Abderhraman III

Abd al-Rahmán ibn Muhammad (in Arabic: عبد الرحمن بن محمد‎) (Córdoba (Qurṭuba), January 7, 891 – Medina Azahara, October 15, 961), better known as Abder-Rahman III, was the eighth and last independent emir (912-929) and first caliph Umayyad of Córdoba (929-961), with the nickname of al-Nāṣir li-dīn Allah (الناصر لدين الله), "he who makes the religion of God triumph" ('of Allah'). The son of a Cordovan nobleman and the captive Muzna or Muzayna (Rain or Cloud) from Navarre, Caliph Abderramán lived for seventy years and reigned fifty. He founded the palatine city of Medina Azahara, whose magnificence is still proverbial, and led the Cordovan emirate from its nadir to the caliphal splendor. He devoted much of his reign to subduing the territory of the emirate, torn by numerous rebellions, through a mixture of persuasion, perquisites, and force.

His courtier Ibn Abd Rabbihi said of him that «the union of the State he remade, from him he tore away the veils of darkness. The kingdom that was destroyed, repaired, its foundations were firm and secure (...) With his light the country dawned. Corruption and disorder ended after a time in which hypocrisy dominated, after rebellious and stubborn reigned. Under his reign, Córdoba became a beacon of civilization and culture, qualified by the Abbess Hroswitha of Gandersheim as "Ornament of the World" and "Pearl of the West".

The Anonymous Chronicle of al-Nasir summarizes his reign as follows:

He conquered Spain city by city, exterminated their defenders and humiliated them, destroyed their castles, imposed heavy tributes to those who left alive and terribly swept them down by cruel governors until all the districts entered their obedience and were subjected to all the rebels.

In 929 he challenged the religious authority of the rival Fatimid and Abbasid dynasties and proclaimed himself caliph. The Caliphate period (929-961) was the most brilliant of his reign: he succeeded in subjecting the border marches to his authority, defeating the Fatimids in the Maghreb on several occasions —although not eliminating this threat— and dominating the Christian states in the north of the peninsula, despite military setbacks, especially the serious defeat at Simancas. If during the first twenty years of his reign he maintained intense military activity, after the defeat of Simancas he did not participate in the campaigns in person again. Holy Roman Empire.

Defeated at the battle of Simancas by Ramiro II of León (939), he was unable to reduce the Christian kingdoms of northern Spain. At his death he left behind a powerful caliphate forged by force of arms, one of the most powerful states in Western Europe, which, however, collapsed in just over half a century.

Youth

Birth and Ancestry

The future emir Abderramán —in Arabic, "servant of the Merciful"—, third of his name and eighth of the Iberian dynasty, was the grandson of Abdalá I, seventh independent emir of Córdoba, descendant of the Umayyads who had once ruled the Caliphate of Damascus (661-750) and whose power had been reestablished in the Iberian Peninsula. He was born on January 7, 891. He was the son of Mohamed, Abdalá's firstborn, and Muzna or Muzayna (meaning rain or cloud), a Christian concubine probably of Basque origin who came to be considered an umm walad or "mother of infante" for having given his lord a son. One of his grandmothers, Onneca —Abdalá's companion—, was also of Basque origin, as she was the daughter of a Pamplona chieftain, Fortún Garcés. Thus, his origin was mainly Spanish-Basque and only a quarter Arab. Abder-Rahman was born on January 7, 891. He soon became the favorite grandson of his grandfather the emir.

Name

The grandson of the Cordovan emir received the name Abderramán and the kunya from Abul-Mutarrif, the same names his great-great-grandfather Abderramán II and the founder of the Umayyad emirate had in al-Andalus, Abderramán I. The name Abd al-Rahman means "the servant of the merciful God", and Mutarrif means, among other things, "the fighter or hero who bravely attacks enemies and repels them", in short "noble knight", "distinguished" and "champion". The kunya Abul-Mutarrif , imposed on a boy intentionally named Abd al-Rahman could be understood as a hope that he would be a champion in the service of God and restore power to the declining Umayyad dynasty.

Murder of his father, childhood and youth

Twenty days after the birth of Abd al-Rahman, the infant Muhammad was assassinated by his own brother, Al-Mutarrif. The emir had apparently chosen Muhammad as his heir on his merits but, suspecting who conspired against him in cahoots with the rebel Omar ibn Hafsun, had him locked up. Shortly before or shortly after his release, Abd Allah allowed Mutarrif to beat Muhammad to death, a death that he justified by his rebellion.. In 895 and after several years as a trusted person of Abd Allah, Mutarrif suffered the same fate: suspected of treason in the eyes of the emir, he was assassinated.

In any case, the early childhood of Abderramán III must have been spent in the harem of his grandfather, the emir Abdalá, living with his mother and his minor uncles, with his grandfather's wives and concubines and with a good number of servants, slaves, nursemaids, midwives and eunuchs. In charge of the harem at a certain time was his aunt, called al-Sayyida, that is, the Lady, uterine sister of the infante Mutarrif, the murderer of his father. This infanta was in charge of the upbringing and education of Abderramán; he treated him quite rigorously, and even mistreated him. In any case, Abderramán led a silent youth, devoted to studies. Upon ascending the throne, his military and administrative experience was practically nil. Despite this, his grandfather he had chosen him to succeed him because of his gifts: he was intelligent, confident, had a temperament and a taste for state tasks.

Characteristics of Abderramán and family life

Appearance and Temperament

Physically he was described as attractive, with fair skin, reddish-blonde hair, and dark blue eyes, stout and relatively short—he had short legs. He dyed his beard black, to look more Arabic.

Courteous, benevolent and generous, intelligent and perceptive, with intense moral scruples, he was also accused of being inclined to pleasures - especially to drink - and willing to use extreme cruelty towards his enemies. All the Arab chroniclers emphasized his virtues: his sagacity and diplomacy, his firmness and intrepidity, his liberality and generosity, his remarkable knowledge of Muslim law and other disciplines. He was also an excellent poet and an eloquent speaker. his works in defense of Islamic orthodoxy and condemnation of heresy, such as the persecution of the followers of Ibn Masarra and his generosity with the relatives of a madman who wanted to kill him, were thoroughly reviewed. According to Ibn Idari, Abderramán III wrote a kind of diary in the one who recorded the happy and pleasant days marking the day, month and year. But in his long life only fourteen happy days were reflected in that diary.

He adopted the protocol and palatial pomp of the Byzantines and Abbasids. Punctilious in the ornate protocol that he perceived as essential to the majesty of his position as caliph, he was, on the other hand, plain in daily dealings. devout, not at all fanatical, and was the most tolerant Cordovan Umayyad in religious matters of all those who held the caliph's office, which allowed some Christians and Jews to play prominent roles during his reign. Both religious groups prospered during his reign and were handed over to him. generally faithful.

However, the caliph also had numerous flaws. Passionate about luxury and pomp, he was publicly censured by the qadi Mundir ibn Said al-Balluti, because he failed to fulfill his religious duties in the aljama mosque three Fridays in a row when he enthusiastically directed the works of the "Great Hall of the Caliphate" in Medina Azahara, whose walls he wanted to cover with gold and silver. He also abused the drink; on one occasion, while drunk, he threatened to kill Muhammad ibn Said ibn al-Salim, who had become rich in public office, unless he made a significant donation to contribute to state expenses. The frightened Ibn al-Salim he was so upset that he got drunk to the point of vomiting next to the caliph, who charitably held his head and helped him clean himself. Days after the festival he gave his lord one hundred thousand dinars in silver coins, Al-Nasir accepted the proof of submission, and continued to provide him with high offices and benefits until his death.

He sometimes liked to amuse himself at the expense of his viziers by pitting them against each other, and was able to spontaneously complete verses in romance using the meter and rhyme of classical Arabic verse. He was bilingual.

When he had a whim he didn't mind trampling on the rights of his subjects. It is known that on one occasion he wanted to buy land for one of his favorites and he liked the house that some orphan children had inherited, who as such were under the guardianship of the qadi Múndir ibn Said. Abderramán ordered the executor to appraise it at the low, to acquire it at a lower price. The qadi opposed it, blaming Abderramán for his attitude.

The same Arab sources echo his cruelty. At times he could be bloodthirsty and ruthless. For example, he wanted to see with his own eyes the death of his rebellious son Abdalá, and he had him executed in the throne room, in the presence of all the dignitaries of the court, for the general punishment. According to Ibn Hayyan, he even had the sons of some blacks hang on the waterwheel of his palace as if they were arcaduces until they drowned, and he made the " shameless old buffoon Rasis" in her courtship, with sword and bonnet —symbols of the Army and the judiciary— to mock her people. Her brutality with the women of the harem was notorious. While drunk one day, alone with one of his favorites of extraordinary beauty in the gardens of Medina Azahara, he wanted to kiss her and bite her, but she was elusive and made a bad gesture. This angered the caliph, who sent for the eunuchs to hold her and burn her the face, so that it loses her beauty. Her executioner Abu Imran, who did not leave his master, was summoned by Abderramán III when he spent the evening drinking with a slave in the Palace of La Noria. The beautiful young woman was held by several eunuchs and asked for clemency while the caliph answered him with the worst insults. Following his lord's orders, the executioner beheaded the young woman and received as a prize the pearls that spilled from the concubine's magnificent necklace, with the value of which he bought a house. Ibn Hayyan rounds off Abder-Rahman's examples of cruelty by telling that the caliph used the lions given to him by some African nobles with those sentenced to death, although at the end of his life he dispensed with them, killing them.

Wives and children

Near Al-Mughira, ivory belonging to a son of the caliph Abderramán.

Three were his main wives: the first Fatima, free and daughter of a great-uncle of Abderramán; Maryan, a slave of Christian origin and mother of the successor to the throne Alhakén II, and Mustad, his last favorite after the death of the first two.

Fatima al-Qurasiyya was the daughter of her great-uncle the emir al-Múndir; due to her rank she bore the title al-Sayyida al-Kubra, "the Great Lady". She was the first and only free among his wives. His grandfather Abd Allah had been his tutor, so it is assumed that they had known each other since childhood, spent in common in the Cordovan fortress. The marriage took place when Abderramán was appointed emir.

