The Reverberations of Santiago's Bells in Reconquista Spain

7KH5HYHUEHUDWLRQVRI6DQWLDJR V%HOOVLQ5HFRQTXLVWD 6SDLQ $OL$VJDU$OLEKDL La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Volume 36, Number 2, Spring 2008, pp. 145-164 (Article) 3XEOLVKHGE\/DFRUµQLFD$-RXUQDORI0HGLHYDO+LVSDQLF/DQJXDJHV /LWHUDWXUHVDQG&XOWXUHV DOI: 10.1353/cor.2008.0011 For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cor/summary/v036/36.2.alibhai.html Access provided by University of California, San Diego (18 Jan 2016 09:14 GMT) THE REVERBERATIONS OF SANTIAGO'S BELLS IN RECONQUISTA SPAIN Ali Asgar Alibhai Southern Methodist University As the impetus of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela grew throughoutthe Middle Ages, its symbolic significance to medieval Europe's Christians became widely recognized by Spain's Muslim population. The fourteenth-century North African and Spanish chronicler, Ibn Idhäri, describes the pilgrimage to Santiago, or Shánt Yaqüb as it is called in Arabic, in the following words: It is the greatest existing Christian shrine in the country of AlAndalus and the vast lands connected to it. Santiago's cathedral carries the same significance to them as the Ka'bah does to us. They vow by it and make pilgrimages to it from the farthest parts of Rome (Christendom) and beyond. They believe that the tomb which is visited there is the grave of Yaqüb (James), one of the twelve disciples, may Allah have mercy on them. [They believe] that he was the most special of them to Essa (Jesus), may peace be upon him. They call him Essa's brother because of his companionship with him. Some of them believe that he is the son of Joseph the Carpenter. Santiago is the burial place of Yaqüb. The)' also call him "the brother of the Lord" (Allah is highly and largely exalted from what they say). (2: 294-95) La corónica 36.2 (Spring 2008): 145-164 146Ali Asgar AlibhaiLa coránica 36.2, 2008 Writing in 1312, Ibn Idhäri was describing Santiago while relating an event which occurred there over three hundred years before, and which left a lasting impact upon both the Muslim and Christian populace of Spain for years to come. In 976 the Umayyad Caliph Al-Hakam died, leaving the throne of Al-Andalus to his adolescent son Hishäm II. Hishàm's powerful vizier Al-Mansùr (Muhammad bin Abi Amir), set out to legitimize his control over the inexperienced sovereign and his realm by staging several military campaigns against local oppositions and the Christians in the North.1 He successfully led over fifty raids in Christian territory, which included an attack on Santiago de Compostela in 997 (Kennedy 119-20). According to Ibn Idhäri, the raid on Santiago was the forty-eighth expedition against the Christians. He writes, In August of 997 Al-Mansür and his army arrived in Santiago only to find that the city had been deserted by all its inhabitants. They looted all the valuables of the city and destroyed its buildings, walls, and church. They wiped out all traces of the city. Al-Mansûr appointed someone to protect the grave of James and to make sure no harm reached it. The buildings of Santiago had been extraordinary and well structured. They were turned into dust as if they hadn't existed the day before. (Ibn Idhäri 2: 296) The account of Al-Mansür's devastation of the holy shrine was equally remembered and recorded in medieval Christian sources. In the twelfth- century Codex Calixtinus, the story of Al-Mansûr's sack of Santiago is told in connection to a miracle of St. James in Capitulum 25 of the Historia Turpini. The Codex recounts that Al-Mansúr, whose name is distorted to Altumaior, having been prompted by the devil and in an attempt to regain all the lands taken from his predecessors by Charlemagne, decides to conquer all the lands of Galicia. After reaching Compostela, Al-Mansùr's army desecrates the church by depriving it of its many ornaments including its manuscripts, silver tables and bells (tintinnabula). The army 1 Muhammad bin Abi Amir was the häjib (chief minister) for Hishäm. He rose to power by eliminating all his rivals and became the defacto ruler of AlAndalus in 981. Upon his ascension to power he assumed the title Al-Mansür (the victorious). See Hugh Kennedy 109-115. The Reverberations of Santiago's Bells147 uses the church as a stable and shamelessly eats before the altar. For these atrocities, Al-Mansür's army was punished with dysentery and some were made blind. Al-Mansür was also afflicted by these punishments, and on the advice of a captive priest he prayed to God and St. James to restore his health. In return, he vowed never to return to Galicia again for plunder and to renounce his religion and return what he had stolen from the shrine (Walter Muir Whitehill 1: 345-46). The purpose of the story in the Codex Calixtinus is quite clearly revealed by the author's closing words: "Let those who would disturb that land [the land of St. James] know that they would be damned for evermore. Those who protect that land from the power ofthe Saracens will be rewarded with favors in heaven" (Colin Smith 1: 79). Although the Codex Calixtinus briefly specifies only some of the inventory of Al-Mansür's plunder from Santiago, Muslim sources were more detailed. Upon returning from his campaigns in the North, AlMansúr made sure his victories were publicized all over Al-Andalus. In the case of Santiago, according to Ibn Hayyàn, the preeminent Muslim historian of the Taifa period of Al-Andalus, Al-Mansür ordered that Santiago's bells be brought back to Córdoba on the shoulders of Christian captives. The bells were then transformed into lamps and hung in the Great Mosque of Córdoba, the chief congregational