Excerpt: The Palm of the Distant West Nurtured in the Soils of al-Andalus - Joseph ibn Abram al-Qadisi, AH 442 (AD 1059)*
Taking into his harem the daughter of Sancho II the Pamplonan monarch, Hisham bestowed upon her the name of Buhayr, and grew fond of her to some degree.
It was also about this time, that Hisham began to take for himself the first members of a harem of young men, favouring to an extent men of Sclavonian countenance, for though many of the
Saqaliba of the palace were eunuchs, the unmanning was hardly a constant for their kind. (Here it must be admitted the oft-spoken-of fondness of the men of the Banu Umayya for blondes, as befit their own countenance, for Hisham himself was fair-haired and blue-eyed as had been his father and his father's father, and their preferences tracked much the same way, to the degree that the masculine harem of Hisham would come to be almost exclusively of blonde men.)[1]
Now as it happened, in the north the conflict between the two cousins, Ramiro III of Leon and Bermudo II the so-crowned King of Galicia, had raged for the better part of a year, and further on still, until again Ramiro, in sensing the desperation of his circumstance, once more appealed to the caliph to intervene, and mediate in the dispute. After consulting over the letter of Ramiro with al-Mughira the
hajib, Hisham ultimately issued another declaration recognizing Ramiro as the rightful King of Leon, and urging Bermudo to come to terms with him.
In truth the goal of Hisham and al-Mughira was to divide Leon, and render it as a series of shattered fragments, each in and of itself too weak to challenge the power of Islam in Andalusia. Only in 374[2] did the issue begin to break, as the forces of Galicia neared the city of Leon, when Ramiro fled his kingdom and rode to Córdoba, throwing himself upon the mercy of Hisham and pleading for his protection.
Showing some mercy to the broken king, Hisham finally consented to send al-Mughira northward, drawing upon the
junds to draft a force sufficient to rout the Galician. The forces of the
hajib marched past the Douro, and turned north to Leon, where word came of the armies of Bermudo encamped outside Astorga, soon to march upon Leon. With haste al-Mughira marshaled his men northward.
Now as the Galician forces broke camp, they encountered the army of al-Mughira near the stream called Obrigo. Cunningly did al-Mughira move to cut off Bermudo's forces on the opposite side of the stream, and met them with a storm of arrows, and the Christians were slow to answer despite their fatalities, for the stream lay between the opposing armies. When finally the forces of Bermudo mustered to cross the Obrigo they had suffered some attrition, and the horsemen of al-Andalus proved the superior to Bermudo's forces, already exhausted and demoralized from the hard fighting, and unable to match a fresh army with an advantage of terrain. Thus it was that the Battle of the Obrigo proved a victory for the caliphal forces, and the army of Galicia began its retreat, as al-Mughira dispatched after them some forces to break the garrison of Astorga.
As the summertime wound to cooler months, and Bermudo no doubt sensing the precariousness of his position with the caliph prepared to support the independence of Leon, the Galician monarch agreed to come to Córdoba and submit to the mediation of Hisham. The young caliph ushered the Christian monarchs together, and in recognition of the zeal of Bermudo's support, received from Ramiro the agreement to acknowledge Bermudo as sovereign, and from Bermudo the agreement to acknowledge Ramiro's kingship as true. To both kings he extended the peace agreement al-Hakam had generously offered their forebears, with the caveat that any action against the caliphal power would be met with the end of the peace, and the punishment of the offender by force of arms.
Thus it was on the twentieth day of Jamada al'Ula of 374[3] that Ramiro and Bermudo rode home in submission to the caliph, one as King of Leon and the other as King of Galicia, the realm split between them. The strong power of the north had been divided unto itself, and Leon itself still grappled with the de facto independence of Garcia Fernandez the Castilian.
As the cooler months approached, further news trickled into Cordoba, this time from the north. Messengers brought word of the death of Lothair, the King of the Western Franks, and the passage of the throne to his son, the fifth to bear the name of Louis.[4] Now the new king was a young man, perhaps of eighteen years, and was reputed to live a debauched and dissolate lifestyle even in his tender years, much to the consternation of his bride Adelaide-Blanche, a woman who had passed her fortieth year some years prior, and who was said to hold the king in the greatest contempt. In the Marches of Catalunya the counts there were slow to acknowledge the young king.
