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Muhammad and the rise of Islam 343

integrated into the Muslim army as allies of the Tamim tribe before and after

the battle of Qadisiyya. Some Hamra’were infantry; they joined the Muslim

side and settled in Kufa. Such new non-Arab converts, the mawali (‘clients’, so

called because they had to become afﬁliated to an Arab tribe), made mangonels

and helped the Arabs to learn the use of armour and the heavy Persian horse.

Thus a picture emerges in which certain elements of the Sasanian population,

both those with vested land interests and also military contingents, saw their

survival in terms of a quick accommodation with the conquerors.

Can a similar situation be postulated for the Byzantine Empire? Recent

research reveals a complex picture and suggests that the population did not

welcome the Arabs with open arms. It is certainly too simplistic to argue that

local Monophysite Christians supported the Muslim conquerors because of

their religious disaffection with Constantinople. There were, however, impor-

tant individuals who allegedly aided the Muslims; Mansur b. Sarjun, the gov-

ernor of Damascus, apparently wanted them to capture the city. It was his

family that was to provide an array of talented administrators for the Umayyad

caliphs. According to Brock, it is possible to gauge some of the attitudes of

the Christian population towards the transfer of power to the Muslims.

The

Syriac writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, relying on much earlier

sources, notably Jacob of Edessa (d. 708) and Dionysius of Tell-Mahre (d. 845),

reveal a sense of relief at the transition from Byzantine to Muslim rule after

the disruptions of the Byzantine/Sasanian wars. Indeed, the Arab invasions are

viewed primarily as punishment for the wickedness of Byzantine ecclesiastical

policies.

An anonymous Nestorian source, dating from between 670 and 680,

also shares a positive attitude to the conquerors, claiming that their victory has

‘come from God’. How much such statements are attributable to a desire for

survival and good relations with the Muslim newcomers it is difﬁcult to say.

No clear-cut principle of succession was established during the reigns of the

ﬁrst four so-called ‘Rightly-Guided’ (Rashidun) caliphs of Islam. ‘Umar’s assas-

sination in 644 plunged the community into a crisis which was not solved by

the eventual emergence of ‘Uthman as the compromise choice of the consulta-

tive council set up by the dying ‘Umar to appoint his successor. With ‘Uthman’s

accession, the Muslim state witnessed the growing dominance of the Meccan

elite and, above all, the Umayyad clan, who, with the notable exception of

‘Uthman himself, had been the Prophet’s main opponents in his attempts to

establish the new faith and community. ‘Uthman’s nepotistic policies, which

placed his Umayyad relatives in key administrative posts, proved unpopular.

However, not all the blame for internal turbulence can be placed at ‘Uthman’s

door: his caliphate coincided with widespread dissatisfaction and unrest within

Cf. Morony (1984), pp. 181ff.

Brock (1982).

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344 carole hillenbrand

the community. The slowing down of the conquests and concomitant booty,

strife in the garrison towns, increasing support for the idea that the caliphate

should be in the hands of the Prophet’s blood relations (an idea particularly

prevalent among the partisans of ‘Ali – the so-called Shi‘at ‘Ali, hence the

term Shi‘ite) culminated in his murder in Medina in 656; the aged caliph was

killed whilst reading the Qur’an. ‘Uthman’s death was a seminal event in the

internal development of the community. ‘Ali who had been bypassed for the

caliphate on three preceding occasions ﬁnally took ofﬁce but was to rule for only

two turbulent years before he too was assassinated. ‘Ali’s impeccable religious

credentials and his blood and marriage ties with Muhammad proved power-

less to stem centrifugal forces within the community, especially the claims of

‘Uthman’s Umayyad relatives who demanded vengeance for his murder. The

crisis culminated in civil war between ‘Ali and the Umayyad faction, led by

the talented governor of Syria, Mu‘awiya, who had ruled the province since

‘Umar’s time. Within three decades of Muhammad’s death, supreme power

in the Islamic empire was now to pass to the Meccan Quraysh elite. The

Umayyads ruled the empire from 661 to 750 and brought about substantial

changes in Islamic government and society.

It is difﬁcult to give a balanced view of the Umayyad period.

