Is there a way for any of the great dynasties who held Muslim Iberia to survive and thrive into the modern age without completely altering the balance of power?
Was Iberia always bound to be reconquered by the western powers?
- Thread starter Simone nel Pozzo
- Start date
It is not necessarily inevitable, but once the Arab campaign in Francia failed, it became likely, IMO. Even then, Francia was considerably more populous than Hispania. An isolated Muslim state with a large Christian neighbor, while ruling over a large Christian population itself, is going to be on the defensive.
I think that Iberia could had kept Muslim at least partially if they just wouldn't had fall as multiple fighting small emirates and Christian kingdoms would had remained pretty weak.
I don't think that you need change something with Francia since between days of Charles Martel and fall of last Iberian Muslim kingdom is some centuries. You probably can do something even with 13th century POD.
I don't think that you need change something with Francia since between days of Charles Martel and fall of last Iberian Muslim kingdom is some centuries. You probably can do something even with 13th century POD.
Nope, just some bad luck,plus the umayyds getting it apart the main caliphate didn't helped
What killed the Umayyad caliphate was the heritability problem in the kingdom. There are other factors such as ethnic disputes, but as a whole the country was very functional. This is the realm with the highest chance of surviving. They were tolerant enough not to cause an extreme reaction from Iberian Catholics like the other kingdoms that followed did.
yes, this idea that the non-conquest of france killed Muslim Iberia is quite wrong.
I'm of the idea that if anyone was going to maintain Iberia divided and partly Muslim it was going to be the Almohads
IMHO, for al-Andalus to survive some state or dynasty would have to build up and maintain a local military base, rather than relying on fighters from North Africa. The Ottomans managed this with the sipahis and janissaries, but even the Umayyads ended up dependent on Berber soldiers and the later dynasties were all reliant on maintaining their powerbases in North Africa.
“The Almohads will brutally change the living conditions of Jewish and Christian dhimmis”, forcing them to convert, in violation, according to Michel Abitbol, of the Muslim tradition, which until then reserved a special status for the “people of the Book”. Thousands of Jews and Christians converted to Islam against their will; thousands more fled; many were killed, in North Africa as in Spain.
In Al-Andalus, the 12th century is considered the end of the golden age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula.
According to Adnan Husain, the advent of austere radicalism led by the Almohads was experienced as a catastrophe not only by Jews and Christians, but also, in Spain, by the Muslims of Al-Andalus.
Universities reject knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the teaching of philosophers such as Averroes, whose Almohads publicly burned works after they banned philosophy and the use of reason. Several great philosophers of all religions were persecuted during this dynasty. Averroes, a Muslim philosopher, and Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher, are the best known. Averroes was accused of heresy and exiled for a year and a half (before being recalled to Morocco). In order not to be forced to renounce his religion, Maimonides will be forced to emigrate definitively; he will find refuge in Egypt at the court of the Fatimids and after Saladin.
Source wiki
They were fanatics who managed to radicalize the Iberian Christians. quite a feat
maybe use Iberian Muslims and Christians instead of foreign mercenaries?
imitating the armies of Christian Iberia
so I picked the absolute worst people for the job
Which dynasty do you reckon had the best chance of keeping it together indefinitely?
an Iberian Muslim dynasty, and the easiest, the Umayyads do not fall. (Basically one of the leaders see the nation's problems and reforms the institutions to be healthier). A better form of heritability (Be it something like the Ottomans, with the best son killing the others, or by some other method). Stop importing Berbers to solve problems, stop treating Iberian Muslims as second class compared to those of Arab origin (who at that time had nothing of Arab origin, considering that the greatest Muslim leader in Iberia had blue eyes and red hair), focus in dealing with the rest of the catholic kingdoms in iberia using the pyrenees mountains as a border between them and france, not following the reactionary and anti-science islamics (which doesn't happen in otl, and i doubt it would happen, considering that the place that questioned the al ghazali's work was andalus. Or reject things like printing press). Maintain a scientific, commercial and naval focus. Having a good local army. Good diplomacy with European and North African countries, Andalus had good diplomacy with England for example. I think that's it
But by that point Granada was weak and basically a vassal of Castille.
You could have the Christian states be weak, but then there is the possibility that France eventually invades them.
It's possible that Granada/other state could survive long term, but I just think it's more likely that they would not. One could argue that they did well OTL. If the Franks had a more straightforward succession and their empire stayed intact, they probably would have wanted to continue beyond the Spanish March.
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Like previous posters have said, I think it needs to be a pre-1086 POD, before the Almohads and Almoravids take control of Muslim Iberia. While those two dynasties prolonged Muslim rule, the fact that they were spread out between both sides of the Straits of Gibraltar meant they couldn't exploit lucky breaks and Muslim victories to the same extent that more compact kingdoms like Castile/Leon/Portugal/Aragon could exploit Christian victories. When the Christians lost at Alarcos, they still held on to Toledo and weathered the temporary ascendancy until the Berbers had to return to Africa without major strategic gains in Iberia. When the Almohads lost at Las Navas de Tolosa 17 years later, the Christians made gradual major gains with the capture of Granada and Seville while the Almohads went into decline.
