Pluralism in the Middle Ages

Hybrid Identities, Conversion, and Mixed Marriages in Medieval Iberia

Ragnhild Johnsrud Zorgati

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136622106
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

The challenges of cultural and religious diversity that face European and American societies today are not a new phenomenon. People in the Middle Ages lived in pluralistic societies, and they found highly interesting ways of dealing with religious and cultural diversity. While religious and political authorities commanded people to stick to their kind, some people explored the borderland between religious identities. In medieval Iberia, Christians and Muslims challenged the legal authorities' prohibitions against crossing religious and cultural boundaries when they engaged in mixed marriages between Muslims and Christians or converted from one religion to the other. By examining the topics of conversion and mixed marriages in legal texts of Muslim and Christian origin, Pluralism in the Middle Ages explores the construction of boundaries as well as the reasons explaining such constructions. It demonstrates that the religious and social boundaries were not static, nor were they similarly defined by Islamic and Christian medieval cultures. Moreover, the book argues that Muslims and Christians in medieval Iberia did not constitute clearly separated groups, since various categories of people haunted the boundaries between them: false converts employing taqiya strategy (taking on an outward Christian identity while practicing Islam in secret), those engaged in mixed marriages or interreligious sexual relations (and their children), and converts, whose conversion may be perceived as sincere or insincere, total or partial.

1 Conversion and Apostasy in Al-Andalus and Christian Spain

Etymological Play

Terms that denote the change of religion are not symmetrical in Arabic, Greek, and languages derived from Latin. The Muslim who deserts his or her religious community is called a murtadd, “one who turns back”, especially from Islam.¹ He or she has committed ridda (apostasy) or irtidād (retreat; retrogression; renunciation; desertion; apostasy). There are two categories of murtadds, the murtadd fiṭrī, from ‘fiṭra’, meaning instinct, inborn or innate nature, and the murtadd millī, from ‘milla’, meaning religious community. The murtadd fiṭrī is born to Muslim parents and is therefore viewed as a natural Muslim, whereas the murtadd millī has embraced Islam and thereafter abandons the true path. The first act of apostasy is conceived of as more serious than the second. Whereas the murtadd millī commits treason towards the Muslim community (Ibn Warraq, 2004), the murtadd fiṭrī additionally negates his or her true nature. The act therefore constitutes a double transgression, of nature and of the community. Positive change of religion, that is, to Islam, is denoted by the verb aslama, “to commit or resign oneself to God, to declare oneself committed to the will of God, become a Muslim, embrace Islam” (Wehr, 1994). In the fatwās that will be examined later in this chapter, ‘aslama’ is the current verb used to denote conversion to Islam. When one fatwā treats the issue of conversion to Christianity, it uses the verb tanaṣṣara—‘to become a Christian’. However, from an Islamic point of view, such an act comes down to irtidād, or apostasy to another religion.²

According to the New Catholic Encyclopedia the term ‘conversion’ is associated with the Greek verbs στρέφω and ὲπιστρέφω, with the “original sense of a physical turning back, or returning.” These verbs are found across the Old and the New Testaments and are related to the word µετανοέω which contains “the notion of a transformation of the inner self” (New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2003, vol. 4, 232). Conversion would therefore mean to return to the true faith by transforming the inner self. James Muldoon makes use of the Latin etymology, explaining that the word ‘conversion’ derives from a Latin word meaning “to change or transform one thing into another” (Muldoon, 1997, 1). Whereas ‘conversion’ refers to the return or coming back to the true path, ‘apostasy’ is generally used to describe the act of deserting one’s original faith. Contrary to this meaning, the author of the Siete Partidas explains that apostasy means to abandon the Christian faith and subsequently return to it (SP 7, 15, 5). In what follows, the term ‘apostasy’ will be used in the conventional sense to describe persons who forsake their original faith.

