Ethnic relations in Islamic Spain

[Kukul-Kan]

Ethnic relations in Islamic Spain

Much of the drama and vigor that typified social relations in medieval Spain resulted from the fact that the peninsula possessed a degree of ethnic diversity unknown elsewhere in Europe. This drama was a function, in part, of the degree of cultural difference separating groups, and, in part, of the social, economic, and demographic force of each of the peoples involved. In al-Andalus, the Muslim majority was composed of three powerful groups: the Arabs, a numerically slight but powerful, dominent elite; the Berbers, outnumbering the Arabs, and powerful militarily; and the Neo-Muslims, muwalladûn, eventually the majority of the population. Political life in Islamic Spain throughout the high middle ages was conditioned by the balance of power among these three culturally distinctive groups. In addition, there were two very large non-Muslim religious minorities, the Christians (Mozarabs) and Jews, who played social and economic roles that were not insignificant. In Christian Spain, from the late eleventh century on, conquest entailed the ingestion of large Muslim and Jewish enclaves whose role in society, by virtue of numbers and economic function, was significant.

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Thus in Islamic Spain, in addition to differentiation among groups along religious lines, with ethnic ramifications, the Muslims themselves were split into three groups, all with putative access to power according to the dictates of Islamic law: Arabs, Berbers, and Neo-Muslims. The demographic structure of the Muslim, sector of Andalusi society virtually mandated intense competition among its components. The Arabs were a ruling, bureaucratic, and landholding elite, but were scant in numbers: Târiq's original invasion force of 12,000 men was said to include but seven.(33) Subsequent emigration under Umayyad impetus was mainly felt at the very top of society and could not have increased the Arabs' demographic weight significantly. More numerous were the Berbers who joined the Arab command in North Africa and constituted the bulk of the invasion force. Despite the withdrawal of substantial numbers during the drought and famine of the 750's, fresh Berber migration from North Africa was a constant feature of Andalusi history, increasing in tempo in the tenth century. Hispano-Romans who converted to Islam, numbering six or seven millions, comprised the majority of the population and also occupied the lowest rungs on the social ladder. Yet, through the system of clientage, substantial upward mobility was possible, especially among the Neo-Muslim elite.

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Romans or Goths, reshaped (reformados) by Islamic culture, and who could easily enough come to an agreement with their brothers to the north."(50) This statement, which may be regarded as typical of traditional historiography, contains two kinds of questionable assumptions. The first concerns the directionality of cultural change. Pierre Guichard has demonstrated quite conclusively that far from ingesting the Arabs and Berbers into structures of native social organization, the muwallads themselves were assimilated to a measurable degree into the agnatically based social structure of the conquerors. Indeed, he shows that as a general rule endogamous, agnatic groups tend to expand precisely by ingesting exogamous elements, particularly women, without altering the basic structure of the family and, hence, of tribal organization.(51)
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The emergence of five distinct cultural zones in Christian Spain (Galicia-Portugal, León, Castile, Aragón, and Catalonia) did not in the high middle ages generate enough cultural distinctiveness to cause conflicts of an ethnic, as distinguished from a political, nature. During this period, people from all kingdoms spoke dialects which were mutually intelligible, or nearly so, and peoples from all regions seem to have intersettled in newly opened territory without conflict. Three Christian groups characterized by substantial ethnic differentiation -- primarily linguistic -- did evoke special responses, but were handled more in accord with the special statutes governing religious minorities as a more or less transitional measure to enhance peaceful intergroup relations during the period of acculturation. None of the three groups -- Basques, Franks, and the Mozarabs of Toledo -- suffered the long-term stigmatization that the religious minorities did.

There were numerous Basque settlements in the north of Castile, particularly in the region of Oca and Briviesca. We must assume substantial bilingualism throughout the period, and even the persistence of nuclei of monolingual Basque-speakers as late as the thirteenth century when (ca. 1235) Ferdinand III granted them permission to plead in Basque before the royal merino (judge).(62)
As they came down from the mountains, the Basques appear to have, on the whole, learned Romance very quickly and, since their participation in the formation of Old Castile and the early efforts of conquest and settlement was so much in evidence, seem not to have generated any hostility on account of linguistic differentiation.

The term franco was applied generically to anyone arriving from the north of the Pyrenees. The Chronicle of Sahagún specifies Gascons, Bretons, Germans, Englishmen, Burgundians, Normans, as well as folk from Toulouse, Provence, and Lombardy. But in fact most "Franks" were from the southern areas of France adjacent to Spain.

libro.uca.edu/ics/emspain.htm