Hard to focus on Iberia when you're always looking back over your shoulder to Africa, watching for your Berbers' next messianic rebellion out of the Sahara or the Atlas.
Hard to focus on Iberia when you're always looking back over your shoulder to Africa, watching for your Berbers' next messianic rebellion out of the Sahara or the Atlas.
IMO holding not all of France but a buffer beyond the Pyrenees (like Visigothic Septimania and southern Gascony) for a century or more would help. This requires either Muslim unity (a POD in the early 700s to butterfly the Berber revolt and keep Iberia Umayyad + consolidation after the victory on the Garonne) or Frankish disunity (worse succession crises for the mayors of palace and more enmity between the Visigoths in Septimania and the Franks). With Septimania in Muslim hands, Charlemagne has no route into Iberia to conquer the Spanish Marches and establish the foundation for Aragon and Christian reconquest down the Mediterranean coast.
I believe a better POD would be the total removal of rump Christan statelets in the north right after the conquest. Without native Iberian Christian states, it'd be up to French arms to challenge Islamic power; a much less frequent problem, also less likely to want and be able to make constant gains.
The most underrated but lovely... The Taifa of Murcia led by the Wolf King Mardanis. That guy almost unificate all Al-andalus and during 20 years he alone served like shield against the Almohads. His reign was prosperous and he was enough nice for hire Christian mercenaries for serve like h. Infantry and h. Cavalry.
perhaps a Muwallad dynasty, ie Banu Qasi, or a rebel like Umar ibn Hafsun with an army of Mozarabs and Muwallads would be able to breakdown the pseudo-caste system developed from the legacy of the pro-Arab Umayyads into a system that would allow Al-Andalus to be considered "Hispanic" like the the Kingdoms of the North. IMO the Reconquista really didn't begin until the invitation of increasingly orthodox and apocalyptic Berber kingdoms from the south forced an equal and opposite reaction from the North in the form of Crusades and combined invasions of territories.
I am honestly surprised that the Ummayads didn’t finish the job and conquer the rump Visigothic states to the north, instead allowing them an opportunity to reconquer Iberia part by part.
The richest and most sophisticated state in Western Europe in the year 1000 was in fact the Caliphate of Córdoba, to be honest.
If things played out a bit differently one could well see Hispania remaining majority Muslim.
If things played out a bit differently one could well see Hispania remaining majority Muslim.
to be honest if the Muslims of Iberia were conquered pre Almoravid the situation would be an inversion with the Muslims being second class citizens but without persecution. It only became a truly religious conflict with the entry of extremists from north africa .
Leon-castile would conquer the entire peninsula (without these invasions) , but the king had promised that the muslims would be treated fairly and could maintain their faith and practices (as the muslims had done with the christians). So if the conflict stayed between the iberians the situation would not escalate as it happened in otl. if the christians conquered iberia it would have a muslim percentage and if the muslims won the conflict it would have a christian percentage.
The more I read about Andalus the more I see that the loss of this center of Islam has harmed Muslim civilization in the long run. Andalus could easily have been the center of
Averroism, a school of medieval philosophy.
The term Averroist was coined by Thomas Aquinas in the restricted sense of the Averroists' "unity of the intellect" doctrine in his book De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas. Based on this, Averroism came to be near-synonymous with atheism in late medieval usage.
The standpoints listed above resulted in two condemnations in 1270 and 1277 by bishop Etienne Tempier of the Roman Catholic Church. Tempier specified 219 unacceptable theses some of which were clearly directed against the supposed "Averroists" at the University of Paris.It has been pointed out that Tempier's main accusations are almost identical to those brought by Al-Ghazali against philosophers in general in his Incoherence of the Philosophers, which Averroës had tried to demonstrate to be unjustified in The Incoherence of the Incoherence.
There was no formal school or movement of Rushdiyya ("Averroism") in the Islamic tradition. The decline of Kalam or "Islamic scholastic theology" and Muʿtazila or "Islamic rationalism" has precluded the reception of Averroes in Islamic thought that would parallel that in Christian or Jewish philosophy.
source wiki.
an islamic renaissance in andalus would be quite possible.
Averroism, a school of medieval philosophy.
The term Averroist was coined by Thomas Aquinas in the restricted sense of the Averroists' "unity of the intellect" doctrine in his book De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas. Based on this, Averroism came to be near-synonymous with atheism in late medieval usage.
The standpoints listed above resulted in two condemnations in 1270 and 1277 by bishop Etienne Tempier of the Roman Catholic Church. Tempier specified 219 unacceptable theses some of which were clearly directed against the supposed "Averroists" at the University of Paris.It has been pointed out that Tempier's main accusations are almost identical to those brought by Al-Ghazali against philosophers in general in his Incoherence of the Philosophers, which Averroës had tried to demonstrate to be unjustified in The Incoherence of the Incoherence.
There was no formal school or movement of Rushdiyya ("Averroism") in the Islamic tradition. The decline of Kalam or "Islamic scholastic theology" and Muʿtazila or "Islamic rationalism" has precluded the reception of Averroes in Islamic thought that would parallel that in Christian or Jewish philosophy.
source wiki.
an islamic renaissance in andalus would be quite possible.