This etymological exercise has revealed some common features shared by Islam and Christianity when it comes to terms denoting change in religious belonging. Abandoning the faith amounts, for instance, to treason against God and the community. Conversion and apostasy are therefore not only personal acts which involve the believer and his or her God; they are also actions with an important communal component. Another result of the etymological detour is the emphasis put on movement: return, turn away from, turn back, and join. It is easy to assume that the phenomenon of conversion logically involved movement between two defined entities: spiritually between two established truth systems, mundanely between two culturally defined communities. Still, as we will see, it is not certain that this was the only way of characterizing acts of conversion in medieval Iberia. Linguistically, ‘conversion’ is also related, within the Latin context, to the preposition ‘trans’ (Muldoon: conversion is to “transform one thing into another”), rendered in the English ‘transgress’ and ‘transform’. Within the scope of this volume, ‘trans’ also refers back to the concept of transculturation as the notion was introduced by Fernando Ortiz in 1946 (Ortiz, 1995, 98). Conversion is therefore not only the movement between two entities; it is also the movement across entities. This in turn implies a transformation, not only of the person moving, but also of the entities through which the person moves. As Richard W. Bulliet has noted, converts to Islam during the first centuries of its existence heavily influenced what was to become known as the Islamic faith and doctrine (Bulliet, 1979, 2).

Such an analysis raises the question as to whether the convert was a figure who lived in what Homi Bhabha has referred to as the ‘in-between’, that precarious, indefinite space in which a person of multiple cultural belongings is situated. In one sense medieval converts experienced the ‘in-between’ since they were raised within one religious culture and adopted another. Burns refers for instance to the convert as “a kind of displaced person, whose story and status illuminate the larger scene” (Burns, 1978c, 338). A more interesting question is the position converts took on this multiple identity. Did they aim to live in the ‘in-between’ as bearers of two or more cultures, or did they adopt a more determined position as fervent defenders of their new worldview? A topic related to this issue is whether conversion always stemmed from the individuals’ own free will, or whether a new religious identity could be received from above, from the authorities in the territory in which one lived.

The issue of conversion in medieval Iberia relates to the continuous struggle over territory that took place between the Muslim powers of the south and the Christian kingdoms of the north. One may assume that conversions mainly occurred in the direction of the religious community that was hegemonic in both a political and military sense. Mass conversion to Islam therefore took place in the first centuries after the Arab and Berber conquest, at a time when the major part of the Iberian Peninsula was in Muslim hands. Conversions to Christianity, on the other hand, might have become more current in the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries when the kings of Castile-Leon and the realms of Aragon laid hold of former Muslim lands. The sole remnant Islamic kingdom was Granada, which paid tribute to the Crown of Castile-Leon, but nevertheless represented a refuge for Muslims who fled the Christian political order. Still, there are examples of Muslim nobles living next to the Granada-Castilian border who adopted the Christian faith, receiving land as well as positions at the Christian court in return (Echevarría Arsuaga, 2003, 222–223). Conversions could also take place in the direction of the subordinate religions. For example, the Siete Partidas addresses conversion to Islam as a serious issue.

There are few examples of forced conversions during the period considered. Minorities were protected by law and were granted freedom of religion as long as they respected the preeminence of the majority. In the beginning of the twelfth century the Islamic dhimma (treaty between the Muslims and the people they conquered) was nonetheless interrupted when the Almohads forced Jews and Christians to convert to Islam under the menace of expulsion. The forced conversions of Mudejars (Muslims living under Christian rule) and Jews to Christianity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which culminated in the expulsion of both groups from the Iberian Peninsula, lie beyond the scope of this volume. Nevertheless it will touch on tendencies that announced such harsh policies.

Islamic Conquest and Conversion

When the Arab and Berber forces crossed the Strait of Gibraltar for the first time in 711 they met a Hispano-Roman and Visigothic population that was mainly Christian, even though some Basque people in the north appear to have been ignorant of the Christian faith.³ Christianity was introduced to the Iberian Peninsula in the fourth century C.E. when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. However, the Visigoths’ invasions in the fifth and sixth centuries came to alter the religious composition of the population since at the time of the conquest the Visigoths had converted to Arianism, a Christian doctrine which originated with Arius of Alexandria. It was qualified as a heresy by Western orthodoxy, the religion practiced by the Hispano-Roman population of Iberia. Hence, the Visigothic kingdom of Spain experienced a religious division between the native population and its Germanic conquerors that lasted until King Recared (586–601) “summoned a council for the realm to formalize and promulgate the adhesion of both the king and the ‘gentis ghotorum’ to the traditional faith [Western orthodoxy]” (Reilly, 1993, 19). The Iberians developed, however, a particular liturgy which later was referred to as the Mozarabic rite. It was these Christians with whom the Arabs and Berbers came into contact in 711.