mosque of the city (Ahmad ibn Muhammad Al-Maqqari, The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain 2: 196). They would remain there as a public display of Al-Mansür's great victory against the Christians for centuries to come. The powerful message conveyed to the inhabitants of Spain by AlMansür's looting of the bells did not end with his regime. The Muslim capture and reuse of Santiago's bells as mosque lamps foreshadows what would later become a persistent cultural practice in medieval Spain and North Africa centuries later during the Reconquista. Besides the obvious triumphalistic message conveyed by the looting and display of Christian treasures, the power of these lamps resides in the fact that they were made with bells, objects that carried high symbolic value to the medieval Christian mindset over most other church furniture. To understand more clearly the symbolic value of this cultural practice it is essential to try to uncover why Al-Mansür, and those who followed his example, chose bells, among all other forms of Christian spolia that 148Ali Asgar AlibhaiLa coránica 36.2, 2008 had entered Islamic realms, to be used in these mosque accoutrements. What significance did the bell carry for both Christians and Muslims in the Middle Ages? How did this significance evolve in response to changing political and religious situations in Spain? What message did the bell lamps convey to those who saw them or heard about them? Although Christians and Muslims in medieval Spain often enjoyed a more positive form of convivencia, an undercurrent of conflict continued to exist between the two faiths. This is revealed particularly in their contrasting treatment of the means by which the faithful were called to prayer. For Christians, the bell served this purpose both functionally and symbolically, and for Muslims it was the adhän, the vocal call to prayer from a high point, usually the minaret. Early evidence of this conflict emerges in the writings of Eulogius of Córdoba and Paul Albar, a Mozarabic layman, who both had a key role in the Christian Martyr Movement of Córdoba in the mid-ninth century. Paul Albar wrote in relation to bell tolling, "But when they [the Muslims] hear the sign of the basilica, that is, the sound of ringing bronze, which is struck to bring together the assembly of the church at all the canonical hours, mouthing their derision and contempt, moving their heads, they wail out repeatedly unspeakable things; and they attack and deride with curses both sexes, all ages and the whole flock of Christ the Lord" (Jerrilynn Dodds 66). Eulogius reveals a reciprocal Christian antipathy to the Muslim call to prayer in his claim that his grandfather was obliged to cover his ears to shield them from the cries of the muezzin (Jonathan M. Bloom 363). These writings offer evidence of the frictional environment these two symbols created for the inhabitants of Spain. Public manifestation ofreligious rituals was vital to medieval frontier societies because it signaled their potency within the social order. Iberian Jews, Christians and Muslims all at times sought to establish their position in society through public manifestation of faith, which especially included art and architecture. As Jerrilynn Dodds suggests, "cultures react creatively when confronted with one another, and that such encounters help to form a group's attitude toward its art and itself" (3). In order to reinforce temporal dominance and religious superiority in their multicultural realms, rulers often restricted the public display of minority religions through regulatory laws. Such rules also included The Reverberations of Santiago's Bells149 the restriction of public airspace: in certain times of Muslim rule, bellringing was not allowed, and in various times of Christian rule the adhän was prohibited. An example of this law in Muslim Spain is found in the writings of Ibn 'Abdün, a twelfth-century jurist living in Sevilla. His treatise on the rules and laws of the marketplace proclaims, "It is obligatory that the ringing of bells is put to a stop in the territories of Islam. Bells are rung in the municipality of disbelief [Christian lands]" (Emile Lévi-Provençal 55). The law implies that bell ringing might have been tolerated by local Muslims prior to this point, since Ibn ' Abdün is calling for a stop to it. Al Wansharïshï (died 1508), a North African jurist in Fez, also wrote a treatise, Asna al-Matäjir, which was comprised of several fatwás (religious legal opinions) for Spanish Muslims "whose lands have been conquered by Christians". In the treatise, Al-Wansharishi also suggests negative sentiments towards bell ringing along with a clear disdain towards Spanish Muslims who felt that they would rather have stayed in Spain than have migrated to North Africa because of the poor quality of life there. In afatwä, Al-Wansharïshï tried to reprimand their "worldly thinking" by reminding them: "Do those, who have been cheated of their end of the bargain and are regretful of their migration from a land in which the trinity is propagated, bells are rung, the devil is worshipped, and God is forsaken, not know that a persons religion is everything for them?" (45). In the minds of both jurists, the land of the Muslims should be free of the sound of the bell. The treatment of the adhdn in Christian-ruled Spain can be similarly interpreted from a papal edict given by Pope Clement V at the Council of Vienne in 1311 to "certain parts of the world subject to Christian princes where Saracens live, sometimes apart, sometimes intermingled with Christians". This document prohibited the public vocalizing of the adhän and a certain