turmoil. For example, when Córdoba descended into the fitna (civil war) on the death of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān “Sanchuelo” in 1009, the members of the harems of several leading Muslims were violated.151 Concubines might sometimes live in the lap of luxury, but for many, clearly, the experience must have been a deeply traumatic one.
The Rationale for Sexual Mixing
How are we to explain the readiness of the Umayyad rulers and other élite Muslim families of al-Andalus to enter into cross-border interfaith marriage alliances or to take Christian slave concubines? In the case of powerful kin groups such as the Banū Qasī and the Banū Shabrīṭ, marriage ties with Christian lords were clearly designed to bolster their autonomy and security vis-à-vis other regional powers, be they the Umayyad emirs to the south or the Christian Franks and Asturians to the east and west respectively, all of whom, at one time or another, had sought to impose their authority over the region of the Upper Ebro. For the Umayyads, meanwhile, as well as for the ḥājib al-Manṣūr, exogamous marriages acted partly as a tool of diplomacy, which could help stabilize relations with the sometimes fractious Christian states to the north. This is very much what the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss had in mind when he declared that “a continuous transition exists from war to exchange, and from exchange to intermarriage, and the exchange of brides is merely the conclusion to an uninterrupted process of reciprocal gifts, which effects the transition from hostility to alliance, from anxiety to confidence, and from fear to friendship.”152
Yet peacemaking was only part of the equation. From another perspective, Umayyad policy in this regard provides a classic example of an “aggressive” marriage strategy that seems to have been a characteristic feature of many premodern Mediterranean societies.153 In the words of Julian Pitt-Rivers,
Marriage strategy can be either conciliatory, defensive or aggressive. To give women in exchange for political protection and/or economic advantage involves accepting domination and profiting from its counterpart…. A more defensive strategy attempts to reserve its women within the group and avoid outside involvement. But the aggressive strategy aims both to deny its women to outsiders and take in their women…. Competition for women, however it may be conceptualised by the people themselves, is competition for power.154
Ruth Mazo Karras puts it more baldly: “Penetration symbolizes power. For men of one group to have sex with women of another is an assertion of power over the entire group.”155 Muslim societies were by no means unique in this respect, but it was undoubtedly the case that in early Islamic and even pre-Islamic culture it had been considered honorable for a man to acquire a wife from another kin group through force or persuasion, by conquest or alliance, and women were regarded as particularly valuable prizes of conquest.156 Echoes of such attitudes could be found in al-Andalus too. The sexual dominance of a Muslim ruler over a Christian woman—be it a freeborn princess or a slave concubine—was portrayed by some as symbolic of Islamic political and military hegemony, as well as a humiliating reminder to the Christians themselves of their subordinate status.157
The prolific poetic output of the panegyrist and man of letters Ibn Darrāj al-Qasṭallī (d. 1030) provides a useful perspective on these matters.158 Hailing from the Algarve in southern Portugal, Ibn Darrāj rose to prominence at the court of al-Manṣūr in 992, and it was in honor of the latter and of his son, ‘Abd al-Malik al-Muẓaffar, that he composed a large number of panegyrics. Especially revealing for our purposes are the poems he composed for al-Manṣūr to celebrate the ḥājib’s military successes over the Christian armies during the final decade of the tenth century. In these works Ibn Darrāj is quick to praise the nobility, valor, piety, and generosity of his patron, but equally eye-catching is the emphasis that he places upon the capture of Christian women by Muslim armies. One such poem, which is dedicated to al-Muẓaffar, and which refers to a campaign led by al-Manṣūr against Navarre and against the territory of Miró count of Pallars, perhaps in 999, claims that the ḥājib had stolen the Christians’ lives, “possessing the slavery of their women and dominating their souls”; he further adds that their marriage contracts had been “written with spears,” a clear indication that their forcible recruitment to Muslim harems was anticipated.159 Equally explicit is the poem written to extol al-Manṣūr’s campaign to Navarre and the Rioja in 1000, which had culminated in a victory over a coalition of Christian forces. Here again Ibn Darrāj mentions the capture of Christian women, who are described as “herds of fat gazelles.” Although they are chaste, the poet declares, “they would accept your offer if you wanted to marry them.”160 In another poem he wrote to celebrate the winter campaign waged against León in 995, Ibn Darrāj makes extravagant play of the vulnerability of those Christian women whose husbands had been put to the sword.161 Furthermore, when King Sancho Garcés II of Navarre came to Córdoba at the head of a diplomatic mission in September 992, and had the opportunity to meet his grandson ‘Abd al-Raḥmān “Sanchuelo,” Ibn Darrāj praised the nobility of the Christian king, but left his audience in no doubt that his visit and pledge of obedience to his son-in-law, al-Manṣūr, marked a considerable humiliation for him.162
Since a woman’s very reputation and status rested upon her honor and chastity, the sexual use of Christian female captives or even freeborn wives was designed in part to destroy solidarity among Christian families and communities, inflicting shame not only on the women themselves, but also on their male coreligionists—like King Sancho Garcés of Navarre—who had failed to protect them.163 Simultaneously, the forcible deracination of Christian women and children to al-Andalus, and their conversion to Islam in many cases, was seemingly designed to encourage a process of assimilation which would hinder procreation among the Christians of the North and ensure a shift in cultural and ethnic loyalties in the future.164 Sex was, perhaps, the ultimate colonizing gesture. Of course, this was by no means an exclusively medieval Iberian phenomenon. Organized sexual violence against women, with the intention of reinforcing a sense of failure and humiliation among the vanquished, has been an integral aspect of military conduct throughout the ages.165 In a modern context, one need only recall the forcible recruitment of many thousands of “comfort women” to Japanese-run brothels during the Second World War, or the mass rapes carried out by Soviet forces in Germany in 1945 and by the participants of the Balkan and Rwandan conflicts of the 1990s, to list only some of the most shocking examples.166 In all such cases, sexual violence acts as a political metaphor, an emblem of military hegemony, with women’s bodies being used to stage the conflict.167 “In war zones,” Ruth Seifert has observed, “women apparently always find themselves on the front line.”168
The taking of Christian prisoners—male and female alike—was regarded as a significant propaganda opportunity for the Umayyad caliphs and for the ḥājibs who later supplanted them. By the time of the reigns of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III and al-Ḥakam II, the military expeditions that were regularly dispatched from Córdoba against the Christians and other enemies of the caliphate had developed into complex ceremonial occasions designed to project the caliph’s power and legitimacy, as well as his commitment to the defense of the faith. Thus, we know from the detailed descriptions provided by al-Rāzī that before an army departed on jihād during the reign of al-Ḥakam II, its banners were customarily blessed and fixed on lances; muezzins recited verses from the Qu’rān and blessed those who would wage war on God’s behalf; and the general and his army paraded through the streets of Córdoba, stopping off at the Bāb al-Sudda, one of the ceremonial gates to the royal palace, where the caliph would appear to impart his own blessing on the departing troops.169 And the return of the army some months later was equally carefully choreographed. A report on the campaign and its achievements would be read out before the faithful in the great mosque of Córdoba; there were further parades, and the heads of some of the enemy dead, as well as prisoners of war, were conveyed in solemn procession back to the Bāb al-Sudda, along with other battle trophies such as banners, crosses, and bells.170 The poems of Ibn Darrāj demonstrate that the many campaigns led against the Christian realms by al-Manṣūr, the
