Two Castilian political myths and al-Andalus

Abstract

The thirteenth-century Poema de Fernán González recounts how the Count Fernán González obtained the independence of Castille thanks to a skilful bargaining for a horse and a falcon with the king of León. It also tells us that the ancestor of the Count was one of the two judges who had ruled Castille during the vacancy of royal power following the death of King Alfonso II of Asturias (d. 842). Those two judges were known by names that refer to the lack of hair in their heads: Laín Calvo and Nuño Rasura. While the story of the horse and the falcon has already been connected to an Islamic context, the second has not. This paper shows how the narrative of the bald judges of Castille is illuminated by the history of al-Andalus and, more generally, it emphasizes that when studying the political myths of Medieval Christian Spain, al-Andalus needs to be taken into account as one among other providers of literary tropes on rulers and ruling.

Keywords:

• Castille
• al-Andalus
• Fernán González
• Berbers
• Kharijis
• two judges of Castille
• Qadis
• political myths

Acknowledgements

This paper has been developed within the research project “Knowledge, heresy and political culture in the Islamic West (8^th–15^th centuries)”, funded by the European Research Council and directed by Maribel Fierro. It was presented at the Seminar of Arabic and Islamic Studies (CCHS-CSIC, Madrid) in 2012; at the 13th Mediterranean Research Meeting of the Robert Schuman Centre European University Institute at Montecatini (Italy) (March 2012) within a panel organized by B. Catlos and S. Kinoshita; at Queen Mary College, University of London (October 2012); at the conference “Cross-cultural encounters in the Medieval and early Modern Mediterranean”, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA (2013); and at the conference Representations of Power at the Mediterranean Borders of Europe (12th-15th c.), organized by Ingrid Baumgärtner and Mirko Vagnoni (University of Kassel). I wish to thank Luis Molina and Miriam Ali-de-Unzaga for their help, and most especially Amina Naciri, as well as those who attended the presentation of previous drafts for their comments.

Notes on contributors

Maribel Fierro is Professor at the Centre of Human and Social Sciences at the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC – Spain). Her research focuses on the religious and intellectual history of al-Andalus and the Islamic West, and on Islamic law; she is also interested in the representation of violence and in the interplay between knowledge and power in Islamic societies. Among her recent publications is “Codifying the law: the case of the Medieval Islamic West”, in Diverging Paths? The Shapes of Power and Institutions in Medieval Christendom and Islam, ed. J. Hudson and A. Rodríguez (Leiden: Brill, 2014). She has edited a dossier on “The control of knowledge in Islamic societies”, in the journal Al-Qantara XXXV/1 (2014), and Orthodoxy and Heresy in Islam: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies (4 vols., Routledge, 2013); with C. Adang and S. Schmidtke, Ibn Hazm of Cordoba. The Life and Works of a Controversial Thinker (Leiden: Brill, 2012). She has been the recipient of the Anneliese Maier Award 2014 (Humboldt Foundation). Her monograph on Knowledge and Power in the Islamic West (Eighth–Fifteenth Century) is forthcoming.

Notes

¹Fernán González (d. 970) lived during the reigns of the kings of León Ramiro II (r. 931–51), Ordoño III (r. 951–56), Sancho I (r. 956–58 and 960–66), Ordoño IV (r. 958–60) and Ramiro III (r. 961–84).

²Washington Irving, Spanish Papers and Other Miscellanies hitherto Unpublished or Uncollected, 2 vols. (New York, 1866), 339–45. As noted by one of the reviewers, W. Irving did not completely follow the original, but the changes he introduced (for example, the Count was not the one who asked for the coins but they were offered by the king) do not affect what is of concern in this paper. On the legend of Fernán González, see the recent study by José Manuel Pedrosa, “Fernán González, el usurero mítico: entre la epopeya y el cuento”, Revista de Poética Medieval 25 (2011): 295–347.

³Letizia Osti, “The grain on the chessboard: travels and meanings”, in Le répertoire narratif arabe médiéval: transmission et ouverture. Actes du Colloque International qui s'est tenu à l'Université de Liège (15-17 septembre 2005), ed. F. Bauden, A. Chraibi and A. Ghersetti (Liége, 2008), 231–48.

⁴The first number refers to the hijri date, the second to the C.E. date.

⁵al-ʿAdlī/al-Ṣūlī, Kitāb al-shaṭranj, facsimile ed. F. Sezgin, Frankfurt am Main, 1987 (ms. dated 1140). In El Libro de ajedrez (ed. F.M. Pareja, Madrid, 1935), dated 1257, coins are also mentioned.

