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Medieval Arabic accounts of the conquest of Cordoba: Creating a narrative for a provincial capital1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2011

Nicola Clarke
Nicola Clarke*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
*
nicola.clarke@wolfson.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

Like most early Islamic history writing, the tradition surrounding the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 711 is the product of later debates and priorities rather than a true reflection of eighth-century circumstances. Rather than seek to reconstruct what is lost, this article explores what the sources have to tell us about these later priorities: that is, what the authors, their patrons and their wider environment valued in the history that they retold. Its focus is the conquest of Cordoba, narratives about which entered the tradition in the tenth century, as a result of the patronage of history writing by the Umayyad caliphs ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (r. 912–61) and al-Ḥakam II (r. 961–76). These tenth-century narratives are expressions of both caliphal ideology and the writers' own status in their society.

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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , February 2011 , pp. 41 - 57
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 2011

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Footnotes

1

I would like to thank Chase Robinson, Harry Munt and Ann Christys for their comments on drafts of this article, and Hugh Kennedy and Adam Silverstein for a discussion of the ideas.

References

2 A. Huici Miranda, “Istidja”, EI (second edition), iv, 254.

3 A Roman-founded suburb to the south-east of the city. Christys, A., “The meaning of topography in Umayyad Córdoba”, in Goodson, C., Lester, A. and Symes, C. (eds), Cities, Texts, and Social Networks, 400–1500: Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 109Google Scholar; E. Lévi-Provençal, “Shaḳunda”, EI (second edition), ix, 255.

4 That is, approximately 6 km.

5 Ibn ʿIdhārī, , Kitāb al-bayān al-mughrib, ed. Colin, G. S. and Lévi-Provençal, E. (Leiden: Brill, 1948–51)Google Scholar, ii, 9–10.

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11 Ibn Ḥabīb, Ta'rīkh, 146. Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, ii, p. 18, and the anonymous Fatḥ al-Andalus contain very similar versions of this. The former does not cite his source; the latter credits it to Ibn Ḥabīb, adding that Ibn Ḥabīb's informant was Abū Nuʿaym al-Tujībī.

12 Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, , Futūḥ Miṣr, ed. Torrey, C. C. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1922), 206Google Scholar.

13 Molina, L., “Los Ajbār Maŷmūʿa y la historiografía árabe sobre el periodo omeya an al-Andalus”, Al-Qanṭara 10/2, 1989, 513Google Scholar, notes the impossibility of pinning down the Akhbār Majmūʿa, since it contains such a variety of reports and styles; Moreno, E. Manzano, “Oriental ‘Topoi’ in Andalusian historical sources”, Arabica 39/1, 1992, 43Google Scholar, suggests that there is at least a substantial amount of tenth-century material in it. Fatḥ al-Andalus, editor's introduction, XXVIII–XXX, argues that the text is a redaction of an eleventh-century work by Ibn Muzayn, prince of the ṭā’ifa of Silves; Ibn Muzayn drew upon Ibn Ḥayyān, who in turn had used Ibn Ḥabīb, al-Rāzī, and others. Ibid., 120, gives a terminus ad quem for the compilation with a reference to Yūsuf b. Tashfīn (d. 1106) as if he is still alive.

14 The text of the address announcing this appears in Una Crónica anónima de ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III al-Nāṣir, ed. and tr. Lévi-Provençal, E. and Gómez, E. García (Madrid and Granada: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1950), 79Google Scholar, and the surviving fragment of ʿArīb b. Saʿīd Brazales, (tr. J. Castilla), La Crónica de ʿArīb sobre al-Andalus (Granada, 1992), 205–6Google Scholar.