Now not all was a matter of war at the
Madinat az-Zahra, for Hisham by his nature was a peaceful man given to scholarship and pursuits of the art. He took to lavishing some patronage upon poets and painters, and he attracted to his court artisans of all stripes, even among them the Jew and the Christian, those who lived in al-Andalus as
dhimmi. Among those invited were two Jewish brothers, Jacob ibn Jau and his brother Joseph, who approached Hisham the year after the battles in Leon, and presented the caliph and the
hajib with garments of precious silks, and flags woven with Arabic writings, the likes of which had never before been beheld at the court. Upon receipt of the precious weavings, Hisham is said to have cried out, "By God! Such sublime skill could only be a divine gift!" From that day onward was Jacob ensconced at court as the master of the royal wardrobe, and later to become one of the great liaisons of Hisham to the community of the Jews.[5]
As the year turned, word came north of a break in the campaigning of the Zirids of Ifriqiya to place more of the Maghreb under their control, with the death of the governor Buluqqin ibn Ziri, the rule passing then to his son al-Mansur. Warfare continued between the Zirids and the Berbers supported by the caliph in the area, with the Shia governor slowly realizing he was unable to press his interests towards Fes or Sijilmasa. These men of the Sanhaja Berber tribe clashed often with the Zenata tribe of Ziri ibn Atiya, who had by now captured Fes and moved onwards to the coast. The men of the caliph watched all this from the strongholds of Ceuta and Tangier, with some worry, for despite positive overtures between the caliph and the Berber, there was some doubt in the reliability of Ziri, who seemed to hold little respect for Hisham, or for al-Mughira.
Thus it was that the early years of Hisham's reign saw the
Saqaliba begin to be purchased in greater numbers than before, for the unreliable nature of the Zenata and the association of the Banu Birzal with ibn Abi Aamir provided some worry about continuing to hire them in as mercenaries.
Now the typical
Saqlab soldier was purchased as a youngster, as a mere child imported from the lands far to the east, some from the lands on the fringe of the Romans and many from the cold lands of the pagans even further beyond. Brought into the court as youths, they were educated in the ways of Islam, and of battle, and trained from childhood as warriors. Surely there were never many of them, for it is prudent not to place too many slaves together with weapons. It must however be said that the slavery of the warrior
Saqaliba was of a different sort than those purchased as eunuchs at the palace, for while an ordinary slave would never be given the consent to bear a weapon or march into battle, so were the
Saqaliba warriors permitted to do so. These men would gradually grow in prominence in years subsequent, some eventually to be renowned to a degree for their prowess and nobility.[6]
[1] Believe it or not, this is historical - the Umayyads apparently really liked blondes.
[2] 984.
[3] October 19, 984.
[4] OTL, Lothair died suddenly in 986. Here he dies somewhat earlier thanks to butterflies, while Louis V is still married to a 40-year-old Adelaide-Blanche of Anjou, who hates him.
[5] Jacob ibn Jau was a real guy and his story here is much the same as it was with Almanzor, save that Hisham gives him a "make my clothes" role while Almanzor used him to collect taxes and appoint rabbis and judges in al-Andalus's jewish community.
[6] Incidentally, here's another change from OTL: Where Almanzor relied on Berbers to the exclusion of all else, here Hisham and al-Mughira favour the
Saqaliba, who will come to fill a societal role in al-Andalus analogous to the Mamluks, in combination with a regular army drawn from the
jund system. Slowly we're seeing the seeds sown for an al-Andalus which can eventually draw a native-strength military, while also adding an elite military class with more in common with regular Andalusis than the Berbers had (most Berbers brought in were tribal warriors who didn't speak Andalusian Arabic and didn't like city life).
SUMMARY:
984: The Battle of the Obrigo. As the Caliphate of Córdoba intervenes in the Leonese civil war on King Ramiro III's behalf, an army led by hajib al-Mughira defeats a Galician host by forcing them to charge into the Muslim lines across a stream.
984: Caliph Hisham II brokers peace between Ramiro III of Leon and Bermudo II of Galicia, acknowledging the claims of both as valid. Galicia becomes independent of Leon.
984: Lothair, King of West Francia, dies suddenly. His son Louis V becomes King of West Francia.
985: In Mahdia, Buluqqin ibn Ziri is succeeded by hs son al-Mansur, who continues to war intermittently with the Berbers.