Volume 100, Issue 2

The memory of war – and the use of this – is a constant in the Middle Ages and beyond. Within all this war memory, the remembrance of great battles is, perhaps, the most recurrent phenomenon. The pitched battle had an extraordinary impact on the people of the time, which made its remembrance remain alive and dynamic in the collective memory, as moments when the balance of power was seen to have tipped, or when aspects of collective identity were shaped. The battles became places of memory. This paper studies the memory circulating in Umayyad al-Andalus about the battles of their ancestors, the eastern Umayyads. Focusing on Ḥunayn and Marj Rāhiṭ, the two “eastern” battles most remembered in Umayyad al-Andalus and both with important implications for their dynastic history, this paper analyzes how this memory is presented, how these battles are “memorialized” and “commemorated” through texts and rituals, in what contexts of memory production they appear, and for what purposes.

The Umayyad caliphs of Damascus have been remembered in Arabic historiography by their respective given name ( ism ). While epithets ( alqāb ) are widely documented from the ʿAbbāsid period onward for rulers, emirs, viziers, and courtiers, and have been treated in some detail in research, no comparable studies exist for the Umayyads. This paper discusses the style and validity of epithets ascribed to Umayyad caliphs drawing on a wide array of sources, including historiographical works and panegyric as well as material evidence. It is argued that an interpretation of alqāb in the sense of individual throne names, which only became the norm under the ʿAbbāsids, distorts our perspective of the process of augmenting the ruler’s name with honorific epithets, which can already be observed in the Umayyad period. This expansion of the ruler’s titulature, it is argued, mirrors a broader process of sacralizing caliphal power to legitimize the claim to authority in the face of competing factions within the nascent Islamic empire.

In 122/740 an uprising in the Far Maghrib triggered a series of rebellions that eventually ended Arab rule over the Islamic West. The event is not of key importance for the historians of the Islamic Empire, and when it is discussed, the focus tends to lie on the uprising’s significance for Arab rule in al-Andalus rather than the Maghrib. This study compares the most detailed accounts of the Uprising of 122 by early imperial historians such as al-Ṭabarī and Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam with those of later historians writing in the heartland of the Islamic Empire, such as Ibn al-Athīr and al-Dhahabī, and of historians situated further west, in al-Andalus and the Maghrib. It finds that the presentation of the Uprising of 122 varies depending on the historical context of and the source tradition used by the author in question. It also finds that while the Umayyad and Khārijite actors tend to be presented with a degree of differentiation and from a variety of perspectives, the portrayal of the rebels is more uniform. The rebels, referred to as Berbers in all accounts, are depicted as a monolithic entity displaying a stereotypical set of characteristics that sets them apart from notions of order and propriety that the authors associate with the Islamic Empire. Although its consequences for Arab rule in the West are not explicitly acknowledged by the historians, this comparison of how they depict its actors reveals the Uprising’s impact on the historical consciousness, particularly in regard to the inhabitants of the seceded region.

The concept and image of a court is strongly associated with its main character, the sovereign around whom court life revolves. How was the Umayyad caliph named and conceptualized in al-Andalus? Keeping this in mind, the purpose of this paper is the discussion of the Umayyad Andalusī caliphal titles. Sources repeatedly stress the Umayyad legitimacy to the caliphate as heirs of the Umayyads of Damascus. In a panegyric, even Syria rises to receive the Andalusī caliph. The contrast of these titles with those reserved for rebels will also be considered. While the caliph was seen as a sun, the darkness was associated with rebels. Official titles used for bureaucracy and metaphorical titles reproduced in official letters and panegyric poetry will be considered, which were preserved in Andalusī sources such as the Muqtabis of Ibn Ḥayyān (d. 1075) or the ʿ Iqd al-Farīd of Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (d. 940). Ceremonial situations will also be considered as the figure of the caliph was central and praised in official letters and panegyric poetry.

This paper addresses literary evidence on the spoils of al-Andalus, their origin and final fate once transported to the East. These objects, identified as the Table of Solomon, the crowns of the Visigothic kings, a gemstone ( yāqūt ) that belonged to Ḏū l-Qarnayn, and a jug of pearls ( qulayla ), were not only associated with pre-Islamic and Islamic characters but also with objects displayed in major Islamic shrines in the East, such as the pearl Yatīma and a gemstone called Qulayla, displayed in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and in the Great Mosque of Damascus, respectively. It is my contention that the accounts provided by Andalusi scholars such as Ibn Ḥabīb (d. 853) and Aḥmad al-Rāzī (d. 955) stressed the symbolic value of these spoils of conquest as signs of sovereignty and relics of the past and articulated an Umayyad discourse of legitimacy that highlighted their claim as rightful and pious caliphs, establishing a link between Past and Present and East and West.

