We are inheritors of a murdered land. We stand on foundations of bones set in soil drenched in blood. When Maya people speak out against the actions of our ancestors, all you need to do is open a history book to know that they speak the truth about our sins.
- Saleh ibn Latif al-Jatumali, "Understanding the Hidden History of Cawania," 1952
~
Excerpt: 14: The Century That Changed Everything - Christian Saldmare, Dragon's Hill Press, AD 2002
It was a pure twist of fortune that Quwaniyyah - the future Cawania - drew the attention of Andalusian military adventurism rather than Anawak.
In truth, Anawak had advantages over Quwaniyyah as a place Andalusians would want to adventure for. Its people were more advanced, its geography better for farming and its cities more developed. And yet, it is this development that made it inaccessible to Andalusian conquerors: Unlike in Quwaniyyah, the complex political situation and rising of powers in Anawak resulted in the Muslims finding allies and converts easily. With parties like the Totonac and Otomi powers welcoming Andalusi, Sudani and Berber visitors and converting readily to Islam, there was no need to wage a
jihad against them.
Quwaniyyah was a more divided polity. Muslim explorers arrived at a time when Maya society was fractured and in a period of terminal decline, with the city-state of Mani enjoying only a hegemony over the other Mayan cities rather than an actual empire - hegemony which rapidly declined as disease swept the peninsula. The states of the peninsula were smaller, weaker and more spread out. While one adventurer and a group of
kishafa could make little impact in Anawak, it was easier in a depleted Quwaniyyah. Moreover, no Maya rulers were in a hurry to convert to Islam, possibly due to the importance of traditional beliefs in maintaining their legitimacy. While Andalusian explorers in Anawak found allies willing to embrace Islam for the sake of protection against plague and the Tepanecs, those in Quwaniyyah found chilly receptions and the occasional bloody conflict with the locals.
It was this division, coupled with the poor reception of Islam, which opened the door to Hasan the Majestic, an obscure figure variously lionized as a righteous man of faith and demonized as an avaricious mercenary leader. Whatever the true story is, Hasan gave the Hizamids their foothold in Quwaniyyah by overthrowing the ruling class of the important port city of Zama.
The War of Navarrese Succession left the threat of conflict with France looming over the Hizamids should future raids along the Way of Saint James go awry. Seeing little reason to incur the wrath of Christendom,
hajib Abd ar-Rahman the Seafarer shifted his focus to the new Wilayah of Al-Quwaniyyah, deputizing the aging Hasan and sending over summer troops in an official capacity. It is these troops who provided the muscle for the Hizamid conquest of the peninsula. The conquest was justified simply as
jihad against pagans: In the minds of the
mujahidin, the Maya had heard the word of the Prophet and rejected it, and as such, war was fair game.
*
The challenge in any occupation of Quwaniyyah is that, in terms of Eastern-style farming, the peninsula provides little. Quwaniyyah is overwhelmingly a rugged landscape of karst, with little surface water and thin topsoil. This situation is particularly severe in the north of the peninsula. Water mainly comes in the form of sinkholes called
zonot - from the Mayan
ts'onot.[1]
The Maya adapted to this harsh landscape through a range of techniques, from exploitation of some zonots (both for ritual and farming purposes) to canal and reservoir-building to particularly the use of slash-and-burn farming techniques. These were relatively unfamiliar to Andalusi and Berber arrivals, most of them accustomed to post-Roman irrigation and farming techniques. Many members of Hasan's entourage either died of starvation or returned to Mawana or Al-Andalus in the early years simply because they didn't know how to grow enough food to survive, and the depletion of the Maya population by disease and war left few people willing to help them. Still more were killed in periodic raids from other Maya city-states, many of whom viewed the Muslims as what they were: Invaders out to destroy them.
Over time, however, some native allies came to side with Hasan, forming an underclass of labourers practicing traditional Mayan farming techniques. These farmers brought mahiz[2] into regular consumption for the newcomers, who adopted a number of Maya dietary practices.
The difficult terrain made war all the more challenging, not only in terms of feeding an army, but in terms of defeating the Maya.
On paper, the Andalusians had prohibitive military advantages: Sail, steel and horses. Andalusian troops carried crossbows, rode powerful steeds and could ship men from abroad rapidly to attack Mayan ports without ever having to cross the distance between cities. It was for this reason that coastal Maya cities were the primary targets of
jihad. The Maya, by contrast, mainly used flint-tipped or obsidian-edged weapons and equipped cotton-padded armour and wood or hide shields. Howewever, what they lacked in technical sophistication, they made up for in discipline and craftiness. The Maya relied on ambushes to catch surprised Muslim war parties, mainly seeking to take captives, some of whom would be sacrificed. Against horses, they took to setting stake-lined pit traps - tactics which neutralized the advantage of mounted
kishafa by killing their horses.
The deciding factor, however was again disease. By 1400, smallpox and typhus had swept through the region, killing more than half the population of virtually every city in Quwaniyyah. Still more died from other diseases, leading to depopulation on a scale even more dramatic than that which took place in Anawak. Between disease, warfare and mistreatment by Muslim conquerors, it's estimated that 95% of the indigenous people of northern Quwaniyyah were killed, with the numbers somewhat less in the southern area.
