Mozarabs

right|thumb|260x260px|Mozarabic church of [[Santiago de Peñalba ]]

The Mozarabs (from ), or more precisely Andalusi Christians, were the Christians of al-Andalus, or the territories of Iberia under Muslim rule from 711 to 1492. Following the Umayyad conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania, the Christian population of much of Iberia came under Muslim control.

Initially, the vast majority of Mozarabs kept Christianity and their dialects descended from Latin. Gradually, the population converted to Islam—an estimated 50% by the year 951—and was influenced, in varying degrees, by Arab customs and knowledge, and sometimes acquired greater social status in doing so. The local Romance vernaculars, with an important contribution of Arabic and spoken by Christians and Muslims alike, are referred to as Andalusi Romance (also called Mozarabic language). Mozarabs were mostly Catholics of the Visigothic or Mozarabic Rite. Due to Sharia and fiqh being confessional and only applying to Muslims, the Christians paid the jizya tax, the only relevant Islamic law obligation, and kept Roman-derived, Visigothic-influenced civil law.

Most of the Mozarabs were descendants of local Christians and were primarily speakers of Romance varieties under Islamic rule. They also included those members of the former Visigothic ruling elite who did not convert to Islam or emigrate northwards after the Muslim conquest. Spanish Christians initially portrayed Muslims primarily as military or political enemies, but with time, Islam came to be seen as a religion and not merely a threat. Spanish Christians sought to discourage apostasy from Christianity and to defend Christian beliefs, but they increasingly became connected to the dar al-Islam (land of Islam), through shared culture, language, and regular interaction.

A few were Arab and Berber Christians coupled with Muslim converts to Christianity who, as Arabic speakers, felt at home among the original Mozarabs. A prominent example of a Muslim who became a Mozarab by embracing Christianity is the Andalusi rebel and anti-Umayyad military leader, Umar ibn Hafsun. The Mozarabs of Muslim origin were descendants of those Muslims who converted to Christianity following the conquest of Toledo, and perhaps also following the expeditions of King Alfonso I of Aragon. These Mozarabs of Muslim origin who converted en masse at the end of the 11th century, many of them Muladí (ethnic Iberians previously converted to Islam), are distinct from the Mudéjars and Moriscos who converted gradually to Christianity between the 12th and 17th centuries.

Separate Mozarab enclaves were located in the large Muslim cities, especially Toledo, Córdoba, Zaragoza, and Seville.

Name

Mozarab ( ; ; ; from ) is first documented in Christian sources from the 11th century; the term Mozarab was not used by Muslims to describe Christians. for Abd ar-Rahman III, undertook various diplomatic missions in Germania and Byzantium, and was rewarded with the bishopric of Elvira (present-day Granada). Furthermore, in 1064, Emir Al-Muqtadir of Zaragoza sent Paternus, the Mozarabic bishop of Tortosa, as an envoy to king Ferdinand I of León in Santiago de Compostela, while the Christian Abu Umar ibn Gundisalvus, a Saqaliba (a Slav), served the same taifa ruler as the Wazir (Vizier, or the equivalent to prime minister).

Conversion to Islam was encouraged by the Umayyad caliphs and emirs of Córdoba. Many Mozarabs converted to Islam to avoid the heavy jizyah tax which they were subjected to as dhimmi. Conversion to Islam also opened up new horizons to the Mozarabs, alleviated their social position, ensured better living conditions, and broadened scope for more technically skilled and advanced work. Apostasy, however, for one who had been raised as a Muslim or had embraced Islam, was a crime punishable by death.

left|thumb|190px|León Antiphonary Folio (11th-century), [[León, Spain|León Cathedral]]

Until the mid-9th century, relations between Muslims and the majority Christian population of Al-Andalus, were relatively cordial. Christian resistance to the first wave of Muslim conquerors was unsuccessful. In Murcia, a single surviving capitulation document must stand for many such agreements to render tribute in exchange for the protection of traditional liberties; in it, Theodomirus (Todmir in Arabic), Visigothic count of Orihuela, agrees to recognize Abd al-Aziz as overlord and to pay tribute consisting of a yearly cash payment supplemented with specific agricultural products. In exchange, Theodomir received Abd al-Aziz' promise to respect both his property and his jurisdiction in the province of Murcia.

The expansion of the Caliphate had come primarily through conversion and absorption, and only very secondarily through immigration. The remaining Mozarab community shrank into an increasingly fossilized remnant.