unspecified Muslim pilgrimage to a shrine of a saint, proclaiming: this brings disrepute on our faith and gives great scandal to the faithful. These practices cannot be tolerated any further without displeasing the divine majesty. We therefore, with the sacred council's approval, strictly forbid such practices henceforth in Christian lands. We enjoin on Catholic princes, one and all, who 1 50Ali Asgar AlibhaiLa coránica 36.2, 2008 hold sovereignty over the said Saracens and in whose territory these practices occur, and we lay on them a pressing obligation under the divine judgment that, as true Catholics and zealous for the Christian faith, they give consideration to the disgrace heaped on both them and other Christians. They are to remove this offence altogether from their territories and take care that their subjects remove it, so that they may thereby attain the reward of eternal happiness. (Norman P. Tanner 380) In Spain, Jaime II (1318), Martin I (1403) and Alfonso V (1417) quickly instated the papal policy (Mark Meyerson 43). At times the adhän seemed to generate more intolerance by Christians in conquered Muslim cities than the actual presence of a mosque. In 1266 when Murcia surrendered to James I we learn from his own writings that when he entered the city, after the Mass he climbed up to the castle and told the vizier and other Muslim leaders of the city that the mosque near the castle gate should belong to the Christians and be included in their sector of the city. The Muslims argued that according to the agreements made in the treaty they were allowed to keep their own mosques as they had under Muslim rule. James convinced them that since they already had two mosques in the city and the Christians had no church for worship, that the mosque near the castle gate would be converted into a church. He added, "For us to be able to hear the muezzin right by our head when we were asleep is, if you think about it, not fitting" (L. P. Harvey 46-47). By the time of Fernando and Isabel, Mudejars could only announce the call to prayer by sounding a horn and even this was prohibited in Valencia (Meyerson 43). The enduring struggle between bell and adhän did not originate in Spain. As Islam began to spread globally in the first half of the seventh century onwards by conquering Byzantine and Persian lands, early Islamic rulers were led to deal with their non-Muslim subjects. This meant new rules had to be enacted in regard to the conquered populaces. Generally, according to Islamic law, the AhI al-Kitäb (the People of the Book), Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians were allowed to live in Islamic lands and practice their religion under an obligation to pay an annual tax known as the jizya. Although this provided them protection under Islamic rule, for which they were called ahi al-dhimma (the protected The Reverberations of Santiago's Bells151 people), it did not mean that these religious minorities were accustomed to complete religious freedom. When ' Umar bin al-Khattäb conquered Syria in 637, he offered the Christian populace a pact well known today as the Covenant of ' Umar, promising them protection in return for their obedience to the laws set by the pact. Although the statutes laid out by the covenant have been preserved in several versions from a number of medieval sources, their content is generally consistent. According to Muhammad ibn al-Walid Al-Turtüshi (died 1126),2 the laws of the covenant are primarily concerned with the humbling of the Christians through regulations concerning clothing and apparel, restrictions on religious and domestic building, and even a forfeiture of the right to bear arms. Also included were specific laws prohibiting Christians to build new churches or monasteries in their neighborhoods, to display the cross or their books in the open road or in the markets of Muslims, and most importantly for this discussion, to beat the näqüs, except softly within the church (Turtüshi 2: 542-43). Originally, the näqüs was the word used in Arabic to describe the semantron used by Eastern Christians to summon the faithful to prayer. The semantron was a large wooden plank that was struck with a mallet to produce a noise, an early Christian precursor to the bell later used in the West for the same purpose. Although in Spain the Christian call for prayer was customarily made with a bell, it can be assumed that when the Arab forces arrived in the beginning of the eighth century the regulation concerning the semantron was generalized to include bells as well. In newly conquered cities, the tolling of the Christian bell was ultimately replaced by the adhän, a symbolic triumph clear to both the conquerors and the conquered. This idea has been reflected in a tenth-century poem written to commemorate the reign of Abd al-Rahman III (died 961) by Ibn Abd Rabbihi (died 940), an Umayyad court poet. In 924, in response to the Navarrese king Sancho Garcés's defeats of Muslim settlements on the frontier, Abd al-Rahman III sacked Pamplona. Ibn Abd Rabbihi wrote in a tribute to the victory, 2 Al-Turtüshi was a Spanish Muslim from Tortosa who traveled east as a scholar. 