Excerpt: The Most Unlikely Palm: How Medieval Andalus Survived and Thrived - Ibrahim Alquti, Falconbird Press, AD 2012
For someone of supposedly obscure origins, we know a surprising amount about the man known in Córdoban circles as Harun ibn Qays, sometimes known as al-Quti.[1]
The son of one Qays ibn Mus'ab, a local landholder along the south coast in the vicinity of Qadis, Harun claimed direct descent from Ilyan, Count of Sabta, the noble said to have provided the ships which ferried the party of Tariq ibn Ziyad to Gothic Iberia in the first place.[2] In fact it is unlikely that Harun's descent went back that far, and indeed it is likely that Harun's genealogy is only accurate back to about his grandfather's time. It had long been in vogue among
muwallad citizens of higher means to forge genealogies for themselves, and it would seem that ibn Qays was no stranger to that trend.
Most likely, Harun chose to make the genealogical tie to Ilyan for deliberate reasons. Whatever the historical truth is about Ilyan, histories dating from the ninth and tenth centuries had already begun to describe him as the Christian lord who had lent his boats to Tariq to make the arrival of the Muslims in Iberia possible. We know that ibn Qays was a man of relatively excellent education who was highly literate and exceptionally well-read. Scholarly consensus has drifted towards the notion that ibn Qays adopted the Ilyan al-Sabti narrative as a political move, positioning himself as the descendant of someone not only present before Islam, but who was reputed to have invited Islam in.
More concrete facts about ibn Qays are somewhat more clear. He seems to have been born in the late 1010s or thereabouts, spending much of his early life on his family's lands outside Qadis before travelling to Córdoba to pursue higher learning. He's believed to have come into his education there. However, things seem to have gone sour on him: A couple mentions of an individual of the same name appear in some of the more obscure chapters of
Palm of the West, referring to a man being judged in a dispute with a peer over some manner of theft.
Whatever the reality of the dispute was, the historical record suggests that ibn Qays was accused of stealing dinars from a colleague of Arabo-Andalusian descent, and that an order was handed down to detain. Joseph ibn Abram notes that ibn Qays then fled Córdoba in disgrace and was considered a fugitive
Some of ibn Qays' own writings exist in fragments; enough remains to determine that he took his treatment in Córdoba as an injustice, believing that he had been falsely accused by a jealous rival. In any case, he fled the city and seems to have gone into exile for a few years before resurfacing as a minor name involved in the petty disputes between some of the more prominent Arab and
muwallad families in Qadis. Eventually, though, he turned to a similar path to Umar ibn Hafsun in years prior, joining up with outlaws discontent with the treatment
muwalladun received at the hands of their Umayyad overlords.
Soon enough, ibn Qays - evidently a highly eloquent man with a swift mind and a noble bearing - rose to a leadership position among that band of rebels operating in the general vicinity of the southern reach of al-Andalus. These rebels were largely native conversos furious with their lot in al-Andalus, gradually began to pick up momentum.
In 1055, ibn Qays exploded onto the political scene when his band of
muwallad agitators sparked off an uprising in the town of Shaluqah,[3] not far outside Qadis. Ibn Qays proved to be highly potent at rallying disaffected
muwalladun to his cause, and his ranks swelled quickly, with the group able to mount a surprise raid on Qadis itself and capture the city, largely from within, given its exceptionally defensible position. It would become the revolt's power base in the years ahead.
Troubled as he was by infighting within the military and his own difficulties in asserting his primacy, Caliph Muhammad II was slow to respond, but was able to mount a summer campaign against ibn Qays in 1056, dispatching hired Berbers to attempt to break down Qadis. But the Berbers could not count on the same ability to capture the city from within so richly exploited by ibn Qays, and his group held the city over the course of the year, resupplying by ship and slowly expanding their influence northwest along the coast.
Part of the success of ibn Qays in the early going came from his refusal to repeat the mistake of the last truly serious
muwallad rebel. In the late 9th century, Umar ibn Hafsun - while more territorially successful than ibn Qays - had converted back to Christianity during the course of his reign. Ibn Qays did not, positioning himself as not only a native son but also as a devout Muslim. More than that, he seems to have arrived on the scene at just the right time to tap into the new wave of the
shu'ubiyya movement in al-Andalus, at a time when
muwalladun were seeing increasing roles in some corners of society but still yearning for equal treatment from the Arabo-Andalusian superminority.