The Umayyad amirs and caliphs of al-Andalus had as their permanent residence a qaṣr or Alcázar within the madīna of Cordoba, opposite the main mosque. Very few remains are left of this palatial complex, which sources do not describe in too much detail. However, these sources consistently mention the existence of a cemetery within the walls of this Alcázar in which all Umayyad rulers were buried. This cemetery was called rawḍa . The existence of a “royal” mausoleum in Islamic lands from as early as the eighth/second century is extraordinary since there are not precedents in the Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid caliphates of this kind of funerary enclosures. Also, the name rawḍa begs some questions about the symbolism of this funerary enclosure that can be related to Qurʾānic references to Paradise, to parallels with the topography of the mosque of the Prophet in Medina, and, particularly, to the massacre of the oriental Umayyads by the ʿ Abbāsids.

This study explores the potential of using one of the less-studied textual sources for the caliphal period in al-Andalus, namely, the ʿIqd al-farīd by Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (d. 940), for an investigation of the Western Umayyad discourse of legitimacy. It focuses therein the narrative portrayals of the Eastern caliphs Muʿāwiya and ʿAbd al-Malik, generally seen as models of strong and successful Umayyad leadership, and analyzes which qualities are highlighted and downsized, of them and their opponents. A close reading of selected passages shows that the result is of high complexity and ambivalence. In literalized anecdotes peppered with sayings, poems, and foreboding dreams, the narratives feature dramatic, violent scenes and tragic plots, which emphasize the human tragedy of the protagonists in their fight for power and authority in the Islamic community. The study proposes to interpret them in the framework of a particular Andalusī anxiety (“sentiment of precarity”), which saw the Umayyad dynasty and its caliphal credentials as central warrants of unity and Muslim permanence on the peninsula.

This article discusses the fragment of an Arabic-script book list with a Cairo Geniza provenance that includes 33 identifiable titles. On the basis of the list’s provenance, its organization, and its content, we argue that it was part of a larger Cairene library catalogue dating to the seventh/thirteenth century. All titles in this catalogue refer to Arabic poetry ranging from pre-Islamic jāhilī ʾ poets to poets living in the first half of the seventh/thirteenth century. A comparison with the poetry section of the Damascene Ashrafīya Library from the same period shows a distinct overlap in terms of titles and textual format. We thus suggest that this Cairene catalogue should not primarily be seen as witness of a “Jewish” library but rather as part of Egyptian/Syrian Arabic elite book culture that cut across religious communities. While it is likely that this shared book culture went beyond Egypt and Syria and encompassed wider regions in North Africa and West Asia, further comparative material is needed to substantiate this assumption.

In a previous study about Max Nordau (1849–1923), a doctor, writer, journalist, and Zionist born in Hungary who had spent his youth in Budapest and had a successful career in Paris, and Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), who became known as a playwright in Vienna, an employee of the newspaper Neue Freie Presse , and ultimately as the author of Der Judenstaat ( The State of the Jews ), I examined the role that assimilation, language, and identity played in the development of their careers. Ujvári , Hedvig, “Issues of Assimilation, Language and Identity in the Lives of Young Max Nordau and Tivadar Herzl”, AHEA: E-journal of the American Hungarian Educators Association 5 (2012), 1–20, http://ahea.net/e-journal/volume-5-2012. The present study is a continuation of that train of thought, this time focusing on Ignác Goldziher (1850–1921), the founder of what would become Modern European Islamic Studies. He and Nordau were high school classmates Goldziher himself refers to the classmate relationship in his Diary : “Max Nordau was among my classmates.” See Goldziher , Ignaz, Tagebuch , ed. by Scheiber , Alexander, Leiden: Brill, 1978, 30; Goldziher , Ignác, Napló [Diary], Vál., s. a. r., az előszót és a jegyzeteket írta Scheiber Sándor [ed. by Scheiber , Sándor], Budapest: Magvető, 1985, 39. and prepared for their graduation together, during which time Goldziher also attended the university lectures of Ármin Vámbéry (1832–1913) in preparation for his scientific career. At the age of 20, Goldziher completed his doctorate in Leipzig with every promise of a successful career in Hungarian higher education; however, the death of Minister of Culture József Eötvös dashed these hopes, József Eötvös (1813–1870): lawyer, writer, first minister of religion and public education in the Batthyány and then Andrássy governments, and president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1866–1871). and instead of joining the ranks of academia, Goldziher was forced to earn a living as a religious notary for the local Jewish community and worked on his academic research at night. He spent the rest of his life in Budapest, only leaving Hungary for short periods of time to attend academic events such as conferences on Orientalism, and consistently refused every foreign job offer that came his way.