152Ali Asgar AlibhaiLa coránica 36.2, 2008 And how many churches in it [Pamplona] have been held in contempt, while their bells have been replaced by the muezzin's call. Both bell and cross weep over [Pamplona], for to each of them weeping is a [last remaining] duty. (James T.Monroe 110) The cross often represented Christianity in the medieval Muslim mindset. In Spain, however, the bell seems to have served a comparable symbolic function. The intolerance for bells in Spain might have been associated with their negative connotations even within Islamic culture. Sunni Islamic law is widely interpreted from the Quran and the sunna (teachings and traditions of the Prophet Muhammad) as articulated in his hadiths, or sayings. The hadiths had a large role in the development of ethical and religious thought in early Islam (Ignaz Goldziher 41). The works of the Sahäh-e-Sitta, "The Six Correct", were collections of hadiths which were compiled into literary form by Sunni scholars in the ninth century who excluded the hadiths they believed to be apocryphal. By the thirteenth century these six collections were considered canonical around the Islamic world and served as a major source by which medieval Islamic jurists deduced and pronounced religious laws, tenets and commands (37-41). The Sahih of Muslim (died 874), which was widely regarded as the "more sound" among the other collections, contains two hadiths regarding bells. He writes, "Angels do not accompany the travelers who have with them a dog and a bell" (Book 024, Number 5277) and "The bell is a musical instrument from the instruments of Satan" (Book 024, Number 5279). As inauspicious as the sight and sound of the bell was to Spanish Muslims, medieval Christians revered it. The earliest use of the bell as a tool for summoning Christians to assemble for prayer is recorded in a letter written by Fulgentius Ferrandus, a deacon in Carthage in 515. In it, Fulgentius advises Eugippius, the Abbot of Lucullano, to use the bell as a method to summon monks to prayer: During all the hours that are set aside for appropriate prayers, you are not only permitted but also have time to be presented The Reverberations of Santiago's Bells153 to the divine countenances [i.e., to pray]. Only you yourself do not practice this alone but call many others to take part in this good work, to serve which ministry the most holy custom of the most blessed monks has established [the ringing of] a resonant bell. Because you ordered [it], we have sent this [bell] to Your Holiness. I have not permitted my name to be inscribed on it because the Holy Spirit has already written it on your heart. (Williams 20) As the use of the bell spread throughout Western Europe, its symbolic value also grew. In the West, the act of clanking metal together traditionally had been believed to have a metaphysical or even supernatural effect, which finds its roots in antiquity. In Ovid's Fasti, for example, bronze vessels were struck together in a celebration known as the Lemuria Nefastus in order to exorcise the Lémures, restless ancestral spirits (Ovid 126).3 The idea that ringing metal had the metaphysical power to dispel spirits and storms came to be associated with the use of bells in medieval Europe. In 1286 William Durandus describes the symbolic nature of the bell in detail in his Rationale Divinorum Officiorum. According to Durandus, bell ringing had salutary effects on the faithful, which increased their devotion and protected the fruits of their fields and the fruits of their minds and bodies. In addition, Durandus wrote that the sound of the bell carried the power to ward off the hostile legions of the "enemy", as well as the ability to repel whirlwinds, hail, thunder and lighting. For this reason, he claimed, they were subject to consecration and blessing before their use (Durandus 67). The ritual of blessing and consecrating bells before their use in the church was widespread in medieval Europe, as witnessed by the 3 The ritual took place on 9 May. It began at midnight whereupon the elder of the household, being barefoot, washed his hands and gathered black beans, throwing them in the air. He threw the beans around the house nine times and each time he said, "These I release; I redeem me and mine with these beans". After this part of the ritual was done, supposedly a ghost collected the beans. The elder then touched water again and began to clank Temesan bronze together. While clanking the vessels together, he again said nine times to the ghosts, "Leave, ancestral spirits", and then the ceremony commenced. 154Ali Asgar AlibhaiLa coránica 36.2, 2008 vivid account of the tenth-century Romano-Germanic Pontifical. The ceremony began with exorcising, then consecrating, salt and water and then mixing them together. The priest performing the ritual sprinkled the bell with this mixture and then invoked God to accept the sound of the bell and to sanctify it. The Pontifical points out that the sanctification of the bell was necessary so that the faithful would be invited to spiritual rewards through its ringing and sound, and the devotion of the people of the nation who heard its melody would grow (Cyrille Vogel 1: 189; Chapter LI, IO).4 In Spain, this ritual was also performed by the Mozarabic liturgy. The Liber Ordinum gives a similar account of the process of exorcism and consecration of bells before their liturgical use. However, in this case the prayer that followed the consecration allows us to see an additional symbolic characteristic that the Spanish bell acquired. The prayer following the consecration reads, "Let the sound of your bells, Oh Lord, terrify the Jews and the faithless so that they may be recovered from wickedness. And also may the sound serve as a consolation and relief for the weak and sorrowful" (Marius Férotin, 159; LVI. Exorcisms Ad Consecrandum Signum Basilice).5 For Spanish Christians the metaphysical effects of the bell extended beyond Christian ears. In Reconquista Spain, the bell's symbolic nature acquired similar meanings for both Christians and Muslims. In the beginning of the twelfth century the Spanish Muslim chronicler and poet Ibn Bassäm (died 1 147) wrote that in July of 1085 Alfonso VI ordered that the chief mosque of Toledo be transformed into a cathedral almost two months after the city had surrendered to Castilian rule. After documenting this event he continued, "I have been told that that day, a follower of Alfonso VI suggested that he begin to wear a crown and adorn himself like the Visigoth rulers of Spain had done before him". Alfonso VI replied, "No, 4 The Latin text of the Pontifical reads: "ut per illius tactum et sonitum fidèles invitentur ad praemium et cum melodia illius auribus insonuerit popularum, crescat in eis devotia fidei". For the complete ritual of the blessing of the bell in the Pontifical see Chapter LVI, 185-90. 