Maryam, Maryan, Maryana or Muryana was a slave of Christian origin, circumspect and intriguing. In the disputes between Fatima and Maryan for the caliph's favour, the latter was victorious and Abderramán ended up abandoning the former It is claimed that Maryan gained the emir's favorite position through a ruse: she bought Fatima for one night with Abdurrahman, and then told Abder-Rahman how his wife had accepted money for allowing him to replace her. Her lord's favourite, she received large amounts of money, which she used in part for pious works—among them, the construction and maintenance of a mosque. Manumitted by having children with the emir, she gave him five in all, two wives and one three boys, including Alhakén II. She was Abder-Rahman's favorite for much of his reign and predeceased him.

Mustaq was the caliph's favorite in the last years of his life and bore him the last of his children, al-Mughira —later assassinated during the accession to the throne of Hisham II, who was considered a rival.

Another woman of the emir is known, a possible concubine, although not her name: the sister of Nayda ibn Hussein (a maula who rose to army chief through kinship and skill), by trade a laundress, a the one he saw next to a river; she is known by the kunya of Umm Qurays, "the Mother of Qurays", because she is the mother of the Quraysh — members of Muhammad's clan, because her father, Abder-Rahman, is.

The famous story of the concubine al-Zahra, who allegedly incited the caliph to found the city of Madinat al-Zahra, seems to be pure legend created much later, to explain the etymology of Abderramán III's residential city.

Abd al-Rahman had a total of eighteen or nineteen sons and sixteen daughters. Of the males, only eleven or twelve reached adulthood. The males, in order of birth, were: his successor al-Hakam—born 20 January 915 and heir since 921—, al-Múndir, Abd Allah, Ubayd Allah, Abd al-Jabbar, Sulaymán, Abd al-Málik, Marwan, al-Asbag, al-Zubayr and al-Mughira. Five of them survived him: Caliph Alhakén II, aged forty-six, and the infants Abd al-Aziz, al-Múndir, al-Asbag and al-Mughira. The latter was then about ten years old. His daughters were at least survived by Hind, who was nicknamed Ayuz al-Mulk "The Ancient of the Realm" for her extraordinary longevity, having died forty-nine years after her father did. Both Hind and the Infanta Wallada were uterine sisters of Alhakén II. Two other daughters were given the names Saniya and Salama.

In imitation of his ancestor the emir Muhammad, he did not allow male children, with the exception of the heir and the youngest, to reside in the royal fortress after childhood, to avoid conspiracies. As they grew up, they were sent to luxurious residences and were granted allowances so that they could live opulently, but they were not given positions of power, neither in the capital nor in the provinces.

Alhakén appears already at the age of four designated as heir —after the death in 915, the day of his birth, of the eldest son Hisham—, and he remained on behalf of his father in the Cordovan Alcázar every time he went on campaign in the first years of reign; then he began to accompany him on his military expeditions. At the age of twelve, he came to be in command of the troops, by paternal order. In 941, he was appointed responsible for the collection, the Caliphate Treasury and the coinage of currency. The designation of Alhakén as heir had, however, painful personal consequences for the young man. For four decades, his father forced him to live locked up in the Alcázar and kept him away from dealing with women — there were rumors about relationships with ephebes. The sources link this unusual treatment to the fact that he was the heir chosen by his father to succeed him. his to dethrone him. The palatine chronicler al-Razi makes the following reference to Alhaken's miserable existence:

...to whom [his father] did not allow to leave the Alcazar for a day, nor such an occasion to become a woman of more or less age, bringing to the top a jealous attitude (...) that al-Hakam supported with prudence that imposed him, although it was a burden that, by prolonging his father's reign, exhausted the best days of his life, depriving him of the intimate pleasures of the inner life,

Ibn Hayyan, Muqtabis Ved. Zaragoza 1981, pp. 8 and 9

The fact that Alhakén did not have children until very old - he ascended to the throne at forty-eight, still without children - later led to political problems, since his son Hisham, born in 965, ascended to the throne while still a child.

Abderramán ordered the execution of another of his sons, the uterine brother of the heir Alhakén, Abd Allah, who enjoyed a reputation as virtuous, pious and cultured, accused of rebellion against the caliph (in 950 or 951). The same fate befell the alleged conspirators, including the eminent jurist Abu ibn 'Abd al-Barr. The young prince was a man of learning, intelligent, noble in spirit, and pious. According to Ibn Hazm, He had studied the Shafi'i legal doctrine and not the Maliki one, in force in al-Andalus, and he specifies that he was sentenced to death because he disapproved of his father's misconduct and his despotic and unjust actions. It seems that his throat was slit during the sacrificial feast and, according to some hostile sources, that it was done by Abderramán himself.

The rise to power

When the old emir Abd Allah died at the age of seventy-two, the succession took on an unprecedented turn, since it did not fall to any of the sons of the deceased, but to his grandson Abderramán. Despite Out of fears that Abd-Rahman's uncles might interfere with his accession to the throne of the emirate, the succession proceeded smoothly on Thursday 15–16 October 912, after Abd Allah died. In a series of ceremonies, both the court and the people swore allegiance to the new emir; the first to do so were his own uncles, brothers of his deceased father. Although the sources present the fact as something normal, given the late emir's preference for the son of his firstborn, the matter must have been somewhat more complex. Ibn Hazm notes that the new emir was appointed by an assembly, although he omits the details, and some of his uncles, who initially submitted unreservedly according to the chronicles, conspired to overthrow him a few years later., that in the designation of Abderramán as heir the palace intrigues hatched around the bed of the dying emir played an important role.

In any case, Abderramán III succeeded his grandfather on October 16, 912 when he was just over twenty-one years old. He inherited an emirate on the verge of dissolution, and his power was not far beyond the suburbs of Córdoba. Since the middle of the ix century, political, social and conflicts between different cultural groups undermined the unity of the emirate and the authority of the emirs barely covered the capital and its region. The administration had been greatly diminished, as well as the army, reduced to little more than an armed band financed by annual forays. Immediately, on the very day of his enthronement, Abderramán proclaimed his intention to recover the prestige and authority lost by the previous Umayyad emirs.

Abderrahman's challenges

The first step to regain political power in al-Andalus was to subdue the regions that had become quasi-independent of the emir's authority and to crush the long rebellion of Omar ibn Hafsún. Multitudes of rebels, some lords of large cities and others with barely a fortress, disobeyed the authority of the emir. The new emir dedicated the first thirty years of his long reign to this task. To do this, Abderramán almost immediately launched an energetic policy of military campaigns and forgiveness to those who bowed without resistance. The threats to the emirate, however, were three:

• The autonomy or quasi-independence of border marks and other territories of the emirate, which governed by themselves the weakness of the Cordoba power. These were joined by the dangerous and long rebellion of Ibn Hafsún.

• The presence in the Maghreb of the Fatimid dynasty, rival, both politically and religiously.

• The threat of Christian States from the north of the peninsula.

In the north, the kingdom of Asturias-Leonese continued the Reconquest, already dominating the border of the Duero with the help of the Mozarabs who had fled from the cruel Andalusian rule. In the south, in Ifriqiya, the Fatimids had proclaimed an independent caliphate, likely to attract the loyalty of the many Muslims justifiably upset with the Umayyad yoke. In the interior, finally, the discontented muladíes continued to be an incessant danger for the Cordovan emir, even though some of the sources of rebellion had been weakening. The most prominent of the rebels was Omar ibn Hafsún, who from his impregnable fortress of Bobastro, in the Ronda mountains, controlled a large part of the Takurunna, Istiyya, Rayyah, Ilbīrah and Jayyān koras.

From the first moment, Abderramán showed firm determination and constant tenacity to put an end to the rebels in al-Andalus, consolidate central power and restore internal order in the emirate. To do this, one of the measures he took was to introduce into the Cordovan court the saqalibah or Slavs, slaves of European origin, with the intention of introducing a third ethnic group and thus neutralize the continuous disputes that pitted their subjects of Arab origin against those of Berber origin.

At first, he kept in their positions the main figures of the administration inherited from his grandfather, among them the zalmedina Musa ibn Muhammad ibn Said ibn Musa ibn Hudayr —chamberlain from 921—, the personal secretary and the chief military chief Áhmad ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Abda, a veteran soldier. Almost all of them served Abd al-Rahman in various capacities throughout his reign.

Term as emir

During the first twenty years of his reign, Abderramán III undertook victorious battles against Omar ibn Hafsún and his sons and allies in Andalusia, and against the lords of Extremadura, Levante and Toledo. Later, in the fourth decade of the century (937), he submitted to the lord of Zaragoza. His first objective was to break the anti-Umayyad coalition formed by the Arab groups of Seville and Elvira and by the muladíes, Berbers and Christians. In this work, he had the effective support of his hayib, the eunuch Badr, who had grown up in the Cordovan fortress. In each circumstance, Abderramán, in agreement with his collaborators, tested the situation, negotiating, agreeing and offering privileges, perks and political positions and military; but he also resorted to cunning, deception, threats and the most extreme cruelty to recover the past power of the dynasty and tirelessly continue his pacifying mission. Although there were cases in which he imprisoned and even executed the rebels, the most common thing was that they submitted due to the pressure of successive campaigns and that they received in exchange charges and favors from Abderramán, who often included them along with his men in the Cordovan army. In some cases, generally from border territories —Zaragoza, Huesca, Daroca, Albarracín—, the rebels continued to exercise power, but now as subjects of the caliph. Abderramán used to subdue the rebels a mixture of military pressure, especially effective in sieges, and concessions to those who they submitted without resisting. After twenty-five years of campaigns, he managed to subdue all the rebels who had threatened Cordoba's power.

As part of the acts to assert his power, in 921-922 he had an uncle and a first cousin executed, conspired against him.

Domestic policy

Military and financial situation

The situation of the government of the emirate had already begun to improve during the last decade of the reign of Abder-Rahman's grandfather. The increase in income from the state treasury allowed the new emir to increase his armed forces and, with it, attack with greater signs of success the submission of the abundant rebels who challenged the Cordovan authority and the confrontations with the neighboring countries. The recovered territories accelerated the process through their contributions to the state coffers, which allowed them to reinforce the armies and further extend the authority of Abderramán. The extension of state authority also favored trade, by restoring contact between regions once again effectively included in the emirate. The strengthening of state authority fostered the prosperity of al-Andalus.