⁶Osti, “The grain on the chessboard”, 240.

⁷Osti, “The grain on the chessboard”, 241, citing Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk Literature, 2nd ed., 6 vols. (Copenhagen and Bloomington, 1955–58), motif Z21.1 (origins of chess).

⁸There are several editions, among them ed. Ramón Menéndez Pidal in Reliquias de la poesía épica española (Madrid, 1951), 34–180; ed. Alonso Zamora Vicente, Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1978; ed. Emilio Alarcos Llorach, Madrid: Castalia, 1982 (1st ed. 1965); ed. H. Salvador Martínez, Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1991; ed. Miguel Angel Muro, Logroño: Gobierno de La Rioja. Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 1994; Itziar López Guil, Libro de Fernán Gonçález, Madrid: CSIC, 2001. To my knowledge, there is no English translation.

⁹Camille Pitollet, “Notes au Poema de Fernán González”, Bulletin Hispanique 4 (1902): 157–60, at 160.

¹⁰F. Marcos Marín, “El legado árabe de la épica hispánica”, Filología Hispánica XXX/2 (1981): 396–419; J. Ramírez del Río, “El caballo y el azor. Motivos literarios árabes en la leyenda de la independencia de Castilla”, Anuario Medieval XII (2004): 139–54.

¹¹Fernán González appears with the title of Count of Castile in 945, and towards 950 he was ruling over the lands of Burgos, Lantarón, Cerezo and Álava.

¹²This legend is found in ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Marrākushī (d. after 621/1224), Kitāb al-muʿjib fī talkhīṣ akhbār al-Maghrib, ed. R. Dozy, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 1881), 82–3. For a more general context see Jenny Adams, Power Play: The Literature and Politics of Chess in the Late Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

¹³In contradiction to R. Menéndez Pidal (Los godos y la epopeya española, Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1953, p. 43) who thought that the motif reflected a roboratio, a type of sale.

¹⁴L.P. Harvey and D. Hook, “The affair of the horse and the hawk in the Poema of Fernán González”, Modern Language Review LXXXVII (1982): 840–7.

¹⁵Julia Hernández Juberías, La península imaginaria: mitos y leyendas sobre al-Andalus (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1996), 165–93; E. Drayson, The King and the Whore: King Roderick and La Cava (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Patricia E. Grieve, The Eve of Spain: Myths of origins in the history of Christian, Muslim and Jewish conflict (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).

¹⁶Ibn al-Qūṭiyya, Taʿrīkh iftitāḥ al-Andalus, ed. and transl. J. Ribera (Madrid, 1926), 7–8/5–6; English trans. David James, Early Islamic Spain. The History of Ibn al-Qūṭīya (London: Routledge, 2009), 51–2 (the Arabic term buz āt is translated as “birds of prey”).

¹⁷Harvey and Hook, “The affair of the horse and the hawk”, 841. For the use of other motifs in the Poema see A. Deyermond and M. Chaplin, “Folk-motifs in the Medieval Spanish Epic”, Philological Quarterly LI (1972): 36–53, consulted online at http://213.0.4.19/servlet/SirveObras/hisp/02416185323629490976613/p0000001.htm

¹⁸Harvey and Hook, “The affair of the horse and the hawk”, 842.

¹⁹Harvey and Hook, “The affair of the horse and the hawk”, 844. The horse and hawk as objects to be coveted, and their association with lordship over a territory are also present in a Balkan epic poem: p. 846, note 22.

²⁰Daniel Walker, “Arqueta de Leyre”, in Jerrilyn D. Dodds, Al-Andalus. Las artes islámicas en España, catálogo de la exposición (New York / Granada, 1992) (Madrid: El Viso, 1992), 198–203.

²¹Harvey and Hook, “The affair of the horse and the hawk”, 846, note 22, citing José Fradejas, La épica, Literatura española en imágenes (Madrid, 1973), vol. I, p. 43 and slide 28. The link between the “affair of the horse” and this textile had been noted previously by A. Lázaro López, “Una riquísima tela, quizá de la época fundacional de Castilla, ha sido encontrada en la Iglesia Parroquial de Oña”, Boletín de la Institución Fernán González 172 (1969): 48–53; F. Marcos Marín, “El legado árabe de la épica hispánica”, Filología Hispánica XXX/2 (1981): 396–419; see also F. Marcos Marín, “Tejidos árabes e independencia de Castilla”, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies LXIII (1986): 355–61. A good reproduction is in Arte burgalés (Burgos: Caja de Ahorros Municipal, 1976), 84.

