Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines. Simon Barton
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that in early Islamic and even pre-Islamic culture it had been considered honorable for a man to acquire a wife from another kin group through force or persuasion, by conquest or alliance, and women were regarded as particularly valuable prizes of conquest.156 Echoes of such attitudes could be found in al-Andalus too. The sexual dominance of a Muslim ruler over a Christian woman—be it a freeborn princess or a slave concubine—was portrayed by some as symbolic of Islamic political and military hegemony, as well as a humiliating reminder to the Christians themselves of their subordinate status.157
The prolific poetic output of the panegyrist and man of letters Ibn Darrāj al-Qasṭallī (d. 1030) provides a useful perspective on these matters.158 Hailing from the Algarve in southern Portugal, Ibn Darrāj rose to prominence at the court of al-Manṣūr in 992, and it was in honor of the latter and of his son, ‘Abd al-Malik al-Muẓaffar, that he composed a large number of panegyrics. Especially revealing for our purposes are the poems he composed for al-Manṣūr to celebrate the ḥājib’s military successes over the Christian armies during the final decade of the tenth century. In these works Ibn Darrāj is quick to praise the nobility, valor, piety, and generosity of his patron, but equally eye-catching is the emphasis that he places upon the capture of Christian women by Muslim armies. One such poem, which is dedicated to al-Muẓaffar, and which refers to a campaign led by al-Manṣūr against Navarre and against the territory of Miró count of Pallars, perhaps in 999, claims that the ḥājib had stolen the Christians’ lives, “possessing the slavery of their women and dominating their souls”; he further adds that their marriage contracts had been “written with spears,” a clear indication that their forcible recruitment to Muslim harems was anticipated.159 Equally explicit is the poem written to extol al-Manṣūr’s campaign to Navarre and the Rioja in 1000, which had culminated in a victory over a coalition of Christian forces. Here again Ibn Darrāj mentions the capture of Christian women, who are described as “herds of fat gazelles.” Although they are chaste, the poet declares, “they would accept your offer if you wanted to marry them.”160 In another poem he wrote to celebrate the winter campaign waged against León in 995, Ibn Darrāj makes extravagant play of the vulnerability of those Christian women whose husbands had been put to the sword.161 Furthermore, when King Sancho Garcés II of Navarre came to Córdoba at the head of a diplomatic mission in September 992, and had the opportunity to meet his grandson ‘Abd al-Raḥmān “Sanchuelo,” Ibn Darrāj praised the nobility of the Christian king, but left his audience in no doubt that his visit and pledge of obedience to his son-in-law, al-Manṣūr, marked a considerable humiliation for him.162
Since a woman’s very reputation and status rested upon her honor and chastity, the sexual use of Christian female captives or even freeborn wives was designed in part to destroy solidarity among Christian families and communities, inflicting shame not only on the women themselves, but also on their male coreligionists—like King Sancho Garcés of Navarre—who had failed to protect them.163 Simultaneously, the forcible deracination of Christian women and children to al-Andalus, and their conversion to Islam in many cases, was seemingly designed to encourage a process of assimilation which would hinder procreation among the Christians of the North and ensure a shift in cultural and ethnic loyalties in the future.164 Sex was, perhaps, the ultimate colonizing gesture. Of course, this was by no means an exclusively medieval Iberian phenomenon. Organized sexual violence against women, with the intention of reinforcing a sense of failure and humiliation among the vanquished, has been an integral aspect of military conduct throughout the ages.165 In a modern context, one need only recall the forcible recruitment of many thousands of “comfort women” to Japanese-run brothels during the Second World War, or the mass rapes carried out by Soviet forces in Germany in 1945 and by the participants of the Balkan and Rwandan conflicts of the 1990s, to list only some of the most shocking examples.166 In all such cases, sexual violence acts as a political metaphor, an emblem of military hegemony, with women’s bodies being used to stage the conflict.167 “In war zones,” Ruth Seifert has observed, “women apparently always find themselves on the front line.”168
The taking of Christian prisoners—male and female alike—was regarded as a significant propaganda opportunity for the Umayyad caliphs and for the ḥājibs who later supplanted them. By the time of the reigns of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III and al-Ḥakam II, the military expeditions that were regularly dispatched from Córdoba against the Christians and other enemies of the caliphate had developed into complex ceremonial occasions designed to project the caliph’s power and legitimacy, as well as his commitment to the defense of the faith. Thus, we know from the detailed descriptions provided by al-Rāzī that before an army departed on jihād during the reign of al-Ḥakam II, its banners were customarily blessed and fixed on lances; muezzins recited verses from the Qu’rān and blessed those who would wage war on God’s behalf; and the general and his army paraded through the streets of Córdoba, stopping off at the Bāb al-Sudda, one of the ceremonial gates to the royal palace, where the caliph would appear to impart his own blessing on the departing troops.169 And the return of the army some months later was equally carefully choreographed. A report on the campaign and its achievements would be read out before the faithful in the great mosque of Córdoba; there were further parades, and the heads of some of the enemy dead, as well as prisoners of war, were conveyed in solemn procession back to the Bāb al-Sudda, along with other battle trophies such as banners, crosses, and bells.170 The poems of Ibn Darrāj demonstrate that the many campaigns led against the Christian realms by al-Manṣūr, the victories that he won, and the plunder and captives he brought back to Córdoba were likewise regarded as opportunities for the ḥājib to project his own power among the populace. Significantly, the Bāb al-Sudda was the location chosen by al-Manṣūr for the mass execution of some fifty Navarrese notables by way of retaliation for an earlier Christian attack on Calatayud; indeed, we are told that the ḥājib’s son, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān, by then no more than fourteen, personally killed one of the nobles to whom he was related through his mother.171 By the end of the tenth century, it is apparent that jihād against the infidel and the large-scale enslavement of Christians that accompanied it had become significant instruments of political authority, a means to achieve social cohesion, and doubtless a significant stimulus to the local economy.172 At the same time, the expectation was that Muslim leaders would offer protection to the women of their own community: those who failed to do so were heavily criticized. When the Muslim general Wāḍiḥ refused to rescue a Muslim girl who had been taken by a Christian soldier who had entered Córdoba in support of the would-be caliph al-Mahdi in 1010, and the girl’s father was subsequently killed by the Christian despite paying a ransom, it was regarded as a particularly shameful act.173
We should also be aware that there were other political imperatives at play here. For the Umayyads, the taking of slave concubines or intermarriage with Christian princesses appears to have served as an important dynastic defense mechanism. Marrying a freeborn Muslim woman necessitated the paying of a dowry and even the providing of favors to her family, while divorce might lead to a costly property settlement.174 More dangerous yet, marriage ran the risk that a Muslim wife’s own kin group might at some time in the future entertain its own competing dynastic claims. Marrying a Christian princess or, even more preferable, procreating with jawārī, forestalled that danger. In the case of the Umayyads, D. Fairchild Ruggles has argued that “a deliberative procreative program was in effect whereby wives were denied the sexual services of their royal husbands at least until a successor (or two) had been born to a slave concubine.”175 This impression is strongly reinforced by the fact that all of the Umayyad males who came to assume the rank of emir or caliph in al-Andalus between the eighth and the tenth centuries were born to slave consorts, many of them Christian, rather than to married mothers. In his celebrated love treatise The Dove’s Neckring Ibn Ḥazm went so far as to assert that with only one exception the Umayyad caliphs were
disposed by nature to prefer blondes…. Every one of them has been fair haired, taking after their mothers, so that this has become a hereditary trait with them…. I know not whether this was due to a predilection innate in them all, or whether it was in consequence of a family tradition handed down from their ancestors, and which