Campaigns against rebel territories

Berbers of Campo de Calatrava and conquest of Écija

The Iberian peninsula to the advent of Abderramán III and the main foci of rebellion to the authority of the emir. It succeeded in bringing back the Muslim territories to Cordoba obedience, ending the internal rebellions and limiting the conquests of the Christian states of the north, but not recovering the lost territories at their hands.

The first campaign of his reign took place a month after he ascended the throne. The emir's forces defeated the Berbers of Campo de Calatrava and took Caracuel after hard combat. The next offensive by the Cordovan forces was directed against Écija, fifty kilometers west of the capital. On January 1, 913, the hayib Badr entered it, without there was no bloodshed in the conquest. He demolished the city walls and all the fortifications, except the fortress, which he reserved for the residence of the governors and garrison of the Emiral army. He granted the he loved its inhabitants and integrated his soldiers into the Cordovan army. Until then the city had been in the hands of Omar ibn Hafsún.

Eastern Andalusia

In the spring of that same year and after sixty-five days of meticulous preparations, Abderramán III personally led the first aceifa through eastern Andalusia in April. The objective was Jaén and Granada, regions partially controlled by Ibn Hafsún and other rebels. This campaign is called "of Monteleón" in all the chronicles, because its first objective was a castle of that name that must have been near Mancha Real, in the province of Jaén. The emir took this castle on April 27, thanks to the surrender of his lord, who received a royal pardon. In this important expedition, the Umayyad troops toured the coras of Jaén and Elvira, where they subdued the leaders rebels from these regions; At the same time, he had to send a cavalry detachment from Martos to free Málaga from the siege of Omar ibn Hafsún, the dynasty's greatest enemy. In his advance, Abderramán pardoned those rebel lords who submitted to him. without offering resistance. He accepted the defeated in his forces but, to ensure their loyalty, he arranged garrisons in his citadel and sent their families to Córdoba. de Elvira, marched to the northeast of Guadix. In Fiñana, after setting fire to its suburb, Abderramán III managed to get its defenders to capitulate advantageously on the condition of handing over the allies of the Bobastro rebel. In the same heart of Granada, also captured Baza and Tíjola. Shortly after, on May 25, the Umayyad army headed for Juviles, in the Alpujarras of Granada, and after razing its fields and destroying all its resources, besieged the castle, who defended himself effectively, because it was out of the firing range of the besiegers' catapults. Then the Emir of Córdoba had a platform built where he installed a large almajaneque that bombarded the fortress incessantly with its stone projectiles, in addition to cutting off the water. After fifteen days, the muladíes managed to save their lives in exchange for handing over fifty-five Christian leaders and allies of Omar Ibn Hafsún, who were beheaded. He then headed for the coast, where he conquered Salobreña and He returned from there to the capital, but not before taking two other castles considered impregnable. In this campaign, which lasted ninety-two days, he conquered or destroyed seventy castles and nearly three hundred fortified towers. The objective of the incursion, to wipe out the rebel areas to the east of the territory controlled by Ibn Hafsun, was achieved.

Seville's submission

Also in this first year of his reign, Abderramán III took advantage of the existing internal rivalries between the Banu Hayyay, Arab lords of Seville and Carmona, to subdue them. The death of the lord of Seville in August made that his son and successor confronted his uncle, who dominated Carmona; family quarrels favored Abderramán's desire to regain control of the city. The emir first sent the qadi and vizier Áhmad ibn Muhammad ibn Hudayr, who had been appointed military governor of Écija by Badr, at the head of a detachment of special troops (hasam), to try to attract the Sevillians without confronting them. He failed in his attempts, but obtained the unexpected and valuable collaboration, of course interested, of Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Hayyach, lord of Carmona and cousin of Áhmad ibn Maslama, lord of Seville. his allies from Carmona in Cabra, but he was defeated by the besiegers and withdrew to Bobastro. Faced with this setback, Áhmad ibn Maslama resumed his attempts to ingratiate himself with the people of Cordoba. He failed in the negotiations he entered into with the authorities He is an Umayyad, but he pretended otherwise, showing his most notable followers a supposed document of the emir Abderramán III. In December 913, he again negotiated with the hayib Badr through Omar ibn Abd al -Aziz ibn al-Qutiyya, descendant of Sara la Goda, granddaughter of King Witiza, and father of the famous historian Ibn al-Qutiyya. The ambassador resorted to a stratagem that delighted the emir and half convinced his chamberlain Badr: the to leave Ibn Maslama and his entourage outside the city when he left it to receive the Umayyad representatives. The fact is that, finally, the lord of Seville had to capitulate in December and Badr, in the name of the emir, the aman granted some thousand knights of the yund or army of Seville who had declared themselves hostile to the dynasty, giving each one the rank and soldiery that corresponded to them in the the emir's army. Said ibn al-Mundir al-Qurays, a member of the royal family, was appointed governor of the city of Seville. al, who convinced the hayib to tear down the city walls —built by Abderramán II to protect it from Viking attacks. The lord of Carmona, who had collaborated in the subjugation of Seville soon broke the alliance with Abderramán, unhappy at not having obtained the city, but was defeated in February 914. In April he went to Córdoba to submit again and Abderramán granted him the rank of vizier; the emir took him with him on the spring expedition of that year against Iban Hafsún, but later his disloyalty and collusion with the governor of Carmona, who had revolted, was proven. Captured and imprisoned in Córdoba, he died the following year; the city, however, remained in rebellion until the end of September 917, when the chamberlain Badr finally stormed it after a harsh siege.

In 917, most of the Andalusian territory had once again been subject to Cordovan authority, with the exception of certain territories of the border marches and the areas under the control of Ibn Hafsún. Even so, in 921 another campaign in which Turrush, Torre-Cardela, Esparraguera, Priego and Alhama were taken. Of Pechina, governed by his sailors, Abderramán achieved submission thanks to his diplomatic skill, that same year. Dominion of al-Andalus during his period as emir were those that Abderramán carried out in 924 and 925. During the first year, he regained control of the Santaver cora; during the spring of the second, some pockets of rebellion that still remained in the coras of Elvira and Jaén were crushed.

The resistance of Omar ibn Hafsun and his sons

The second Umayyad aceifa against Ibn Hafsún left Córdoba on May 8, 914. The objective of this second campaign was the rebel territories in the coras of Rayya, Algeciras and Carmona. A few days later, the Cordovan army camped before the walls of Belda. There the cavalry dedicated itself to felling its trees and devastating the nearby territory, while the rest of the forces went to Turrus, a castle located in the current municipality of Algarinejo, Granada, which was besieged for five days while its surroundings were devastated. The town's citadel resisted the attacks of the emir's forces, who had defeated the defenders in the suburbs. The emir's objective was devastate the rebel territories and deprive their leader of their bases, protect Málaga and isolate it. The first two sieges, those of Belda and Turrus, however, did not end with the conquest of the squares.

Approximate extension of Omar ibn Hafsún's rebellion around 912, before Abderraman's campaigns against him and his children, which ended with the crushing of the long revolt against the Cordoba authority in 928.

Afterwards, the Emiral army moved to Bobastro, although the chronicler does not mention it by name, and from there the Emir sent the cavalry against the castle of Sant Batir (Santopitar), whose defenders abandoned it into the hands of the Umayyad soldiers, who obtained a large booty. They then attacked the castle of Olías and from this fortress Abderramán launched his cavalry against the castle of Reina or Rayyina. After hard-fought fighting, the rebel castle fell, threatening the city of Málaga. Next, the emir marched to the capital of the province —almost totally dominated since the aceifa of the previous year—, where he camped for a few days to resolve city affairs before resuming the campaign. Abderramán began his return along the coast passing through Montemayor, near Benahavís, Suhayl or Fuengirola and another castle called Turrus or Turrus Jusayn and that Lévi-Provençal identified with Ojén, to finally reach Algecir as on Thursday, June 1, 914. Umar ibn Hafsun's ships patrolled along the coast, which were usually supplied in North Africa, but they were seized and set on fire in the presence of the emir. In the presence of the imposing Cordovan army, the rebel castles near Algeciras submitted to Adbderramán. He also imposed a naval blockade of the coast to prevent Ibn Hafsún from receiving aid from Africa. With this, he ended the campaign, which had lasted eighty and two days. Despite the fact that the young emir had managed to triumphantly cross the core of the territories of his main enemy, thwart his threat to Malaga and blockade it by sea, the raid, like others in the reign of Abderramán, was more spectacular than effective. as for the control of the lands, which were again abandoned after the passage of their armies.

In the summer of 914 and 915, the emir was unable to send large forces against Ibn Hafsún due to the intense drought suffered by the territory and which prevented the deployment of large units, a circumstance that favored the rebel. The hardships and diseases that spread through the region forced the two sides to avoid all combat and parley. The negotiations concluded with the delivery to the emir of one hundred and sixty-two castles, the submission to his authority of Ibn Hafsún and a league between both sides. By virtue of this, Ibn Hafsún even collaborated in the subjugation of Úbeda, which his son Sulaimán snatched on two occasions from the warden faithful to the emir.

After various campaigns, the emir managed to surround and isolate Ibn Hafsún in Bobastro where he died on February 1, 918. His sons, however, continued the paternal rebellion. Jafar, son of the deceased and A convert to Christianity, he decided to break the truce that his father, whom he claimed had also secretly converted to Christianity, had formed with Córdoba. Despite the hopes of the Córdoba government that the sons of the late rebel would get into disputes that would put an end to the rebellion, it lasted ten more years, forcing the emir to send annual expeditions against it.

