The Second Umayyad Caliphate: The Articulation of Caliphal Legitimacy in al-Andalus (review)

The Second Umayyad Caliphate: The Articulation of Caliphal Legitimacy in al-Andalus. By Janina M. Safran (Cambridge, Mass., Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University Press, 2001) 272 pp. $19.95

Cordoba, Spain, lies some 4,400 miles to the west of Damascus, Syria, the seat of the Umayyad caliphs, who reportedly authorized the conquest of Visigothic Spain by a nominally Muslim Berber army in 711 C.E. The Umayyad prince who asserted a claim to political authority in Spain arrived as a refugee in 756, five years after a rebel army from Iran seized the caliphal throne from his kinsmen and executed them. Seven generations later, in 929, Abd al-Rahman, a descendant of the same name, reassumed the title of caliph and inaugurated the "Second Umayyad Caliphate."

Legendary elements abound in the history of Muslim Spain and North Africa. The Spanish Umayyads are one of three major dynasties—Morocco's Idrisids and Tunisia's Fatimids the other two—established by noble refugees from the east, each with his tale of hardship on the path of exile. If one adds to these three Dido, who founded Carthage after the treacherous killing of her husband, the king of Tyre, and Aeneas, who fled the fall of Troy to reach Carthage and then Latium, the legendary pattern becomes clear.

It is reasonable, therefore, to scrutinize royal actions and narratives of royal deeds in this region through interpretive lenses that take more than the empirical political situation into account. Wearing these lenses, Safran asks, "How then did the Umayyad caliphs define and promote their legitimacy?" Part I concentrates on propaganda—proclamations and circular letters from the caliphs and poems dedicated to them—and on the symbolism of royal palaces and mosques. Part II deals with the presentation of the caliphate and the image of al-Andalus (Spain) in contemporary chronicles and in the hindsight of later chroniclers.

Save for an unfortunate misplacement of long vowel marks in the word rashidun (it's the a that is long, not the i), this book is agreeably and cleanly written. Yet it will leave historians rooted in social realities wishing for more. Safran is far more interested in expounding plausible interpretations of deeds and words than in demonstrating their reception by different audiences. But finding echoes of the first Umayyad dynasty, which had been gone for two centuries by the time the second reached its peak, in pronouncements, architectural styles, and court chronicles does not say anything about why, or to whom, it mattered. When Napoleon aped the styles and terminology of imperial Rome, was he trying to impress the French peasantry? A bourgeoisie thirsting for grandeur? His own court circle? Or was he just satisfying himself?

To be sure, such matters are easier to study in modern France than medieval Spain, but Safran might have made more of an effort. The term legitimacy in her subtitle implies a constituency, and simply observing that a particular phrase might have conveyed to some listeners a claim of religious orthodoxy or dynastic right does not tell us whom the Umayyad caliphs were trying so hard to impress.

One cannot take exception to the literary appreciation represented by Safran's point, "It is easy to see striking similarities between the way the Andalusi Umayyads defined their caliphal authority and the way their ancestors did. Both Andalusis and Syrians affirmed that the Umayyad caliphs were God's agents on earth, chosen to champion the true religion and guide believers to salvation" (192). But the 200 years and 4,400 miles separating the two caliphates constitute a big gap. One would hardly take at face value a comparable evocation of the American founding fathers by a currently sitting American president. Moreover, what intertexts might Safran have caught if she had cast her net more broadly? Did the Syrian Umayyad antecedents that she analyzes really...