THE MEDIEVAL HERITAGE OF IBERIA’S CHRISTIAN KINGDOMS 37
a small admixture of Germanic terms, and in ad-
ministration, it followed the Roman model. But the
succession to the kingship followed Germanic tra-
dition in being elective, a frequent source of great
internal strife.
The Medieval Heritage of
Iberia’s Christian Kingdoms
The divisions among the Goths, caused by strug-
gles over kingship, played into the hands of a ris-
ing new Muslim power that emerged from Arabia
and swept across the North African plains. In 711
the armies of the Umayyad caliphate crossed the
straits and decisively defeated Roderic, the last
Gothic king. Within a few years, the entire Iberian
Peninsula, except for the remote region north of
the Cantabrian Mountains, fell into Muslim hands.
But the Muslims’ hold on the bleak uplands of
one Christian kingdom, Castile, was never strong;
they preferred the fertile plains and mild climate of
southern Spain, which they called Al-Andalus, the
land of Andalusia.
The Umayyads, who were heir to the accu-
mulated cultural wealth of the ancient Mediter-
ranean and Asian worlds, enriched this heritage
with their own magnifi cent contributions to sci-
ence, arts, and letters. With its capital located at
Córdoba, the Umayyad dynasty transformed the
Iberian world into an economic and intellectual
showplace from which fresh knowledge and ideas
fl owed into Christian lands. Agriculture gained from
the introduction of new irrigation, water-lifting de-
vices, and new crops like sugar, saffron, cotton, silk,
and citrus fruits. Industry was broadened through
the introduction of such products as paper and
glass, hitherto unknown to the Christian kingdoms.
Muslim metalwork, pottery, silk, and leatherwork
were esteemed throughout Europe. Many Muslim
rulers were patrons of literature and learning; the
scholar-king Al-Haquem II built up a library said to
have numbered four hundred thousand volumes.
As a rule, the Umayyad conquerors did not
insist on the conversion of the vanquished Chris-
tians, preferring to give them the option of accept-
ing the Islamic faith or paying a special poll tax.
This relatively tolerant Muslim rule was favorable
to economic and cultural advance. Jews, who had
suffered severe persecution under the Christian
Visigoths, enjoyed offi cial protection and made
major contributions to medicine, philosophy, and
Talmudic studies. The condition of the peasantry
probably improved, for the conquerors distributed
the vast estates of the Visigothic lords among the
serfs, who paid a certain portion of the produce to
the Muslim lords and kept the rest for themselves.
But in later centuries, during the Almoravid oc-
cupation, these trends were reversed; great landed
estates again arose, taxation increased, and severe
persecution of Jews and Mozárabes(Christians
who had adopted Arab speech and customs) drove
many to fl ee to Christian territory.
Despite its noble achievements, the Umayyad
dynasty rested on insecure foundations. First, its
extraordinary success in expanding the caliphateWith the aid of Iberian Jews oppressed by Chris-
tian kings, Islamic forces conquered the peninsula
in the eighth century and inaugurated a period of
peaceful coexistence that, even after the Christian
reconquest, left a lasting multicultural imprint on
Spanish art, architecture, music, and literature.
[The Conversion of a Moor, illustrations to Cantiga 46, from
“Cantigas de Santa Maria” (13th century); Biblioteca Monasterio
del Escorial, Madrid, Spain/Index/Bridgeman Art Library,
London/New York]