Abder-Rahman therefore took up arms against the family in May 919, encircling Belda and felling its surroundings. Belda was taken after stubborn resistance—the Muslim defenders finally accepted a royal pardon in exchange for the surrender; the Christians were put to arms after the fortress was taken— and months later, in an offensive, Alora and Talyayra were conquered. The Cordovan troops had followed the course of the Guadalhorce in the direction of Bobastro and had seized several strategic fortresses close to it in early June. Both the rebels and Cordoba then withdrew, the latter to consolidate their new holdings in Casarabonela, Ardales, and other places. When Abderramán's onslaught resumed, Jáfar requested a truce to the emir in exchange for the payment of a tribute; he granted it and returned to Córdoba on June 24, after thirty-eight days of campaigning. Meanwhile, another of the sons of Ibn Hafsún, namesake of the emir, he had to surrender in Ojén before the arrival of a column from Cordoba that he could not oppose; Enemied with Jafar, he made a pact with Córdoba.Adbderramán had once again relieved the rebel pressure on Málaga in this campaign and subjugated part of the territories of the sons of Ibn Hafsún, trying to get closer to Bobastro.

On October 29, 920, Jafar was assassinated in Bobastro, perhaps at the instigation of his brother Sulaymán or at the hands of local Christians; Sulaymán marched to the fortress and took command of the anti-Cordoba rebellion. He retook Ojén, but lost it again in 921. In 922, the Cordovans took the castle of Monterrubio, an important border fortress between Jaén and Elvira. Abderramán left the siege in the hands of one of his lieutenants to cut down the surroundings of Bobastro in July; then he returned to Córdoba passing through the coras of Ronda, Osuna, Sevilla and Carmona, thus concluding a campaign of eighty-five days. — and then took the Cámara fortress, passed through Jete —without being able to surrender the citadel— and took Fuengirola. The Cordovans damaged several fortresses near Bobastro and tightened the siege around it, although they could not benefit from a frustrated conspiracy that broke out against Sulaimán during the campaign. On June 29 Abderramán was back in Córdoba. The harassment of the rebels resumed in 926, after a period of calm due to the aceifas against the northern Christians. In 927 Sulayman was captured by chance by an Umayyad soldier who killed him and took his head and ring finger to prove it; command of the rebels passed to Ibn Hafsun's youngest, Hafs, which was surrounded in Bobastro while the forces The emir's zazas attacked the nearby castles (Olías, Santopitar, Comares and Jotrón, all of them populated exclusively by Christians) in a four-month campaign that ended in August. Abderramán had left command of the subjugation operation in the hands of of the vizier Said ibn al-Mundir, and had returned to Córdoba. On January 17, 928, Hafs finally surrendered his impressive fortress in exchange for a pardon in January 928. Abder-Rahman personally visited the town in March, before ordering it to be completely razed. Ibn Hasfún's corpse was disinterred and crucified at one of the gates of Córdoba as punishment for his long rebellion and his apostasy from Islam. He briefly toured the region of Malaga ordering the demolition of the castles that he did not consider essential. With the conquest of Bobastro, the submission of Andalusia to Abderramán concluded.

East and West

The continuous expeditions directed against Omar ibn Hafsún, his sons and his allies did not make the emir Abderramán III forget the situation of other regions of al-Andalus, where his authority was little or null. In most cases, the The loyal governor of a city remained in precarious conditions, such as that of Évora, which could not prevent the attack by the King of Galicia and future King of León, Ordoño, who in the summer of 913 occupied the city, inflicted seven hundred casualties on it and it took four thousand prisoners and a large booty. In other cases, both to the east and to the west, the local chiefs did not recognize the authority of the emir of Córdoba at all.

The lord of Badajoz, Abd Allah ibn Muhammad, grandson of Abd al-Rahman ibn Marwán al-Yiliqi ("the Galician"), faced with a possible incursion by the King of Leon, fortified his city and rebuilt the wall; these measures He took them on his own, without ever recognizing Cordoba authority. So that Évora would not fall into the hands of Berber groups from the region, he ordered the destruction of its defensive towers and knocked down what was left of its walls, until a year later he decided to rebuild it to hand it over to his ally Masud ibn Sa'dun al-Surunbaqi.

Further south, in the Algarve, power was held entirely by a Muladi coalition led by Said ibn Málik, who had expelled the Arabs from Beja, and the lords of Badajoz and Évora. his might the lords of Ocsónoba, Yahya ibn Bakr, and of Niebla, Ibn Ufayr.

In 916 the emir's forces went to both the Algarve and the Levant, again with the aim of subduing rebel territories. A Cordovan general subdued the principality of Lorca and Murcia. On March 7, 917 the chamberlain Badr repudiated Niebla, which had refused to surrender. The town, as elsewhere, received a royal pardon from Abder-Rahman. Mérida and Santarem were also conquered. At the same time, in 916-917 one of The Cordovan viziers, a relative of the emir, led another campaign through the coras of Tudmir and Valencia, which led to the conquest of the castle of Orihuela, the provincial capital. The region had taken advantage of that year's campaign against the Christians of the north to rise up against Córdoba.

The emir used the campaign against Pamplona in the year 924 to subdue the Levantine rebels. Instead of marching directly north, he advanced towards the objective through the eastern lands, in order to take advantage of the aceifa to subdue the the rebels and gather support for the incursion against the Christian kingdom. Although he managed to subdue some of the rebels, others resisted his attacks and a third group pretended to submit to his authority and then resume the rebellion, as soon as the Cordovan army had passed Despite everything, he was able to seize Lorca.

After ending Bobastro's long rebellion in 928, he was able to send more forces to the northeast to definitively subdue the Levant. The lord of Alicante and Callosa surrendered in August and joined the group of defeated who received perks and privileges of the emir in the capital. The other members of the family, the Banu al-Shayj, capitulated before October. The same happened with the lord of Valencia, Alcira and Játiva, who also capitulated and moved to Córdoba. The conquest of Chinchilla and Peñas de San Pedro concluded the subjugation of the Iberian Levant to the Cordovan authority.

That same year of 928, one of Abderramán's generals took Mérida, the capital of the northern border, and Beja in 929 —this time in person, accompanied by two of his sons. The caliph had already first tried to seize Badajoz in vain but, in the face of his staunch resistance, he had surrounded Beja, which resisted valiantly until July 26. He then marched against Ocsónoba, whose lord agreed to submit to the caliph and pay him tribute in exchange to remain in charge of the square. By the time the caliph was proclaimed, Abderramán still had to subdue several important cities of the Upper March (Lérida, Huesca, Zaragoza and Tudela) and Toledo in the Middle March and Badajoz and Lisbon in the March Bottom.

Foreign Policy

Christian Kingdoms

Abderramán was related from birth to the royal house of Arista-Íñiga of Navarra, and, through it, to the kings of León, which would somehow justify his intervention in the Hispanic kingdoms. In general, his campaigns were defensive, launched to punish previous Christian incursions into Andalusian territory or to thwart their preparations, and they failed to extend the emirate's domain.

Early years: Córdoba impotence

Ordoño II de León, an outstanding rival of Abderramán until his death in 924.

In the first years of his reign, when he barely dominated Córdoba and its surroundings and the lords of the borders often made pacts with the Christian sovereigns of the north, Abderramán could not avoid their incursions. The border lords, often muladíes, they engaged in continuous fights among themselves and often requested the help of the Christian States in them. of the Banu Qasi in the Ebro, which allowed them to consider territorial expansions in that area, as if to face the reborn Cordovan power represented by the new emir. The incursions into the region of Sancho Garcés and García's successor, his brother Ordoño, were constant. Andalusians and Navarrese-Leonese disputed the domain of the main strongholds of the region: Viguera, Calahorra, Arnedo and Tudela.

The chaos into which the previous emirs had plunged the kingdom had made it possible for the Leonese, Castilians, Aragonese, Catalans and Navarrese to weaken the northern border of al-Andalus and, already under the mandate of Abderramán, the Leonese king Ordoño II. he sacked Évora in August 913 and attacked Mérida in 915. Ordoño took the first after a hard fight in which some seven hundred people perished and took another four thousand captives. The serious setback forced to the Muslims to repair the walls of the cities of the peninsular west. The second was besieged in the campaign of 915; The warden of the imposing fortress dissuaded the Leonese monarch from attempting the assault with gifts. The Leonese sovereign did not find any resistance from the emir in his incursion.

At the end of 913, the Lord of Huesca invaded the territories of the Count of Barcelona, but he was defeated and killed by his armies. and that same year they fought the battle of Arnedo (March 21), which ended with a Christian victory. On July 15 of the same year, the Muslim lord of Tudela and Tarazona recaptured Calahorra from the hands of the Navarrese. However, they had already seized San Esteban de Deyo and the Andalusian fortresses north of the Ebro. In 915, Sancho Garcés ransacked the lands of Tudela; he captured its lord, whom he only released in exchange for the fortresses of Falces and Caparroso.The death of the lord of Tudela and the murder of his brother at the hands of the deceased's son plunged the Banu Qasi into internal strife.

Abderramán's reaction, first attacks

Faced with these military setbacks in the first years at the helm of the emirate, when he was engaged in the subjugation of the territories independent from Cordoba rule and in his first offensives against Ibn Hafsún, Abderramán decided to take up arms against the northern States from from 916. Since that year, the aceifas followed one another in the north, almost every year; these should serve both to stop Christian attacks and to obtain booty in their territories. To recover the lost territories, Abderramán sent his general Áhmad ibn Abi Abda in command of an army to confront the Leonese king, with little fortune. In September 917, the Cordovans, who were trying to take San Esteban de Gormaz, suffered a total defeat at the Battle of Castromoros. In 918 the fate of the Cordovans and their enemies It was even: although in June Ordoño and Sancho Garcés carried out a fruitful raid on the upper and middle Ebro and took Nájera, Tudela and Valtierra, the chamberlain Badr carried out a victorious counterattack the following month, in which he defeated Ordoño and Sancho in Mitonia. The defeated ranks had also fought hosts from Huesca, whose lord was related by marriage to the Navarrese king. In 919, the concentration of Cordovan forces persuaded Ordoño to abandon the campaign he was preparing; the Cordovans, for their part, did hold an aceifa during the summer, in which they were victorious.