²²This suggestion was made by Lázaro López, “Una riquísima tela”, who also proposed that it could have belonged to Garci Fernández, the son of Fernán González. For the historical context see Peter Scales, The Fall of the Caliphate of Córdoba. Berbers and Andalusis in Conflict (Leiden: Brill, 1994), and Gonzalo Martínez Díez, El condado de Castilla, 711–1038: La historia frente a la leyenda, 2 vols. (Marcial Pons Historia, 2005), II, 611–21. The issue of which Castilian count actually entered Cordoba when the Berbers conquered it is a matter of dispute (see Martínez Díez, El condado de Castilla, II, 616–21). I am inclined to agree with Margarita Torres Sevilla in identifying the Ibn Mama Duna al-Qūmis with the count of Saldaña García Gómez: see “A propósito de la identificación del conde Ibn Mama al-Qumis”, Estudios Humanísticos 18 (1966): 239–49, and “Un tradicional ejemplo de confusión genealógica: a propósito de la muerte de Abd al-Rahman Sanchuelo y Sancho Ibn Gómez (1009)”, Estudios Humanísticos 19 (1997): 67–73.

²³R. Casamar and Juan Zozaya, “Apuntes sobre la ŷuba funeraria de la Colegiata de Oña (Burgos)”, Boletín de Arqueología Medieval 5 (1991): 39–60, at 57.

²⁴S. Makariou, “Quelques Réflexions sur les Objets au Nom de ʿAbd al-Malik ibn al-Mansûr”, Archéologie Islamique 11 (2001): 47–60.

²⁵Miriam Ali-de-Unzaga, “El Bordado de Oña, Testigo Ineludible de la Historia, la Política y la Cultura entre Castilla y al-Andalus”, in Oña. Un milenio: Actas del Congreso Internacional sobre el Monasterio de Oña (1011-2011), ed. Rafael Sánchez Domingo (Fundación Milenario San Salvador de Oña, 2012), 562–73; also “Re-thinking through textiles: The Andalusi and Castilian biographies of the Oña's embroidery”, in The Chasuble of Thomas Becket in the Cathedral of Fermo, ed. A. Shalem (The Bruschettini Foundation, forthcoming). I wish to thank Miriam Ali-de-Unzaga for sharing with me her deep knowledge of this textile before the above-mentioned articles were published.

²⁶Oneca Fortúnez, a daughter of the king of Pamplona Fortún Garcés (r. 880–905), was the grandmother of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (she had married the emir ʿAbd Allāh and had borne Muḥammad, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III's father) and the great-grandmother of Sancho García. (In a second marriage she was married to her cousin Aznar Sánchez, and their daughter Toda, wife of King Sancho Garcés I of Pamplona, was the mother of Sancha, who married Fernán González and bore García Fernández, the father of Sancho García.) Almanzor and Sancho García also had family links: Almanzor had married Urraca, daughter of Sancho Garcés II, king of Pamplona (Urraca's mother was the grandaughter or daughter of Fernán González), and with Urraca he had his son Sanchuelo. Almanzor also married Oneca García, sister of Sancho García. See on this Luis Javier Fortún and Carmen Jusué Simonena, Historia de Navarra. I. Antigüedad y Alta Edad Media (Gobierno de Navarra, Pamplona, 1993), 91 (I wish to thank Alejandro García Sanjuán for this reference).

²⁷Ali-de-Unzaga has been able to prove this by using Manuela Marín, “Una galería de retratos reales: los soberanos omeyas de al-Ándalus (siglos II/VIII-IV/X) en la cronística árabe”, Anuario de Estudios Medievales 41/1 (2011): 273–90.

²⁸M. Gómez Moreno, “El arte árabe español hasta los almohades. Arte mozárabe”, Ars Hispaniae 3 (Madrid, 1951), 312.

²⁹On the importance of falconry as a symbol of royal power see Virgilio Martínez Enamorado, “Falcons and Falconry in al-Andalus”, Studia Orientalia 111 (2011): 159–83.

³⁰M. Fierro, “Por qué ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III sucedió a su abuelo el emir ʿAbd Allāh”, Al-Qanṭara XXVI (2005): 357–69.