Relatively large numbers of Mozarab communities did, however, continue to exist up to the end of the taifa kingdoms; there were several parishes in Toledo when the Christians occupied the city in 1085, and abundant documentation in Arabic on the Mozarabs of this city is preserved. An apparently still significant Mozarab group, which is the subject of a number of passages in the Arabic chronicles dealing with El Cid's dominion over Valencia, was also to be found there during this same period. Similarly, the memoirs of the emir of Granada clearly indicate the existence of a relatively large rural Christian population in some parts of the Málaga region towards the end of the 11th century. Until the reconquest of Seville by the Christians in 1248, a Mozarab community existed there, though in the course of the 12th century Almoravid persecution had forced many Mozarabs in Al-Andalus to flee northward.

Restrictions

left|thumb|190px|Mozarab mural painting from [[San Baudelio de Berlanga, now in the Prado Museum]]

Christians did not enjoy equal rights under Islamic rule, and their original guarantees, at first fairly broad, steadily diminished. They were still allowed to practice their own religion in private, but found their cultural autonomy increasingly reduced. Mozarabs inevitably lost more and more status, but they long maintained their dignity and the integrity of their culture, and they never lost personal and cultural contact with the Christian world.

In the generations that followed the conquest, Muslim rulers promulgated new statutes clearly disadvantageous to dhimmi. The construction of new churches and the sounding of church bells were eventually forbidden. But when Eulogius of Córdoba recorded the martyrology of the Martyrs of Córdoba during the decade after 850, it was apparent that at least four Christian basilicas remained in the city, including the church of Saint Acisclus that had sheltered the only holdouts in 711, and nine monasteries and convents in the city and its environs; nevertheless, their existence soon became precarious.

It is supposed that the Mozarabs were tolerated as dhimmi and valued taxpayers, and no Mozarab was condemned to death until the formation of the party led by the Christian leaders Eulogius (beheaded in 859) and Alvaro of Córdoba, whose intense faith led them to seek martyrdom by insulting Muhammad, and criticizing Islam. The Arabization of the Christians was opposed by Eulogius himself, who called for a more purely Christian culture stripped of Moorish influences. To this end, he led a revolt of the Mozarabs at Córdoba in which Christians martyred themselves to protest against Muslim rule.

However, Kenneth Baxter Wolf Ordination of the clergy ultimately drifted far from canonical norms, breaking apostolic succession, and various Muslim sources claim that concubinage and fornication among the clergy was extremely widespread.

Some Christian authorities (Álvaro and Eulogius of Córdoba) were scandalized at the treatment of Christians, and began encouraging the public declarations of the faith as a way to reinforce the faith of the Christian community and protest the Islamic laws that Christians saw as unjust. Eulogius composed tractates and martyrologies for Christians during this time.

The forty-eight Christians (mostly monks) known as the Martyrs of Córdoba were martyred between the years 850 and 859, being decapitated for publicly proclaiming their Christian beliefs. Dhimmi (non-Muslims living under Muslim rule) were not allowed to speak of their faith to Muslims under penalty of death.

Wolf points out that it is important to distinguish between the motivations of the individual martyrs, and those of Eulogius and Alvarus in writing the Memoriale. Jessica A. Coope says that while it would be wrong to ascribe a single motive to all forty-eight, she suggests that it reflects a protest against the process of assimilation. They demonstrated a determination to assert Christian identity.

The Mozarab population was badly affected by the hardening of relations between the Christians and the Muslims during the Almoravid period. In 1099, the people of Granada, by order of the Almoravid emir, Yusuf ibn Tashfin, acting on the advice of his Ulema, destroyed the main Mozarab church of the Christian community.

The Mozarabs remained apart from the influence of French Catholic religious orders, such as the Cistercians – highly influential in northern Christian Iberia, and conserved in their masses the Visigothic rite, also known as the Mozarabic Rite. The Christian kingdoms of the north, though, changed to the Latin liturgical rites and appointed northerners as bishops for the reconquered sees. Nowadays, the Mozarabic Rite is allowed by a papal privilege at the Mozarab Chapel of the Cathedral of Toledo, where it is held daily. The Poor Clare church in Madrid, La Inmaculada y San Pascual, also holds weekly Mozarabic masses. A Mozarab brotherhood is still active in Toledo. Since Toledo was the most deeply rooted centre where they remained firm, the Gothic rite was identified and came to be known as the "Toledan rite".

In 1080, Pope Gregory VII called the council of Burgos, where it was agreed to unify the Latin liturgical rite in all Christian lands. In 1085, Toledo was reconquered and there was a subsequent attempt to reintroduce the ecumenical standards of Rome. The reaction of the Toledan people was such that the king refused to implement it, and in 1101 enacted the "Fuero (Code of laws) of the Mozarabs", which awarded them privileges. He specified that it applied only to the Castilians, Mozarabs, and Franks of the city.