In 920, with the territories near the capital already under control thanks to the military activity of the first years of his reign, Abderramán decided to lead the campaign that year in person. He marched to Toledo, where he received the support of the forces of the local lord and, after passing through Guadalajara and Medinaceli, he headed for the Duero. Osma, Clunia and San Esteban de Gormaz, which the Leonese had evacuated, were razed before Abderramán continue towards Carcar and Calahorra. Then the Cordovan army reached Tudela. Trying to stop the Cordovan advance, the Christian sovereigns faced the hosts of Abderramán southwest of Pamplona, in the battle of Valdejunquera on 25 July, in which they were defeated. Cordoba put to arms some five hundred defenders, among them them to some leading figures of the Christian states. On September 1, Abderramán was back in Córdoba after ninety days of campaigning. The Córdoba victory, however, had little long-term consequence, as neither did not modify the border or eliminate the wishes of the Leonese and Pamplona monarchs to seize the lands of the Ebro.

Caliphal campaign of the Aragon of the year 924.

Between 921 and 924, a series of minor campaigns took place: in 921 a small incursion by Ordoño; in 922, an aceifa of the lord of Tudela that temporarily conquered Nájera and Viguera before retreating due to a counterattack by Sancho Garcés, who recovered Viguera and captured the man from Tudel and his Berber allies; a Córdoba foray into the Marca Superior without transcendence and, finally, in 923, the Pamplona monarch attacked Valtierra and ephemerally seized Calahorra, forcing Abderramán to send troops north to protect Tudela.

In 924 Abderramán again organized an important campaign against Pamplona. The main reasons for this new aceifa were the continuous harassment of Sancho Garcés on the Ebro border and his death at the beginning of that year from his ally, King Ordoño. The caliph left at the head of his troops in April, crossed the coras of Turmir and Valencia and passed through Tortosa before going up the Ebro. Zaragoza joined his forces, which sacked several fortresses in the Ebro basin and crossed different towns, such as Alcañiz, Tudela, Calahorra Falces, Tafalla and Sangüesa. The climactic battle of the campaign took place on the banks of the Ega river and the victory was clearly decided on the Cordovan side. Abderramán continued advancing to Pamplona, which had been evacuated and which he devastated. During the withdrawal several more battles were fought, of which the emir's troops they emerged victorious. In August, after passing through Calahorra, Valtierra y Azafra, Abderramán camped in Tudela. At the end of the month, he returned to Córdoba, after subduing two Berber lords from the Santaver area. The results of the campaign were ambiguous: the loot was large and they held back the advances of the Christian States, but the territory lost to the Navarrese in 923 was not recovered. The Cordovans did obtain, however, seven years of tranquility without incursions from the north. Abderhraman to a member of the Tujibi family.

In the same year of 924, a serious succession crisis broke out in León when Ordoño died, who favored Abderramán. He was briefly succeeded first by his brother Fruela II, who died in 925, when a fierce rivalry broke out among the pretenders to the throne. Finally, Alfonso IV, son of Ordoño and son-in-law of Sancho Garcés, who reigned until 931, without worrying the emir, died. In 925 Sancho Garcés died, who was succeeded by his son García Sánchez I, still a child. By then, the people of Pamplona had seized the lands between the Arga and the Ebro and the Rioja Alta. The death of Ordoño y Sancho did not put an end to the Navarro-Leonese league, which continued. Between 924 and 928, Abder-Rahman, without completely abandoning the fight with the northern states, devoted himself mainly to definitively crushing the rebellion of the sons of Ibn Hafsun.

Term as caliph

After subduing most of the rebels, on Friday, January 16, 929, Abderramán III, like his ancestors, proclaimed himself khalifa rasul-allah (successor to the envoy of God, Caliph) and amir al-muminin ("prince of the believers"), presuming to have more legitimate rights than the Fatimid caliph of Kairouan and the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad to assume that title, as a descendant of the Umayyads of Damascus. He also adopted the title of an-nasir li-din Allah ("he who obtains victory for the religion of God"), characteristic of the "prince of the believers" (caliph). Abderramán's objectives in proclaiming himself caliph included both opposition to Fatimid authority and the recovery of Umayyad prestige or the implementation of a great political and cultural reform. Two months and a half earlier, as a previous step, on November 1, 928, he had founded the mint for the issuance of gold dinars and silver dirhems, one more prerogative of the supreme authority. Until then, only silver coins had been minted in the peninsula - the last minting of gold coins in the peninsula had taken place in 744 - and the dinars came from the Aghlabid emirate. The issuance of gold coin marked the end of a long Umayyad currency crisis, a reflection of the political and fiscal crisis in which the emirate had been mired since the end of the previous century. In 947, the mint moved to the new royal palace of Medina Azahara.

Dirham of Abderramán III issued in Medina Azahara. Although his predecessors on the throne of the emirate had coined silver coins, he was the first to do so also in gold, from his enthronation as a caliph.

By virtue of his title of caliph, Abderramán III became the spiritual and temporal lord of all the Muslims of al-Andalus and the African provinces, as well as the protector of the Christian and Jewish communities. Consequently, he had to ensure religious unity and rigorously fight everything that meant any opposition to official orthodoxy, eradicate heterodox currents and persecute the activities of the disciples of Ibn Masarra, very important at that time. As imam of the Muslim community his name had to be cited in the khutba (Friday sermon) as a sign of recognition of his sovereignty, and included in the coins minted in the royal mint. He was also head of the armies, and in fact participated in numerous military campaigns, until the Simancas disaster.

The ornaments of his new sovereignty were the royal seal, the scepter or jayzuran and the throne or sarir. His royal seal, like that of his predecessors Abderramán I and Abderramán II, had the following inscription or motto: Abderramán is satisfied with God's decision, but his annular seal read, it is understood that after his proclamation as caliph: By the grace of God Abderramán al-Nasir achieves victory.

The proclamation of the caliphate led to a distancing of Abderramán from his subjects: the palace ceremonial was complicated —copied from the Abbasid—, the construction of Medina Azahara made the monarch more distant and enhanced the courtly splendor and the formation of bodies of saqalibas ensured the existence of a guard that took care of the safety of the new caliph.

The new period inaugurated by Abderramán with the proclamation of the Cordovan caliphate resulted in the heyday of Islam in the Iberian Peninsula, both in terms of political power and economic prosperity, cultural and artistic development or scientific knowledge.

Domestic policy

Submission of brands

The actions to subdue the lords of the border marches began the same year the caliphate was proclaimed. The first attack was made against the Marca Inferior, at that time in arms against Córdoba. lands of Badajoz and seized the main towns in the region. Mérida surrendered in exchange for a royal pardon; the Cordovans then took Beja, Santarém and Ocsobona. In 930, the caliph regained control over the city and territory of Badajoz, which had resisted the siege launched the previous year. Abderramán, who led part of the campaign personally, skillfully combined the military aggression with the forgiveness of the local leader and the reduction of taxes to the inhabitants of some towns in the region to end up dominating it. Part of the defeated troops also joined the Caliphate army, strengthening it. From this territory, incursions were launched from then on both against the kingdom of Asturias and against the border Berber nuclei, barely subject to Cordovan authority.

With the Lower March subdued, Abderramán concentrated on subduing the lords of the Middle March. This, despite its unruly tendency, was of great importance for Cordoba communications. In this case, it counted with the advantage of already dominating important regions of the brand, in the hands of loyal governors. Toledo himself had apparently submitted years before, in 920, during the campaign of Muez against the kingdom of Pamplona. The first attempts to agree with Toledo failed, which led to an attack against the city being launched in May 930. Despite losing various fortresses and being closely surrounded by the hosts of the Caliphate, the city resisted the attack. siege. The caliph finally crushed the rebellion of the city, which surrendered on August 2, 932 after a two-year siege. The city had received the aid of Ramiro II de León, whose forces had been defeated by the Umayyads when they tried to destroy the siege. The desperate situation of the town, which suffered a great famine, and the magnanimous disposition of the caliph, inclined to grant royal pardon and reduce taxes, facilitated the end of the siege and the final submission of the city. Abderramán managed to surrender the city, but not without granting it extensive autonomy.

In 931 the Balearic Islands had also submitted to Abderramán and in 932, Zaragoza and Lleida. Although the caliph had confirmed Muhhamad ibn Hasim al-Tuyibí as lord of Zaragoza in 931, he refused to participate in the Cordovan campaign against Osma in 934, which soured relations with Abderramán, who until then had been basically satisfied with the theoretical submission of the man from Zaragoza and the receipt of abundant tribute from him. Al-Tujibí received the support of their neighbors the lords of Huesca and Barbastro, which alarmed the caliph, who made his hosts depose the Huesca caudillo and harass the Zaragoza lands before marching against Osma. In the following spring, a campaign was launched against the Zaragoza and the Caliphate army surrounded the city in June 935. The campaign was a failure for Abderramán: in November he returned to Córdoba without having taken Zaragoza and having suffered the spread of the rebellion. Not only Huesca and Santa not only supported the Tujibids, but also Calatayud and Daroca had gone over to the rebel side. In the summer of 936 the commander of the siege, Ahmad ben Ishaq al-Qurasi, a member of a minor branch of the Umayyads, was dismissed. and months later executed, probably for sedition. His elimination coincided with a moment of danger for Abderramán: Ramiro II had broken the pact that forced him not to provide help to the Zaragoza rebels, they received the help of the Lords of Daroca and Calatayud —until then faithful to Córdoba—, the Count of Barcelona had attacked the Caliphate border and a Berber tribe settled in the Middle March rebelled against him. The Caliph soon managed to subdue most of the cities allied with Zaragoza and in March 937 he marched again to direct the siege of it. The uprisings in Huesca, Santaver and Talavera were quickly put down, but not in Santarem, where one of his nephews had risen up against the caliph, what He joined forces with King Ramiro. On July 25, he took Calatayud, allied with Zaragoza —his lord was a cousin of Zaragoza— and aided by the Christians. Daroca fell shortly and in August the caliph arrived at the outskirts of Zaragoza, after making a quick incursion into the kingdom of Pamplona. Unable to resist the siege any longer, the people of Zaragoza entered into talks with Abderramán that led to the agreed surrender of the city in November. The caliph granted the pardon of al-Tujibí in exchange for his submission and the rupture of his relations with the Christian states of the north. Although al-Tujibí promised to pay tribute, expressly submit to the caliph, help him in his military campaigns and not welcoming the outlaws, he obtained in exchange control of the city for life and the power to appoint his heir as governor of the city. After the triumphant entry into the city on November 21, an event that marked the submission front brands hedgehogs to Córdoba, he marched with al-Tuyibí to harass the Navarrese before returning to Córdoba in January 938. Also in 937, one of the qadis had marched to the lands of Talavera to crush a revolt by the Nafza Berbers. In 939 and after a few minor campaigns —the crushing of the rebellion in Santarém and the suffocation of a rebellious attempt in Huesca—, the Marches and the rest of al-Andalus were subject to the power of the caliph.