15 See Martinez-Gros, G., L'idéologie omeyyade: la construction de la légitimité du Califat de Cordoue (Xe–XIe siècles) (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1992)Google Scholar, and Safran, J. N., The Second Umayyad Caliphate: the Articulation of Caliphal Legitimacy in al-Andalus (Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs, 33. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

16 Safran, Second Umayyad Caliphate, 45–7, 190–5.

17 Examples: Ibn al-Qūṭīya, Ta’rīkh iftitāḥ al-Andalus, in Ribera, J. (ed.), Historia de la conquista de España (Madrid: Tipografía de la “Revista de Archivos”, 1926), 4–6Google Scholar (several Umayyads show generosity to the author's Christian ancestor, who remembers this when ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I comes to rule in al-Andalus from 754); Akhbār Majmūʿa, 51–4 (on ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I's Umayyad lineage), 118–9 (the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Manṣūr [r. 754–75] praises ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I in comparison with pre-750 Umayyad caliphs).

18 Humphreys, R. S., Islamic History: A Framework for Enquiry (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1999 rev. ed.), 69–70Google Scholar; Robinson, C. F., Islamic Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 92–7Google Scholar (and elsewhere).

19 Leder, S., “The literary use of the Khabar: a basic form of historical writing”, in Cameron, A. and Conrad, L. I. (eds), Problems in the Literary Source Material (The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 284Google Scholar, 307–8; Leder, S., “The use of composite form in the making of the Islamic historical tradition”, in Kennedy, P. F. (ed.), On Fiction and Adab in Medieval Arabic Literature (Studies in Arabic Language and Literature, 6. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005), 129Google Scholar; Judd, S. C., “Narrative and character development: al-Ṭabarī and al-Balādhurī on late Umayyad history”, in Günther, S. (ed.), Ideas, Images, and Methods of Portrayal: Insights into Classical Arabic Literature and Islam (Islamic History and Civilization: Studies and Texts, 58. Leiden: Brill, 2005), 209–10Google Scholar, 211–3, 225.

20 In the whole of Ibn Ḥabīb's history, only three names can be securely linked to Andalusis, none of them in the conquest narrative; two are known to have been Mālikis. Ibn Ḥabīb, Ta’rīkh, editor's introduction, 71–2.

21 Ibn Ḥajar, , Tahdhīb al-tahdhīb (Hyderabad: Matbaʿat Majlis Dā’irat al-Maʿārif al-Nizāmīya, 1325–27/1907–09)Google Scholar, v, § 648, and viii, § 832, respectively. Al-Layth was born in Qalqashanda and travelled to the east on several occasions, although there does not appear to be any evidence that he visited al-Andalus; Khoury, R. G., “Al-Layth b. Saʿd (94/713–175/791), grand maître et mécène de l'Egypte, vu à travers quelques documents islamiques anciens”, JNES 40/3, 1981, 190–1Google Scholar.

22 Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb, vi, § 237.

23 Makkī, M., “Egypt and the origins of Arabic Spanish historiography: a contribution to the study of the earliest sources for the history of Islamic Spain”, in Fierro, M. and Samsó, J. (eds), The Formation of al-Andalus, Part 2: Languages, Religion, Culture and the Sciences (Formation of the Classical Islamic World, 47. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 180–5Google Scholar. This, of course, assumes that there was anything to link to, of which I am by no means convinced.

24 Abū ’l-Arab al-Tamīmī, , Ṭabaqāt ʿulamā’ Ifrīqiya wa-Tūnis (Tunis: al-Dār al-Tūnisīyah lil-Nashr, 1968), 82Google Scholar; Ibn Sa’d, , Ṭabaqāt al-kubrā (Beirut: Dār Sādir, 1957–68)Google Scholar, vii, 512.

25 Labelled a trustworthy transmitter (thiqa) by Ibn Sa’d, Ṭabaqāt, 515.

26 Makkī, “Egypt and the origins”, 182–3, 186.

27 Al-Maqqarī, Nafḥ, i, 278.

28 Al-Ghassānī, Riḥlat al-wazīr fī-iftikāk al-ashīr, in Ribera, Historia, 194.

29 Fatḥ al-Andalus, 25. Ibid., editor's introduction, XXVII, posits that both texts drew upon the same eleventh-century sources; Penelas, M. in the translation (La conquista de al-Andalus (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2002), 18, n. 46)Google Scholar adds that al-Ghassānī may be more correct, but there is no obvious reason to accept this. Fatḥ al-Andalus does call ʿAlī a tābi’ī elsewhere, 28.