³¹For ʿAbd al-Raḥman III's struggle to put an end to the rebellions of Arab, Berber and muwallad lords see M. Fierro, Abdarramán III y el califato omeya de Córdoba (San Sebastián: Nerea, 2011). For Ibn al-Qūṭiyya's chronicle as serving the interests of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III see M. Fierro, “La obra histórica de Ibn al-Qūṭiyya”, Al-Qan ṭara X (1989): 485–512, and Gabriel Martinez Gros, L'idéologie omeyyade. La construction de la légitimité du Califat de Cordoue (Xe-XIe siècles) (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1992).

³²M. Fierro, “On political legitimacy in al-Andalus. A review article”, Der Islam 73 (1996): 138–50, referring to a passage in Ibn ʿIdhārī, al-Bay ān al-mughrib, p. 42; quoted in Scales, The Fall of the Caliphate of Córdoba, 40, 42. While in 1996 I assumed that such a claim made sense only in reference to Christian political culture, I now think that Berber preference for matrilineal lineages should also be taken into account. See M. Fierro, “Genealogies of power in al-Andalus: politics, religion and ethnicity during the second/eighth-fifth/eleventh centuries”, Annales Islamologiques 42 (2008): 29–56.

³³M. Fierro, “Cuatro preguntas en torno a Ibn Ḥafṣūn”, Al-Qanṭara XVI (1995): 221–57; English trans. in The Formation of al-Andalus. Part 1: History and Society, ed. M. Marín (Ashgate: Variorum, 1998), The Formation of the Classical Islamic World, vol. 46, 291–328.

³⁴The Chronicon de Cardeña and Lucas de Tuy report that it was during the reign of “King Froila” – to be understood most probably as Fruela II – that Castilians chose judges to govern them. On Alfonso II's lack of descendants see Georges Martin, Les juges de Castille. Mentalités et discours historique dans l'Espagne médiévale (Paris, 1992), 113–15.

³⁵Fray Justo Pérez de Urbel, Historia del Condado de Castilla, (Madrid, 1945), 149–66; José María Ramos Loscertales, “Los jueces de Castilla”, Cuadernos de Historia de España 10 (1948): 75–104. Ramos Loscertales considered that the election of the two judges of Castile may have been inspired by the Biblical precedent, when God put the people of Israel in the charge of judges after the disappearance of Joshua and his generation. But as Martin has pointed out, God named one judge, not two: Les juges de Castille, 127.

³⁶R.A. Fletcher, The Quest for El Cid (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 59.

³⁷Martin, Les juges de Castille. See also Martínez Díez, El Condado de Castilla, I, 280–9, and F. Javier Peña Pérez, El surgimiento de una nación: Castilla en su historia y en sus mitos (Barcelona: Crítica, 2005).

³⁸Martin, Les juges de Castille, 30–82, especially 39.

³⁹Martin, Les juges de Castille, 112, 124.

⁴⁰See for example the use of the term iudicum to refer to Arab governors in the Crónica mozárabe de 754: Continuatio isidoriana hispana, ed. J. Eduardo López Pereira (León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro, 2009), paragraphs 79 and 84.

⁴¹Martin, Les juges de Castille, 126–7.

⁴²Martin, Les juges de Castille, 128.

⁴³Martin, Les juges de Castille, 190.

⁴⁴Martin, Les juges de Castille, 129.

⁴⁵M.I. Fierro, “Muʿāwiya b. Ṣāliḥ al-Ḥaḍramī al-Ḥimṣī: historia y leyenda”, Estudios Onomástico-Biográficos de al-Andalus. I, ed. M. Marín (Madrid: CSIC, 1988), 281–411, especially 314–25.

⁴⁶On military factions in early al-Andalus expressed through tribal language see Fierro, “Genealogies of power in al-Andalus”.

⁴⁷Ernest Gellner, Saints of the Atlas (London, 1969), 81.

⁴⁸V. Prévost, “L'ibadisme berbère: la légitimation d'une doctrine venue d'Orient”, in La légitimation du pouvoir au Maghreb médiéval. De l'orientalisation á l’émancipation politique, ed. A. Nef and M.É. Voguet (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2011), 59.

⁴⁹al-Muqaddasī, A ḥsan al-taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm, ed. M.J. De Goeje (Leiden, 1906), 236–7; English trans. al-Muqaddasī, The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions, 195. F. Dachraoui (Le califat fatimide, Tunis, 1981, p. 402) takes this passage as proof that the antagonism described in other sources as having existed between the two legal schools does not correspond to reality.