These victories allowed the reorganization of the borders into brands, which allowed them to be consolidated. On the other hand, Abderramán was not able to completely annihilate the power of the border lineages, which not only retained their lordships —albeit as subjects—, but also which in some cases survived the Umayyads.

The last action to subdue the Muslim territories took place in 947, when Abderramán sent one of his lieutenants to consolidate the Caliphate's control of the Balearic Islands.

Situation of the State during the reign of Abderramán

Administrative reforms

Main Andalusian agricultural products during the period omeya.

As soon as he acceded to the throne of the emirate, Abderramán had reestablished the position of hayib or chamberlain —a kind of prime minister—, which had two incumbents until it was abolished again when the second died in 932. His tasks simply passed to one of the viziers until the caliph created the equivalent title of "double vizier" in 938. The title of hayib was recovered later, in the following reign.

In 955, coinciding with the serious setback caused by the Fatimid assault on Almería, the caliph reformed the Public Administration, creating four departments, each headed by a vizier: the one in charge of interdepartmental correspondence, the one in charge of correspondence with the border regions, the one for the transmission of orders and decrees and the one destined to the attention to complaints to the Administration. To maintain control of the recovered territories through his cunning use of magnanimity and violence, he launched a system by which the positions were renewed continuously and frequently —except in the brands—, so that none of them doubted their dependence on the sovereign's favor and did not have time to establish a power base that would serve to threaten the Cordovan authority Unlike his predecessor and grandfather Abd Allah, he knew how to delegate the exercise of power, for which he surrounded himself with a group of capable figures in the State Administration. plus the provincial system, creating new coras, in order to reduce the power of their governors —who controlled a more limited territory— and to optimize their contribution to the armed forces. At the end of his life, eunuchs gained great importance in the Public Administration and temporarily cornered the maula families that had controlled it until then. In general, however, the main civil, religious and military positions continued to be held by the population of Arab origin, both baladí -the descendants of the who arrived in the years of the conquest—such as "Syrians"—those settled in 740—a situation that lasted until the end of the caliphate. The importance of slaves grew more in the military than in the civil sphere.

The extension of state control also fostered enormous increases in Treasury revenue: if during the second half of the viii century and the first half of the ix the emirs received around six hundred thousand dinars in tributes, during the reign of Abderramán these reached five million eight hundred thousand dinars, to which must be added the private income of the caliph, which reached seven hundred and sixty-five thousand. The extension of the effective Administration to the entire territory and the myriad taxes ensured large rents for the caliph. The minting of coins was also coupled with the dominance of the territory and the amount of income: it had practically ceased during the last two decades of Abd Allah's reign and only recovered in the second of Abderramán's reign, once he had achieved the subjugation of the Andalusian rebellions. At all times, as du For the rest of the history of the emirate and after the caliphate, the main currency was the dirhem, a piece of silver much more common than the gold dinar, which was only minted, and never in large quantities, during the reigns of Abder-Rahman and his son, thanks to the expansion in the Maghreb that facilitated the arrival of more raw material.

Military situation and reforms

The base of the military system dated from the settlement in the south of the peninsula of the remains of the decimated Umayyad army that had been defeated in 740 near Fez, at the time of the Berber revolt. The army, sent from the east to to crush the serious rebellion, had taken refuge in al-Andalus after its defeat and unleashed a civil war that pitted it against the peninsular Arabs until 743, when an agreement was reached according to which its members —called Syrians— settled in the provinces with two-thirds of the properties in exchange for their services in the event of war. In each province thus militarized, a yund or army was established. These armies constituted the nucleus of the Cordovan armed forces until the reforms of Almanzor at the end of the century. These armies were joined by contingents from other provinces without "Syrian" settlements and the large palatine guard (about five thousand soldiers, three thousand of them cavalry), made up of slaves and foreigners.

Abderramán extraordinarily reinforced one of the pillars of the ground troops, that of the mercenaries, of Berber origin —brought for the first time by his grandfather Abd Allah and very important in the subsequent reign of Alhakén II—, Sudanese or Christian who, together with the hosts provided by each kora and the jihadist volunteers, formed the Umayyad forces. Both in the increase in the mercenary units of the Caliphate forces and in other aspects -the courtly ceremonial among them-, the Cordovan Umayyads imitated their Abbasid rivals. If at the beginning of the reign, until the defeat of Simancas, Abder-Rahman maintained the tribal system of Syrian regiments (yund), later he clearly relied on mercenary units By mid-century, the standing army, made up of professional mercenaries known as "the silent ones" for their lack of knowledge of Arabic, numbered sixty thousand soldiers. It maintained the predominance of cavalry over infantry a —in a ratio of three to one—, which forced most of the military campaigns to be carried out during the summer, to guarantee the fodder for the mounts. The weapons of the Cordovan soldiers were similar to those of their Christian enemies from the north The equipment of the troops was transported on the back of camels and mules, which allowed the rapid movement of the hosts, which sometimes traveled in the fleet. The maintenance of the army was expensive and came to represent a third of the budget state. One of the primary objectives of the military incursions in the north was the capture of booty, which served to earn income and to pay the troops. The captives were another source of income, as they became slaves that they could be sold or held for ransom.

The caliph also encouraged the growth of the naval forces, ordering the construction of more ships —generally made of pine— and shipyards and the improvement of the ports. At least six shipyards are known, three in the Atlantic (Alcácer do Sal, Algeciras and Seville) and many others in the Mediterranean (Almería, Pechina and Tarragona). The Cordovan army had to cut off all possible aid to the rebels of Ibn Hafsún from North Africa. Abderramán himself went to inspect the new ships anchored in Algeciras and encouraged the reinforcement of the Pechina fleet. The strengthening of the fleet allowed the caliph to intervene in the fights that were taking place in the Maghreb. To this was added the reinforcement of the coastal defenses through the construction and reinforcement of fortresses and watchtowers. The fleet was necessary both to face the Vikings and the Fatimids. The shipyards of Algeciras were built in 914 and in 944 the shipyards were built. docks of Tortosa, a place that was also an important arsenal. The pine of this region was highly valued in the construction of ships. The most important port, however, was that of Almería —notably enlarged during the reign of Abderramán—, which also had an arsenal.

Religious and social policy

After a period of great social and religious tensions between Christians and Muslims and, within these, between Arabs and muladíes, the situation improved with the advent of Abderramán, who put an end to the persecution of Christians and Jews. Despite Since a large part of the rebels in the emirate were muladíes, this did not prevent Abderramán from trying to win their favor and appointing some of them to important posts. Thus, several of the qadis in the capital were muladíes, as was his first hayib, Badr. During Abder-Rahman's reign, social mobility increased and power less limited to the Arab population than hitherto.

He appointed cadis of various Sunni tendencies in Córdoba, partly as a measure to limit the supremacy of the Maliki school in national politics, which, however, he defended in times of crisis. The association of the rebel son Abd Allah with another of the legal schools, the Shafi'i, undermined its prestige and limited its extension in the caliphate. It favored the Sunni Maliki religious homogenization of the territory, which during the caliphate had a Muslim majority for the first time and persecuted the which he considered heretics, but also tolerated other Sunni currents. It is estimated that it was during the end of his reign when more than half of the Andalusian population professed Islam for the first time.

Christians played an important role during his reign, partly due to their numerical importance in al-Andalus: entire regions were populated by Christians. There were notable Mozarabic communities (Arabized Christians) both in many cities (Córdoba, Toledo, Seville or Mérida) as well as in some rural areas, such as the mountains of Málaga, almost exclusively Christian until the XI century. As rebels In general, they received more severe treatment than the muladíes, usually due to their greater resistance and less willingness to make a pact with Abderramán. In addition, once he was proclaimed caliph, he showed great rigor in punishing those who had apostatized from Islam, a circumstance until then more tolerated. At court, the most prominent Christian was Bishop Recemundo, sent as ambassador to Otto I and the Byzantines. Several Mozarabs, however, carried out important diplomatic tasks for the caliph. Jews also abounded in the cities, in some of which they were the main religious community (Granada, Lucena or Roda). They stood out in commerce and in other activities such as translation and medicine.

He shied away from identifying with the Arabs in order to gain the support of other cultural groups, such as the Berbers, the Muladíes or the Christians and Jews who populated al-Andalus. Suspicious of the loyalty of the Arabs, he tried to control them through appointment of the commanders of the Arab regiments, the election of military commanders among other groups—including that of slaves—and the granting of provincial government to other social groups. It weakened their strength, but could not end their primacy. Unlike the case of the muladíes, whose power bases it eliminated, I cannot do the same with those of the Arabs and the Berbers, a circumstance that favored the emergence of taifas governed by these two groups after the fall of the caliphate.

Urbanism, art and technology

During the caliphate, important changes took place in peninsular agriculture, which favored the improvement of the health of the population and its increase: new crops were introduced and spread, such as rice, durum wheat —for pasta—, sorghum, sugar cane, cotton, oranges, watermelons, bananas, and eggplants; Irrigated cultivation was notably expanded, which improved harvests —less dependent on the rains— and reduced famines. The importance of irrigation meant that there was a high position dedicated to its supervision: the acequiero mayor or zabacequias. The improvement Agriculture, in addition to favoring population growth, allowed part of it to move on to other activities and the urban population to grow. Among the industries that flourished during the caliphate were mining, ceramics, glass manufacturing, books, carvings or textiles and leather, dedicated in part to export.