There are few

extant contemporary sources and the dynasty’s achievements have been dis-

torted by the partisan accounts of the chroniclers of the ‘Abbasids, their rivals

who ousted them in the revolution of 750.Shi‘ite groups roundly condemned

the Umayyads as political usurpers rather than true theocratic rulers, alleging

that they were mere ‘kings’ who had introduced the principle of hereditary

succession into the umma. The Umayyads were also opposed by pietistic non-

Shi‘ite circles. So much can be gleaned from the sources. More recently, a pro-

cess of re-evaluation has rightly shown the Umayyads to be the true architects

of an international empire. The key ﬁgures in this process were Mu‘awiya (661–

680) and ‘Abd al-Malik (685–705). During the Umayyad period the embryonic

Islamic state was freed from the cultural yoke of the Byzantine and Sasanian

empires and came of age: this process can be charted through contemporary

numismatic, architectural and epigraphic evidence independently of the writ-

ten sources which, despite their ‘Abbasid bias, also conﬁrm it.

Mu‘awiya moved the capital to his power base, Damascus, an important

urban centre in late antique times and strategically a more appropriate loca-

tion from which to administer the enormous Islamic empire. In Damascus, the

Arab Muslim governing elite lived close to the conquered Christian population

from whose ranks they drew their high-level administrators. A symbiosis was

created between Byzantine modes of government and society and new Islamic

Foraclear overview, Hawting (1986).

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Muhammad and the rise of Islam 345

institutions. Muslims and Christians for a while shared the same buildings for

religious worship. The caliphal court became the forum for open theological

discussion between Christians and Muslims. Each side inﬂuenced the other

and sharpened their polemical skills in debates before the caliph. By the reign

of ‘Abd al-Malik (685–705), self-conﬁdence had grown to such an extent that

aprogramme of religious monuments was initiated. The mosque had devel-

oped into a building type easily identiﬁable with the spread and triumph of

Islam. The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus was a tangible sign of the religious

prestige of Islam. Even more overt was the propagandistic signiﬁcance of the

Dome of the Rock, erected at the heart of the religious centres of Judaism and

Christianity, Jerusalem, and decorated with Quranic inscriptions proclaiming

the triumph of Islam. Arabic, the sacred vehicle through which God’s ﬁnal

and perfect revelation had come to mankind, became the sole language of

government and coinage. The Umayyad caliphs favoured Arab over non-Arab

Muslim. Berber and Persian converts to Islam suffered discrimination and their

disaffection with the regime grew as the seventh century progressed. The inter-

national aspects of the Islamic message, the brotherhood of man mentioned

in the Qur’an, came to be emphasised, as the initial ‘Arabness’ of the revela-

tion receded into the background. Islam was for Berber and Persian as well as

Arab. This desire to redeﬁne Islam contributed to the downfall of the Umayyad

dynasty in 750.

The preceding pages have shown that, despite the early appearance of debil-

itating internal disputes about the nature of true succession to the Prophet,

disputes which caused civil war and the violent deaths of caliphs, the waves

of Islamic territorial conquests which had begun shortly before or after the

death of Muhammad in 632 had created by 732 an enormous empire stretch-

ing from Spain to India and Central Asia. The Sasanian polity had been wiped

out and Byzantium seriously diminished. The reasons for the success of the

phenomenon of Arab Islamic expansion remain complex, but the irruption of

nomadic forces out of the Arabian peninsula at the same time as the emergence

of the Islamic revelation and the career of Muhammad points to the new faith as

the mainspring of the inspirational leadership underpinning the military suc-

cesses. Conquest was followed by consolidation, and in the Umayyad period

a series of very gifted caliphs, based on Syria rather than Arabia, elaborated a

government system capable of administering this vast empire. Arabic was now

its lingua franca and Islam, a clearly identiﬁable new religion, was the faith of

its ruling elite.

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chapter 13

THE CATHOLIC VISIGOTHIC

KINGDOM

A. Barbero and M. I. Loring

With the abandonment of Arianism at the Third Council of Toledo in 589,

there began a new phase in the evolution of the Visigothic kingdom. Religious

uniﬁcation facilitated the deﬁnitive rapprochement of the Gothic nobility and

upper classes of Roman origin, and allowed the Catholic church, the principal

repository of the old Roman culture, to acquire a growing prominence in the

political life of the kingdom.

