204 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINcounts to negotiate with the Muslims may also suggest that Theodemir
had not been alone in what he did, in creating what was effectively
a principality under Arab suzerainty, or as the treaty put it 'under the
clientage of God and of his Prophet'.
Such enclaves of immune Visigothic and Christian rule probably
did not long survive the creation of the Umayyad Amirate in Al-
Andalus. They are never heard of after 754. Even so it seems very
probable, as the report of Ibn J:iawqal, an Arab geographer who trav-
elled in Spain in 948, suggests, that large numbers of indigenous
Christians, especially in the lower ranks of society, survived in rural
areas and in many provincial towns throughout the Umayyad period.^50
They may well have still constituted the majority of the population,
despite a rise in the number of conversions to Islam and the settling
of the conquerors, and in the countryside at least may have proved
as resistant to Arab culture as to religion. The urban and rural lower
classes tend to escape from the net of available historical evidence as
easily in the Umayyad as in the Visigothic period.
For Christians in Cordoba, Seville and other centres of Arab settle-
ment and administration conditions were inevitable very different.
Problems of coexistence had to be faced from the start. The initial
small size of the Muslim community in Cordoba is perhaps indicated
by their sharing of the Church of St Vincent with the Christians.^51
This, the basilica of the principal martyr-patron of the city, was
divided, with the Muslims taking one half for their mosque. Such a
choice by the conquerors, in occupying part of the Christians' main
place of worship and focus of urban religious loyalty, can hardly have
been accidental. In the time of 'Abd al-Ral).man I it was determined
that a proper mosque should be built on the site, and the Christians
were persuaded to vacate their portion of the church by allowing
them to erect a new one, which was, however, to be established out-
side the city, across the Guadalquivir. Over St Vincent's church the
first stage of the great Umayyad mosque came into being.
Apart from such, perhaps symbolic, episodes, the urban Christian
communities were reasonably well treated by the Muslim rulers. They
were forbidden to build new churches or to advertise their worship
by the ringing of bells, but beyond these limits and a prohibition on
Christians attempting to convert Muslims or openly controverting
Islam, persecution did not exist, nor was there any overt pressure put
on the Christians to change their religion. They could be employed
in government service and several individuals rose to hold high office