⁵⁰Mohamed Talbi, L’émirat aghlabide. 184-296 / 800-909 (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1966), 182–3, 184–5, 214, 411–12, 696–7.

⁵¹G. Marçais, “Asad b. al- Furāt b. Sinān, AbūʿAbd Allāh”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. P. Bearman, T. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs (Brill, 2007). Brill Online. EI3-contributors. 24 August 2007. http://www.brillonline.nl/subscriber/entry?entry=islam_SIM-0758.

⁵²Brockopp, Jonathan E., “Asad b. al-Furāt”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three, ed. Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas and Everett Rowson (Brill, 2012). Brill Online. EI3-contributors. 31 January 2012. http://www.brillonline.nl/subscriber/entry?entry=ei3_SIM-0332. Brockopp insists on describing the double qadiship as “an unusual situation; the two co-qāḍis apparently remained bitter rivals”.

⁵³Ibn Saʿīd, al-Mughrib fi ḥulā l-Maghrib, ed. Shawqī Ḍayf, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1953–55), I, 157.

⁵⁴M. Penelas, “Ibn al-Ṣaffār, Abū l-Walīd Yūnus”, Biblioteca de al-Andalus, ed. Jorge Lirola (Almería: Fundación Ibn Tufayl, 2007), vol. 5, 73–7, n. 1043. Descendant of a mawlā of the Umayyads, he may also have been of Berber extraction; in any case he was certainly a non-Arab, as indicated by the nisba al-Anṣārī: M. Fierro, “La nisba al-Anṣārī en al-Andalus y el cadí Munḏir b. Saʿīd”, Al-Qanṭara XXV (2004): 233–8, and “The Anṣārīs, Nāṣir al-dīn, and the Naṣrids in al-Andalus”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 32 (2006): 232–47.

⁵⁵F. de la Granja, “Ibn García, cadí de los califas ḥammūdíes”, Al-Andalus 30 (1965): 63–78 (reed. Estudios de historia de al-Andalus, Madrid, 1999, 21–39), at 66; M.J. Viguera, “Los jueces de Córdoba en la primera mitad del siglo XI (Análisis de datos)”, Al-Qanṭara V (1984): 123–45, at 126, 132, 135–6, 145. On the fitna, see note 22.

⁵⁶Scales, The fall of the caliphate of Córdoba, 165, quoting Maf ākhir al-barbar.

⁵⁷Ibn Bashkuwāl, Kitāb al-ṣila fī ta'rīkh a'immat al-Andalus, ed. Francisco Codera (Madrid, 1882–83), number 1405.

⁵⁸See the complex history of this accession in M. Fierro, “The qāḍī as ruler”, Saber religioso y poder político. Actas del Simposio Internacional (Granada, 15-18 octubre 1991) (Madrid, 1994), 71–116, at 72–8.

⁵⁹Mathieu Tillier, Les cadis d'Iraq et l'Etat abbasside (Institut Français du Proche-Orient, 2009), 281–4. Consulted online http://ifpo.revues.org/698.

⁶⁰Patricia Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 170–87.

⁶¹For the case of Ceuta – where Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (d. 544/1149) became the ruler in the transition period between the Almoravids and the Almohads – see H. Kassis, “Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ's rebellion against the Almohads in Sabta (A.H. 542-543/A.D. 1147-48): New Numismatic evidence”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 103/3 (1983): 505–14. In the East, the most famous case is that of the Banū ʿAmmār, a family of qāḍīs who governed Tyre and Tripoli of Siria in the forty years that preceded the conquest of Tripoli by the Crusaders in 502/1109, managing to be independent of both Fāṭimids and Saljūqids: EI², s.v. ʿAmmār (G. Wiet); more generally, see B. Shoshan, “The ‘Politics of Notables' in Medieval Islam”, Asian and African Studies XX (1986): 179–215.

⁶²M. Fierro, “The qāḍī as ruler”. See also Pierre Guichard, Les musulmans de Valence et la Reconquête (XIe-XIIIe siècles), 2 vols. (Damascus, 1990–1991), I, 107–8 and 114; G. Martínez-Gros, “Le gouvernment du juge: Ibn ʿAbdūn et Seville au debut du XIIIe siècle”, in Les Cahiers de Fontenay. Idées de villes, villes idéales (1993), 37–51, and Rachid El Hour, La administración judicial almorávide en al-Andalus: élites, negociaciones y enfrentamientos (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2006).

