"So now that we have the issue of the loot from the Viguera raid settled," said Sa'd al-Din, "I'd like to hear your recommendations on whom we should entrust things to on Liwaril."
The Alcazar had grown over the past few years thanks to the work of predecessors. Here, in 1184, it was an impressive structure overlooking the Wadi al-Kabir, the river flowing slowly by on a muggy day as the council gathered with the
hajib to sift through the matters of the day.
Well. Not just the council. The group of about a dozen bearded and robed men did their best to assiduously peer at their ledgers and abacuses rather than at Sa'd al-Din's entourage of cats. A particularly fluffy black-and-white cat had the privilege of occupying the blond-bearded
hajib's lap and receiving a slow, stroking pet, the cat purring away with utter contentment. A smaller calico draped across his shoulder sleepily. Three or four more meandered around the legs of his chair. Another dozen wandered the chamber at random, contributing the occasional mewl or pestering nuzzle or tap to the discussion.
"We really do need a permanent person there," one of the very serious advisors began, before trailing off as a fluffy cream-coloured cat settled to the tabletop and curled up on his ledger to nap. The advisor stared helplessly for a moment. "...As I was saying," he continued lamely. "We need someone permanent to ensure the people who come there aren't somehow offloading half their cargo before they pay taxes on it. We have heard stories of tax evasion--"
"Well, at this point maybe I should send one of the cats," Sa'd al-Din put in with a mischievous smile. "Rayyan, maybe. Look, she already likes your report, Tariq. Perfect choice."
The bureaucrats around the table stared at Sa'd al-Din in bewilderment.
The
hajib shook his head with a laugh. "You all take life far too seriously," he murmured as he scratched lazily between the ears of his black-and-white lap cat, evoking a purr. The comment met with a few seconds of silence.
"Come now," Sa'd al-Din snorted, then waved his hand. "Live a little! Laugh! Be merry! Ha! Ha ha ha ha!"
The advisors soon followed along with the hearty laughter, though their own efforts couldn't be said to be so ebullient. One man chortled earnestly at the joke; a dozen more glanced at each other awkwardly and forced out a few chuckles, more out of strained patience than actual amusement.
"RIGHT!" Sa'd ad-Din abruptly interjected, thumping his palm against the table and causing the bureaucrats to jump in their seats in surprise. His tone quickly crisped up again as he snapped instantly from laughter to business. "You're right, of course. We cannot have these people sneaking around their obligations. Get me your best recommendations of a good man to run the tax collection on Liwaril by the end of the day and I will make sure he has the resources he needs to get the job done. Good?"
The bureaucrats looked at each other, then nodded slowly.
They couldn't be too shocked. It's not like this wasn't just... Sa'd al-Din being Sa'd al-Din.
+
Excerpt: The Mediterranean World and the Great Plague - Saul Bendayan, AD 2003
At the tail end of the 12th century heading into the dawn of the 13th, al-Andalus was the most cultured and one of the most prosperous places in Europe. With the Roman Empire still wrestling with Turkmens and Pechenegs, only the Italian city-states could boast greater wealth.
The latter 25 years of the 12th century saw dividing lines between al-Andalus and western Islam begin to crystallize in a way which drew clearer distinctions between Andalusian Islam and Islam in Mesopotamia and Persia. The form of Islam embraced by the Turkmens relied primarily on the Shafi'i
madhhab, though Hanafi tended to prevail in Anatolia. By contrast, Iberia and the South Mediterranean west of Egypt primarily followed the Maliki
madhhab, with small pockets of Zahirites scattered throughout the Maghreb owing to the spread and decline of the al-Mutahirin.
Generally speaking, the historic sponsorship of Maliki jurisprudence by the Umayyads had transformed al-Andalus into the effective centre of this particular
madhhab, with some caveats. Andalusian jurists tended to view
Hadith with more skepticism than their eastern counterparts, considering many of them to be untrustworthy, and were usually less well-versed in both it and the
Sunnah.
Over time, these divergent viewpoints gave the areas different characters. Muslims from the East tended to find Andalusians overall less zealous and more prone to behaviours they would consider sinful - Andalusians were reputed to enjoy their wine, though this seems mostly to have been a stereotype, among other cultural practices which startled visitors from the Holy Land. As the Arab merchant and shipwright Ibn al-Baghdadi wrote in the 1160s:
"They understand nothing of the laws, and their women go about with their heads shamefully uncovered, and see no sin in what they do." Andalusian art from this period tends to be split evenly in its depiction of Andalusi women with or without veils. While the Maghreb was traditionally more conservative, the veil was less expected even there.
The subjection of the Abbasid Caliphs to the Turkmens, coupled with the effective ownership of the Umayyads by the
Saqaliba, left Muslims in between the two groups searching for legitimacy. In general, however, the spheres of influence after the 1150s and '60s stopped at the edge of the declining realm of the Fatimids. Realms to the east and south of Egypt tended to place the name of the Abbasid Caliph in the
khutbah; west of Egypt and following the decline of the al-Mutahirin, it was the name of the Caliph of Córdoba being spoken in the
khutbah.
