Excerpt: First Contact: Muslim Explorers in the Farthest West and the Sudan - Salaheddine Altunisi, Falconbird Press, AD 1999
6
The First Monster
While word had begun to filter back to Isbili about the religious practices of the indigenous people of the Algarves, by and large, efforts there were not led by organized government programs, but by individuals with at best sponsorships.
The gap in technical sophistication between Andalusia and Maghrib on one side and the Farthest West on the other was vast - but not insurmountable. While peoples like the Maya and Nahua did not have steel or metal weapons, they were skilled archers, and even flint-tipped arrows could kill if they struck home. But there was also the issue of skepticism. Andalusian religious personages had been hearing news of contacts with "polytheists" from the Sudan for years without issuing blanket
jihad against them.
On a broad spectrum, Western Islamic reaction to human sacrifice was inconsistent and had more to do with the actions taken on opportunity than on broad ideological or religious dogma. For instance, on Ajinit in the Kaledats, there are reports that native Island Berbers were killed when it was alleged that they had thrown children off a cliff and into the sea as part of a ritual for the summer solstice. By contrast, explorers deep in the Sudan would occasionally come back with tall tales about sacrifice and cannibalism, most of which went ignored (and none of which have been substantiated by history.) Most often, these sorts of tales were spun for the sake of sensationalism, or as a means of asserting the superiority of the Muslim over the "uncivilized" peoples they met.
There is ample evidence that the complex societies of the Algarves - at least the Nahua and the Maya - did engage in human sacrifice. However, many took these stories as tall tales for some time. Even those who believed them tended to err on the side of jurists like Al-Hafiz of Anaza: Muslims were obliged to fight against those indigenous peoples who attempted to do them harm, but to deal fairly with those who did not. Most Muslims who visited the Farthest West did so with the expectation of trade, at least with the complex civilizations of Kuwunah and Anawak.
Sojourns in the Farthest West, however, were hardly idyllic, and Muslim visitors were involved in no shortage of bloody incidents beyond the incalculable death toll caused by the diseases they brought and spread. The first of these atrocities is, famously, the conquest of Qisqayyah.
When Al-Mustakshif first discovered the island in 1348, Qisqayyah was divided into roughly seven[1] chiefdoms, each ruled by a
kashika.[2] The largest and most powerful of these chiefdoms was Mawana,[3] the main one on the island. At the time Al-Mustakshif arrived, this chiefdom was allied with the chiefdom of Kaishkimu,[4] taking up the southeastern jut of the island, through the marriage of the Mawana
kashika Maniquatesh[5] to Samani, daughter of the Kaishkimu
kashika Aymaku.
Al-Mustakshif's stop there had involved some basic trade contacts with the northernmost of the native people - the island was largely ruled by the Taino people, but minorities such as the Ciguayo people were present as well. He attempted to establish a trading post called Makzan al-Jamal at the northwesternmost chiefdom, apparently called Marien. However, the explorers evidently began to squabble with the natives. Relations broke down when one of Al-Mustakshif's crew kidnapped three native women to take as concubines. The Taino responded by attacking the collection of half-finished outbuildings, destroying them and killing several of Al-Mustakshif's crew. Al-Mustakshif himself took an arrow to the shoulder but survived, and he and his crew fled the island and returned home after watering at a smaller island to the north.
Success on the island began in 1351, when two ships arrived from Makzan al-Husayn carrying supplies and interpreters. These crews, led by Abu Bakr ibn Mutarrif al-Anzi, landed in a shallow harbour and made contact with
kashika Maniquatesh of the Mawana. This contact went more smoothly, and the trading post of Makzan as-Salih was established, though it would not prove to be a permanent location.
The island of Qisqayyah grows progressively more humid the further inland you go, with arid zones in the south-central region. The "sweet spot" for Andalusi explorers was seen as the mouth of the Wadi al-Hisad,[6] where the Taino grew plots of qasabi. When a storm damaged Makzan as-Salih in 1352, Al-Anzi - by then assigned by the trade governor in the Kaledats to oversee trade with the Taino - simply moved the settlement to the mouth of the Hisad, re-establishing it as the Makzan al-Hisad. The successor to this settlement - Hisadah - is today the second-oldest Muslim-founded settlement in the Farthest West.[7]
A new group of settlers from the east arrived in 1355 - several dozen families, mostly poor people from the cities who had come in search of gold, guarded by roughly 250 Sanhaja
kishafa and their horses, some of them bringing wives and children. This group was led by Mahmud ibn Asafu and consisted mainly of defectors from the Blue Army. At the time, it was typical of the Asmarids of the Maghreb to pay off members of the Blue Army with the promise of work guarding trade ships, and many
kishafa in this period were former Blue Army men looking for money in a world where their traditional camel trade routes were ailing. Mahmud and his men arrived with a large chunk of money behind them, with promises that they would be able to make a profit trading gold.
Relations with the Taino had largely been peaceful to that point, with Al-Anzi making a point to try and befriend Maniquatesh. Trade between the two sides had been reasonably brisk, with the Muslims steadily collecting gold artifacts at a smaller scale. However, some in the Makzan insisted that more gold was to be found, and occasional scuffled with the natives cost the lives of a few traders, leading some to argue that the alliance with the Mawana and the Kaishkimu was not being honoured.