This active political role was expressed principally

through the series of national church councils in Toledo, the regal metropolis,

initiated by that of 589.Inthese the church seemed to play the role of arbiter

between the royal power and the high nobility, although a close reading of the

conciliar acts reveals its tendency to act in solidarity with the secular nobility.

Kings, on the other hand, only exceptionally made use of the councils in order

to assert their authority and were generally obliged to negotiate in the face of

the powerful secular nobility and church, this being one of the main causes of

the weakness of centralised authority. Religious uniﬁcation also made way for a

progressive interpenetration of the spiritual and temporal spheres at every level

of Visigothic life and society, in which the former shaped the whole dominant

ideological structure.

religious unification

In the spring of 586 King Leovigild (568–586) was succeeded by his son Rec-

cared, who had for years been associated with the throne: according to the

chronicler John of Biclaro, the succession took place without difﬁculties.

For the ﬁrst steps in this direction, see Barbero and Loring, chapter 7 above.

The early years of Reccared’s reign are well known thanks to the Chronicon of John of Biclaro, which

covers up to 590 and includes the acts of the Third Council of Toledo. Additional sources are Gregory,

Hist., which ends in 591, the Historia Gothorum of Isidore of Seville, the correspondence of Pope

Gregory the Great, and the Vita Patrum Em

aritensium,ahagiographic work on the bishops of the

metropolitan see of M

erida from 500 to 600.

346

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The Catholic Visigothic kingdom 347

the ﬁrst year of his reign the new king sought an alliance with Gosuintha, his

father’s widow, whom he adopted as his mother, and tried to broker a peace with

the Frankish king, although Guntramn of Burgundy continued to maintain

the bellicose tension along the Narbonensis frontier, which had been a feature

of Leovigild’s reign. Simultaneously, he abandoned Arianism and converted to

the Catholic faith, a decision proclaimed before an assembly of Arian clergy

whom he urged to follow his example, and which, apart from any personal

motives, was intended to complete the political achievements of his father

by ensuring the support of the nobility of Roman origin and the Catholic

church.

The new religious orientation of the monarch, whilst in pursuit of the same

objectives as his father, represented an about-turn in policy from the advocacy

of religious union within the Arian creed, and it was not long before it pro-

duced conspiracies and revolt: one led by the Arian bishop of M

erida, Sunna,

who counted on the support of various notable Visigoths, another, perhaps

more serious, headed by the queen Gosuintha and the bishop Uldida, and a

third directed by Athalocus, the Arian bishop of Narbonne. To the instability

created by these revolts was added a Frankish offensive on Narbonne. After his

conversion, Reccared had sent new embassies to the Frankish kings, communi-

cating to them the change. He managed to conclude a treaty with Childebert

of Austrasia, which included the marriage of Reccared to Childebert’s sister

Clodosinda, granddaughter of the queen Gosuintha. However Guntramn of

Burgundy refused to seal a peace and invaded Septimania in 589. The attack,

which probably coincided with the pro-Arian revolt, was crushingly repelled

by the dux of Lusitania, Claudius, who had repelled several Frankish incursions

over a long period. The proposed marriage of Reccared and Clodosinda never

took place since the monarch appears to have been married that same year to

Bada, whose name suggests Visigothic origin. It was a marriage that responded

to the new play of alliances established with the Gothic nobility and aimed at

suffocating the revolts.

Control over the internal situation and containment of the Frankish threat

allowed Reccared to conclude his policy of religious uniﬁcation, to which

end he convened a great Synod in Toledo, which began sitting on 8 May

589.

According to the acts of the council, sixty-three bishops participated,

and an unspeciﬁed number of other clergy, abbots and Visigothic nobles.

Presiding over the assembly were Leander, bishop of Seville, who had resided

at Constantinople and was consequently familiar with the imperial conciliar

The main sources for its study are the acts of the council and information from John of Biclaro. The

acts of this and other councils of the Visigothic church are in Concilios Visig

oticos, ed. Vives (1963); a

detailed study of this council in Orlandis and Ramos Liss

on (1986), pp. 197–226; and also Orlandis

(1991) and Abadal (1962–3).