The capital of the Caliphate was by far the largest city in Western Europe, with perhaps 100,000 inhabitants, a size similar to that of Constantinople and almost half that of Baghdad. Abderramán carried out an extensive urban development program in the city: he enlarged the main mosque of the capital by adding an original minaret (completed in 952, the highest in the West at the time), he renovated the façade facing the courtyard (in 958) and this one; he opened a gate in the wall —a consequence of greater security due to the crushing of the rebellions—, he paved roads, created a new mint, rebuilt the market and the post office, and carried out other public works, thanks to the improvement in the income of the royal Treasury. The expansion of the main mosque began just in the year of his death, in 961. In March 941, he inaugurated a canal that brought water from Sierra Morena to irrigate the gardens of the Alcázar de la Noria, west of Córdoba. His most outstanding work was, however, the palace complex of Medina Azahara, built on the outskirts of the capital from 936; of great luxury, it was destroyed during the civil war at the beginning of the xi century, in 1010. This became not only the residence of the caliph, but also the headquarters of the Public Administration, which was installed in he.

Foreign Policy

In foreign policy, the caliphate had to face two problems: the Christian kingdoms on its northern border, and the Fatimid expansion on the south, made up of the Maghreb.

The Christian kingdoms: Simancas and border stabilization

Subjugation of Zaragoza and raids on Pamplona and León

The death of Ordoño II in 924 and the successive crises suffered by the Kingdom of León in matters of succession meant that the hostilities practically disappeared until the accession to the Leonese throne, in 931, of Ramiro II who attended, in 932, in aid of the rebellion that had begun in Toledo against Abderramán and, after conquering Madrid, he inflicted a defeat on the Caliphate troops at Osma in 933. Once Toledo had been conquered, the Caliph focused on containing the advance south of the Duero. The new King of Leon became a powerful adversary of the Caliph and collaborated with various rebels.

Adberramán led a campaign of punishment to put an end to the Christian raids in 934. After harassing the rebels from Zaragoza, the Cordovan army marched to the kingdom of Pamplona, where Queen Toda managed to obtain a truce from the caliph and the recognition of García Sánchez as king of Pamplona in exchange for agreeing to abandon any alliance against Abderramán. Next, the caliph crossed Álava, occupied Falces, whose count had opposed the Navarrese-Cordovan truce, and possibly burned the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña in August. Returning to Córdoba territory after taking Clunia and Huerta de Rey, he defeated Ramino II near Osma, in Alcubilla de Avellaneda. Count of Castile, was devastating for the region, which the forces of the Caliphate thoroughly felled.

Although the caliph focused on subduing Zaragoza in the following years, the campaigns against Christian territories did not cease for this reason. In August 936, one of his generals defeated the Barcelona count Suniario I, who wanted to extend his authority to Panades In 937, the Navarrese broke the truce they had requested in 934, allying themselves with León and the Tuyibí rebels from Zaragoza —who had recognized Ramiro's authority—, which unleashed a punitive offensive by the Cordovans. The Cordoba first subdued Calatayud, defended by a relative of the Lord of Zaragoza. A Cordoba column devastated the Pamplon plain and the valley of the Aragon river; the bulk of the caliph's army surrounded Uncastillo in vain and razed Tafalla, which the Navarrese had abandoned. After the raid was over, the caliph's hosts resumed the long siege of Zaragoza, which capitulated in November. Abderramán, despite everything, forgave his lord, whom he allowed to keep the city. After the conquest of this city, four thousand knights made a short raid on the Pamplona borders, again as punishment for breaking the truce. The Pamploneses agreed to pay tribute to Córdoba.

Disaster in Simancas and territorial losses in Marca Media

Puerta de la muralla de Medinaceli, square that Abderramán ordered to rebuild Galib as the nucleus of the defense of the Middle Mark in 946, after the decay of the battle of Simancas.

At the beginning of 939 Ramiro II ran, although with few consequences, the Andalusian west. Abderramán prepared to board a reprisal expedition with copious forces. The objective of the great campaign seems to have been to stop the Christian colonization of the lands south of Duero, for which he began by razing a series of enemy fortresses south of the river (Olmedo, Íscar, Alcazarén and Portillo). In August Abderramán suffered his greatest disaster at the hands of the Christian kingdoms when his troops they were defeated in the battle of Simancas, perhaps due to dissensions between the military chiefs and where the caliph himself was about to lose his life, a circumstance that made him not lead any other battle in person again. Future campaigns were entrusted to the qadis; the lords of the border marches recovered part of their lost autonomy and, since then, have led the defense against the Christian states. The reaction Abderramán's defeat was brutal upon his return to Córdoba: several hundred of those considered responsible for the catastrophe were crucified. The following year, and partly as a consequence of the caliph's lack of confidence in his troops, the construction of the Medina Azahara, both a palatial residence and a fortress.

The Christian victory imposed a certain balance of forces on the peninsula between the victors and the caliphate: in 940, Abderramán's envoys reached agreements with the Barcelona count —which favored trade with the northeast of the peninsula and the south of France — and with Ramiro II. Ramiro obtained control of the Duero border and was able to fortify various points along the Tormes valley (Salamanca in 941 and Ledesma), while maintaining the center of his border device in Zamora. In 940, he ordered the Castilians to occupy and fortify Sepúlveda, to control access to the eastern Central System. Further east, Fernán González obtained Osma, San Esteban de Gormaz and other fortresses on the upper Duero. The repopulation of the middle Duero was, however, temporary and the new localities were soon abandoned, partly due to the Andalusian incursions. Despite everything, approximately the northern half of the territory between the Duero and the Central System, divided by a line in a southwest-northeast direction, it was gradually integrated into León, throughout the reigns of Ramiro and Ordoño III. In the latter's time the bishopric of Simancas was created, to frame the territories south of the Duero in the kingdom. For the Muslim lords of the Upper March —with a center in Zaragoza—, the caliph's disaster ensured their autonomy from Córdoba. This defeat also had another important consequence: the abandonment of clashes in pitched battles and their replacement by fast campaigns, the aceifas.

Abderramán ordered the strengthening of the defenses of the Middle March. In the center of the peninsula, he entrusted the reinforcement of Medinaceli as the nucleus of the Middle March to his most prestigious general, Galib, in 946. The town, previously semi-abandoned, became the defensive center of the region, replacing Toledo. Before and taking advantage of the disagreements between the Leonese and the Castilians, Gormaz had been occupied in July 940, as a counterweight to the Castilian takeover Osma and San Esteban de Gormaz.

Mutual raids and political influence in the Iberian Christian states

Approximate extension of the caliphate to the death of Abderramán in 961. The caliph had succeeded in subduing all the rebels of the Andalusian territory and fundamentally maintaining the borders, except in the riojana area and in the Duero valley, areas that had passed into the hands of the Christian States of the north.

Leonese and Córdoba signed two peace agreements, one in October 940 and another in August of the following year. Despite the agreements, the confrontations continued: in 940 there was another aceifa against the kingdom of León; in 942 the governor of Zaragoza successfully confronted the Navarrese and in 944 the struggle between Ramiro II and the Castilian count Fernán González facilitated the Cordovan attack on Galicia. The Castilian rebellion also undermined the Leonese forces, which had to stay mainly on the defensive after the triumph in Simancas. From this time, the annexation of territories by the peninsular Christian States stopped, due to the power of the Caliph. 944, 948/949 and the winter of 950 reached Galicia.

In 950 Ramiro II defeated the Cordovans in Talavera, but he died the following year and the kingdom plunged into a serious succession crisis. This situation facilitated Caliphate incursions, which occurred almost annually (in 951, 953, 955, 956 and 957). These raids were opposed by some of the Christian lords: in 956, Ordoño III beat the vicinity of Lisbon —despite having requested peace from the Cordovans the previous year— and on the same dates Fernán González defeated the people of Cordoba in San Esteban de Gormaz. better dominated by the Andalusians than those from La Rioja, they stopped their advance towards the south. In any case, the internal dissensions in the northern States facilitated the Cordovan containment of the Christian advance, which since the 930s was based more on continuous harassment what in the great armed confrontations. Again, as had happened with the first campaigns before proclaiming himself caliph, Adbderramán failed to reverse the enemy advances: the incursions provided captives, loot and protection against Christian attacks, but did not substantially modify the borders and the Lost territory was not recovered.

In 950 he received an embassy sent by Borrell II in Córdoba, through which the Barcelona count recognized the Caliphate's superiority and asked for peace and friendship. Relations between the Caliphate and the Iberian Carolingian territories were, in general, peaceful until the end of the X century, when they gave way to the expeditions of Almanzor and his son Abd al-Málik al-Muzáffar.

Between the years 951 and 961, the Caliphate actively intervened in the dynastic disputes that the Leonese monarchy suffered during the reigns of Ordoño III, Sancho I and Ordoño IV. The Caliph varied his support between the different parties in dispute according to the political conjuncture of each moment, seeking to weaken the most powerful of the Christian kingdoms of the peninsula. The Leonese kings of this time became, in practice, political clients of Abderramán and later of his son and successor, Alhakén II.

In 955 a peace had been signed with Ordoño III, which was disrupted when he died in the autumn of the following year and was succeeded by his half-brother Sancho, who refused to respect the agreement with the people of Cordoba. Their reaction was a campaign of punishment in 957, which ended with the defeat of Leon. The nobility overthrew Sancho and handed over the crown to Ordoño IV; Sancho took refuge with his grandmother Toda Aznárez who, to help him recover the kingdom of Leon, made a pact with the Cordovan caliph. In 958, Abderramán received a visit from Toda Aznárez from Pamplona accompanied by his grandson, the deposed Sancho I, for whom he achieved support of the caliph, who helped him to recover the Leonese throne, although this meant tacit submission to the caliph. Cured of his obesity by Hasdai ibn Shaprut, a skilled diplomat and doctor of Abderramán, Sancho recovered León in 960. The last incursions while Abderramán was alive occurred that year against Zamora and against Tarragona, which the caliphate recovered. The caliph died the following year, on October 16, 961.