By 1356, a power struggle had begun between Mahmud and Al-Anzi. The
kishafa outnumbered the initial block of Andalusian settlers and had force of arms on their side. Mahmud felt the quantity of gold they had received from the Taino was not sufficient to pay his men to be there, nor worth leaving the Maghreb for. The feud came to a head in 1357, when Mahmud - against Al-Anzi's wishes - gathered most of the Berbers and went to Maniquatesh themselves. It's clear that his intent was to try and get more gold out of the Taino, but with no objective account of the meeting extant, it's been left to interpretation: Mahmud apologists claim he tried to ask Maniquatesh where gold could be found, while the more typical view is that he threatened Maniquatesh with violence if he did not provide the
kishafa with gold.
An infuriated Maniquatesh provided the Berbers with gold and sent them on their way. However, that night, the Tainos attacked the fort at Makzan al-Hisad and attempted to kill the
kishafa group. The attack saw about 30 people at the Makzan left dead. The Berbers retaliated swiftly, massacring hundreds of Taino and capturing Maniquatesh's wife Samani, whom Mahmud declared to be his concubine. Mahmud justified his retaliation later in a letter to the trade governor in the Kaledats, which has survived in large part. In it, he claims that "the
mushrikin violate their covenant with the Muslims, they make war upon us and conspire to strike down and slaughter those who know God, and what we have done to them is only what is appropriate."
A state of open war blossomed between the Taino and the small group of transplanted Sanhaja. While the Taino had the advantage of numbers and locality, however, disease was beginning to affect them, and the Sanhaja had the advantage of horses and superior weapons. They also had the advantage of increasing numbers of Al-Anzi's supporters on their side, many of them having lost family in the attack on the Makzan. Al-Anzi himself was ultimately killed in early 1357, apparently in another Taino attack.
The kidnapping of Samani infuriated her father, the
kashika of Kaishkimu, and brought two entire chiefdoms into conflict with the Berbers. But the arrival of another 100
kishafa in 1357 bolstered Mahmud's forces, and he was able to solidify an alliance with Maniquatesh's rivals in the northern chiefdom of Magua. Over the next year, Mahmud and his northern allies brutalized the southern and southeastern Taino, notoriously capturing Maniquatesh himself and beheading him in front of hundreds of his people. Those Taino he captured were released but forced to collect gold and resources for Mahmud and his men, or to work on the sugar plantations which had sprung up on the island, and the women were often taken as concubines and slaves; those who disobeyed were brutally punished and often killed. Muslims in the Makzan, by contrast, were treated as a prestigious ruling class and given slaves from among the locals.
The result of all of this was a foregone conclusion, leading to the establishment by 1358 of the so-called Emirate of Mawana on the southeastern part of the island, with Mahmud acknowledged as its tacit administrator; he acknowledged the Umayyad Caliph.
The campaign on Qisqayyah is considered one of the more brutal and disgraceful examples of Muslim-and-native contact. Between 1351 and 1358, more than 100,000 Taino died, some by war, others by mistreatment and execution at the hands of the
kishafa emirate. The land around the Makzan became a zone not unlike the illegal sugar plantations in the Mufajias, a grey area beyond the eye of the Caliph where unlawful sugar barons - and now gold barons - could ply their trade with a workforce of native tributaries.
Most of the Taino eventually came to pay tribute to Mahmud, who required that native peoples provide him with gold, slaves and other riches on a regular basis. Failure to provide would result in beheadings of men and enslavement of wives and daughters.[8] In the north, those Taino who had allied with Mahmud were allowed to go on with their lives. In the short term, this would result in gold flowing from the hands of rapidly-diminishing Taino and into the hands of the subjugators; the gold trade would be short-lived, though, not outlasting the century.
These factors and others would contribute to the rapid destruction of the native groups on Qisqayyah. In 1348, the island was likely home to as many as 600,000 people. By 1368, there would be less than 50,000 Taino left.[9]
[1] When Columbus showed up, there were five cacicazgos on Hispaniola. Butterflies here have created seven. There are two chiefdoms where Jaragua would be, plus a small one way to the north which has a lot of Ciguayo people living under its thumb.
[2] From the Taino
kasike, which lies at the root of the Spanish
cacique.
[3] Maguana.
[4] Higüey.
[5] His name is Maniquatex, but the letter X tends to be commonly transliterated as "sh" in Andalusi Arabic.
[6] Harvest River - the Ozama.
[7] Santo Domingo is just too good a location to pass up compared to the rest of Hispaniola. It's got a natural deepwater harbor, a more agreeable subhumid climate and access to a river.
[8] Some people are awful people. Mahmud al-Mawani is an awful person. The Andalusians and their mercenaries are not necessarily any better than the Spanish in some areas. The Tepanecs, Totonacs, Otomis and Maya, with their stone cities, webs of alliances and more complex social and military organizations, may be able to resist by force of arms. The Taino cannot.
[9] No matter what, at least some native peoples in the Americas were in for a bad time at the hands of bad actors like Mahmud. The Andalusians and Maghrebis are neither saints nor angels. Some of them are evil men. Not all of them are - but there are examples. Mahmud is an example of what I (and I suspect most) would consider to be an evil man.
SUMMARY:
1358: The rogue kishafa Mahmud ibn Asafu subjugates most of the Taino of Qisqayyah. The so-called Mawana Emirate emerges, nominally loyal to Isbili, built on the backs of Taino tributaries toiling in fear of the Berbers.
