By Camilo Gómez-Rivas This is the second in a two-part series on Law under the Almoravids. The first was a reflection on legal texts as sources for writing social and cultural history.[1] Building a new state on an entirely new scale for the regio…
This is the second in a two-part series on Law under the Almoravids. The first was a reflection on legal texts as sources for writing social and cultural history.[1]
Building a new state on an entirely new scale for the region, the Almoravids found themselves in need of forging relationships with surrounding states and state actors. Little direct textual evidence survives in the form of legal texts. But, considered altogether, there appears to have been a significant institutional development in this regard. A point that seems particularly important to highlight is how the burgeoning Almoravid state was able to develop the use of their legal administrative branch (their Mālikī scholars) not only to legitimize their presence and actions before their peers, but also to do much of the hard work of negotiating and administrating political and diplomatic relationships with the various actors and polities they encountered. The level of institutional innovation seems remarkable: Mālikī jurists acted as chief negotiators, deputies, and representatives of the Almoravid state both with Christian and Muslim polities; they secured recognition from the latter and oversaw significant parts of the process of conquest and administrative take-over.
From very early on, the Almoravids articulated a successful formula for legitimating and strengthening their negotiating and coercive position vis-a-vis the polities they encountered in their expansion northward, from the western Sahara into what is today Morocco and Algeria. An early examples of this is found in the narrative of the conquest of Sijilmasa, a trade emporium on the northern "edge" of the Sahara, capture of which was crucial in setting the foundations of an Almoravid state. Here, representatives of a small but vociferous network of "pious" scholars were influential and effective as instigators and negotiators.[2] Their presence, rhetorical stance, and participation lent the conquest a significant level of legitimacy.
View of Albaycín, one of Granada's oldest neighborhoods. The city was conquered by the Almoravids from ʿAbd Allāh b. Buluggīn al-Zīrī (r. 1073-1090), who left a first-person account of the experience. (Photo taken by the author.)
The story goes that this group of scholars from Sijilmasa approached the Almoravid leadership, writing a letter or petition in which they entreated the Almoravids to take up arms against the leadership of their city, the Khārijī Maghrāwā, who they characterized as illegitimate unbelievers.[3] Almoravid conquest would allow for the establishment of legitimate Islamic government and the justice and peace presumably accruing from such an arrangement. The action of intervening in order to lend support to Muslim scholars who felt oppressed by unorthodox government became a trope of Almoravid conquest.
But the sharpest definition of this strategy took place in the run-up to the intervention in al-Andalus, when strategies and administrative arrangements for inter-regime negotiation developed rapidly. The fall of the Ṭāʾifa of Toledo to Alfonso VI of Castile-Leon shocked the fractured political leadership of al-Andalus into action (some would say desperate action). The fall of the first major Muslim city of al-Andalus posed a new level of existential threat, as it, almost overnight, doubled the population and resources of the hostile Christian kingdom. Several of the Ṭāʾifa rulers turned to the Almoravids as possible saviors. But Yūsuf b. Tāshfin (d. 500/1106), amīr of the the Almoravids, was careful and demanded that any military participation be preceded by legal consultation and agreement in support of such an action.[4] This happened at least at two stages of the intervention, before the first campaign of support and before the third campaign transformed the overall effort into outright conquest and occupation. This was one of the episodes that likely lent the Almoravids the reputation of doing nothing without first having it validated by the fuqahāʾ.
This gesture was part of a negotiating strategy for securing material and logistical support. The Banū ʿAbbād ultimately lent Yūsuf use of the port of Algeciras and naval support to transport his troops across the strait. Obtaining public legal approval thus secured public confirmation of legitimacy as well as the provision of material logistical support, validating the wisdom of Yūsuf's strategy. A closer reading of the historiographical accounts indicates that, beyond a strategic position to secure the upper hand symbolically and logistically, a kind of institutionalization of a diplomatic and negotiating branch of the Almoravid campaigns was underway. At multiple stages of their advance, we find Mālikī jurists articulating the Almoravid position and justification for intervening, as well as, ultimately, formulating the terms of takeover and annexation.[5]
The support of the Mālikī jurists therefore went beyond rubber-stamp approval and extended to officiating the process of negotiation, coordinating agreement, and later, overseeing administrative takeover. There are clear instances of direct participation at almost every level of action: They convened and formulated legal opinions in justification of Yūsuf's intervention. They justified Yūsuf's campaign of conquest and officiated over setting terms of surrender. These took place separately as the Ṭāʾifa states fell one by one to the Almoravids. The Almoravids went about replacing and installing political and administrative leadership, relying on the Mālikī legal interface to mediate between the Andalusī communities and the Almoravid government.