The first Arab and Berber troops were not numerous, and later waves of immigration from beyond the Strait of Gibraltar were not to alter the situation remarkably. Bernard F. Reilly has suggested that the combined number of Arab and Berber invaders throughout the eighth century did not attain more than 50,000 people. Out of these, approximately 40,000 may have settled permanently. This represents some 1 per cent of the total population of Iberia, estimated at the time at four million people (Reilly, 1993, 57). The fact that Islam expanded so rapidly and that in less than 250 years more than half of the indigenous population of Iberia had converted to Islam has engaged much scholarly debate.⁴

The Bulliet-Epalza Controversy

The issue of mass conversion to Islam in the aftermath of the Islamic conquest has provoked much debate among scholars. In the context of the Iberian Peninsula, Richard W. Bulliet and Míkel de Epalza stand out as important contributors to the reflection. Their antagonistic views spell out issues such as the dating and pace of the process of conversion to Islam in the first centuries of Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula.

In his seminal study from 1979, Bulliet introduced quantitative statistical method in the study of mass conversion to Islam, a field that was poorly documented due to few primary sources. The same paucity of sources has made the corroboration of his conclusions difficult, and they remain controversial. In pooling data from several Arabic biographical dictionaries from the same geographical area, Bulliet was able to establish curves which measured the rate of conversion to Islam in Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and al-Andalus.⁵ The curves for Syria and Egypt reach their climax some hundred years before the curve for al-Andalus, reflecting the earlier conquests of those regions with approximately the same number of years. The curve for al-Andalus suggests that conversions took place according to the following pace: at about 800 C.E., only 8 per cent of the population had converted to Islam. Following a very slow rate in the ninth century, the pace of conversion accelerated in the tenth. From about 900 to 1000, there is an explosion in the rate of conversion which goes from 50 per cent in 950 to 75 per cent in the year 1000. The curve thereafter flattens out in the eleventh century. At that moment the majority of the population was Muslim. According to Bulliet, this accelerated rhythm is due to the fact that innovations are first adopted by a minority before subsequently being spread through self-enforcing mechanisms to the majority of the population. Correspondingly, Bulliet proposes a division of Andalusian history into four periods: early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. The peak of the conversion curve (the moment at which 50 per cent of the population had converted) is reached in 961 and marks the end of the early majority period and the beginning of the late majority era. This corresponds to the final year of the reign of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III (912–961) and the beginning of the reign of al-Ḥakam II (961–976), the two caliphs under which Islamic rule in al-Andalus saw its most glorious period.

Michael G. Morony has observed that an underlying premise of Bulliet’s hypothesis is that a sufficient cause for conversion to Islam is social contact between Muslims and non-Muslims. Such contact starts the self-generating process referred to above: “the more Muslims there are, the more likely are non-Muslims to come into contact with them” (Morony, 1990, 139). Morony notices that this aspect of Bulliet’s hypothesis makes it very attractive because it appears to stand on its own feet, to have “an aura of autonomy” (Morony, 1990, 140). According to Morony, “Bulliet’s work is [ … ] significant for eschewing most of the reasons that tend to be given for widespread conversion” (Morony, 1990, 139)—such as internal instability in the converts’ community of origin, social pressure, high taxation, inferior social rank, better social possibilities within the Islamic fold, similarities between doctrine of origin and Islam, cultural assimilation, Arabization, etc. Morony acknowledges that Bulliet does not entirely dismiss such reasons or circumstances, but says that they are not within the scope of his project. In fact, what Bulliet says is that there is no other material able to corroborate his hypothesis. It should therefore be taken as a heuristic device and inspiration for further studies. Morony, for his part, underlines the necessity of delving deeper into the issue of circumstances, for as he laconically notes, “we will never know what might have happened without these circumstances” (Morony, 1990, 139). As a corollary to Morony’s remark, I would add another objection. If social contact is enough in order to encourage conversion, how can Bulliet explain the unidirectional course of conversion to Islam in the aftermath of the Muslim conquest, and not for instance to Christianity, Judaism, or Zoroastrianism? More precisely, why did not the Arab and Berber conquerors of al-Andalus adopt Christianity which was the religion of the majority? It is in fact a widespread theory in historical research that tribal peoples generally adopt the culture of the settled communities they conquer (McNeill, 1986). This would for instance be the case of the Visigoths who, in imitating the Hispano-Romans, adhered to Christian orthodoxy.

