13 - Staying Roman after 711?

Summary

Abstract

Historians of the first half century after 711 rely on the so-called Mozarabic Chronicle, written within the east Roman chronographic tradition. Several statements in the chronicle appear to be corroborated by coins and lead seals with Arabic inscriptions found in the peninsula that also have Byzantine antecedents. This chapter looks at the ways that material evidence for imitation, reinvention, or the strategic adoption of the Roman and Byzantine past can inform the debate about rupture and continuity in Iberia after 711.

Keywords: Islamic conquest of Spain; coinage of al-Andalus; Arabic lead seals; Chronica Muzarabica/Chronicle of 754; Byzantine North Africa

When the Muslims conquered al-Andalus, they found in the city of Qurṭuba [Córdoba] the ruins (‘athār) of a massive bridge that spanned the river, held on several arches of firm pillars, the work of the people of ancient civilizations now vanished, of which only traces remained (al-‘umam al-māḍīa al-dāthara lam yabqā minhā).

Mérida [Mérida] was one of the first places that the kings of the ‘ajm [non-Muslims] and the emperors before them chose to settle as […] a foundation on which to build. It was completed in the time of the Caesar Uktūbiyān [Octavian]. The first Caesar began it and the second Caesar completed it. The rulers visited frequently and renewed the monuments, excellently made, the decorations, and the astonishing marble. They were

able to bring in water stored in a construction known as al-barīqa [from Latin Aqua Barraeca] [which] workmen [both] before […] and after them were incapable of contriving.

When the forces of Ṭāriq ibn Ziyād crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 711, followed a year later by those of Mūsā ibn Nuṣayr, the governor of North Africa appointed by the caliph in Damascus, they found all around them the material traces of Roman and Visigothic Hispania. In Córdoba, Roman walls, gates, and streets formed the template of the new capital. Visigothic buildings abutting the southern wall of the city served as the palace and administrative centre of the first Umayyad emir, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān I (756–788). The Great Mosque of Córdoba may have replaced a Visigothic basilica on the same site. Roman hydraulic systems were repaired to supply the garden palaces of Rusāfa, al-Rūmanīya, and Madīnat al-Zahrā’ outside Córdoba.