Islamahmadia Spain Guide

Islamahmadia Spain Guide

 Spain is the third most popular tourist country in the world, and its not hard to see why. Every region is Spain has it's own flavour and you can find out about it all here!

At 504,782 km2 (194,897 sq mi), Spain is the world's 51st-largest country. It is some 47,000 km2 (18,000 sq mi) smaller than France and 81,000 km2 (31,000 sq mi) larger than the U.S. state of California. The Teide (Tenerife, Canary Islands) is the highest peak of Spain and the third largest volcano in the world from its base.

Early in the eighth century, armies from North Africa began probing the Visigothic defenses of Spain and ultimately they initiated the Moorish epoch that would last for centuries.

In 711 Tariq ibn Ziyad, a Berber governor of Tangier, crossed into Spain with an army of 12,000 (landing at a promontory that was later named, in his honor, Jabal Tariq, or Mount Tariq, from which the name, Gibraltar, is derived). They came at the invitation of a Visigothic clan to assist it in rising against King Roderic. Roderic died in battle, and Spain was left without a leader. Tariq returned to Morocco, but the next year (712) Musa ibn Nusair, the Muslim governor in North Africa, led the best of his Arab troops to Spain with the intention of staying. In three years he had subdued all but the mountainous region in the extreme north and had initiated forays into France, which were stemmed at Poitiers in 732.

Al Andalus, as Islamic Spain was called, was organized under the civil and religious leadership of the caliph of Damascus. Governors in Spain were generally Syrians, whose political frame of reference was deeply influenced by Byzantine practices.

In 929 Abd al Rahman III (r. 912-61), who was half European-- as were many of the ruling caste, elevated the amirate to the status of a caliphate. This action cut Spain's last ties with Baghdad and established that thereafter Al Andalus's rulers would enjoy complete religious and political sovereignty.

When Hisham II, grandson of Abd al Rahman, inherited the throne in 976 at age twelve, the royal vizier, Ibn Abi Amir (known as Al Mansur), became regent (981-1002) and established himself as virtual dictator. For the next twenty-six years, the caliph was no more than a figurehead, and Al Mansur was the actual ruler. Al Mansur wanted the caliphate to symbolize the ideal of religious and political unity as insurance against any renewal of civil strife. Notwithstanding his employment of Christian mercenaries, Al Mansur preached jihad, or holy war, against the Christian states on the frontier, undertaking annual summer campaigns against them, which served not only to unite Spanish Muslims in a common cause but also to extend temporary Muslim control in the north.

The caliphate of Cordoba did not long survive Al Mansur's dictatorship. Rival claimants to the throne, local aristocrats, and army commanders who staked out taifas (sing., taifa), or independent regional city-states, tore the caliphate apart. Some taifas, such as Seville (Spanish, Sevilla), Granada, Valencia, and Zaragoza, became strong amirates, but all faced frequent political upheavals, war among themselves, and long-term accommodations to emerging Christian states.

Peaceful relations among Arabs, Berbers, and Spanish converts to Islam were not easily maintained. To hold together such a heterogeneous population, Spanish Islam stressed ethics and legalism. Pressure from the puritanical Berbers also led to crackdowns on Mozarabs (name for Christians in Al Andalus: literally, Arab-like) and Jews.