By 1174,
hajib Musharraf al-Din had died, having tamped down a few minor rebellions, solidified relations with the Rezkids of the Maghreb and the Igiderids of Ifriqiya, and dispatched a trade governor to oversee the beginnings of forestry and sugar farming on the island of Liwaril. From him, power passed to his eldest son, who took on the name Nur al-Din but ultimately only lasted five years before dying of dysentery. With Nur al-Din's own children too young to rule, the office of
hajib fell to his younger brother, simply known to history as Hakam, largely because he died in 1180 of an unspecified illness. Both of these
hajibs were effective non-factors, placeholders during a period when times were good save for a few raids out of Navarre, Santiago and Narbonne and a few minor brushfire rebellions.
With Hakam also dying without an heir ready to go, the court settled on the young and intelligent Mu'adh, a cousin of Hakam and Nur al-Din. He was raised to power at about 28 and took on the name of Sa'd al-Din.
While Sa'd al-Din was reputely chosen for his intellect and his reign coincides with the erection of new mosques and madrasahs throughout al-Andalus, writers of the period also portray him as eccentric, prone to seeking governance advice from his cats - of which he was said to own at least fifty - and to sharp swings between ebullience and intensity. Other sources describe his tendency to wear specific colours on specific days of the week almost without fail, to organize his days "with unseeming exactitude" and to constantly introduce new interests to the court. Recent scholarly theories suggest he may have suffered from some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but the most accepted explanation is that Sa'd al-Din was simply intelligent but eccentric: His personal behaviours did not prevent him from being a sound
hajib whose reign was largely without rebellion but marked by infrastructure-building and prosperity.
Sa'd al-Din is also notable for being responsible for introducing mara to al-Andalus.[1] The drink spread slowly through the Muslim world following the arrival of the Banu Hilal in the Gezira of the East Sudan just over a century prior and their subsequent discovery of mara beans in the eastern foothills near Ethiopia. The Banu Hilal must have quickly learned to roast and brew the beans into "the bitter drink" and traded it northward through those Banu Hilal settled in Nubia, where it passed through the hands of Berber traders and into the broader trade stream. Contemporary sources suggest that Sa'd al-Din received mara beans and a taste of the brew from visiting Ifriqiyan merchants in 1185 and loved it so much that he pushed the drink on courtiers. It is the first historical reference to the drinking of mara.
It would appear that mara remained exclusive to the upper classes for a long time, but Sa'd al-Din's building projects were rather more ecumenical. Several mosques from the period bear his name, including a splendid one in Beja. A new
qasbah was built in the frontier military city of Mansura; this structure, known as the Qasbah of Sa'd al-Din, survives in part today and forms a major tourist site in the region. And a small fort was built on Liwaril to house tax collectors and administrators sent by Sa'd al-Din to ensure the budding timber trade on the distant island could be taxed, thus creating the first permanent residents on the island.
Perhaps Sa'd al-Din's biggest legacy, though, was his sponsorship of artists and theologians. Under his administration, poets, painters and architects flourished, but so did scholarship, with intellectuals flocking to Córdoba from abroad to share their wisdom.
The most important of these scholarly learners was Hasan ibn Hizam,a
chorfa and the youngest son of the governor of Beja. He arrived in Córdoba in the 1180s as a
qadi appointed by Sa'd al-Din, but he dedicated himself heavily to the study of the
Quran and Sharia in general in comparison with Ibn Sajr's
The Philosophy of Faith and his collections of
Hadith analyses. Ibn Hizam accepted most of Ibn Sajr's assessments of the authenticity of certain
Hadith and used them to build out an analysis of the law in which he identified and criticized laws founded on inauthentic or poorly-sourced
Hadith.
Because of Ibn Hizam's place within the court, his study was widely-circulated and widely-debated, stirring up significant intellectual controversy. A number of learned men penned treatises denouncing Ibn Hizam as a Mu'tazilite, while others rose to his defense. The book became a matter of intense theological discussion for the next several decades and proved to have a profound influence on Maliki jurisprudence and how it viewed
Hadith as a source of law.
This cultural flowering of the 1180s and 1190s would have interesting ramifications for al-Andalus in the decades to come - though none in Córdoba or anywhere else in Europe could know what the 13th century would bring, and in fairly short order.
[1] Coffee. The name comes from a distillation of what Google Translate tells me means "the bitter drink." Either way, it's arriving early.
SUMMARY:
1180: Sa'd al-Din becomes hajib in Córdoba.
1184: The bitter drink known as mara is first introduced to al-Andalus, by way of the Banu Hilal.
1189: Hasan ibn Hizam issues an extensive treatise criticizing law derived from inauthentic Hadith. The treatise becomes an object of intense debate in al-Andalus for decades to come.
