Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 62 h Vassilios Christides At the turn of the 8 th century, following the conquest of Libya, under the leader- ship of the Berber Ṭāriq b. Ziyād and Mūsā b. Nuṣayr, the Arabs crossed the straits of Gibraltar and landed in Spain. 2 For several years while they slowly expanded their territory, the Arabs remained administratively attached to the central government of Damascus and were ruled by local governors ( wālī ). 3 At the time of the caliph Hishām b. ‘Abd al-Mālik (724–743), Andalusia and Egypt formed an administrative unity ( wilāya ) under the governor ‘Ubaydallāh b. Ḥabḥāb. 4 In 756 AD, almost half a century after the Arab conquest of Spain, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān I, the last king of the Umayyads, abandoned his allegiance to Syria and managed to subdue Andalusia and establish the emirate of al- Andalusia which lasted from 756 to 929 when it was transformed into a ca- liphate under ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III. 5 ‘Abd al-Raḥmān I chose Cordoba as the seat of the administration of Andalusia, although it became the official capital of the state later at the time of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān II (822–852). Cor- doba gradually developed into a magnificent city with about half a million inhabitants, numerous public baths and mosques, rivaling in splendor the city of Baghdad. 6 2 The newly establishedArab fleet could not undertake the difficult task of transporting theArab army sailing in unknown waters. Most probably, the crossing was accomplished unopposed by confiscated local merchant ships; see V. Christides, Byzantine Libya and the March of the Arabs towards the West of North Africa , BAR International Series 851, Oxford 2000, 50. Concerning the time of theArab landing in Spain, A. D. Ṭaha prudently places the time of the caliph Walīd I (86–96/705–714) as the starting date of the conquest of Spain; see A. D. Ṭaha, The Muslim Conquest and Settlement of North Africa and Spain , London — New York 1989, 84. Ṭāriq has been glorified in Arabic literature, in which he is portrayed as a model of heroism; see L. F. Bernabé Pons, “Ṭāriq ibn Ziyād y el sello indeleble de la conquista”, in R. G. Khoury — J. P. Monferrer-Sala —María Jesús Viguera Molins, eds., Legendaria medievalia en honor de Concepción Castillo Castillo , Cordoba 2011, 111–125; see also Maqqari, Fatḥ al-Andalus , ed. L. Molina, Madrid 1994, 17–18. For a different approach to Ṭāriq’s personality, see J. Vallvé, “Nuevas ideas sobre la conquista árabe de España toponimia y onomástica”, in Al-Qanṭara 10.1 (1989), 85–89 (article: 51–150). For a panoramic view of the Arab conquest of Spain, see Nicole Clarke, The Muslim Conquest of Iberia: Medieval Arabic Narratives , London 2012. For the causes of the Arab conquest of the Iberian Peninsula see María Antonia Martínez Núñez, “Por qué llegaron los Árabes a la península Ibérica?: las causas de la conquista musulmana del 711”, Awraq 3 (2011), 21–36. 3 See a list of wālī rulers in E. Lévi-Provençal, “Andalus”, in EI 2 (1960), 493. 4 See ‘Abd al-‘Azīz Sālim, who cites Ibn ‘Idhāri ( Al-Bayān al-Mughrib , ed. G. S. Colin and E. Lévi-Provençal, Leiden 1951, reprinted Beirut 1980), “De al-Andalus a Egipto y de Egipto a al- Andalus”, in Al-Andalus y el Mediterráneo , Barcelona — Madrid 1995, 141–147. 5 For the history of Cordoba during the Umayyad Emirate (711–929), see Antonio Arjona Castro, Historia de Córdoba durante el emirato omeya: desarrollo, apogeo y ruina de la Córdoba Omeya. Vol. I: De la conquista al-final del emirato Omeya (711–729), Cordoba 2001. 6 For the splendor of Cordoba see R. Hillenbrand, “‘The Ornament of the World’. Medieval Cordoba as a Cultural Center”, in S. K. Jayyusi, ed., The Legacy of Muslim Spain , Leiden 1992,