The Preaching of Islam: A History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith

by Sir Thomas Walker Arnold

THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIANS OF SPAIN.

In 711 the victorious Arabs introduced Islam into Spain: in 1502 an edict of Ferdinand and Isabella forbade the exercise of the Muhammadan religion throughout the kingdom. During the centuries that elapsed between these two dates, Muslim Spain had written one of the brightest pages in the history of mediæval Europe. Her influence had passed through Provence into the other countries of Europe, bringing into birth a new poetry and a new culture, and it was from her that Christian scholars received what of Greek philosophy and science they had to stimulate their mental activity up to the time of the Renaissance. But these triumphs of the civilised life—art and poetry, science and philosophy—we must pass over here and fix our attention on the religious condition of Spain under the Muslim rule.

When the Muhammadans first brought their religion into Spain they found Catholic Christianity firmly established after its conquest over Arianism. The sixth Council of Toledo had enacted that all kings were to swear that they would not suffer the exercise of any other religion but the Catholic, and would vigorously enforce the law against all dissentients, while a subsequent law forbade any one under pain of confiscation of his property and perpetual imprisonment, to call in question the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, the Evangelical Institutions, the definitions of the Fathers, the decrees of the Church, and the Holy Sacraments. The clergy had gained for their order a preponderating influence in the affairs of the state;[1] the bishops and chief [[132]]ecclesiastics sat in the national councils, which met to settle the most important business of the realm, ratified the election of the king and claimed the right to depose him if he refused to abide by their decrees. The Christian clergy took advantage of their power to persecute the Jews, who formed a very large community in Spain; edicts of a brutally severe character were passed against such as refused to be baptised;[2] and they consequently hailed the invading Arabs as their deliverers from such cruel oppression, they garrisoned the captured cities on behalf of the conqueror and opened the gates of towns that were being besieged.[3]

The Muhammadans received as warm a welcome from the slaves, whose condition under the Gothic rule was a very miserable one, and whose knowledge of Christianity was too superficial to have any weight when compared with the liberty and numerous advantages they gained, by throwing in their lot with the Muslims.

These down-trodden slaves were the first converts to Islam in Spain. The remnants of the heathen population of which we find mention as late as A.D. 693,[4] probably followed their example. Many of the Christian nobles, also, whether from genuine conviction or from other motives, embraced the new creed.[5] Many converts were won, too, from the lower and middle classes, who may well have embraced Islam, not merely outwardly, but from genuine conviction, turning to it from a religion whose ministers had left them ill-instructed and uncared for, and busied with worldly ambitions had plundered and oppressed their flocks.[6] Having once become Muslims, these Spanish converts showed themselves zealous adherents of their adopted faith, and they and their children joined themselves to the Puritan party of the rigid Muhammadan theologians as against the careless and luxurious life of the Arab aristocracy.[7]

At the time of the Muhammadan conquest the old Gothic virtues are said by Christian historians to have declined [[133]]and given place to effeminacy and corruption, so that the Muhammadan rule appeared to them to be a punishment sent from God on those who had gone astray into the paths of vice;[8] but such a statement is too frequent a commonplace of the ecclesiastical historian to be accepted in the absence of contemporary evidence.[9]

But certainly as time went on, matters do not seem to have mended themselves; and when Christian bishops took part in the revels of the Muhammadan court, when episcopal sees were put up to auction and persons suspected to be atheists appointed as shepherds of the faithful, and these in their turn bestowed the office of the priesthood on low and unworthy persons,[10] we may well suppose that it was not only in the province of Elvira[11] that Christians turned from a religion, the corrupt lives of whose ministers had brought it into discredit,[12] and sought a more congenial atmosphere for the moral and spiritual life in the pale of Islam.

Had ecclesiastical writers cared to chronicle them, Spain would doubtless be found to offer instances of many a man leaving the Christian Church like Bodo, a deacon at the French court in the reign of Louis the Pious, who in A.D. 838 became a Jew, in order that (as he said), forsaking his sinful life, he might “abide steadfast in the law of the Lord.”[13] [[134]]

It is very possible, too, that the lingering remains of the old Gothic Arianism—of which, indeed, there had been some slight revival in the Spanish Church just before the Arab conquest[14]—may have predisposed men’s minds to accept the new faith whose Christology was in such close agreement with Arian doctrine,[15] and a later age may have witnessed parallels to that change of faith which is the earliest recorded instance of conversion to Islam in western Europe and occurred before the Arab invasion of Spain—namely the conversion of a Greek named Theodisclus, who succeeded St. Isidore (ob. A.D. 636) as Archbishop of Seville; he was accused of heresy, for maintaining that Jesus was not one God in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but was rather Son of God by adoption; he was accordingly condemned by an ecclesiastical synod, deprived of his archbishopric and degraded from the priesthood. Whereupon he went over to the Arabs and embraced Islam among them.[16]

Of forced conversion or anything like persecution in the early days of the Arab conquest, we hear nothing. Indeed, it was probably in a great measure their tolerant attitude towards the Christian religion that facilitated their rapid acquisition of the country. The only complaint that the Christians could bring against their new rulers for treating them differently to their non-Christian subjects, was that they had to pay the usual capitation-tax of forty-eight dirhams for the rich, twenty-four for the middle classes, and twelve for those who made their living by manual labour: this, as being in lieu of military service, was levied only on the able-bodied males, for women, children, monks, the halt, and the blind, and the sick, mendicants and slaves were exempted therefrom;[17] it must moreover have appeared [[135]]the less oppressive as being collected by the Christian officials themselves.[18]