30 Al-Bakrī, , Kitāb al-masālik wa-’l-mamālik, ed. van Leeuwen, A. P. and Ferre, A. (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1992)Google Scholar, ii, § 1505.

31 Kitāb al-imāma wa-’l-siyāsa, in Ribera, Historia, 126–7. This text has been attributed, wrongly, to the Kūfan scholar Ibn Qutayba (d. 889); Makkī, “Egypt and the origins”, 223–6, while rejecting Ibn Qutayba's authorship, still prefers a ninth-century date for its conquest section, though admits that it is an incoherent compilation. I believe it contains much later material; for example, Ṭāriq's speech, Kitāb al-imāma, 122–3.

32 Noth and Conrad, Historical Tradition, 126; Schacht, J., “On Mūsā b. ʿUqba's Kitāb al-Maghāzī”, Acta Orientalia 21, 1953, 300Google Scholar.

33 Al-Maqqarī, Nafḥ, i, 279: discussing ʿAlī b. Rabāḥ, he notes “Al-Layth transmitted, on the authority of his son Mūsā b. ʿAlī” (rawā al-Layth ʿan ibnihi Mūsā b. ʿAlī).

34 Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, ii, 13.

35 Ibn Ḥabīb, Ta’rīkh, 138.

36 Crónica de 1344, ed. Catalán, D. and de Andrés, M. S. (Madrid, 1971), 143Google Scholar. The Crónica de 1344 is largely based on the Castilian Crónica del Moro Rasis, which is itself based on an earlier Portuguese translation of al-Rāzī's lost work.

37 Akhbār Majmūʿa, 15.

38 Akhbār Majmūʿa, 15; Crónica de 1344, 145.

39 Ibn al-Qūṭīya, Iftitāḥ, 9–10 (both); Akhbār Majmūʿa, 9–15 (Ṭāriq), 15–8 (Mūsā). All the later Arabic and Spanish Christian sources containing itineraries are derived from tenth-century material: Fatḥ al-Andalus, 20–4 (Ṭāriq), 24–9 (Mūsā); Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī ’l-ta’rīkh, ed. C. J. Tornberg (Beirut: Dār Sādir, 1965–67), iv, 563–4 (Ṭāriq), 564–5 (Mūsā); Crónica de 1344, 134–5 and 139–42 (Ṭāriq), 142–53 (Mūsā). de Santiago Simón, E., “The itineraries of the Muslim conquest of al-Andalus in the light of a new source: Ibn al-Shabbāṭ”, in Marín, M. (ed.), The Formation of al-Andalus, Part 1: History and Society (Formation of the Classical Islamic World, 46. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 5–9Google Scholar, compares a number of itineraries, all late.

40 Molina, L., “Un relato de la Conquista de al-Andalus”, Al-Qanṭara 19/1, 1998, 42–3Google Scholar, 49. It is presumably not a coincidence that al-Rāzī was also responsible for the first major Andalusi description of the geography of the Peninsula.

41 Neither account is structured around itineraries of named cities, as are all narratives from the mid-tenth century onwards. Both mention Algeciras, Toledo and Cordoba (Ibn Ḥabīb in the context of Mūsā's prophecy only). Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, Futūḥ, adds Carteya, Narbonne (206 and 208, neither as conquests) and Sidonia (206–7, the site of the battle with Roderic) and Ibn Ḥabīb, Ta’rīkh, 142, Zaragoza.

42 Ibn Ḥabīb, Ta’rīkh, 141.

43 Especially his grandson ʿAbd al-Malik, a qāḍī and then amīr of Egypt: al-Kindī, , Kitāb al-wulāh wa-Kitāb al-quḍāh, ed. Guest, R. (Leiden: Brill, 1912), 93Google Scholar, 98, 101; Ibn Taghrībirdī, , Al-nujūm al-zāhira (Cairo: Matbaʿat Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣrīya, 1929–72)Google Scholar, i, 316–7, 324–5.