⁶³In 414/1023, given the disorder (al-harj) reigning in Seville, the judge Abū l-Qāsim and other notables of the town (wuj ūh al-bilād wa-aʿlām buyūtātihā) had taken power into their own hands, the same solution found in Córdoba, where a council of notables, under the leadership of Ibn Jahwar, ruled after the abolition of the Umayyad caliphate in 422/1031.

⁶⁴On this office, closely associated to that of the qāḍī, see Christian Müller, “Administrative tradition and civil jurisdiction of the Cordoban ṣāḥib al-aḥkām”, Al-Qanṭara XXI (2000): 57–84 and 307–38.

⁶⁵Guichard, Les musulmans de Valence, I, 69 and 74.

⁶⁶Ibn al-Abbār (d. 658/1260), al-Takmila li-kitāb al-Ṣila, ed. Francisco Codera, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1887–89), number 85. Later, Ibn Juzayy (d. 741/1340) stated that “in al-Andalus the judges rebelled, having agreed among themselves to look after the (well-being of) the Muslims (wa-qāma bi-bilād al-Andalus quḍātu-hāʿalā ittifāq minhum naẓar^an li-l-muslimīna).

⁶⁷Francisco Codera, Decadencia y desaparición de los almorávides en España (Zaragoza, 1899), 53–88.

⁶⁸In Jaén, Ibn Hūd put an end to the rule of the q āḍī Ibn Juzayy, and then went to Granada, where Ibn Aḍḥā was acting as leader (ra'īs) on behalf of Ibn Ḥamdīn, and made him swear obedience to his rule. Unable to defeat the Almoravids, Ibn Hūd eventually left Granada and went to Murcia.

⁶⁹On this formula see David Wasserstein, The caliphate in the West. An Islamic Political Institution in the Iberian Peninsula (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).

⁷⁰We do not know whether there was a rebellion of the common people (ʿāmma) as in Córdoba or whether the qāḍī took power, imitating Ibn Ḥamdīn and taking advantage of the vacuum of power created by the fact that the Almoravid troops were busy fighting against the Murīdūn.

⁷¹A number of other similar “spiritual crises” are recorded during the Almoravid period, including that of the Sufi rebel Ibn Qasī.

⁷²See note 32.

⁷³M. Fierro, “El proceso contra Abū ʿUmar al-Ṭalamankī a través de su vida y de su obra”, Sharq al-Andalus 9 (1993): 93–127.

⁷⁴S.M. Stern, “The constitution of the Islamic city”, in The Islamic city, ed. A.H. Hourani and S.M. Stern (Oxford, 1970), 25–50, at 33–4.

⁷⁵Ibn Rustum, the Ibāḍī ruler of Tāhert (Algeria), became im ām because of his religious knowledge and because he had been named judge: A. Gaiser, Muslims, Scholars, Soldiers. The Origin and Elaboration of the Ib āḍī Imāmate Traditions (New York: Oxford University Press-American Academy of Religion, 2010), 72.

⁷⁶A.K.S. Lambton, “Quis custodiet custodes? Some reflections on the Persian theory of government”, Studia Islamica V-VI (1956): 125–48, at 132–3, quoting a diploma for the office of qāḍī issued by Alp Arslān, as well as Ghazālī, who stated that “whereas the offices of the ra'īs and ʿāmil belonged to the world, the dignity of prophethood pertained to that of the qāḍī”. See also Ibn al-Munāṣif, Tanbīh al-ḥukkām, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥāfiẓ Manṣūr (Tunis, 1988), 40, l. 8–9.

⁷⁷Ibn ʿAbdūn, Risāla fī l-qaḍā' wa-l-ḥisba, ed. E. Lévi-Provençal, Thalāth rasā'il andalusiyya fīādāb al-ḥisba wa-l-muḥtasib (Cairo, 1955), 1–65; trans. E. García Gómez and E. Lévi-Provençal, Sevilla a comienzos del siglo XII. El tratado de Ibn ʿAbdūn, Sevilla, 1981; M. ʿA. Makki, “Wathā'iq ta'rīkhiyya jadīda ʿan ʿaṣr al-murābiṭīn”, RIEEI VII-VIII (1959–60), 109–98, at 142, on the judge's control over the governors and tax collectors (risāla number 4, 170–4), as well as p. 163 on the fact that the Almoravids let the towns choose their judges (risāla number 18, 186).

⁷⁸Ibn ʿAbdūn, 16/68, para. 20.