5 The Latin text is: "Sit etiam signorum istorum sonitus, Domine, ludeis et perfidies terrificatio ualida resipiscenda a malitia; languidis et mestis consolation et releuatio obtata". The Reverberations of Santiago's Bells155 not until I cross the peak of the kingdom and take the Muslim's precious Córdoba from them". Ibn Bassäm went on to say that "Alfonso VI had commissioned an extraordinary bell for the Great Mosque of Córdoba, may God protect its court from calamity. Thanks be to God for weakening and rescinding Alfonso's plot" (4: 168-69). A related Christian account, recorded by Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada (died 1247), also treats bells as central to the appropriation and conversions of Muslim holy places in his Historia de Rebus Hispaniae. Instead, Rodrigo wrote, When the King had gone off to León, the Archbishop-elect [who was the Cluniac bishop Bernard De Sedirac], with Queen Constanza encouraging him, and with the approval of the Christian troops, entered the chief mosque of Toledo, and having purged it of the filth of Muhammad, set up an altar of the Christian faith, and placed bells in the main tower so that Christians could be called to worship. (Smith 1: 88-91) Both ofthese accounts suggest that in the twelfth century the symbolic conflict was taking a new turn. Instead of simply being understood as a change in the method ofcalling people to congregate, the appropriation of Toledo's minaret as a bell tower was understood as a symbol of Christian triumph over the Muslims of Toledo. The account of Alfonso's mythical commission of a bell to be placed in its Great Mosque of Córdoba in its anticipated conquest illustrates how powerfully many medieval Spanish Muslims had begun to associate the symbol of the bell with Christian Spain's rising offensive against Al-Andalus. In the course of this offensive, many mosques, instead of being destroyed, were appropriated into Christian churches, as transpired in Toledo in 1086. After a Muslim town was conquered and the mosque converted into a church, the victorious monarch would enter the new church in a procession in which the Mass was chanted. Such ceremonies are known to have taken place in Toledo, Córdoba, Jaén, Sevilla and Murcia between the eleventh to thirteenth centuries (Julie A. Harris 160-61). Bells were commonly rung on joyous festivals and celebrations pertaining to grace (Durandus 74). If we assume that they were also rung to announce the celebration of these triumphal processions as well as the 156Ali Asgar AlibhaiLa coránica 36.2, 2008 Mass, the sound of the bell might have easily have been associated by the conquered as a direct celebration by the Christians ofvictory. For Muslims slowly losing control of their land, the sound of the bell represented a threat to their way of life. Silencing them became an important symbol in their efforts to defend the lands that for centuries had been theirs. Muslim writings from the twelfth century onwards often mourn the loss of Andalusian territory to Christian Spain. In some of these texts, this loss was literarily signified by the lamentation of the replacement of the adhän with the bell. Under the Almohad regime, which ruled most of Al-Andalus and parts of North Africa between 1145-1269, these themes were widely expressed. For example, when James the Conqueror surrounded Valencia in 1238, the acting governor of the city, Zayyän, sent his vizier, Ibn al-Abbär to plead with the Hafsid ruler of Tunis for help (Kennedy 270). In the plea, written in a form of a poem, he wrote this verse, "Woe for the mosques which have become churches for the enemy, / and woe for the call for prayer which has been replaced by the bell" (Ahmad ibn Muhammad Al-Maqqari and Muhammad Shujä' Dayf Allah 144-45). When Valencia was finally taken, an anonymous poet wrote in a verse, "Woe for the madrasas which are like deserted ruins, / the call for prayer has been obliterated by the bells of the cross" (Al-Maqqari and Shujä' Dayf Allah 168). Al-Rundi, another Spanish-Arab poet, wrote a dirge commemorating the fall of Sevilla in 1248, in which he laments, Over dwellings emptied of Islam that were first vacated and are now inhabited by unbelief. In which mosques have become churches wherein only bells and crosses maybe found. Even the mihrabs weep though they are solid; even the pulpits mourn even though they are wooden! (Monroe 334-35) A desire to silence Christian bells is also found in medieval North African Arabic texts. In a panegyric written for the third Almohad Caliph Abü Yüsuf Yaqüb Al-Mansür to commemorate his major victory against Alfonso VIII at Alarcos in 1195, the poet Ali ibn Hazmün wrote about the Caliph's several achievements in battle which ultimately led The Reverberations of Santiago's Bells157 to victory and Alfonso's retreat, rejoicing that: "The clatter of Indian swords surrounds his head / He no longer hears the clanking of bells" (Al-Marrakushi 194). A similar impulse is recorded in