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348 a. barbero and m. i. loring

tradition, and Eutropius, abbot of the monastery of Servitanum. The sessions

were opened by Reccared himself, who presented the assembly with a written

profession of faith. In it he expounded the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity,

condemned and anathematised Arius, and made adherence to the doctrine

established by the ﬁrst four ecumenical Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople,

Ephesus and Chalcedon obligatory. It was signed by both himself and Queen

Bada.

The royal intervention complete, the assembly rose, acclaiming God and

the king. Later, eight bishops and an indeterminate number of clerics and

Gothic dignitaries signed another profession of faith, in which Arianism was

solemnly abjured. Then the assembly occupied itself with questions of clerical

discipline and organisation, which were expressed in twenty-three canons.

The acts included the royal edict conﬁrming these regulations and raising

them to the status of civil law, the subscriptions of the bishops present headed

by that of the monarch himself, and ﬁnally a homily by Leander of Seville

summarising what had taken place. During the proceedings only eight bishops

abjured Arianism. The paucity of this number, together with the feeble showing

of pro-Arian revolts put down prior to the council, seems to indicate that

many had already followed the example of the king, who was baptised in

587, and that by the opening of the council Catholicism had already made

considerable inroads. Although in 590 Reccared had to confront a further

revolt led by Argimund, a dux provinciae and member of the cubiculum,John

of Biclaro, who is the source of this information, does not link it to a pro-Arian

reaction and in what followed there is nothing to suggest the survival of any

Arian groups. The relative ease with which the Nicene creed was accepted is

explained as much by the advanced stage of the acculturation between the

Gothic nobility and the Roman world as by the strengthening of a monarchy

which, despite its differences from Byzantium, represented itself as heir to the

Empire.

In this respect it is necessary to point out that when signing the acts of the

council, Reccared adopted the name Flavius, the family name of the emperors

of the Constantinian dynasty, which all Visigothic kings used from then on.

In this way, the monarch presented himself as the political successor to the

Roman, and especially to the Christian Roman, emperors. Likewise, John of

Biclaro compared the Visigothic king to Constantine and Marcian, at whose

instigation the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon had been held, and con-

sidered the Third Council of Toledo as successor to the grand synods of the

Roman Empire. But both John of Biclaro and the acts of the Third Council

rejected the canons of the Second Council of Constantinople convoked in

553 by Justinian. This council had taken decisions opposed by most of the

western churches, among them those of Hispania, whose ecclesiastics would

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The Catholic Visigothic kingdom 349

be some of its ﬁercest opponents.

The independent attitude of Hispanic

prelates to the religious policy of the Eastern Empire doubtless facilitated

the Visigothic monarch’s acceptance of Nicaean Catholicism, his deﬁnitive

renunciation of Arianism, and the presentation of himself as a champion of

orthodoxy.

From the Third Council of Toledo onwards, the state, as much as Visigothic

society, existed within parameters characterised by an interpenetration of the

spiritual and temporal at all levels of life. HenceReccared,in one of his addresses

to the conciliar assembly, pointed to the obligation of a prince to concern

himself not just with temporal matters but also with spiritual ones. In turn,

in the laudes they addressed to the king, the ecclesiastics extolled Reccared’s

apostolic labours, indicating that by them he had merited earthly and eternal

glory. The canons were consonant with these theoretical principles: they did

not regulate solely liturgical and organisational questions, but also matters

which were not strictly ecclesiastical. The well-known canon 18 established

yearly provincial synods to be convoked by the metropolitans, adapted the old

canon law of two annual meetings, and laid down that district governors (iudices

locorum) and those responsible for tax revenue (actores ﬁscalium patrimoniorum)

had to submit themselves to the scrutiny of the bishops, who could deny

communion to functionaries who had not acted properly.

The second half of Reccared’s reign is not as well documented. Isidore wrote

that he fought the Byzantines and Basques, but minimised the importance of

these conﬂicts, comparing them to the games of the arena. The hostile activ-

ities of the Basques must have been limited to plundering, but the Byzantine

offensives must have been greater in scope. It is possible that they managed

to recover some of the territories conquered by Leovigild. We know from an

inscription from Cartagena, capital of the Byzantine province, that around 589–

590 Byzantines and Visigoths found themselves at war, since it mentions that

the patrician Comenciolus, magister militum Spaniae, had been sent by Mauri-

cius to struggle against the hostes barbaros.