44 This is perhaps unsurprising, given how long it was before parallel areas of intellectual life blossomed. We know of seventy-five legal scholars in the ninth century, compared with ten during the eighth: Marín, M., “La transmisión del saber en al-Andalus (hasta 300/912)”, Al-Qanṭara 8/1, 1987, 89Google Scholar; Martinez-Gros, L'idéologie, 19.

45 Safran, Second Umayyad Caliphate, 10–13; Martinez-Gros, L'idéologie, 20.

46 Their court ceremonies, for example, were claimed to be better than those of the ʿAbbāsids, because they were older; Meouak, M., Pouvoir souverain, administration centrale et élites politiques dans l'Espagne ummayade (IIe–IVe/VIIIe–Xe siècles) (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1999), 23Google Scholar.

47 M. Barceló, “The manifest Caliph: Umayyad Ceremony in Córdoba, or the staging of power”, in Marín, Formation, 426–7, 433–4; Safran, J. N., “Ceremony and submission: the symbolic representation and recognition of legitimacy in tenth-century al-Andalus”, JNES 58/3, 1999, 191, 193–7Google Scholar; Fierro, M., “Violencia, política y religión en al-Andalus durante al s. IV/X: el reinado de ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III”, in Fierro, M. (ed.), De Muerte Violenta: Política, religion y violencia en al-Andalus (Estudios onomástico-biográficos de al-Andalus, 14, Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2004), 44–6Google Scholar, 50–1.

48 Notably the Great Mosque of Cordoba: Khoury, N. N. N., “The meaning of the Great Mosque of Cordoba in the tenth century”, Muqarnas 13, 1996, 80, 83–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This link was also made in the stories tenth-century writers attached to its founding, drawing parallels between the church of St John in Damascus – which had been shared for a time between Muslims and Christians before being converted in a mosque – and the church of St Vincent in Cordoba that underlay the mosque there; Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, ii, 229 (quoting al-Rāzī), 237 (al-Ḥakam sending to Constantinople for decorative materials, as had been done for the Damascus mosque). Cf. Fierro, M., “En torno a la decoración con mosaicos de las mezquitas omeyas”, Homenaje al Prof. Jacinto Bosch Vilá (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1991), i, 135–9, 143–4Google Scholar.

49 Monroe, J. T., “The historical Arjūza of Ibn ʿAbd Rabbihi, a tenth-century Hispano-Arabic epic poem”, JAOS 91/1, 1971, 70–3Google Scholar, notes that the titular narrative poem – a florid honouring of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III's rise – was based on one written by the (not very successful) ʿAbbāsid Ibn al-Muʿtazz.

50 ʿĪsā quoted in a fragment from Ibn Ḥayyān; Arabic text in Lévi-Provençal, E., “Sur l'installation des Rāzī en Espagne”, Arabica 2/2, 1955, 230CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The biographer Ibn al-Faraḍī (d. 1013), credits al-Rāzī with “many books (mu'allafāt) on the akhbār of al-Andalus and the tawārīkh of the dynasties (duwal) of its kings”: Ibn al-Faraḍī, § 135.

51 Ibn ʿAbd al-Malik al-Marrākushī (d. 1303), al-Dhayl wa-’l-Takmila, ed. Abbās, I. (Beirut: Dār al-Thaqafa, 1955–73)Google Scholar, i, 141–3; Lopez, A. C., “Vie et oeuvre du fameux polygraphe de Cordoue, ʿArīb ibn Saʿīd (Xe siècle)”, in Barkai, R. (ed.), Chrétiens, musulmans et juifs dans l'espagne médiévale: de la convergence à l'expulsion (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1994), 88–9Google Scholar. He also, in collaboration with a Christian bishop, composed the “Calendar of Cordoba”.

52 Ibn Ḥayyān, , Muqtabis V, ed. Chalmeta, P. (Madrid: al-Maʿhad al-Isbānī al-ʿArabī lil-Thaqāfah, 1979), 81Google Scholar.