Other criticisms of Bulliet’s theory include the point that his sample is too narrow to give a trustworthy picture of the overall population. It consists mainly of male, urban and well-educated men, noteworthy enough to make their entry into a biographical dictionary. Ann Christys comments that “Bulliet’s approach is rather like making conclusions about the population of Britain in the twentieth century from a study of Who’s Who” (Christys, 2002, 3). She believes that the onomastic sequences spelled out in the genealogies show a trend of conversion in the upper classes, a trend that may indicate that conversion was a means to reach those echelons of society. She warns, however, that “these conclusions should not be applied to the population as a whole” (Christys, 2002, 3). In addition, for al-Andalus the sample is numerically scarce, only 154 onomastic sequences, which makes it statistically less trustworthy. Contrary to such a critique, Morony affirms that “Bulliet’s results are probably valid for his sample” (Morony, 1990, 138), whereas María Jesús Viguera Molins chooses to characterize Bulliet’s hypotheses as “relativamente discutibles, pero orientativas y que armonizan bien con el proceso histórico andalusí” (Viguera Molins et al., 2002, 56).

In contrast to Bulliet, Epalza sets the time of conversion in al-Andalus to a much earlier date. Whereas Bulliet proposed that most people converted to Islam in the tenth and eleventh centuries, Epalza suggests that the conversion to Islam occurred only a few generations after the conquest and was achieved before 800 C.E. In an article presenting the reasons for his opinion, Epalza first refutes Bulliet’s hypothesis which he qualifies as being “perhaps more suitable for the Christian communities in the Middle East—for which it was devised—than for al-Andalus, where certain defects become evident” (Epalza, 1992a, 158). The first objection is that Bulliet does not take into account the importance of the preservation of ecclesiastical structures in order to ensure what Epalza calls ‘Christian status’. This is the core argument of his theory and shall be discussed in detail below. The second objection to Bulliet’s work is that the adoption of a Muslim, Arabic name does not necessarily reflect conversion to Islam, but may also depend on other factors such as fashion or social pressure. Christys also endorses this point of view in her study of the Mozarabic community, affirming that many Christians adopted Arabic names (Christys, 2002, 2). Conversely, Epalza also argues that a Latin name is not a sufficient proof of Christian identity: “Muslims in al-Andalus might very well have kept these Latin traditions, and yet have been considered, from a religious and sociological viewpoint, as Muslims” (Epalza, 1992a, 158). This argument refutes the premises of Bulliet’s theory. If one does not agree with the premises a) that change of name indicates change of religious belonging, and b) that a non-Muslim name corresponds to a non-Islamic identity, whereas a Muslim name corresponds to an Islamic identity, then Bulliet’s curve becomes mere speculation. finally, Epalza repeats the criticism of a sample that is too narrow an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Culture Contact in Medieval Iberia
• 1. Conversion and Apostasy in Al-Andalus and Christian Spain
• 2. Conversion, Childhood, and Gender
• 3. Conversion and Concealment
• 4. Mixed Marriages in Islamic and Christian Laws
• 5. Concubines, Slaves, and Illicit Interfaith Relationships
• 6. Reasons Explaining the Ban on Mixed Unions
• Conclusion: Hybrid Identities
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index