Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [56]
The impact that the palace and the caliph made upon foreign visitors, accustomed to the cruder life of the north, was recorded on several occasions. One story tells how the caliph wished to impress them with his magnificence, so within the palace
he placed dignitaries, whom they took for kings, for they were seated on splendid chairs and arrayed in brocades and silks. Each time the ambassadors saw one of these dignitaries they prostrated themselves before him imagining him to be the caliph, whereupon they were told, “Raise your heads! This is but a slave of his slaves!”
At last they entered a courtyard strewn with sand. At the centre was the caliph. His clothes were coarse and short: what he was wearing was worth no more than four dirhems. He was seated on the ground, his head bent; in front of him was a Koran, a sword and fire. “Behold, the ruler,” the ambassadors were told.
This conspicuous modesty echoes the entry of the caliph Omar into Jerusalem in 638, with his darned and well-worn clothes and his broken-down mule.5 Symbolically, the Cordoban caliph showed himself as the humble servant of God, who would carry the holy word, with fire and sword, against the enemies of Islam. For although the city and the palace were architectural and human evidence of cultural fusion, the context in which the caliph presented himself also emphasized the oppositional purpose of Cordoba, its wealth, and its military power. Dozy wrote of Abd al-Rahman III, who “in his wide tolerance calls to his councils men of another religion … a pattern ruler of modern times, rather than a medieval Khalif.”6 But this claims too much. It is true that many of the early rulers of Cordoba were more open to non-Muslim influences than their Almoravid or Almohad successors from the deserts and mountains of North Africa. But for all the achievements in art, science, and learning, Cordoba was built around the theory, if not always the practice, of war with the Christian north. The true temper of the Cordoban caliphate was embodied in another symbolic moment. Abd al-Rahman III died in 961; in 997, the military strongman of Al-Andalus, Al-Mansur, led back his victorious army from destroying the great Christian shrine of Santiago de Compostela.
Compostela was, Spanish Christians argued, the holiest site in Europe. Many north of the Pyrenees agreed with them. For at Santiago, in about 818, the remains of St. James had been miraculously discovered.7 Moreover, these bones turned out not to be those of the apostle James, as was first thought, but of another James: the brother of Christ himself. Thus, on Spanish soil, at the heart of the Asturian kingdom, constantly assailed by the infidel Muslims, was a saint’s body intimately related to the person of Christ himself. This was a relic more precious than any sliver of the true cross or one of the holy nails.8 Already in 822, at the battle of Clavijo, St. James had intervened when King Ramiro of the Asturias was losing against the Moors. Suddenly, a figure on a white horse appeared, and turned the struggle in favor of the Christians. He told the king that Christ himself “gave Spain for me to watch over her and protect her from the hands of the enemies of the faith.” This was the first appearance of Santiago Matamoros, St. James Moor Slayer. Thereafter he returned time and again to save Christian Spain from disaster.
Thus for the Muslims to capture the saint’s remains would be an act of great audacity. In August 997, Al-Mansur and the army of Cordoba fought their way north to the city of Compostela, and the Christians were powerless to resist them. The shrine was deserted except for a single monk. Al-Mansur asked him why