the account of the Almohad historian, Ibn Sähib Al-Saläh, who described the attack of the second Almohad Caliph, Abü Yaqüb Yüsuf, on the unfortified Christian settlement of Huete. In May 1172, Yüsuf left Sevilla via Córdoba and marched towards Huete with about 20,000 men, conquering Christian settlements and forts along the way.6 On July 12, the Almohad army captured nine bells from the town church of Huete. When the army besieging the city was discouraged by bad weather conditions, its leaders spoke, in Arabic and in Berber, in an effort to ignite enthusiasm forjihäd against the Christians. Ibn Sähib Al-Saläh recorded this speech in his chronicle, writing that an elder from the Almohads said, When you were in Marrakech you all said that if you were ever to fight the Christians you would fight ?jihäd for God and would try your hardest in doing so. Now that you have finally met them, you are lacking. You have pushed God aside and have acted with cowardice. You have not shown goodwill. You can no longer be called the Faithful or Almohads (Unitarians) if you continue to hear the bells ring, and witness disbelief, and do nothing to put a stop to malevolence. Our Caliph cannot bear to see your inadequacies in performing jihäd for God. (411) Despite these words, the army, hearing that Alfonso VIII was en route to raise the siege, left Huete to the Christians. Nonetheless, this episode was not without its small victory, the chief of the mule train of the army was ordered to carry the nine captured bells on the backs of the mules, inflicting a symbolic defeat against the Christians of Huete (413). The Almohads' symbolic linkage of bells to their efforts in the Reconquista seems to have been partly inspired by the actions of AlMansür in Santiago in 997. The Almohads emulated Al-Mansür's publicizing of his jihäd against the Christians by forging lamps of their 6 Kennedy states, "This expedition was the first determined attempt by an Almohad caliph in person to reverse the successes of the Reconquista". See pages 223-31 for a full account of the Huete expedition. 158Ali Asgar AlibhaiLa coránica 36.2, 2008 own made from captured Christian bells. The Almohads and the Marinids, who succeeded the Almohads in their rule over parts of North Africa and Spain in 1269, made several bell lamps which still exist today in two North African mosques. Six hang in the central aisle of the Qarawiyyin congregational mosque in Fez, Morocco (plate 11). A seventh bell lamp hangs outside a main entrance to the same mosque. In each lamp, the original bell has been encircled either by several circular rings or by flat wing-shaped panels to which several polycandela have been attached (plate 12, plate 13). This design gives the lamps a conical formation, which is emulated by the other lamps in the central aisle. The ends of the wicks of the candelabra attached to the rings and panels surrounding the bell have been shaped to resemble flower petals. Today where they once held oil to produce light, they have been wired to accommodate the use of electric bulbs. Each lamp has a large copper disc at the bottom on which the bell rests. These discs are all uniquely designed and all have a distinctive foliate and floral pattern as well as the occasional Arabic inscription. Another bell lamp that follows the same cone design is known to exist in the Great Mosque of Taza, a city west of Fez. The Qarawiyyin Mosque was originally built to serve as an oratory in 859 by Fatema, the daughter of a wealthy immigrant. During the tenth century the structure became the congregational mosque of the Qarawiyyin quarter of Fez, and throughout the Middle Ages it served as an intellectual learning center for the Muslim world. In the twelfth century the Almoravids, who ruled North Africa and parts of Al-Andalus between the years 1061-1147, expanded the mosque to its present size, making it the largest mosque in North Africa. Medieval Fez, already an important city for medieval North Africans, had strong political and cultural ties with Islamic Spain. As a result, the Qarawiyyin mosque received special attention from the rulers of North Africa. This may be why the leaders of the North African armies chose the Qarawiyyin to house the triumphal showcase of their victories in Spain against the Christians. As the last remaining artifacts of this cultural practice, these lamps represent the only remaining evidence of how Santiago's bells would actually have functioned in the Great Mosque of Córdoba, where The Reverberations of Santiago's Bells159 they too might have been placed prominently in the most significant part of the mosque, the central aisle. The origins ofthese particular lamps is not usually recorded, although the capture of the bell that hangs in the lamp of the eighth cupola from the mihrab (plate 13) was credited to the military success of a Marinid prince in a descriptive book about Fez by the fourteenth-century writer, Al-Jaznäi. He describes this bell as having come from Gibraltar following its conquest on 13 June 1333 by the Marinid prince Abu Malik, the son of the Sultan of Morocco. The bell was said to weigh ten quintals and was brought to the Qarawiyyin Mosque by Abu Malik to be hung as a lamp (Al-Jaznäi 75). The inscriptions on the Moroccan bell lamps reveal both the ideological motivations for their use and their apparent significance for medieval Muslims passing through the mosque. The bell lamp hanging in the sixth cupola from the mihräb preserves its original Latin inscription on its shoulder: "VOX DOMINI SONAT" [The voice of the Lord resounds], followed by a dedicatory inscription for the patron.7 In the course of the bell's