Reccared furthermore requested

Pope Gregory the Great, with whom both Leander of Seville and the king

himself had followed the process of the conversion, to work closely with the

Byzantines in order to obtain a copy of the treaty agreed between them and

the Visigoths at the time of the conquest. The pope advised Reccared against

this, possibly because the Byzantine possessions recorded in the treaty were of

greater extent than they were in the time of Reccared.

In contrast to his father Leovigild, Reccared maintained good relations with

the nobility, to whom, according to Johnof Biclaro, at the beginning of his reign

Barbero de Aguilera (1987), pp. 123–44.

The text of the inscription is in Vives (1969), pp. 125–6.

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350 a. barbero and m. i. loring

he restored goods that had been conﬁscated by his predecessors, especially his

father. The church also saw itself favoured with the foundation and endowment

of churches and monasteries. His policy towards tribute was similar, whether,

as Isidore pointed out, by granting exemptions, or by trying to ensure that

functionaries did not overstep their duties by unfair impositions. Reccared

created the precept for this policy at the Third Council of Toledo, by entrusting

the supervision of ﬁnancial functionaries to the bishops. He also promulgated

a law, which reinforced this supervisory role, ordering the bishops to denounce

any abuses.

Reccared died in 601, and was succeeded by his son Liuva II, the fourth

member of the same family to accede to the throne. After two years he was

deposed. The plot which led to the deposition and death of Liuva II was headed

by Witteric, a ﬁgure from the high nobility who had already participated in

the Arian revolt in M

erida against Reccared. Then comes,hehad managed to

save his life by denouncing his accomplices. By deposing Liuva the nobility,

which had undoubtedly been strengthened by the policies of Reccared, in effect

prevented the establishment of a principle of hereditary royal succession. The

tying of the royal dignity to one lineage would have reinforced the institution of

kingship and weakened their own position. Once in power Witteric (601–610)

did not modify the politics of his predecessors towards the Franks or Byzantines,

nor is there evidence that he imposed any change of religious policy. He also

died the victim of a plot: the events that had brought him to the throne had

repeated themselves.

visigothic monarchy and the end of byzantine

dominion in the peninsula

In theperiod betweenthe assassinationof Wittericin 610 and the dethronement

of Svinthila in 631, there were several kings.

The most signiﬁcant accomplish-

ment of their reigns was the destruction of Byzantine power in the Peninsula.

These monarchs knew how to capitalise on the crisis in which the Empire found

itself as a result of the Persian war, and the Byzantines were ﬁnally expelled

from Spain.

Other constants were the struggles against a people known as the

Astures and the Basques. Despite some successes against them, these people

LV xiii.1–2.407–8.

For this period we continue to rely on the Historia Gothorum of Isidore of Seville, which closes

with the reign of Suinthila; this information is complemented by the Frankish Chronicle of Fredegar,

which contains some evidence about theVisigothic kingdom, and the Chronicle of 754, written by a

Visigothic cleric under Muslim domination, known as the Mozarabic Chronicle. There are also the

acts of several provincial synods and letters of the king Sisebut.

On Byzantium in the seventh century, see Louth, chapter 11 above.

The Catholic Visigothic kingdom 351

were not crushed and they remained the enemies of the Visigoths until the

end of the kingdom of Toledo. This period is also marked by struggles for

the throne: regicides and dethronements took place with alarming frequency.

Although at this time no general synod was held at Toledo, the church contin-

ued to intervene in civil life through its provincial synods, and kings continued

to act in religious matters.

The most signiﬁcant example of the latter was the decision, made by King

Gundemar (610–612)incommon agreement with the bishops of the king-

dom, to transfer the regional religious capital of the province Carthaginensis to

Toledo. In reality, Toledo had come to function as a metropolitan see in relation

to the province of Carpetana or Celtiberia, which seems to have broken away

from Carthaginensis. Now, Toledo became the ecclesiastical capital of all the

churches of Carthaginensis, snatching the primacy from Cartagena that was

still under Byzantine control, and it was thus an afﬁrmation of the Visigothic

monarchy’s authority in relation to the Empire. The metropolitan of Toledo,

as bishop of the royal city, was transformed into the foremost ecclesiastic of

the Visigothic church and his authority stretched across the whole kingdom.