⁷⁹Ibn ʿAbdūn, 5–6/44–5, 7/47–8, 30/104, 30/105, 31/107, 33/111, para. 4, 6, 61, 66, 70. In al-Māwardī, control of tax collection is not supposed to be the province of the judge.

⁸⁰Ibn ʿAbdūn, 14–15/64–7, para. 18, also p. 9/53, para. 7 (end) and cf. p. 49/152, para. 158.

⁸¹Ibn ʿAbdūn, 14–5/64–7, para. 18.

⁸²Ibn ʿAbdūn, 4 (end)/40, para. 2.

⁸³Ibn ʿAbdūn, 60/182–3, para. 230.

⁸⁴Martin, Les juges de Castille, 131–2. The shaving of one's head by others is linked to punishment under the Visigoths, the famous “decalvatio”. See J. Powers, A Society Organized for War. The Iberian Municipal Militias in the Central Middle Ages, 1000-1284 (Berkeley, 1988), 197–200. This punishment is documented in the period of the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, when the Arab commander Mūsā b. Nuṣayr had the head of Ṭāriq b. Ziyād, the Berber conqueror, shaved in order to punish him for having acted on his own: P. Chalmeta, Invasión e islamización: la sumisión de Hispania y la formación de al-Andalus (Madrid: Mapfre, 1994), 181. The episode is situated in Toledo and perhaps reflects Visigothic influence. Some centuries later the heretic Ibn Ḥātim al-Ṭulayṭulī, when captured in Córdoba in 464/1072, was taken barefoot and with his head shaven before the judge: M. Fierro, “El proceso contra Ibn Ḥātim al-Ṭulayṭulī (años 457/1064–464/1072)”, Estudios onomástico-biográficos de al-Andalus. VI, ed. M. Marín (Madrid, 1994), 187–215. The Māliki scholar Khalīl b. Isḥāq (d. 776/1374) opposed the practice of shaving the beards and hair of the condemned, while the Ḥanafī al-Kāsānī argued that shaving the beard constituted mutilation: Christian Lange, “Legal and Cultural Dimensions of Ignominious Parading (tashh īr) in Islam,” Islamic Law and Society 14/1 (2007): 81–108.

⁸⁵Martin, Les juges de Castille, 129–35, the quotation on p. 133.

⁸⁶Brannon Wheeler, Mecca and Eden: Ritual, Relics, and Territory in Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 95; Françoise Aubaile-Sallenave, s.v.ʿaqīqa, EI³.

⁸⁷F. Peters, The Hajj: Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places (Princeton University Press, 1994), 119.

⁸⁸M. Fierro, La heterodoxia en al-Andalus durante el periodo omeya (Madrid: IHAC, 1987), 70–4.

⁸⁹Helena de Felipe, “Los bereberes Butr y el ibadismo norteafricano”, forthcoming (I thank the author for allowing me to quote from her unpublished article).

⁹⁰Yves Modéran, “Botr et Branès: sur les origines du dualisme berbère médieval,” in Mutations d'identités en Méditerranée. Moyen Age et époque contemporaine, ed. H. Bresc and C. Veauvy (Paris, 2000), 53–65, and also Les maures et l'Afrique romaine (IVe-VIIe siècle) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2003).

⁹¹ Ajbar machmuâ = Colección de tradiciones: crónica anónima del s. XI, ed. and trans. Emilio Lafuente y Alcántara (Madrid: Imprenta y Estereotipia de M. Rivadeneyra, 1867), 40/50. See also now David James, A History of early al-Andalus. The Akhb ār majmūʿa (London: Routledge, 2012), 69: “they shaved their heads in emulation of Maysara's followers in order not to hide their true intent to fight and in order not to be confused [with their enemies]”; Fatḥ al-Andalus, ed. Luis Molina (Madrid: CSIC/AECI, 1994), 54; trans. Mayte Penelas (Madrid: CSIC, 2002), 43–4 (in this source instead of ḥalaqū (shave) the verb khalaʿū is used, a verb that involves scalping or skinning).

⁹²H. de Felipe, Identidad y onomástica de los beréberes de al-Andalus (Madrid, 1997), 299.

⁹³Fierro, Heterodoxia, 128–9.

⁹⁴ Fatḥ al-Andalus, Arabic text, 54; trans. 44 (para. 28). One of the rulers among the Banū Razīn was called al-Aṣlaʿ, “the bald”. The Fatimid caliph al-Manṣūr (r. 334/946–341/953) appears in a report with his head shaved: Heinz Halm, The Empire of the Mahdi: The Rise of the Fatimids, trans. M. Bonner (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 366. In the first case, he was a Berber, in the second case, the Fatimid caliph had to fight against a Berber rebellion using Berber troops. Perhaps in both cases the absence of hair had a symbolic meaning.

