Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages

10. A Dreadful Racket: The Clanging of Bells and the Yowling of Muezzins in Iberian Interconfessional Polemics

 10  ADreadfulRacket The Clanging of Bells and the Yowling of Muezzins in Iberian Interconfessional Polemics In 997, the Andalusian Hâjib Al-Mansûr plundered Santiago de Compostela, removed the bells from the city’s cathedral, and brought them, on the backs of Christian captives, to his capital, Cordoba. He had the clappers removed and the bells transformed into lamps for the great mosque of Cordoba. In this way he silenced the infidels’ bells, which henceforth produced light for the true religion. In 1236, Castilian king Fernando III captured Cordoba and placed his royal insignia on the minaret, there (according to chronicler Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada) “where once the name of that perfidious man [Muhammad] was invoked.” The king silenced the muezzin and sent the bells back to Compostela. The ringing of bells represents, for some medieval Muslim authors, an audible symbol of Christianity, a noisome racket that one should silence. In the same way, various Christian authors express their disdain for the adhân, the call to prayer of the muezzin (mu’adhdhin). Once he has conquered an “infidel” city, the prince often transforms its principal religious center: the cathedral becomes the jâmi’ (main mosque) or vice versa. Some of the texts that describe these transformations insist on the conversion of the belfry or minaret, visual and sonorous symbol of the rival religion. In this chapter, I will trace the history of this opposition through the texts of the first centuries of Islam and then concentrate on Cordoba at three precise moments: the crisis of the ninth-century martyr movement; the arrival 148 / Sons of Ishmael of the bells from Santiago in 997; and the Castilian conquest of the city in 1236, which leads to the conversion of the minaret and the restitution of the bells to Santiago. Bells, Audible Symbols of Christianity, in Muslim Texts Let us first look at the earliest Muslim texts concerning church bells. According to one Hadith, one day in Medina, a Muslim suggested that the Muslims use a bell (nâqûs) to call the faithful to prayer; another suggested that they use a trumpet, like the Jews; ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab recommended a vocal call to prayer. Muhammad turned to his servant Bilâl and said: “Bilâl, call the Muslims to prayer.” Bilâl climbed onto the roof of the Mosque at Medina and became the first to call out the adhân.1 From the very beginning of Islam, according to this Hadith, the muezzin’s call is both compared to and distinguished from church bells: the Hadith identifies the nâqûs (a word which designates at times a bell, at times a simander, σήμαvτρov, a wooden percussion instrument used in certain Eastern churches)2 as the audible symbol of Christianity and proposes the adhân as a similar symbol for Islam. Another Hadith, transmitted by the traditionalist Muslim, relates that Muhammad disliked the sound of bells and that he even said that angels avoided coming to places where bells could be heard.3 This same process of imitation and distinction that we see between bells and the adhân is found, a generation later, in sacred architecture, with the construction of the first minarets. The first Muslims had no minarets: their muezzins, such as Bilâl, simply called out the adhân from the roofs of the mosques. For this reason, some Muslim communities (in particular Wahhabites ) still refuse to use minarets. The first minarets were probably constructed during the reign of Mu’âwiya (661–80), the first Umayyad caliph. These minarets are the monumental expressions of an Islam that seeks to affirm itself over and against Christianity, still the majority religion in much of the caliphate. The first minarets should be seen as part of a monumental building program (including the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and the Umayyad mosques in Damascus and Medina) that affirms the legitimacy of the new Umayyad dynasty, which had emerged victorious from the fitna.4 The minaret rises up across from the church bell tower, against which it competes for the conquest of the urban skyline, soon rising well above the height from which the adhân can best be heard. During this same period, in the first decades of the Umayyad dynasty, this Clanging of Bells and Yowling of Muezzins in Iberian Polemics / 149 opposition between bells and muezzins appears...