11/11/2020

In Folha, the golden age of Islamic culture in Europe.

Representação de Tárique, que em 711 comandou a conquista da Península Ibérica/ Wikimedia commons

Reproduction of Marcelo Viana's column in Folha de S.Paulo.

At the turn of the year 1000, the Iberian Peninsula was the most vibrant and advanced region of Europe, an outpost of the distant East at the westernmost tip of the continent.

Almost three centuries earlier, in 711, Tariq, the Muslim governor of present-day Tunisia, landed on the southern coast with a small Arab and Berber army. The Visigothic monarchy fell: King Roderic died at the Battle of Guadalete, and within five years, the invaders occupied the peninsula. The ancient Roman Hispania became al-Andalus, a province of the empire ruled by the successors of the Prophet Muhammad, the Umayyad caliphs of Damascus.

The Christian reaction was swift. In 722, Chief Pelagius defeated a Muslim contingent at the Battle of Covadonga, which would be considered the beginning of the Reconquista and the founding act of the Christian kingdom of Asturias. From it would emerge Galicia, León, and later Castile and Portugal. In the northeast of the peninsula, Aragon, Navarre, and Barcelona were also under the influence of the Frankish kingdom.

In 750, a coup d'état replaced the Umayyads with the Abbasids, who transferred the seat of the caliphate to Baghdad. All members of the Umayyad family were killed, except for one: Prince Abd al-Rahman crossed the 5,000 km between Syria and Morocco, and in 756 arrived in al-Andalus, which he transformed into an emirate independent of the Abbasid caliphate.

In 929, his descendant Abd al-Rahman III proclaimed himself caliph, equal to the ruler of Baghdad. His capital, Córdoba, was the most prosperous city in Europe, rivaling Constantinople and Baghdad in the brilliance of its science, culture, and art. The construction of the mosque (now a cathedral) of Córdoba, a fusion of Islamic and Christian cultures, dates from his reign.

By the end of that century, al-Andalus occupied more than two-thirds of the Peninsula, and the caliph held prominence among the monarchs of the region, being called upon to arbitrate disputes between the Christian kingdoms. But political disputes and the ineptitude of some caliphs precipitated the fall of the regime, which officially ceased to exist in 1031. Al-Andalus entered the period of the Taifa kingdoms, small domains that warred amongst themselves and against the Christian kingdoms to the north.

To read the full text, visit the newspaper's website.