The Maghreb

The second axis of Abderramán III's foreign policy was to stop the expansion in North Africa of the Fatimid Caliphate, present in the region since 910 and which sought to expand through al-Andalus. Abderramán's policy was fundamentally that of to contend with the Fatimids through their Maghrebi clients and use them to protect their Iberian territories. The Umayyads and Fatimids disputed for a long time the dominance of Moroccan territory, control of the Strait of Gibraltar and dominion of the western Mediterranean in general. At that time the Maghreb The west was a much more rural and backward territory than al-Andalus, populated overwhelmingly by Berbers, divided into tribes. The only major urban center was the city of Fez, although the oasis of Siyilmasa, to the south, also stood out, due to the Saharan trade. At the beginning of the X century, the Idrisids, who had enjoyed a certain predicament among Although the tribes did not firmly control the territory, they were mired in internal strife. In addition to these, there were two important domains: the oasis of Siyilmasa and the coastal emirate of Nekor.

To reinforce control of the Strait of Gibraltar, Abderramán took Melilla and Ceuta (in 926-927 and 931-932, respectively), built the castle of Tarifa and fortified the bay of Algeciras. The Fatimids did not They not only threatened Umayyad control of the Iberian Peninsula and disputed control of the Maghreb, but also hindered the trade routes that crossed the Sahara from Timbuktu to Siyilmasa to bring gold and slaves to al-Andalus.

Fatimid Dinars of the Century x. The Fatimids, chiita dynasty, were the main rivals of the Andalusian omeyas in the Maghreb, whose possession was generally disputed through their political clients in the region. At the end of Abderraman's reign, the situation favored his enemies.

Abderramán decisively promoted the creation of shipyards to create a fleet sufficient to protect himself from Norman, African or Christian incursions from the north of the peninsula. Naval development also allowed him to control the western end of the Mediterranean, the area formed by the Balearic Islands, Algiers and the Strait of Gibraltar. The measures adopted involved the construction of a fleet that turned the Caliphate of Córdoba into a maritime power based in Almería —sacked during the burning of the fleet by the Fatimids in 955—and that would allow him to conquer the North African cities of Melilla (926), Ceuta (931) and Tangier (951), and establish a kind of protectorate over the north and center of the Maghreb supporting the the sovereigns of the Idrisid dynasty, which would remain until 958, when a Fatimid offensive caused it to lose all influence in the Maghreb where it only kept the squares of Ceuta and Tangier. Direct control of some strategic ports allowed the Umayyads to intervene both politically and militarily in the area and to facilitate trade with the region. To ensure the loyalty of regional Umayyad clients, Abderramán carried out an extensive policy of official appointments—which they were accompanied by rich clothing—and by monetary grants and gift-giving to allies. The rivalry—both political and religious, as the Fatimids were Shiites while the Umayyads were Sunnis—was settled primarily through clients from each dynasty.: The Fatimids relied mainly on the Zirids and Cenhegis, while the Umayyads supported the Cenete Berbers and the Idrisid dynasty, already in decline.

To the initial Fatimid advance that allowed them to take Nekor in 917 and Fez in 920, Abder-Rahman reacted by allying with a Zanata warlord who defeated the Fatimids in 924, and supporting the Idrisids, who recaptured Fez in 925. Shortly after, however, the Idrisids suffered new setbacks at the hands of the Miknasa allied to the Fatimids. The advance of the Miknasa to the west was the reason for the Umayyad occupation of Ceuta, in order to protect the passage of the strait. One of the sons of the late lord of Nekor killed in the Fatimid conquest of June 917 recaptured the city and Abder-Rahman's authority was accepted; he held the place until his death in 927-928. In the mid-920s, Abder-Rahman sent an army to the Maghreb to annihilate a new religious movement considered heretical that had spread rapidly through the ranks of the gumara; in 927, he was victorious.

On March 25, 931, and at the request of its inhabitants, the Umayyad fleet occupied Ceuta, thus ensuring Cordovan control of the Strait of Gibraltar, although this upset the Idrisid allies, who tried to frustrate the maneuver. Abderramán continued his previous alliance with the Cenetes and achieved recognition from the Miknasa, formerly allies of the Fatimids but at odds with them. On the contrary, the Idrisids, former allies, began to distance themselves from the Umayyad and ended up in league with the Fatimids. Thanks to these, they recaptured Fez in the great campaign of 935, in which the Fatimids recovered a large amount of Maghreb territory, including Nekor. The Umayyad fleet reacted the following year by running off the Maghreb coast, inflicting several defeats on the their enemies and probably taking Melilla and recapturing Nekor. Abderhraman gained temporary control of the westernmost Mediterranean and took advantage of the spread of Abū Yazīd's Kharijim into Fatimid territories (943-947) to weaken the latter. The religious differences between the Umayyads and the Kharijites did not prevent the two parties from establishing good relations. The Idrisids partially submitted again in 944 under the threat of a campaign Umayyads in the region. At the beginning of the 950s, Tetouan, Tangier (951) and Asilah recognized Cordovan authority and soon after Tlemcen did as well. By then Abder-Rahman's indirect authority extended roughly from Algiers to Siyilmasa and the Moroccan Atlantic coast.

Luck favored Abderramán until 955, when the Fatimids reacted to the seizure of one of their vessels by the Umayyads, unleashing a very harsh attack on the Umayyad fleet in Almería, a city that they sacked and razed. In In the spring, Galib toured the Tunisian coast without major victories. In 957 there was an Umayyad counterattack against El KalaMarsa al-Jaraz, Susa and Tabarca. The following year, there was a major Fatimid offensive that drove out to the Umayyads of the entire Maghreb except for the plazas of Ceuta and Tangier, which they retained. At the death of Abderramán in 961, the Umayyad influence in the region was minimal. The recovery of Umayyad weapons in the Maghreb occurred during the reign of his successor, Alhaken II.

Territorial balance

Although he managed to subdue the rebels to the Cordovan authority and repeatedly defeat the Christian states of the north, the Andalusian territorial situation at the end of Abderramán's reign was one of slight losses compared to the extent at the beginning of it. The successive campaigns of the reign did not serve to conquer territories of the States of the north of the peninsula or to populate the areas in which they took place, but mainly to defend the Andalusian lands and strengthen state cohesion. On the peninsula, its primary objective was weaken the Christian States militarily and impose Andalusian supremacy on them, embodied in the payment of tribute, which at the end of the reign of Abderramán was paid by the lords of León, Castilla and Pamplona and perhaps also that of Barcelona. In the Maghreb, the situation Umayyad was bleak, since only Ceuta and Tangier were subject to Cordovan authority. In the Iberian Peninsula, the northern border followed approximately the following layout: in the west, the line of the Sierra de la Estrella, Gredos and Guadarrama. Then, in the center of the peninsula, the border continued through Soria (Medinaceli and Gormaz were important Caliphate strongholds) and Tudela before continuing through e l north of Aragon, where the Cordovans controlled Boltaña, Alquézar and Barbastro. Finally, to the east the border of the caliphate included the southern half of Lérida and Tarragona. In Lérida, the border was in the Sierra de Montsech and Balaguer was still an important caliphal fortress. Tarragona, although unpopulated, was in the power of Córdoba. To the west, was the heart of the Balearic Islands.

Diplomatic relations

As well as with the Christian states of the north and with the leaders of the Maghreb, Abderramán maintained diplomatic contacts with other countries. An embassy arrived from Sardinia (942) accompanied by merchants from Amalfi, a city with which he trade ties were established. The Marquis of Provence and later King of Italy, Hugh of Arles, also sent an embassy to the Caliph.

In 953, an embassy from Otto I arrived, although relations with him were initially tense due to religious differences between the two states, the haughtiness of both parties, and the raids of the Muslim pirates of Fraxinetum, of for which Otto held Abderramán responsible. The caliph also maintained relations with the Byzantines, especially because of his interest in countering Fatimid power, which also threatened them. The Byzantine delegation that visited the caliph in the In 949 he brought among his gifts an important copy of the botanical works of Dioscorides, unknown in the region. In addition, the Byzantines sent a monk to Córdoba to help found a school of translation from Greek to Latin and Arabic, at the request of the caliph. The Andalusians also maintained contact with distant Crete, where a Muslim dynasty of Iberian origin reigned until 961 and for one hundred and thirty-four years.

Death

He died in Medina Azahara on October 15, 961, at the age of seventy-three, after a reign of fifty years, six months and two days. His body was transferred to the rawda of the Alcázar of Córdoba, where he was buried, like all the emirs and later the Umayyad caliphs. He was succeeded by his son Alhakén II, who was forty-six years old at the time.

His main achievement was the unification and pacification of the Andalusian territories, which he once again submitted to the Cordovan authority. With a skilful combination of violence and magnanimity, he managed to subdue the various rebels who had challenged the authority of his predecessors In the long run, however, Abderramán's efforts were in vain: the caliphate he founded was abolished in 1031 and the Umayyads practically disappeared from al-Andalus. His work of territorial unification was also later thwarted by the fragmentation of the area in the following century in taifa kingdoms. This, in turn, put an end to the defensive achievements of Abderramán, which had made it possible to considerably slow down the Christian advance on the peninsula. On the other hand, the inclusion of abundant contingents berbers among the forces of the caliphate, which was started by Abderrahman and continued by his successors, was of great importance in the internal struggles during the subsequent crisis of the E status.

Achievements

Interior of the Mosque of Córdoba.

Abderramán III not only made Córdoba the nerve center of a new Muslim empire in the West, but also made it the main city of Western Europe, rivaling for a century with Baghdad and Constantinople, the capitals of the Abbasid Caliphate and the Byzantine Empire, respectively, in power, prestige, splendor, and culture. According to Arab sources, under his government, the city reached one million inhabitants (probably an exaggerated figure between 150,000 and 200,000 inhabitants, which made it the most populous city in Europe), which had 1,600 mosques, 300,000 homes, eighty thousand shops and innumerable public baths.

The Umayyad caliph was also a great promoter of culture: he endowed Córdoba with nearly seventy libraries, founded a university, a medical school and another for translators from Greek and Hebrew into Arabic. He had the Mosque of Córdoba enlarged, rebuilding the minaret, and ordered the construction of the extraordinary palatine city of Medina Azahara, of which he made his residence until his death.