- Spain was ruled by Arab leaders from about the time of the conquest to the end of the Omeya caliphate (711-1031), after which a civil war split Al-Andalus into a ton of different kingdoms, some of which were ruled by Arabs (Zaragoza) and some by Berbers, who were muslims from North Africa (Granada). Later, Berber dynasties invaded from Morocco and after a time were largely defeated by Christian forces from the north, save for Granada, ruled by the Nasrids until 1492.
- During the time the Arab Omeya dynasty was in charge, Christians and Jews were allowed to continue practicing their religion as long as they abided by certain laws limiting their power and paid a special tax. A lot of the Christians of Al-Andalus became arabized, and were referred to as Mozarabs, where converts to Islam were called muladíes. Some Christians scholars like Paulus Alvarus bemoaned the arabization of Christians and worried it would lead to the demise of Latin Christianity.
- Arabic was widely spoken among Christian and Jewish scholars, in fact of the first Hebrew grammars is written in Arabic and compares the two language structures. Mozarabs and muladíes would occasionally try to “pass” as Arab to increase their social mobility, as Arabs made up the upper classes. They would take on Arab names and create fictitious geneaologies.
- A Muslim man could marry a Christian or Jewish woman, but not a pagan woman. His wife could keep her religion, but her children would be Muslim. Maliki scholars discouraged these marriages because they worried about Christian influence on Islam, but they happened anyway. Conversely, a Muslim woman was forbidden from marrying outside of her faith. If the wife in a Christian couple converted to Islam, her husband would have to convert with her or divorce her. Bonus fact: a few contemporary sources describe the Omeya caliphs as having blonde hair and blue eyes due to the fact that their mothers were slave women (esclavones) bought from the north, usually France or Germany.
- Due to the way agriculture was revolutionized in Al-Andalus and the sheer amount of time that the Iberian Peninsula was under Arab rule, together with the taxes that Christians and Jews had to pay for not being Muslim, I would hazard a guess that even the most rural villages were aware of who was in charge. As to whether they cared, the people who did were free to flee northward to where Christians still held power, which is what a lot of Visigoth landowners did when their lands were confiscated and distributed among their serfs during the conquest. There were some minor revolts in Córdoba in the 9th century. A muladí rebel, Ibn Hafsun fought against Abd al-Rahman III in the 10th century in what some historians interpret as an Andalusian nationalist movement against Arabs, but he was eventually defeated.
- chapter 2 of Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christianity and Islam: For the most part, apart from the occasional outburst of mutual antagonism, all managed to live side by sid…the cultures acquired characteristics in common, while still maintaining their distinct and separate and identities…the superficial differences between the different groups (Christians, Muslims, and Jews) diminished. Yet the communities remained distinct: they preserved their customs and observed their own laws. The Islamic ruling class was a thin veneer over a largely Christian society and was itself divided between Berbers and Arabs. So, the accommodation of religious minorities was at least, in part, a practical solution. Wheatcroft relates that Muslims and Christians spoke of each other in terms of fear and disgust (pp. 68-69). Even though they lived side by side for centuries there was still a lot of mutual misunderstanding as well as a fear of religious contamination. This situation lasted for about three hundred years and then Christians and Jews were either forced to convert or migrate north to Christian kingdoms. Of course the roles were reversed during the reconquista.