53 Meouak, M., “Histoire de la kitāba et des kuttāb en al-Andalus umayyade (2e/VIIIe–4e/Xe siècles)”, Orientalia Suecana 41–2 (1992–93), 167Google Scholar.

54 Sijpesteijn, P., “New rule over old structures: Egypt after the Muslim Conquest”, Proceedings of the British Academy 136, 2007, 187–91Google Scholar, for evidence from Egypt; Chalmeta, Invasión, 213–20, collects references to pacts in the sources on al-Andalus.

55 Fierro, M., “Mawālī and muwalladūn in al-Andalus (second/eighth–fourth/tenth centuries)”, in Bernards, M. and Nawas, J. (eds), Patronate and Patronage in Early and Classical Islam (Islamic History and Civilization: Studies and Texts, 61. Leiden: Brill, 2005), 199Google Scholar; Judah, J., “The economic conditions of the mawālī in early Islamic times”, in Morony, M. G. (ed.), Manufacturing and Labour (Formation of the Classical Islamic World, 12. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 175Google Scholar; Pitt-Rivers, J., “Honour and social status”, in Peristiany, J. G. (ed.), Honour and Shame: the Values of Mediterranean Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 38, 58Google Scholar.

56 Silverman, S., “Patronage as myth”, in Gellner, E. and Waterbury, J. (eds), Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Society (London: Duckworth, 1977), 13–5Google Scholar.

57 Cf. Mauss, M., The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, tr. Cunnison, I. (London: W.W. Norton, 1969), 2, 37–9Google Scholar.

58 E. Gellner, “Patrons and clients”, in Gellner and Waterbury, Patrons and Clients, 4–5; Eisenstadt, S. N. and Roniger, L., Patrons, Clients and Friends: Interpersonal Relations and the Structure of Trust in Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 48–9, 181–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 See, for example, al-Yaʿqūbī, , Kitāb al-buldān, ed. de Goeje, M. J. (Leiden: Brill, 1892), 354–5Google Scholar, who also notes how given clans stood in relation to the government: Toledo, 354, all hostile; Valencia, 355, Berbers who “do not offer obedience to the Umayyads”. Modern scholars have, more or less tentatively, agreed with this assessment: M. Cruz Hernández, “The social structure of al-Andalus during the Muslim occupation (711–55), and the founding of the Umayyad monarchy”, in Marín, Formation, 61; Guichard, P., Structures sociales “orientales” et “occidentales” dans l'Espagne musulmane (Paris: Mouton, 1977), 251–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has sound suggestions (such as the idea that the Berbers might have sought to stay away from centralized control as much as from urban life) but he extends his argument from toponymy too far to be entirely convincing; Kennedy, Muslim Spain, 16–8.

60 Fierro, “Mawālī”, 218.

61 Pérez, D. Oliver, “Sobre el significado de mawlā en la historia omeya de al-Andalus”, Al-Qanṭara 22/2, 2001, 329–30Google Scholar.

62 Mūsā's father was a guard captain under Muʿāwiya: Ibn Ḥabīb, Ta’rīkh, 138–9. His nisba is given as al-Lakhmī. Ṭāriq was Mūsā's client, or the mawlā of a mawlā, and a Berber.

63 New mawālī included a manumitted slave, Bazīʿ, whose family maintained the ties of dependence with the Umayyads even when they became governors: Fierro, M., “Bazīʿ, mawlà de ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I, y sus descendientes”, Al-Qanṭara 8/1, 1987, 100, 105–6Google Scholar; Moreno, E. Manzano, Conquistadores, emires y califas: los omeyas y la formación de al-Andalus (Barcelona: Crítica, 2006), 232–3Google Scholar; Ibn al-Faraḍī, §§ 1127, 1134; Fierro, M., “Los mawālī de ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I”, al-Qanṭara 20/1, 1999, 65, 89–92Google Scholar.