reconfiguration, several Arabic inscriptions were added, suggesting the triumphalistic light in which such lamps may have been seen. The circular band around the disc to which the bell is attached bears the following inscriptions written in naskh script: "I ask God for protection from Satan the condemned", an apotropaic formula perhaps intended to counter the bell's original inscription. This is followed, as this passage usually is, by the Basmala, "In the name of Allah, the most beneficent and merciful", and then by the prayer, "May God bless our prophet Mohammed, his progeny and his companions". Two sürahs of the Quran follow this inscription. The sürah known as Al-Ikhläs (The Purity), which ultimately proclaims that God is one, and he has not begot nor has he been begotten has been inscribed. This is followed by the first sürah of the Quran, Al-Fätiha, (The Opening) which includes praises of God, the verse, "It is you alone that we worship and from you alone we seek help", and a prayer for guidance toward the "straight path". The disc of each bell lamp in the mosque is attached to 7 The entire Latin inscription is "vox domini sonat domini (cnsdto) rome fecit". 160Ali Asgar AlibhaiLa coránica 36.2, 2008 a polygonal base, which has several knobs affixed to its bottom face. This lamp has four knobs. Between the knobs, the following epigraph has been inscribed once again, "I ask God for protection from Satan the condemned". This prayer, as stated before, usually appears with the Basmala, but here it appears by itself. The repetition of this formula calls to mind the hadith in Muslim's Sahih of the bell as an instrument of Satan; they seem to serve as a symbolic consecration of the bell, sanctifying its use in the mosque. On the bottom face of the base, the epigraph "The Perpetual Kingdom, The Established Honor" is repeated and has clearly been made visible to those who pass by ('Abd al-Hadi Tazi 328-30). Both individually and as an ensemble, the Arabic inscriptions clearly construe medieval triumphalistic and polemical philosophies. The call for protection against Satan, the selected verses from the Quran which indirectly attempt to refute Christian doctrine, and the references to triumph and kingdom are all themes to suggest that the patrons of these lamps understood the symbolic value of the bell for Spanish Christians. The lamps were indeed trophies of conquest. For the Muslims who viewed them in the mosque, however, the most powerful statement that these lamps made was that the bells used to make them were now silent. Just as bells acquired layers of symbolic value in the eyes of medieval Muslims, so did they for medieval Christians as well. During this same period, Spanish Christians began to associate the bell and its sound with the concept of liberation from Muslim rule. This idea is exemplified in the texts and images of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a collection of Marian stories and miracles composed in the court of Alfonso X, King of Castilla and León from 1252-1284. In cantiga 325, a Christian woman is released from her Moorish captors in Tangiers. While imprisoned she is mistreated but nonetheless refrains from conversion to Islam. The Virgin miraculously saves her. When the Christian woman is able to return to Tudia, her hometown near Sevilla, her iron collar miraculously falls off; the cantiga ends with the sacristan ringing the great bell of the church in celebration of her resistance toward her Muslim oppressors (Alfonso X 394-95). The miniatures that accompany cantiga 83 tell a similar story of a Christian man who was bound by his Moorish captors, then whipped and imprisoned (plate 14). In prison, while he prays to the Virgin Mary, his The Reverberations of Santiago's Bells161 chains miraculously break. The Christian man escapes while his captives are still asleep. Carrying his chains, he proceeds to a shrine where a priest records his story on a scroll, Mass is said, and the bells are rung. The miniature that illustrates this final episode made a commendable effort to portray that the bells in the tower were set in a ringing position (plate 15). To Spanish Christians, the celebratory sound of the bell signified the sweetness of liberty from religious captivity, a concept that would become common in years to come. The Christian correlation of bells with the idea of freedom during the Reconquista finds itself intertwined with the story of the bells of Santiago de Compostela. As important as these sacramental objects became to the Muslim civilizations that struggled to keep control of the Peninsula, they found equal significance among the Christian forces striving to conquer it. For more than two centuries the bells of Santiago, transfigured as lamps, had remained in the Great Mosque of Cordoba; Al-Mansür's message became deeply embedded in the minds of Spanish Christians. The intensity of this awareness can be read in two gestures made by Fernando III when he conquered Cordoba in 1236. First, he raised the cross and his royal banners on top of the highest minaret of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, a definitive event in the Reconquista and a symbol of defeat to Spanish Muslims all over Al-Andalus because of Cordoba's position as the capital and seat of the caliphate for many years (Joseph F. O'Callaghan 141). Second, Fernando recovered the bells held inside the mosque and restored them to Santiago de Compostela just as they had been brought there centuries before, an even more powerful symbol of liberation from Muslim rule (Menéndez Pidal 2: 734).8 The bell lamps of Fez document the reverberation of Santiago's bells in the atmosphere of Reconquest Spain. They bear witness to the idea of how sacred symbols, the adhän and the bell, both intended to inspire devotion and faith to those who associated with it, could equally construe 8 The text in the PCG is as follows: "De las canpanas o'trosi de Santiago de Gallizia que dixiemos que troxiera Almonzor de Gallizia a Cordoua por desonrra del pueblo cristiano, et estodieran en la mezquita de Cordoua et seruieran y en logar de lanparas, el rey don Fernando, que fazie las ostras noblezas, fizo estonces tornar aquellas canpanas mismas et leuarlas a la yglesia de Sanctiago de Gallizia" (2: 1047). 