The memory of war – and its use – was a constant in the Middle Ages and beyond. For example, a knight from Vélay, a veteran of the First Crusade, gave King Louis VII of France, probably in 1137, a luxurious illuminated copy of three chronicles of the Holy Land, including those of two eyewitnesses with whom he had shared a trip during the expedition to Jerusalem: Fulcher of Chartres and Raymond of Aguilers. His aim was clear: “the countless and eminent deeds and sayings of our ancestors must be entrusted, with a noble pen, to the most honorable of memo ries […] so that you may be able to follow their footsteps on the path of the virtue” (Rubinstein 2004, 132–168). Likewise, in the literature of the crusades, and of the exhortation to them, the dis cursive use of the memory of martyrs as exempla of crusaders willing to die in the confidence of obtaining the reward of eternal life was also common (Tyerman 2016, 162–163).
The Battle of Badr is perhaps the greatest “memorialized” war landmark not only in the premodern Islamic West but in the whole Muslim world as it was part of Islamic sacred memory (Ibn Rāshid, Maghāzī (2014), 130). The people of Badr, ahl Badr, were the most excellent among the Muslims after the rāshidūn and 10 of the Prophet’s companions, and they were guaranteed entry to Paradise (Afsaruddin 2008, 57 f; Yazigi 1997, 159–167; Khalidi 2009, 87 ff). Already Mūsā b. ʿUqba, one of the first authors of a maghāzī widely known in al-Andalus, compiled lists of participants in Badr (Schacht 1953, 288–300). opies of these lists about the ahl Badr can be found in almost any corner of the Maghribi geography, as well as other texts about the excellencies of the ahl Badr (Al-Sanūsī, Sayf (2014), 37–46).
- The Umayyads and the Memory of War
- The fifteenth book of the ʿIqd al-farīd by Ibn ʿAbd Rabbihi, entitled the “Book of the Second Adorable Jewel About the Caliphs, their Narratives and their Battles” (Kitāb al-masjada al-thāniya fī al-khulafāʾ wa-l-tawārīkh wa-ayyāmi-him) (Ibn ʿAbd Rabbihi, ʿIqd), is a mono graphic section on the history of the caliphs that denotes a particularly local, neo Umayyad agenda. Ibn ʿAbd Rabbihi (d. 328/940), born in Cordoba in Ramaḍān 246/ November 869, was a poet in the courts of the amīrs Muḥammad I and ʿAbd Allāh, although he consolidated his position mainly under ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (Martinez-Gros 1992; Safran 2000; Fierro 2011a; Manzano Moreno 2011), of whom he was also a courtier, panegyrist, and devoted collaborator (Santás 2014, 58 ff; Toral-Niehoff 2015a, 61–85; Toral-Niehoff 2015b, 134–151).
The Battle of Ḥunayn, led by the Prophet himself, is of great importance as it is one of the few battles that are directly named in the Qurʾān (Q: 9.25). Likewise, God par ticipated in it through angels and the greatest of spoils was obtained. On the other hand, Abū Sufyān (d. 31/652), the illustrious ancestor of the Umayyads, had already converted to Islam and participated in this expedition, being, in fact, one of the few warriors who resisted, side by side with the Prophet, the attack of the pagans (Ibn Isḥāq / Ibn Hishām, Sīrat (1955), 566 ff; Al-Wāqidī, Maghāzī (2011), 435 ff). It is worth men tioning that the remembrance of his figure, specifically that of the Abū Sufyān pagan and rival of the Prophet, was also used by the enemies of the Umayyads, mainly Fatimids. For example, after the Umayyad retreat from an attack on al-Mah diyya in 946, the Caliph al-Muʿizz stated that the same thing happened to the ruler of Cordoba as to his ancestor, Abū Sufyān, in the Battle of al-Khandaq, when he had to run away. Thus, al-Mahdiyya became a parallel to Medina (Yalaoui 1978, 7–33; Alajmi / Keshk 2013, 7–21). The Fatimid caliph was probably also capitalizing this “traumatic” memory for the Umayyads (Fierro 2011b, 107–130). That is, the Fatimid scholar was thus placing Ziyādat Allāh III in the position of Abū Sufyān, great general of the Meccan polytheists and enemy of the Prophet at that time, again using the memory of those first battles of the Muslim community in his favor.
Leave a Reply