his nobles to war, he sought assistance from his grandmother Queen Toda Aznárez of Navarre. The queen promptly led a delegation to Córdoba to the court of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III, to whom she was related through her mother Onneca’s second marriage to the Umayyad emir ‘Abd Allāh. As a result of her intervention, the caliph undertook to provide Sancho with the military reinforcements he desperately needed in order to regain his throne, as well as the services of the caliph’s Jewish physician Ḥasdāi b. Shaprūṭ to help him shed his excess weight.112
By marked contrast, it is notable that very few Muslim women are known to have crossed the frontier in the opposite direction and taken Christian husbands. True, a number of the female members of the Banū Qasī are recorded to have married prominent Christians, such as Urraca, daughter of ‘Abd Allāh b. Muḥammad (d. 915–16), who was married off to King Fruela II of León (924–25).113 But in this the family may have constituted something of a special case, in that it was only relatively recently Islamized—which may have prompted the clan to play fast and loose with the strictures of Islamic law regarding mixed marriages. Moreover, the family’s peculiar geopolitical position, sandwiched between several competing powers, apparently led it to be far more pragmatic in its marriage policy than was the case in other regions of al-Andalus. For the most part, however, it appears that cross-border marriages between Muslim women and Christian men occurred only in exceptional circumstances. Thus, when Maḥmūd b. ‘Abd al-Jabbār of Mérida (d. c.845), a longstanding rebel against Umayyad authority, who had found political asylum in the kingdom of Alfonso II of Asturias (791–842), was killed in the course of a skirmish with the king’s forces, the Christian nobles of the region competed to marry his surviving sister Jamīla “on account of her ancestry, beauty and valor,” according to Ibn Ḥayyān. In the end, the nobles reportedly drew lots to win her hand, whereupon she converted to Christianity and married.114 Another Muslim woman who crossed the frontier in this manner was the princess known in Christian sources as “Zaida,” who after the death of her husband al-Fatḥ al-Ma’mūn during the Almoravid attack on Córdoba on 26 March 1091, and the subsequent deposition of her father-in-law, al-Mu‘tamid b. Abbād, ruler of the kingdom of Seville, fled to the Christian North and became the concubine of Alfonso VI of León-Castile (1065–1109), whom she may later have married.115 We shall have much more to say about this interfaith liaison in Chapter 4.
Women Enslaved
Our focus thus far has been on intermarriage between Muslims and Christians. None the less, it is important to recognize that the vast majority of the Christian women who were taken as sexual partners by the Umayyad rulers and other Islamic potentates in al-Andalus were not legitimate wives at all. They were, rather, jawārī (singular jariya), slaves of Iberian or other origin, who had been taken as concubines (sarārī; singular surrīya) on account of their beauty, or their abilities as singers, dancers, or reciters of poetry. The institution of concubinage was recognized by the Qur’an and came to enjoy popularity in all parts of the Islamic world, with the acquisition of jawārī widely regarded as an important status symbol.116 Islamic legal schools regulated the relationship between a man and his concubine and defined her rights closely. A concubine who bore a child to her Muslim master assumed the status of umm walad (mother of a child), which meant that she could not be sold, would enjoy permanent residence in her master’s household, and would be manumitted on his death, if not sooner; their child would be regarded as a free, legitimate heir, whose legal and social status was equal to that of any siblings born to their father’s free wives.
We know the names of a few of those Christian women who were taken as slave concubines in this way.117 One was Qalam, a woman of Navarrese origin, who had been enslaved at a relatively young age and joined the harem of the emir ‘Abd al-Raḥmān II (822–52), where she won renown as a skilled singer and dancer, as well as an outstanding calligrapher and storyteller.118 Another was Ailo, who bore Muḥammad I his son and succcessor al-Mundhir (886–88).119 By far the best known of the jawārī, however, was the Christian Navarrese woman known as Subḥ (d. 998).120 We have no idea of the precise circumstances that led to Subḥ’s enslavement, but given her reputed expertise as a singer and poetess in Arabic the likelihood is that she had been taken to al-Andalus at a relatively young age and received her education there.121 This impression is reinforced by the fact that her brother, known as Fā’iq or Rā’iq in the sources, came to hold a series of influential posts in the caliphal administration between at least 972 and 974/5.122 Recruited to the harem of al-Ḥakam II (961–76), Subḥ bore the caliph two sons, and it was reputedly through her influence that one of them later succeeded his father to the throne as Hishām II. Such was her sway over the caliph, one source claimed, that he never opposed her will.123 After Hishām II’s accession to the throne, Subḥ retained an influential role within the machinery of royal government in Córdoba, effectively acting as regent on account of her son’s young age, with control over the state bureaucracy and treasury. In 996, however, she was sidelined from power by the caliph’s ḥājib, al-Manṣūr, whose own career Subḥ had earlier helped to further and with whom she was reported to have had a passionate love affair.124
The capture and onward sale of Christian women in the slave markets of al-Andalus is well enough documented to suggest that there was a considerable demand for such human merchandise.125 Attractive slave girls could command high prices at market, particularly those who were accomplished singers.126 In the vast majority of cases, such women had been taken into captivity in the aftermath of one of the many military expeditions that were launched from al-Andalus against the Christian states of the North. Whether the Christian rulers ever surrendered women to the Umayyads in payment of tribute, in accordance with the terms of a peace treaty, as Christian tradition would later claim, is unknown, but it is not entirely inconceivable. After all, the payment of tribute in the form of slaves is recorded from other regions bordering the Islamic world.127 In other cases, the slave traffickers might have been Jews or even Christians. Thus, one source refers to the sale of a number of Christian women by Jewish merchants in ninth-century Mérida.128 Meanwhile, a charter preserved in the cartulary of the Portuguese monastery of São Mamede de Lorvâo relates how, at the time of the capture of Coimbra by al-Manṣūr in 987, a local Christian, one Ezerag de Condeixa “went to Farfon iben Abdella and became a Moor,” which could either mean that he converted to Islam, or that he pledged support to the Muslim authorities.129 Having been granted command over thirty Muslim horsemen, Ezerag is reported to have captured the Christian inhabitants of the villages in the vicinity by trickery and sold them into slavery at Santarém for six pieces of silver, in exchange for which he was later granted some property near Coimbra by al-Manṣūr.
In many cases, prisoners would have been taken in relatively small numbers, as Muslim raiding parties rampaged far and wide across Christian lands in search of easy pickings. In others, the numbers involved were clearly more substantial: when Barcelona was sacked by al-Manṣūr in 985, it was reported that all of those Christians who had taken refuge in the city at the command of Count Borrell II “for the purpose of guarding it and defending it” were either killed or taken prisoner.130 We can get a clearer idea of how the division of such human plunder was carried out from Ibn Idhārī al-Marrākushī’s relatively detailed account of the winter campaign waged by Abd al-Malik al-Muẓaffar in late 1007, when he besieged the castle of San Martín.131 We are told that when, after several days of fierce fighting, the exhausted Christian defenders finally surrendered, they filed out of the castle, placing themselves and their property under the ḥājib’s authority. Once all had done so, al-Muẓaffar commanded that the Christians be separated into two groups: on one side the warriors and other men; on the other the women and children. The ḥājib then approached the prisoners on horseback, accompanied by his retinue, and was greeted by great cheers and shouts of praise from his troops. On al-Muẓaffar’s command, the Christian men were then put to the sword; the women and children were shared out among the various volunteers and other troops who had taken part