64 Although the Cordoban Umayyads had military mawālī families too; Meouak, M., “Los Banū Yaʿlà, una familia de la elite militar al servicio de los Omeyas de Córdoba”, Estudios onomástico-biográficos de al-Andalus vii (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1995), 285–93Google Scholar.

65 Such as the Banū Jawhar, of eastern origin; Soravia, B., “Entre bureaucratie et littérature: la kitāba et les kuttāb dans l'administration de l'Espagne umayyade”, Al-Masāq 7, 1994, 180CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 The aforementioned Bazīʿ's lineage produced several notable figures: Ibn al-Faraḍī, §§ 1127, 1134; cf. Fierro, “Bazīʿ”, 107–15.

67 Manzano Moreno, “Las fuentes”, 398.

68 Ibn al-Faraḍī, § 135.

69 Ibn Khaldūn, , Kitāb al-ʿIbar (Būlāq: Dār al-Tibāʿa al-Khidīwīya, 1284/1867–68), ii, 88Google Scholar; Molina, L., “Orosio y los geógrafos hispanomusulmanes”, Al-Qanṭara 5/1, 1984, 67–71Google Scholar, spends a lot of time trying to rationalize what he takes to be conflicting accounts of when the translation took place, but the simplest solution seems to me to be that al-Ḥakam began patronizing scholarship before his accession to the throne. The translation is cited by al-Bakrī, § 1494.

70 Ibn al-Faraḍī, § 1316; Christys, A., Christians in al-Andalus (711–1000) (Richmond: Curzon, 2002), 160, 162Google Scholar.

71 Ibn Ḥayyān, Muqtabis V, 69–81; Carabaza, J. M., “La familia de los Banū Ḥaŷŷāŷ (siglos II–VII/VIII–XII)”, in Marín, M. and Zanón, J. (eds), Estudios onomástico-biográficos de al-Andalus v (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1992), 41–3Google Scholar.

72 Castilla Brazales, Crónica de ʿArīb, introduction, 9, 19–20, 31.

73 Moreno, E. Manzano, “El «medio cordobés» y la elaboración cronística en al Andalus bajo la dinastía de los omeyas”, in García, G. I. (ed.), Historia social, Pensamiento historiográfico y Edad Media (Madrid: Ediciones del Orto, 1997), 74–5Google Scholar, 83–4. Ibn al-Qūṭīya's teachers, for example, included Qāsim and Ibn Lubāba (d. 926) (Ibn al-Faraḍī, §§ 1187, 1316), and he cites the latter as a source on his Christian ancestors, 36–40.

74 Soravia, “La kitāba”, 166–7.

75 Neither is it to be seen in all later works: the Dhikr bilād, for example, written in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, has very little on the conquest of Cordoba: Dhikr bilād al-Andalus ed. L. Molina (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1983)Google Scholar, i, 99.

76 See Molina, “Un relato”, and idem, “Los itinerarios de la conquista: el relato de ʿArīb”, Al-Qanṭara 20/1, 1999Google Scholar.

77 Ibn al-Qūṭīya, Iftitāḥ, 2–5; likewise, Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, ii, 7–8, and Ibn Kathīr (d. 1373), al-Bidāya wa’l-nihāya (Beirut, 1994), ix, 83Google Scholar, both have Cordoba as Roderic's capital.

78 Ṭāriq; we are told earlier, “Then Ṭāriq approached Cordoba”: Ibn al-Shabbāṭ, Ṣilāṭ al-simṭ, in Ta’rīkh al-Andalus li-Ibn al-Kardabus wa-waṣfuhu li-Ibn al-Shabbāṭ, ed. al-ʿAbbādī, A. M. (Madrid: Maʿhad al-Dirāsāt al-Islāmiya, 1971), 141Google Scholar.

79 Ibn al-Shabbāṭ, Ṣilāṭ, 143–4; Ibn al-Shabbāṭ's close contemporary, Ibn al-Athīr (d. 1234), has a single line summary: “As to the cavalry that went to Cordoba: a shepherd pointed out to them a gap in its wall; they entered its territory this way, and took possession of it”. Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, iv, 563.