*
The first targets of the concerted Hizamid
jihad in Quwaniyyah were key ports. By 1395, Hasan and his men had conquered the northeastern city of Ekab, leaving much of the city intact. But the real prize on the east coast was the southeastern city-state of Chactemal, which controlled an area of arable land more suited to Andalusian-style agriculture. Prior to the city's conquest, the Hizamid enclaves in Quwaniyyah depended on food imports from Mawana and a newly-established farming settlement on the southern coast of Al-Gattas.[3]
Chactemal proved to be a challenging settlement to crack, and an attack in 1398 saw Hasan and an army of
kishafa repulsed by the Maya defenders. Hasan himself was wounded in the failed offensive and retired to the Kaledats. He was replaced as
wali by his most trusted lieutenant, Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Dani, who made another attempt on Chactemal in the summer of 1399. This attack never made it within sight of the city: Al-Dani made the foolish decision to march to Chactemal by land, and his volunteers bumbled into a series of Maya pit traps. Most of the attacking force was subsequently imprisoned and enslaved, and Al-Dani himself was shipped off to Chactemal and sacrificed.
The humiliating failure saw a brief lull in the Andalusian campaigns, and there was some talk of abandoning Quwaniyyah altogether. However, Abd ar-Rahman eventually entrusted Al-Dani's successor - Abu Bakr ibn Suleyman al-Gharnati, a reliable man who had fought in the War of the Navarrese Succession as an infantryman - with command of a force of
mujahidin and a flotilla of ships, inviting him to avenge the defeat at Chactemal.
In truth, Abu Bakr's attack on Chactemal succeeded as much due to the toll of epidemic disease as due to tactics. Abu Bakr attacked by sea, landing four scout boats just before dawn and sending men to root out Mayan pit traps around the city. When the scouts returned, Abu Bakr sent his ships in and brought his mostly-Berber cavalry to bear with impunity, avoiding the Mayan defenses with aplomb and attacking the city in a short siege. The depleted Maya held the attackers off for about a month before the city fell.[4]
Chactemal - renamed Madinat al-Jatumal by Abu Bakr - proved to be a key base for the conquest of Quwaniyyah, controlling an area of wetter land along a river, where farming was possible. Labourers were imported and paid in Mayan silver to drain mangrove swamps along the coast, preparing the land for growing crops like mahiz and rice - and, more grimly, Mayan prisoners and survivors were enslaved and put to work doing the same. On the backs of the forced labour of these victims, Al-Jatumal would rapidly become one of the most important Andalusian cities in Quwaniyyah, second in importance to Zama.
As the campaign pressed on, Hizamid attention would primarily fall along the coast, where ships could easily attack. A turning point, however, came in 1407, when the Maya ruler (the
Halach Uinik) of Chichen Itza became the first and most important local ruler to convert to Islam. While Chichen Itza was in decline at the time and no longer the most important city in the area, it remained a notable regional centre, and the ruling dynasty carried a great deal of prestige. His conversion, supported by the Hizamids, saw Muslim efforts in the peninsula gain an important ally in the hitherto-impenetrable inland areas of the peninsula.
It would take decades for
mujahidin to complete the conquest of Quwaniyyah and the isthmian areas to its south. It remains an incredible point of controversy to this day: It is a stark example of Hizamid political opportunism, utilizing a war of conquest and mass murder as a tool to legitimize and strengthen the position of Abd ar-Rahman the Seafarer at a time when it would have been politically dangerous to raid Christian lands in Europe.[5] While Mawana was the first imperial project for the Hizamids, Quwaniyyah was the bloodiest and most complete - a terrifying evolution of Andalusian policy towards the Gharb al-Aqsa, where the mere ambition for trade was subsumed by the ambition of mercenary soldiers, the political whimsy of Muslim rulers and the overwhelming ethnoreligious chauvinism weaponized against the Maya and their culture. It is the best-documented incidence of the brutal toll of epidemic diseases being added to by brutal war and conquest, economic exploitation of the natives and the total disruption of a culture's way of life.[6]
[1] Cenotes.
[2] Maize.
[3] Cuba.
[4] Chactemal - or Chetumal - sits on the border between Belize and the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.
[5] Abd ar-Rahman, Hasan and their successors have basically the reputation of Cortes.
[6] I am always uncomfortable writing about this kind of subject matter here, but while the Andalusians are trading where they can, in the Yucatan things go differently for political reasons - and it spirals into a Cortes-like brutal conquest. Whitewashing the ugliest parts of colonial and alt-post-Columbian history would do them a disservice, but I also wanted to make it absolutely clear that the actions being depicted here are atrocities and should not be lionized.
Summary:
1393: Seeking an alternative to raiding Santiago and potentially annoying France again, Abd ar-Rahman the Seafarer shifts the annual summer jihad to Quwaniyyah.
1394: Andalusian colonists begin to settle the south coast of Al-Gattas.
1402: The Maya city-state of Chactemal falls to the third in a series of Andalusian attacks. Many of the surviving Maya are enslaved and put to work alongside new colonists draining mangrove swamps for farmland.
1407: The Halach Uinik of Chichen Itza becomes the first and most important Maya ruler to convert to Islam, giving the Andalusians of Quwaniyyah a key inroad into the peninsular interior.