During both his first marriage to Agnes of Aquitaine and his second marriage to Constance of Burgundy, both of whom were devout Catholics, King Alfonso VI of Castile was under constant pressure to eradicate the Mozarabic Rite. A popular legend states that Alfonso VI submitted the Mozarab liturgy and its Roman counterpart to ordeal by fire, putting the fix in for the Catholic rite. Hence, the Mozarab liturgy was abolished in 1086. The Mozarabic Chapel in the Cathedral of Toledo still uses the Mozarabic Rite and music.

In 1126, a great number of Mozarabs were expelled to North Africa by the Almoravids. Other Mozarabs fled to Northern Iberia. This constituted the end of the Mozarabic culture in Al-Andalus. For a while, both in North Africa and in Northern Iberia, the Mozarabs managed to maintain their own separate cultural identity for generations. Many of the North Africans returned to their recently freed former homelands as the Reconquista unfolded.

Over the course of the 12th and 13th centuries, there unrolled a steady process of the impoverishment of Mozarab cultivators, as more and more land came under control of magnates and ecclesiastical corporations. The latter, under the influence of the Benedictine bishop of Cluny Bernard, and the Archbishop of Toledo Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, who was himself the principal buyer of Mozarab property in the early 13th century fomented a segregationalist policy under the cloak of religious nationalism. Jiménez de Rada's bias is symbolized in his coining of the semi-erudite etymology of the word Mozarab from Mixti Arabi, connoting the contamination of this group by overexposure to infidel customs, if not by migration.

At Toledo, King Alfonso VI of Castile did not recognize the Mozarabs as a separate legal community, and thus accentuated a steady decline which led to the complete absorption of the Mozarabs by the general community by the end of the 15th century. As a result, the Mozarabic culture had been practically lost. Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, aware of the Mozarabic liturgy historical value and liturgical richness, undertook the task of guaranteeing its continuation, and to this end gathered all the codices and texts to be found in the city. After they had been carefully studied by specialists, they were classified and in 1502 the Missal and Breviary were printed. They revitalized the faith and a chapel was instituted at the cathedral, with its own priests which still exists today.

The Mozarab Missal of Silos is the oldest Western manuscript on paper, written in the 11th century. The Mozarab community in Toledo continues to thrive to this day. It is made of 1,300 families whose genealogies can be traced back to the ancient Mozarabs.

Debates on population

There is a long-running debate about how many of the population of Al-Andalus were Mozarabs. Some maintain that the Mozarabs were part of a historical continuum of Latinized Christians that represented the majority of the population of Al-Andalus, while others argue that the Christian population was relatively small in the areas under Muslim rule. The former camp bases their position on the work of Francisco Javier Simonet, whose works Glosario de voces ibéricas y latinas usadas entre los mozárabes (1888) and Historia de los mozárabes de España supported the idea that the indigenous Christian community of Al-Andalus formed the majority of the population. Other historians argue that the work of Simonet and those who preceded him in studying this question did not use sources properly, and that there is no historical evidence that can be used to make a definitive pronouncement on the ethnic composition of Al-Andalus society. According to scholar Josephine Labanyi, at the end of the 11th century there were about 75,000 Christians in the Emirate of Granada or roughly 15% of the population of Islamic Iberia.

Literature

The literature of the Mozarabs is bilingual in Latin and Arabic. Mozarabs were originally those Christians living under Islamic rule following their own Mozarabic rite. Many continued to live under Christian rule while keeping their distinctive rite down to the 14th century. The switch from a predominantly Latinate culture to an Arabic one was already well underway in the mid-9th century. The use of Arabic by Mozarabs rapidly declined in the late 13th century.

Among the Latin works of early Mozarabic culture, historiography is especially important, since it constitutes the earliest record from al-Andalus of the conquest period. There are two main works, the Chronicle of 741 and the Chronicle of 754.

At the height of the Córdoban martyrs' movement (850–859), Albarus of Córdoba wrote a treatise in Latin, Indiculus luminosus, defending the martyrs and decrying the movement towards Arabic among his fellow Mozarabs. A generation later, Ḥafṣ ibn Albar al-Qūtī, finished a rhymed verse translation of the Psalms from the Latin Vulgate in 889. Although it survives in only one manuscript, it was a popular text and is quoted by Muslim and Jewish authors. Ḥafṣ also wrote a book of Christian answers to Muslim questions about their faith called The Book of the Fifty-Seven Questions. It is lost, but there are excerpts in the work of al-Qurṭubī, who praises Ḥafṣ' command of Arabic as the best among the Mozarabs. The 11th-century writer Ibn Gabirol also quotes from a lost work of Ḥafṣ al-Qūtī.

Name

Restrictions

Debates on population

Literature

See also

Notes

References

Further reading