264 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINimposition of a single will could still maintain the rule of Cordoba.
His elder son 'Abd aI-Malik, to whom in 1007 the puppet caliph gave
the title of Al-Mu~affar, 'the Victor', and who had served as his father's
deputy in Fez, was able to keep the system created by Al-Man~ur in
being for a few years more, but his death in 1008, possibly poisoned
by his half brother' Sanchuelo', son of the Pamplonan princess, finally
exposed the fragility of the central authority, almost as effectively as
had the defeat of Roderic in 711. Over twenty years of strife ensued
that left Cordoba irreparably damaged physically, and its caliphate an
irrelevancy. The history of Spain has demonstrated consistently that
once the hand in the centre is weakened its hold over the diverse and
restive peripheral parts of the peninsula is lost. 54
In the north the career of Sancho 'the Great' of Pamplona (1004-
1035), who achieved a brief pre-eminence over neighbours weakened
by the campaigns of Al-Man~llr and Al-Mu~affar, led, paradoxically,
not to the permanent aggrandisement of his tiny kingdom, but to the
creation, through the division of his territories amongst his sons in
1035, of the new kingdoms of Aragon and Castille, the second of
which speedily absorbed the older Asturian Leonese monarchy (see
Table II). With the demise of the latter in 1037 and the destruction
of the Umayyad Caliphate the two poles of the political order of the
peninsula during the previous three centuries disappeared.
Within a hundred years Spain was to be exposed to more new
forces and influences than perhaps in the whole of its history since
the coming of the Romans. From the north came ideas, individuals
and institutions that further undermined the vestiges of the old or-
der. The Visigothic-Mozarabic liturgy was suppressed in the interests
of a Rome-inspired uniformity of Christian practice, Cluniac
monasticism and the Rule of St Benedict obtained firm holds, espe-
cially in the kingdom of Castille, whose monarchs Fernando I and
Alfonso VI made themselves the most munificent patrons of the
mother house of Cluny. French knights and others too were drawn
into the peninsula by the influence of new ideas of crusade, and by
the increasingly attractive prospects of the acquisition of wealth by
the sword. In art and in the Church foreigners found patronage and
opportunities for advancement in the increasingly flourishing Chris-
tian kingdoms, soon to include the new realm of Portugal amongst
their number. In the south, older ways were submerged by a new
wave of Berber influence and a more rigid and fundamentalist Islam
that accompanied the rule of the Almoravid and Almohad dynasties.