80 Noth and Conrad, Historical Tradition, 19–20, 167–8.

81 Molina, “Los itinerarios”, 32–3 (argument), 34–8 (the extracted account). Ibn al-Shabbāṭ's other main sources are clearly distinguished (and accurately reproduced) within the text; two of them, al-Rushāṭī (d. 1147) and Ibn al-Kharrāṭ (d. 1186) are collected in Al-Andalus en el Kitāb iqtibās al-anwār y en el Ijtiṣār iqtibās al-anwār, ed. E. Molina López and J. Bosch Vilá (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1990).

82 Fatḥ al-Andalus, 20–1; this account is followed, 21, by a rival tradition (from “other works”) saying only that Cordoba was conquered ṣulḥan, with the fact that a Byzantine church still stands there adduced as proof.

83 Akhbār Majmūʿa, 10–14; Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, ii, 9–10.

84 Molina, “Un relato”, 63–4 (etc.).

85 Crónica de 1344, 136–9.

86 Akhbār Majmūʿa, 9; Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, ii, 10. See also discussion (with reference to the Akhbār Majmūʿa) of Mughīth in Martinez-Gros, L'idéologie, 57–60, which concentrates on the legitimating symbolism surrounding Mughīth's conquest of Cordoba, including the fig tree.

87 Al-Maqqarī, Nafḥ, iii, 14.

88 Estimations (albeit based on a model developed for Iran) may be found in Bulliet, R., Conversion to Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 117–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Al-Maqqarī, Nafḥ, iii, 12 and 14. A certain ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Mughīth was active in the service (usually military) of the amīrs Hishām (r. 788–96) and al-Ḥakam I (r. 796–822): Ibn al-Athīr, v, 309, 426; Ibn ʿIdhārī, ii, 64–5, 75. While he was presumably – given the timespan involved – not the son his name would suggest, this may indicate a genuine historical Mughīth, or at least a figure with descendants prepared to embellish his memory.

90 Akhbār Majmūʿa, 10.

91 Akhbār Majmūʿa, 29.

92 Akhbār Majmūʿa, 21; cf. Fatḥ al-Andalus, 30.

93 It was the former home of Ibn Ḥazm's family, as he discusses in his Ṭawq al-hamāma (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Ḥusaynīya al-Miṣrīya, 1975), 102–3Google Scholar, 120–1, 127–8. After its ruin during the fitna that brought down the Umayyads, he lamented it as a symbol of all that was lost.

94 Castejón, R., “Nuevas identificaciones en la topografía de la Córdoba califal”, in Actas: Primer Congreso de Estudios Arabes e Islámicos, Córdoba, 1962 (Madrid: Comite Permanente del Congreso de Estudios Arabes e Islámicos, 1964), 374Google Scholar n. 15, suggests that the balāṭ occupied by Mughīth was a Roman foundation. Ruggles, D. Fairchild, Gardens, Landscapes, and Visions in the Palaces of Islamic Spain (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 39–40Google Scholar, expresses scepticism at this, and notes that while there was a prosperous suburb to the west of Cordoba in the tenth century, it was an undeveloped area in the Visigothic and immediate post-conquest period. For an overview of the literature on Umayyad-period Cordoban country estates, see Anderson, G. D., “Villa (munya) architecture in Umayyad Córdoba: preliminary considerations”, in Anderson, G. D. and Rosser-Owen, M. (eds), Revisiting al-Andalus: Perspectives on the Material Culture of Islamic Iberia and Beyond (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 53–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95 Fatḥ al-Andalus, 29–30.

96 Fatḥ al-Andalus, 30.

97 Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, Futūḥ, 210.

98 Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, Futūḥ, 207.

99 An alternative possibility is that this narrative comes from an eleventh-century (or later) context: that is, one stemming from a post-fitna world in which nostalgia for the caliphate in general and for Cordoba in particular shaped so much historical and other writing in al-Andalus.