León reports that after the Muslim attack on Simancas in 983 those Christians who had not been executed outright were led off to Córdoba in chains.133 For those of high social status there was always the hope that they might be ransomed.134 But for the majority of Christian captives there was the prospect of a lifetime of servitude, either in al-Andalus or in other regions of the Islamic world. Ibn Ḥawqal, writing in the 970s, listed male and female slaves among the most important exports of al-Andalus.135 Of course, this was not a one-way street: Muslims too were regularly enslaved in the course of Christian cross-border raids.136
The tenth century marked the apogee of the cross-border slave trade, as the Umayyad caliphate and the ḥājibs who wielded power on its behalf exerted ever greater military pressure on the Christian states of the North. According to the North African historian ‘Abd al-Wāḥid al-Marrākushī (b. 1185), the fifty or so campaigns waged by al-Manṣūr from the 980s down to his death in 1002 produced such a glut of Christian slave women in the markets of Córdoba that prices collapsed, and the number of men deciding to take a free Muslim wife, as opposed to a slave concubine, slumped dramatically. The beautiful daughter of one Christian notable was said to have fetched only 20 dinars.137 For its part, the anonymous fourteenth-century Dhikr Bilād al-Andalus, which preserves a catalogue of al-Manṣūr’s numerous military campaigns, places particular emphasis on the large numbers of women and children captured by the ḥājib.138 He claims, for example, that when Barcelona was sacked in 985 some 70,000 women and children were taken into captivity; at Zamora (981) the figure given is 40,000 women; at Pamplona (999) 18,000. These figures are doubtless so much hyperbole, but the chronicler’s repeated emphasis on the numbers of prisoners taken demonstrates that the capture of Christian slaves, and in particular females and their offspring, was regarded as a specially significant and praiseworthy act. This impression is reinforced by the fact that when ‘Abd al-Malik al-Muẓaffar returned from a largely fruitless campaign to Sobrarbe and Ribagorza in 1006 he was widely criticized in Córdoba for not having brought back young captives as his father had regularly done, supposedly prompting the sardonic comment from one slave trader that “the slave importer is dead.”139
Two precious eleventh-century documents enable us to put names to a handful of those Christian women who were captured in such Muslim military operations. The first charter, probably drawn up on 4 May 1005, records the grant that was made by the layman Iaquinti and his wife Tornaánimas to the monastery of Saints Justo and Pastor in León of half of their property in Campo de Villavidel, including “in that estate the shares of our daughters named Gaudiosa and Speciosa who are captive.”140 The document says nothing about the circumstances that had led to their captivity, but one is drawn to speculate that the daughters had been carried off to al-Andalus during the course of an earlier Muslim raid into the region. This impression is reinforced by another Leonese charter, drawn up on 28 December 1023.141 The document is remarkable for the extensive historical narratio inserted at the beginning, in which the nun Flora explained the background to her decision to grant all her property to the monastery of Santiago de León. She related that her grandfather Arias and her father Baldredo had earlier built the monastery of Santa Cristina within the city of León and placed the house under the control of her aunts, Justa, María, Domna Infante, and Granda, as well as her sister Honorífica and Flora herself. There then follows a vivid portrait of the devastating campaign that al-Manṣūr launched against León in 988:
On account of the sins of the Christians, the Saracen people, the seed of the Ishmaelites, invaded all the province of the West in order to devour the earth, and to strike all with the sword, to carry off captives; thus our ambusher the most ancient serpent gave them victory. And they cast down the cities, destroyed walls and trampled us underfoot; they razed cities to the ground, they beheaded men and there was not a town, a village or castle that survived that devastation.
In the course of the raid, the nuns of Santa Cristina were carried off captive by the Muslims, with the exception of Flora’s mother, the wife of Baldredo, and their son Arias. Then, Flora relates, after a long time, God took mercy on them and they left that “evil captivity,” with the exception of two of them who remained in chains. Finding their monastery in León in ruins, the women chose to set up a new religious house at nearby Villar de Mazarife. In later life, after the death of her other family members, Flora recovered the remains of Arias, Baldredo, and Justa, who had been buried in the ruined monastery of Santa Cristina, and reinterred them in that of Santiago de León, whose community Flora herself joined and generously endowed. Flora’s account does not tell us what became of those who were carried off to al-Andalus. Some might have been made to work in agriculture or domestic service, but it is equally possible that one or more of them had ended up in the personal harem of al-Manṣūr or in that of another Andalusi notable.
The Leonese charter of 1023 is important to us not only because it sheds some light on the precise circumstances that led to the enslavement of Christian women, but also because it demonstrates the traumatic psychological effects that the campaigns launched by al-Manṣūr had upon the Christian communities of the North. And what happened in León was replicated in Santiago de Compostela, Astorga, Zamora, Pamplona, Barcelona, and all the other major population centers that were overrun by al-Manṣūr’s forces during the final two decades of the tenth century.142
Our sources tell us precious little about the lives of those Christian women who were taken as wives or concubines by Muslim lords. This is hardly surprising, given that, by and large, women registered but rarely on the consciousness of Andalusi writers, and those who did tended to belong to the upper classes, in particular the mothers, wives, and daughters of sovereigns. Members of the harem were not expected to meddle in political activity, and those who did—like Queen Egilona in the eighth century or Subḥ in the tenth—were invariably portrayed as ambitious schemers, who used their feminine wiles to feather their own nests or those of their kin.143 Although none of these women would have been obliged to renounce their faith, they would have been required to abide by Islamic social practices such as those concerning ritual purity and dietary laws, and their children would have been brought up as Muslims. The social pressures to convert to Islam may have been considerable, and it is likely that many women—legitimate wives and concubines alike—did so, particularly those who had borne children to their masters.144 One woman who is known to have converted in this way was al-Manṣūr’s Navarrese royal bride, known as ‘Abda, of whom it was later said by the historian Ibn al-Khaṭīb that “she became a good Muslim; she was of all al-Manṣūr’s wives the staunchest in faith and of most gentle birth.”145 She bore the ḥājib a son, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān—nicknamed Shanjūl/Sanchuelo after his paternal grandfather—who, as we have seen, came to play a key role in the events that led to the fall of the Umayyad caliphate in the early eleventh century.
Although severe restrictions were imposed on their mobility and social interaction, the brides and jawārī who entered the harem of the caliph or some other Muslim lord might live in some comfort. Ibn Ḥayyān, for one, mentions the fine clothes, jewels, and perfumes enjoyed by one of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III’s slave concubines, Marjān.146 Moreover, some concubines might enjoy special status, particularly those who held the status of umm walad; Marjān, who bore the caliph five children, including his son and heir al-Ḥakam II, was even awarded the title of “great lady” (al-sayyida al-kubrā).147 Al-Ḥakam II esteemed his own concubine Subḥ so highly that in 964 he granted her an exquisite ivory container, which may now be viewed in the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid.148 Other concubines were not so fortunate, however, and suffered victimization or even violence at the hands of their masters. According to Ibn Ḥayyān, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III had a particularly violent streak toward the women of his harem, subjecting one unfortunate concubine who rejected his advances at his palace at Madīnat al-Zahrā’ to cruel abuse, by having his eunuchs hold her while he burned her face with a candle.149 Al-Manṣūr is reported to have had two of his slave girls executed for having recited some verses that he deemed inappropriate; while such was the ill treatment suffered by
