Peace Be Upon You (11 page)

It is true that the glory of Baghdad was never quite as glorious as it looked through the misty eyes of later generations. By modern standards, it was hardly a model of law and order. The caliphs were men of their age, and that age did not know from the legal and moral niceties that the modern world demands. But during the height of the Abbasids, there was an eruption of intellectual and philosophical creativity that has rarely been exceeded. Wealth certainly played a part, but many societies have generated wealth without fostering thought. Simple curiosity was also a factor. One thing, however, is undeniable: this flowering of inquiry, this preservation of the knowledge of ancient Greece and the advancement of math, science, and philosophy took place in an environment where Muslim rulers welcomed and invited interaction with the People of the Book. They used Christian scholars and administrators as foils to hone their own arguments about Islam, and the interaction between the faiths—sometimes friendly, often competitive, occasionally contemptuous, and now and then violent—ignited a cultural renaissance.

The heated, passionate embrace of coexistence was central to a golden age whose prerequisite was a powerful Muslim state secure in its legitimacy. That was true when Harun al-Rashid ruled, and it was true when Abd al-Rahman, the last of the Umayyads, retreated to the Iberian Peninsula after most of his family had been massacred by the first Abbasid caliph. Insulated by the Pyrenees to the north and by the Strait of Gibraltar to the south, Spain was the last redoubt of the Umayyads, and it became a cultural mecca. Even after the Umayyads fell to dynasties from North Africa, Spain continued to be a place where Muslims ruled but the People of the Book thrived. Between them they created a jewel that shone every bit as bright as the golden light that emanated from the caliph’s court in Baghdad.

T
HE CITY OF CóRDOBA
in the middle of the ninth century was blossoming. The Umayyads, exiled from Damascus, had carved out a kingdom, and Córdoba was their jewel. Though Spain had prospered under the Romans, under the Muslims it thrived even more. By the mid-ninth century, Andalusia was entering a period of nearly unrivaled prosperity. For a brief period, in fact, Muslim Spain was the most vibrant spot on earth, a place that saw a magical fusion of commerce, learning, and power that put it in the rarefied company of classical Greece, imperial Rome, Han China, and Renaissance Italy. But in 851, something happened that nearly ended its golden age before it had barely begun.

Except for the extreme north and west of Iberia, the whole peninsula was ruled from Córdoba, and the city matched Baghdad as a seat of culture, wealth, commerce, and learning. As in the eastern regions of the Islamic world, Muslims were significantly outnumbered by Christians. Spain was also home to a large Jewish population that had migrated there in the second century. While the rate of conversion to Islam in Spain may have been faster than in Iraq or Egypt, in the middle of the ninth century, Muslims were nowhere near a majority of the population. Both Christians and Jews occupied prominent positions in society, and they shared the rewards of Córdoba’s increasing power and wealth.

One day in 851, a monk named Isaac, who had left the city three years before in despair as more Christians converted to Islam, returned. He entered the palace of the prince and was admitted to the chambers of one of the city’s leading Muslim judges. Isaac was no stranger to the
court, and he was no ordinary monk. He had been trained in both Latin and Arabic and had occupied an important position in the government before he resigned his office and retreated to a self-imposed exile. Having worked in the palace until his abrupt resignation, he was known there, and the judge received him warmly.

Claiming that he wished to learn more about Islam, he questioned the judge about Islamic law and theology. Happy to engage in the conversation, and perhaps hoping that Isaac had returned because he was contemplating converting, the judge began to speak. But before he could finish his answers, Isaac cut him off and denounced Islam as an evil religion, and Muhammad as a false prophet who had been consigned to hell for deceiving the Arabs. Now, there were things you could say about Islam as a Christian, and things you could not. You could have a heated dialogue with a Muslim about the finer points of theology. You could profess that you believed that Jesus was the Christ and the Son of God, and you could politely refrain from praising Muhammad and the Quran. But you could not, under any circumstances, say what Isaac said that day, and you certainly could not say it to one of the most prominent judges in the city.

Hearing Isaac’s sudden outburst, the judge was both confused and outraged, confused because Christians had been living peacefully and prosperously under Muslim rule for more than a century, and outraged to hear Muhammad and the holy Quran spoken of in such vile terms. He struck Isaac across the face, and was about to do so again when one of his advisers reminded him that until guilt could be established beyond a reasonable doubt, religious law demanded that Isaac not be physically harmed. The judge offered Isaac a chance to recant what he had just said, and suggested that he must be drunk or in a temporary state of insanity. Isaac answered that he was of sound mind, knew exactly what he was saying, and meant every word of it. He was, he announced, “on fire with a zeal for righteousness.” He had lived for too long amid the Muslims, and stayed silent. He had retreated from the world, but he could not shut it out. He had come to Córdoba to speak, and to die a martyr.

That gave the judge no alternative but to have Isaac arrested and brought before the ruler. Isaac then repeated his denunciation of Muhammad and of Islam. The sentence was automatic: death. He was decapitated, and his body was hung upside down across the river from the palace for public humiliation. After that, his corpse was cremated
and his ashes scattered in the Guadalquivir River to deny him the consecration of a Christian burial and prevent others from using the body as a holy relic.

If the prince hoped he could keep the contagion from spreading, he was mistaken. Isaac’s martyrdom set off a chain reaction that lasted for the next eight years. Within weeks, another half dozen Christians sought death by publicly condemning Islam as a false faith. Said one who appeared before the judge who had sentenced Isaac, “We abide by the same confession, O judge, that our most holy brother Isaac professed. Now hand down the sentence, multiply your cruelty, be kindled with complete fury in vengeance for your prophet. We profess Christ to be truly God and your prophet to be a precursor of the antichrist and an author of profane doctrine.” Hearing this, the judge had little choice, and probably little hesitation, in granting their wish and sentencing them to death.

