian frontier, this was too the cultural top of Islamic civilization in Spain.

Cordoba

Cordoba

Mezquita mosque in Cordoba ©

In the 10th century, Cordoba, the capital of Umayyad Spain, was unrivalled in both Due east and the West for its wealth and civilization. Ane author wrote about Cordoba:

there were half a one thousand thousand inhabitants, living in 113,000 houses. There were 700 mosques and 300 public baths spread throughout the metropolis and its twenty-one suburbs. The streets were paved and lit...In that location were bookshops and more than 70 libraries.

Muslim scholars served as a major link in bringing Greek philosophy, of which the Muslims had previously been the master custodians, to Western Europe.

There were interchanges and alliances betwixt Muslim and Christian rulers such as the legendary Spanish warrior El-Cid, who fought both against and alongside Muslims.

Muslim, Jewish and Christian interaction

How did Muslims, Jews and Christians interact in exercise? Was this period of credible tolerance underpinned past a respect for each other's sacred texts? What led to the eventual plummet of Cordoba and Islamic Kingdom of spain? And are we guilty of over-romanticising this menses as a golden historic period of co-existence?

3 contributors talk over these questions with Melvyn Bragg. They are: Tim Wintertime, a convert to Islam and lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University; Martin Palmer, an Anglican lay preacher and theologian and author of The Sacred History of United kingdom; and Mehri Niknam, Executive Director of the Maimonides Foundation, a joint Jewish-Muslim Interfaith Foundation in London.

Turn down and autumn

Decline and fall

Toledo fell to Christianity in 1085 ©

The collapse of Islamic rule in Spain was due not but to increasing assailment on the part of Christian states, just to divisions amidst the Muslim rulers. The rot came from both the middle and the extremities.

Early in the eleventh century, the unmarried Islamic Caliphate had shattered into a score of small kingdoms, ripe for picking-off. The offset big Islamic centre to fall to Christianity was Toledo in 1085.

The Muslims replied with forces from Africa which nether the general Yusuf bin Tashfin defeated the Christians resoundingly in 1086, and by 1102 had recaptured almost of Andalusia. The general was able to reunite much of Muslim Spain.

Revival

It didn't concluding. Yusuf died in 1106, and, equally i historian puts it, the "rulers of Muslim states began cutting each other'southward throats again".

Internal rebellions in 1144 and 1145 further shattered Islamic unity, and despite intermittent military successes, Islam's domination of Spain was concluded for good.

The Muslims finally lost all ability in Spain in 1492. Past 1502 the Christian rulers issued an society requiring all Muslims to convert to Christianity, and when this didn't work, they imposed barbarous restrictions on the remaining Spanish Muslims.

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Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/spain_1.shtml

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