⁹⁵Manuela Marín, “Marruecos y los marroquíes en la obra de Eloy Montero (1913)”, Studi Ispanici XXXII (2007): 187–205, at 201. I owe the reference to Herodotus to Helena de Felipe: see her study quoted in note 92.

⁹⁶ Fatḥ al-Andalus, Arabic text, 54; trans. 44 (para.28).

⁹⁷J. van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra: eine Geschichte des religiosen Denkens im Frühen Islam, 6 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991), II, 461, note 8; Chase Robinson, “Prophecy and holy men”, in The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown, ed. James Howard-Johnson and Paul Antony Howard (Oxford, 1999), 241–62, at 255.

⁹⁸Brahim Cherifi, “La halqa des ʿAzzāba: un nouveau regard sur l'histoire d'une institution religieuse ibadite”, Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies 7/1 (2005) : 39–68. For the practice among Sufis see Bárbara Boloix Gallardo, Prodigios del ma estro sufí Abū Marwān al-Yuḥānisī de Almería. Estudio crítico y traducción de la Tuḥfat al-mugtarib de Aḥmad al-Qaštālī (Madrid: Mandala, 2010), numbers 12, 34.

⁹⁹Ernest Gellner, Saints of the Atlas, London, 1969 (French trans. by Paul Coatalen, Les saints de l'Atlas, Saint-Denis [France]: Bouchene, 2003); Mohamed Kerrou (ed.), L'autorité des saints: perspectives historiques et socio-anthropologiques en Méditerranée occidentale (Chapter III: Saintetés, savoirs et authorité) (Paris, 1998).

¹⁰⁰Halm, The Empire of the Mah di, 40–1, quoting al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Iftitāḥ al-dawla, ed. F. Dashrāwī (Dachraoui) (Tunis, 1975), para. 36.

¹⁰¹M. Fierro, “¿Hubo propaganda fatimí entre los Kutāma andalusíes?”, Al-Qanṭara XXV (2004): 239–44.

¹⁰²De Felipe, Identidad y onomástica de los beréberes de al-Andalus, 81, quoting Ibn Ḥayyān.

¹⁰³A. Rodríguez Figueroa, “Ibn Aṭyūn, Abū l-Jaṭṭāb”, in Enciclopedia de al-Andalus. Diccionario de autores y obras andalusíes, tomo I (A-Ibn B), ed. Jorge Lirola Delgado and José Miguel Puerta Vílchez (Sevilla: Consejería de Cultura de la Junta de Andalucía / Fundación El legado andalusí, 2003), 527–8, number 272.

¹⁰⁴Ibn Ḥayyān, Muqtabis V, ed. P. Chalmeta, F. Corriente and M. Ṣobḥ (Madrid/Rabat: IHAC, 1979); Spanish trans. M.J. Viguera and F. Corriente (Zaragoza: Anubar, 1981), 158/183.

¹⁰⁵Ibn Ḥayyān, Muqtabis V, 308/341.

¹⁰⁶Xavier Ballestín, Al-Mansur y la dawla ʿamiriya: una dinámica de poder y legitimidad en el occidente musulmán medieval (Barcelona: Universitat, 2004), 86 (quoting Ibn Ḥayyān, Muqtabis. VII, ed. ‘A.R.ʿA. al-Ḥajjī (Beirut: Dār al-Thaqāfa, 1965), 110–11/141) and 138.

¹⁰⁷The Berbers who had entered the Iberian peninsula at the time of the Muslim conquest.

¹⁰⁸The Berbers who entered al-Andalus in the fourth/tenth century to become soldiers in the Umayyad armies.

¹⁰⁹Martínez Díez, El Condado de Castilla, II, 613.

¹¹⁰Books such as Dolores Oliver's, El Cantar de Mío Cid: génesis y autoría árabe (Almería: Fundación Ibn Tufyal, 2008), with its unfounded claims (see M. Fierro, “La Afrenta de Corpes y la autoría árabe del Cantar de Mío Cid”, Al-Qan ṭara XXXIII (2012): 547–51), do not help to attract medievalists to exploring the permeability, cross-pollinations, interactions, shared legacies, etc., among Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Iberian peninsula.