This was established by the sixth canon of the Twelfth Council of Toledo in

681, amongst whose acts Gundemar’s decree has been preserved.

On the death of Gundemar, Sisebut (612–621) ascended the throne. He was

aprominent man of letters, and some of his letters, poems and a hagiographic

work, the Vita Sancti Desiderii, have survived. He enjoyed a reputation as

areligious man; his correspondence shows him attempting to convert the

king of the Lombards to Catholicism. His religious views were manifest above

all in his laws against the Jews.

Anti-Jewish legislation had ancient roots

in Roman law. The regulations collected in canon 14 of the Third Council

of Toledo, prohibiting Jews from entering into mixed marriages, purchasing

Christian slaves or holding public ofﬁce, had done no more than reproduce

rules contained in the Codex Theodosianus, and later adapted for the Breviarium

Alarici.Reccared had reinforced conciliar regulations with a law that obliged

Jews who circumcised Christian slaves to free them without compensation.

Sisebutwent further, forbidding them ownershipof Christian slaves, something

Justinian had also done, and obliging them to sell or free them unreservedly,

without the recourse to obsequium, that is, residual control over them. He

also commanded that the donations made by his predecessors be conﬁscated

from the Jews, reiterated the ancient prohibition of mixed marriages, and

condemned to death, with consequent conﬁscation of goods, Hebrews who

converted Christians, at the same time punishing Christians who embraced

Judaism with various penalties.

LV xii.2.13 and 14,pp.407–8, 418–20.

352 a. barbero and m. i. loring

This anti-Jewish legislation marginalised Hebrews in social, economic and

political relations, which must have indirectly provoked numerous conversions.

Isidore pointed out, not without criticism, that Sisebut forced many Jews to

convert to the Catholic faith, a fact that was the object of condemnation at

the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633. Owing to the conﬂation of religious and

political principles, apparent from an analysis of the Third Council of Toledo,

Jews outside the ﬁdes owed to God were excluded from the ﬁdes owed to the

king, and in this sense they constituted not just a religious but also a political

problem. Hence the importance that civil legislation, as much as conciliar

canons, gave to what was perceived as the Jewish problem, as well as to those

who converted from Judaism. The number of these converts continued to grow

as a result of the continuing efforts of ecclesiastics and monarchs to eradicate

the Jewish religion.

Sisebut was also an outstanding warrior. During his reign several military

campaigns were undertaken against the Byzantines and the semi-independent

peoples of the peninsula. According to Isidore, Sisebut won victories against the

Byzantines, managing to occupy some of their cities, M

alaga among them. This

we can see from the acts of a provincial council held in Seville in 619.Defeat

led the Byzantine governor, the patrician Caesarius, to seek peace. Although

Sisebut’s correspondence with Caesarius does not give signiﬁcant details of the

treaty that followed, it is believed that Byzantine territories were limited to the

city of Cartagena and some other points along the coast. Among the semi-

independent peoples against whom Sisebut sent his generals, Isidore mentions

the Roccones,apeople whom the Sueves had already fought and who were now

conquered by the dux Suinthila, and the Astures, who were overcome by the

general Requila after they had risen in revolt.

It seems likely that it was a conspiracy that ended the brilliant reign of

Sisebut, for Isidore claimed that the king may have been poisoned. His son

and successor, the young prince Reccared II, died a few days after ascending

the throne. Finally, Suinthila (621–631) ascended the throne, a seasoned dux

provinciae and an experienced general. At the beginning of his reign he person-

ally undertook a campaign against the Basques who, according to Isidore, were

devastating Tarraconensis with their raids. Once defeated, they were made to

build the city of Ologicus (Olite) for the Goths. Suinthila, like Leovigild before

him who founded Victoriacum (Vitoria), then ordered the construction of this

fortress in Basque territory to limit Basque raids on regions near the Ebro val-

ley. Behind the continual wars against Astures and Basques lay differences in

social organisation between them and Hispano-Gothic society. The Basques

and Astures still retained features of their tribal past, and although defeated

on occasion by Gothic monarchs, they were never wholly dominated.

The

Barbero and Vigil (1974), pp. 51–67.