Historiographical evidence for this institutional development is ample. Direct evidence in the form of legal text is less so. We find references and descriptions of the convening of diplomatic and legal representatives of the Ṭāʾifas for the purpose of stating the justification of Almoravid intervention, but we don't have the fatwā[s] which may or may have not been written up on the occasion.[6] We also have evidence and descriptions of how Mālikī agents and negotiators went about securing the capitulation of the Ṭāʾifas of Seville and Granada, some quite detailed. But again, the legal documentation, if produced, appears not to have survived. At the same time, parallel and associated legal texts that capture the spirit of this, are preserved in the literature. Later consultations of notable Andalusī Mālikī scholars for Yūsuf's son and successor survive in the form of fatwā texts. There is also the famous letters secured by Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī (d. 543/1148) from eastern authorities: the Abbasid Caliph (al-Mustaẓhir bi-Llāh r. 1094-1118) and from al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), which describe Almoravid authority and their justified intervention into al-Andalus employing the terms of justification and legitimation used in the historiographical accounts. The Ṭāʾifa leadership is described as fractious while the Almoravids are described as the only ones capable of defending the ummah and therefore more than justified in their intervention and occupation. They are also described as orthodox defenders of the faith, again, against their less upstanding counterparts.[7]
A last key element that should be noted is the adoption of the title, by the Almoravid ruler, of amīr al-Muslimīn, a new formulation with some previous history in al-Andalus, where civil war and fragmentation saw the formulation of multiple new alternatives and political formulas, before the Almoravids unified both regions. It echoes the traditional caliphal title, without trying to supplant it. It also denotes, in some way, formal subordination to the Abbasid Caliphate in the east.
This can seem curious because of the absence of any need to articulate such a subordination, as well as the absence of any real material support to be obtained. It reinforces the feeling of a newly formed authority lacking its own means of legitimation, reaching for ceremonial forms to justify its presence.
Beyond this, however, what I find remarkable is the identification and broad employment of this network of legal officials to facilitate the business of the new and rapidly growing state, to define its relationships with its neighbors, including the formulation of statehood within a broader Islamic commonwealth. The new title, subtly innovating on existing formulae, dexterously creates a new framework for sovereignty and recognition.[8]
Notes:
[1] It is also a set of preliminary thoughts for a forthcoming article.
[2] The gloss for "pious" in this context means non-Khārijī and Sunnī, and in this context, most likely Mālikī, identity which largely informed the Almoravid cause from its beginnings, as a Sunnī champion against the unorthodox forms of Islam and Islamic politics in northwest Africa of the time, such as the Barghawāṭa, the Bajaliyya Shīʿīs, and the Khārijī Maghrāwa.
[3] "In 447/1055 the learned and pious men of Sijilmasa and Darʿa wrote to the faqih ʿAbd Allāh b. Yāsin and the emir Yaḥyā b. ʿUmar and the Almoravid shaykhs urging them to come to their country to purify it of the evil practices, injustice, and tyranny which were rife there. They told him of the oppression, contempt, and tyranny suffered by men of science and religion and the rest of the Muslims at the hands of the emir Masʿūd b. Wānūdīn al-Zanātī al-Maghrāwī." Ibn Abī Zarʿ, Rawḍ al-qirṭās; this translation is found in Levtzion and Hopkins, eds., Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (Princeton: Markus Weiner, 2000), 242. The story is echoed in several sources and linked with Wajjāj b. Zalwī, the teacher of ʿAbd Allāh b. Yāsīn, spiritual founder and leader of the Almoravids. Wajjāj would appear to be the key figure in the development of the Mālikī network the Almoravids championed. Jacinto Bosch Vilá, Los Almorávides (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1998), 67.
[4] Perhaps the two most detailed descriptions of these negotiations are found in the anonymous al-Ḥulal al-mawshiyya fī dhikr al-akhbār al-Marrākushiyya (Tunis: Maṭbaʿat al-Taqaddum al-Islāmiyya, 1979) and in ʿAbd Allāh b. Buluggīn's first-person account, edited and translated by Amin Tibi, The Tibyān: Memoirs of ʿAbd Allāh b. Buluggīn, last Zirid Amīr of Granada (Leiden: Brill, 1986). A description can also be found in Ronald Messier's The Almoravids and the Meanings of Jihād (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010), Chapter 7; it nicely captures how the negotiations were not the result of a single meeting, but were multiple, and that the chief judges of several Ṭāʾifa cities played an active role.
[5] This is salient in ʿAbd Allāh b. Buluggīn's account, for example, in pages 120–21 and: "The jurist Ibn Saʿdūn then came to me from the Amīr of the Muslims and said: "Bring me all your possessions and the inventories (azimma) relating to them, for Muʾammal has told him [i.e. the Almoravid] that you have an inventory for every dirham you possess." A. Tibi, The Tibyān, 156.
[6] "When it was 479 (1086), al-Muʿtamid ʿala Allah crossed the sea, heading for Marrakesh, to seek help from Yūsuf b. Tāshufīn against the Christians. The said Yūsuf gave him a warm welcome and housed him in the finest style, and enquired what he wanted. [Al-Muʿtamid] mentioned that he wished to attack Christian territory and wanted the Amīr al-Muslimīn [Yūsuf] to supply him with horses and men to help him wage war. The Commander of the Muslims hastened to grant his request, and said, 'I am the first to be entrusted to come to the assistance of this faith, and none other than myself will take charge of the matter!'" From ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Marrākushī's description of the Battle of Zallāqa, translated in Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources, ed. Olivia Remie Constable (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 138.
[7] The edited and translated letters can be found in Muḥammad Yaʿlà, Tres textos árabes sobre Beréberes en el occidente islámico: Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm (S. VIII/XIV), Kitāb al-Ansāb, Kitāb Mafājir al-Barbar (Anónimo), Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabī (m. 543/1149), Kitāb Šawāhid al-Ŷilla. Fuentes Arábico-Hispanas 20 (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1996).
[8] For more on the use of this title and its meaning, see Camilo Gómez-Rivas, "Berber Rule and Abbasid Legitimacy: the Almoravids (434/1042-530/1147)," in The Routledge Handbook of Muslim Iberia, ed. Maribel Fierro (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 89–114.
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