While there were lulls that lasted as much as six months, these outbursts continued on and off until 859. Some of the martyrs were women. Some were recent converts to Islam who repudiated their new faith, and thereby commited the dual capital crimes of blasphemy and apostasy. Some were married; some young; some old; but all met the same end.

The main chronicler of the Córdoba martyrs was the monk Eulogius, who after describing the fate of his fellow Christians, emulated their example and was himself executed in 859 in the same gruesome fashion. It was said by one contemporary that Eulogius presented his neck to the executioner’s blade while making the sign of the cross and that when “his body was thrown from the upper level [of the palace] onto the river-bank, a dove of snowy whiteness, gliding through the air, in the sight of all flew down and sat on the martyr’s body.” It was also said that he told the executioner that he welcomed death. “Sharpen your sword, so that you can return my soul, freed from the chains of the body, to Him who gave it.” His followers were so overcome by his death that the guards of the city took mercy and allowed them to retrieve his body so that they could give Eulogius a proper burial.

By the time the last of the Córdoba martyrs had been executed, more than fifty people had sacrificed themselves on the altar of their faith. They courted capital punishment, and they received precisely what they yearned for. Later generations embellished their stories, and added the poetic touches about doves and other symbols of sanctification. A number
of them, including Eulogius, were canonized. They became for generations of Catholic Spaniards heroic symbols of resistance against Islam and against the Arab encroachment. The story of the martyrs was used by later Christian princes to rouse passions in their war to expel the Muslims from Spain. That feat was finally accomplished when the last Muslim kingdom fell to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, the same year that a Genoese merchant named Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic, and in their moment of victory the victorious monarchs carried with them the memory of the martyrs who had perished more than six hundred years before.

CHRISTIANS AND CóRDOBA

THE ACTIONS OF
the martyrs were especially startling given the status of Christians in Muslim Spain. While the rapid spread of Muslim rule in the eighth century had hardly been a welcome development, it also was not as disruptive as early invasions had been. Before the Arab conquest, the peninsula had been wracked by wars. After, though Christians lost prestige and power, they were left to govern themselves. Some cities suffered during the wave of conquests after 711, but many others surrendered without violence when the Visigoth state disintegrated. As in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt in the seventh century, the Arabs promised the local inhabitants that their homes and land would not be seized and that their religious customs would not be curtailed.

For instance, in 713, one of Tariq’s generals signed a treaty of capitulation with the notables of the city of Murcia. Under its terms, the Christians of the city and the surrounding towns would “not be killed or taken prisoner, nor… separated from their women and children. They will not be coerced in matters of religion, will not be burned, nor will sacred objects be taken from their realm.” In return for this leniency, the Christians vowed not to resist the conquerors, and not to assist their enemies. They also agreed to pay taxes on livestock and harvests, as well as a poll tax of one dinar per year. The Arab and Berber armies occupied the city, a handful settled down, and life for the local population continued with only minimal disruption.
¹

Córdoba became the seat of Muslim power in Andalusia after Abd al-Rahman, the last of the Umayyads, seized control in 756. His reign ushered
in a long period of stability, and while there was often tension between the various Muslim principalities, Córdoba itself remained relatively calm and unscathed. The battle of Tours, near Poitiers, France, may have halted the Muslim advance into Europe, but it did nothing to undermine Arab control over the lands south of the Pyrenees. By the time that Isaac made his fateful visit to the palace in 851, Christians had been living side by side with Muslims for longer than anyone then living could remember.

However, as was happening thousands of miles away in the Abbasid heartland, Christians in Spain were gradually being coopted into mainstream Muslim society. Year by year, more of them were abandoning the faith and converting. The advantages were undeniable. Though a Christian could rise high, there was a limit. A Muslim lord might employ a Christian or a Jew as a minister, and the People of the Book could become rich and powerful, but they were never allowed to forget that their freedoms were at the mercy of the Muslims who controlled the armies and the treasuries. Marriage was one of the primary bonds that cemented alliances between rulers and elites, but the People of the Book could not marry Muslims. Even as they adopted Arabic as their primary language, Christians could not avoid the fact that they were second-class citizens in their own country.

In order to integrate themselves, young, ambitious Christian men began to emulate the manners and mores of the ruling Muslims. Paul Alvarus, who recorded the last days of Eulogius, lamented that

the Christians love to read the poems and romance of the Arabs; they study Arab theologians and philosophers, not to refute them but to form a correct and elegant Arabic. Where is the layman who now reads the Latin commentaries on the Holy Scriptures, or who studies the Gospels, prophets or apostles? Alas! All the talented young Christians read and study with enthusiasm the Arab books… they despise the Christian literature as unworthy of attention.

Like so many conquered peoples throughout history, the Christians of Andalusia were drawn to the power and culture of those that had conquered them.

Though many resisted the urge to convert and lived quiet yet secure lives, they still benefited, even with their second-class status, from the success of Córdoba. That was why they were appalled when Isaac set off
a chain reaction of martyrdom—not at the decision of the Muslim authorities to execute the Christians, but at the decision of the martyrs to provoke a response. In courting execution, the martyrs were jeopardizing the delicate balance that had evolved between Christians and Muslims, and most Christians sided with the Muslim authorities and denounced the martyrs as deluded fanatics.