162Ali Asgar AlibhaiLa coránica 36.2, 2008 a message of peril to those minorities who felt suppressed by it. They also represent how a symbol could evolve in meaning and significance as its religious and political contexts changed. In the complex history of the medieval Spanish kingdoms, we are uniquely enabled to observe this evolution from both Muslim and Christian perspectives. Opening a window into the cultural tensions between Muslims and Christians in the Middle Ages, the historic struggle over Santiago's bells may also offer insight into the comparably symbolic battles still occurring in frontier societies of the modern world each day. Works Cited Alfonso X. Songs of Holy Mary of Alfonso X, the Wise: A Translation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. Trans. Kathleen Kulp-Hill. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000. Al-Jaznäi, Abu al-Hasan 'Ali. Jany zahrat al-as fi bina madinat Fas. aiRabat: al-Matba'ah al-Malakiyah, 1977. Al-Maqqari, Ahmad ibn Muhammad. The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain. Trans. Pascual de Gayangos. 2 vols. London: Printed for the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1840-1843. New York: Johnson Reprint Company, 1964. Al-Maqqari, Ahmad ibn Muhammad; Muhammad Shujä' Dayf Allah. Khuruj al-Andalus min yad al-Muslimín. al-Kuwayt: Dar al-Awräd, 1993. Al-Marrakushi, 'Abd al-Wahid. Min kitab al-Mu jab fi talkhis akhbar al-Maghrib. Ed. Ahmad Badr. Damascus: Wizarat al-Thaqafah waal-Irshad al-Qawmi, 1978. Al-Wansharishi, Ahmad ibn Yahyá. Asna al-matajir. al-Zahir: Maktabat al-Thaqafah al-Diniyah, 1996. The Reverberations of Santiago's Bells163 Bloom, Jonathan M. "Mosque Towers and Church Towers in Early Medieval Spain". Ed. Thomas W. Gaehtgens. Künstlerischer Austausch - Artistic Exchange, Akten des XXVIII. Internationalen Kongresses fur Kunstgeschichte. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993. 361-71. Dodds, Jerrilynn D. Architecture and Ideology In Early Medieval Spain. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 1990. Durandus, William. The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments: A Translation ofthe First Book ofthe Rationale Divinorum Officiorum. Ed. John Mason Neale and Benjamin Webb. 3rd edition. London: Gibbins, 1906. Férotin, Marius, ed. Le Liber Ordinum en usage dans léglise wisigothique et mozarabe d'Espagne du cinquième au onzième siècle. Paris: FirminDidot, 1904. Goldziher, Ignaz. Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1981. Harris, Julie A. "Mosque To Church Conversions in the Spanish Reconquest". Medieval Encounters 3.2 (1997): 158-72. Harvey, L. P. Islamic Spain 1250 to 1500. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1992. Ibn-Bassäm. Al Dhakhïrahfi mahäsin ahi al-jazïrah. Ed. Ehsan Abbas. 4 vols. Beirut: Dar al-Thaqafah, 1979. Ibn-Sahib-al-Salah. Tarikh al-mann bi-al-imamah. Ed. 'Abd al-Hadi Tazi. Beirut: Dar al Gharb al Island, 1987. Ibn Idhäri. Kitab al-bayan al-mughrib fi akhbar al-Andalus wa-alMaghrib. Ed. G.S. Colin and E. Levi-Provencal. 2 vols. Beirut: Dar al-Thaqafah, 1967. Kennedy, Hugh. Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of alAndalus. New York: Longman, 1996. Lévi-Provençal, Emile. Documents arabes inédits sur la vie sociale et économique en occident musulman au Moyen Age. Cairo: Imprimerie de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale, 1955. Menéndez Pidal, Ramón, ed. Primera crónica general de España. 2 vols. Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1955. Meyerson, Mark. The Muslims of Valencia: In the Age of Fernando and Isabel: Between Coexistence and Crusade. Los Angeles: U of California P, 1991. 164Ali Asgar AlibhaiLa coránica 36.2, 2008 Monroe, James T. Hispano-Arabic Poetry: A Student Anthology. Los Angeles: U of California P, 1974. O'Callaghan, Joseph F. The Latin Chronicle of The Kings of Castile. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002. Ovid. Fasti. Trans. A. J. Boyle and R. D. Woodard. London: Penguin, 2000. Siddiqui, Abdul Hamid. "Translation of Sahih Muslim". USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts. <http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/ fundamentals/hadithsunnah/muslim/> 25 September 2007. Smith, Colin. Christians and Moors in Spain. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1992. Tanner, Norman P. Decrees ofthe Ecumenical Councils. 2 vols. Washington DC: Georgetown U P, 1990. Tazi, 'Abd al-Hadi. JamV al-Qarawiyin al-masjid wa-al-jamVah bimadinat Fas. Vol. 2. Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Lubnani, 1972-1973. Turtüshi, Muhammad ibn al-Walid. Siraj al-muluk. Ed. Muhammad Fathi Abu Bakr. 2 vols. Cairo: al-Dar al-Misriyah al-Lubnaniyah, 1994. Vogel, Cyrille, ed. Le Pontifical romano-germanique du dixième siècle. 3 vols. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1963. Whitehill, Walter Muir, ed. Codex Calixtinus, Liber Sancii Jacobi. 3 vols. Santiago de Compostela, 1944. Williams, Edward V The Bells of Russia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1985.