An army that had to be paid every year
The caliphate's strength rested on one reorganisation. Almanzor, the chamberlain who ran the state in the caliph's name, replaced the old tribal contingents with mixed units, and the nucleus of the new army came increasingly from Maghrebi Berbers.[2] He made every unit ethnically diverse on purpose, so that its men would not unite against him.[3]
The scale matters. Modern estimates put the caliphal army at 50,000 to 90,000 troops, against 30,000 to 50,000 under Abd al-Rahman III, though contemporary figures contradict each other.[4] Paying that many professionals took loot and land, which gave the regime a standing reason to march out every year.[5] A state that must win each summer to meet its payroll has no slack.
His family, the Amirids, also favoured Saqaliba and Berbers while shutting Arabs out of state posts and military command.[6] That bought loyalty to the paymaster, not to the dynasty.
A caliph with no son, and a chamberlain's heir who wanted the throne
Hisham II was caliph in name while the chamberlain's family held the real power. On 16 November 1008 Sanchuelo, the chamberlain, forced him to name Sanchuelo as heir, even though the caliph had no son at the time.[7]
It did not hold. By 3 March 1009 Sanchuelo's own soldiers had abandoned him, and the soldiers of Muhammad II captured and killed him.[8]
The collapse then gathered speed. In a little under twenty years ten different caliphates emerged as successors to the Córdoba state, each claiming a legitimacy none could enforce.[9]
Mercenaries with no paymaster
Once Almanzor's tight control was gone, mercenaries who were no longer being paid soon resorted to lawlessness and violence.[10] Córdoba itself was besieged and then sacked in 1013, when Berber troops took the city.
The palace-city came first. Excavators of the Plaza de Armas at Medina Azahara date the looting of Madinat al-Zahra by North African troops to 14 and 15 November 1010,[11] although other accounts put the sack earlier that year. The portico and gate of the Plaza de Armas burned at the onset of the civil war.[12]
Explore nearby · Monument
Medina Azahara
Medina Azahara is Córdoba's UNESCO listed Caliphate City: a 10th century palace 8 km from town, with the Salón Rico and award-winning museum. Plan your visit.
The fire was selective. As elsewhere in the city, the burning was apparently limited to ideologically significant areas,[13] which reads as a targeted act of destruction rather than indiscriminate arson.
What the fighting spared became a quarry: in the 15th century the walls were systematically dismantled for building material, including for the monastery of San Jerónimo de Valparaíso.[14] One 2021 geological study adds a side note: it reports the first evidence that an earthquake may also have damaged the city, though abandonment is traditionally tied to the civil war.[15][16]
The elders' decision and what historians blame
The elders simply stopped the office. In 1031 they met under the leadership of Abu Hazm ibn Jahwar and abolished the caliphate,[1] and the motive was exhaustion: after so many years of war and infighting, al-Andalus wanted back the peace and stability it had known before.[17]
The title they voted away had been passed around for eighteen years:
- 1013: Sulayman al-Musta'in is reinstated the day after the Berber sack[18]
- 1016: Ali ibn Hammud takes the palace, executes Sulayman and proclaims himself caliph[19]
- 1018: Ali is assassinated by Saqlabi servants in the palace[20]
- 1021: Yahya ibn Ali enters Córdoba and is proclaimed caliph[21]
- 1023: al-Qasim is deposed and the Umayyads are restored with Abd al-Rahman V[22][23]
- 1025: the Umayyad Muhammad III al-Mustakfi is deposed[24]
- Hisham III, the last caliph, is proclaimed; sources date it 1026 or 1027[25][26]
Hisham III eventually found refuge in the taifa of Lérida, where the record loses track of him.[27] A governing council was set up to rule the region of Córdoba, and towns soon chose rulers of their own, the party kings.[28] One Spanish account counts about thirty such territories by 1031, some no bigger than a city and its district.[29] What Córdoba became afterwards is told in the Banu Jahwar republic of 1031 to 1070.
Deep dive · Article
Abd al-Rahman III: The Morning Córdoba Became a Caliphate
Abd al-Rahman III was the first Caliph of Córdoba, declared on January 16, 929, ruling Córdoba for 49 years and starting work on Medina Azahara in 936 CE.
The evidence is thinner than the drama suggests. Much of the caliphal historians' writing was destroyed during the civil war, and the authors who survive were partisan.[30] Ibn Hazm left a treatise that depicts the devastated city during that crisis.[31]
The consequence reached beyond Córdoba: the Christian kings' campaigns of reconquest gained strength and momentum after the fall of the city.[32]
What is left: a palace-city 10% dug and a mosque intact
UNESCO records that Medina Azahara was laid to waste in the civil war that ended the caliphate in 1009-1010,[33] and that only 10% of the site has been excavated, the remainder offering an opportunity for future research.[34] It has been protected almost continuously since 1911 and has had its own management body since 1985.[35]
The other half of the story is the Mezquita-Catedral, which stands: UNESCO calls the Great Mosque an irreplaceable testimony of the Caliphate of Córdoba.[36] The city around it was said to enclose 300 mosques and to rival Constantinople and Baghdad.[37] The Christian cathedral was installed inside it in 1236.[38]
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See them in that order if you can, the ruin first. A dug fraction of Medina Azahara and a whole Mezquita are a fair summary of Moorish Córdoba: the sack, and what survived it.