More than that, he brought a strong personal charisma and a compelling story to the political scene, one which many native Muslims were likely to listen to. Positioning himself as a descendant of Ilyan of Sabta allowed him to argue that because it was his ancestors who brought the Muslims to al-Andalus, surely they were just as much the inheritors of the land as those whose ancestors came from beyond the shore. His argument was one of a strong local stake - that
muwalladun had a right to the same rights and treatment, if not better, than that received by Arabo-Andalusians, or even Arabo-Berbers. A powerful speaker with a tendency to play on the emotions of his listeners, ibn Qays seems to have used that narrative to effectively talk his way into ownership of a burgeoning
muwallad army.
Given all that, it is still unlikely that ibn Qays could have succeeded. His army consisted largely of an angry mob of
muwalladun, roughly organized into a sort of fledgling urban militia, and while they drilled with a few experienced officers and gained increasing confidence as time went on, they were not the equal of their opposition, whether it be the tribally-bound, highly-seasoned Berber clans of the Maghreb or the highly-trained
Saqaliba of the Royal Guard and the house guards of various rich families. While ibn Qays was a major inconvenience through the 1050s, he was nevertheless still an inconvenience, capable of expanding outside of Qadis into smaller towns and forts but not of mounting a serious campaign against Córdoba itself.
What he did successfully in the early years, though, was hold fortresses and tie up Córdoba's attention long enough for other pots to boil over. Another did so in 1058, when the ever-restive Ghomara Berbers centred in the Rif, still under the influence of Badis ibn Yusuf, began to agitate against Córdoba again.
Badis, a staunch rigorist, had been denouncing the Umayyad Caliphs since the 1040s as decadent and full of sin. While al-Muntasir had set back his movement significantly in 1047, the Ghomaras of the Banu Zejel continued to feud with the nearby Ifrinids and the Zenata clans. By the time of their resurgence, however, Badis had found a focal point: He aligned himself with another agitator, 'Ubayd Allah ibn Ali by name. This man, the son of Ali ibn Hammud,[4] was an Idrisid and a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) through Fatima, but like the rest of the Idrisid line he was fully Berber in his ways. Badis found in 'Ubayd Allah a man who agreed broadly with his rigorist theology, while 'Ubayd Allah found in Badis a man who insisted that he was morally and familially better suited to be caliph than any Umayyad.
In 1059, the
hajib of Córdoba, al-Azraq, fell gravely ill. The duties of
hajib fell to his nominal deputy, Wahb ibn Safyatuslaf,[5] a
Siqlabi of some talent but viewed with distrust by many at court. An uncertain Muhammad II continued to mount campaigns against both thorns in his side, managing to keep ibn Qays contained, but discontent at court continued to grow.
[1] The Goth.
[2] Julian, Count of Ceuta. This individual's history and even his identity are disputed, and there are a couple of different theories out there about him, but not much concrete. However, his historicity isn't important to Harun, who claims him as an ancestor in keeping with the fine Andalusi tradition of forging Gothic genealogies. It's sort of like how there may or may not have been a real Count Cassius from whom the Banu Qasi descended, or how Umar ibn Hafsun probably made up all the genealogy before his grandpa.
[3] Today's Sanlúcar de Barrameda.
[4] A real dude. 'Ubayd Allah is a Hammudid.
[5] "Son of Sviatoslav" - Wahb is a
Siqlabi of Rus' origin.
SUMMARY:
1055: A major Muladi revolt breaks out in Shaluqah. The mob, led by the charismatic and aggrieved Harun ibn Qays, seizes Qadis by year's end and holds it through the next year against a Berber relief column.
1058: The Ghomara Berbers begin to agitate again in the Maghreb, clashing with the Banu Ifran. They support the cause of 'Ubayd Allah ibn Ali, a Hammudid propped up by the rigorist preacher Badis as a potential pro-Berber Caliph.
1059: Al-Azraq, the right-hand man of Muhammad II and effective micromanager of al-Andalus, falls ill and is left bedridden and in no condition to administrate much of anything, leaving his nephew the Caliph to face down two pesky rebellions at once. The Muladi rebellion of ibn Qays continues to dig in along the southwestern seaboard.
