The Berber Revolt in Islamic Spain (video)

[Menydh]

I've mentioned the Berber rebellions on several occasions. Some shortcomes that I see in the video are:

• The Jews were not only given weapons by the Muslims to "fight the Visigoths", but they actually instigated the contact between the Muslim Walid of N. Africa, Musa, with the Visigothic party of the Witiza family which would betray Spain. Further, they were given the initial control of the cities as they were conquered, while the Muslim army advanced northwards (I think that they say something about that in the video).
• It wasn't a war of Muslims against Visigoths, since the rebellion against King Rodrigo was lead by Visigoths and the Muslims were at that moment an army in support of the rebellion.
• The concept of dhimmitude is downplayed. While Christianisn was respected in the early times of Islam in Spain, this is a hipocritical form of respect as Christians were given an automatic second class status and their rights abused (e.g. Christian churches and cathedrals were forcibly turned into mosques), plus in later times they were persecuted and even exterminated.
• The video does not tell how the Berber rebellions ended (perhaps in its complete version it does, I don't know), which is interesting as Berbers are exterminated at large and the last pocket resisting is offered to go back alive to Northern Africa in exchange for their surrender.

The video does mention that Berbers were given a lower status in Al-Andalus, something that I've argued many times. This is an interesting detail because, in fact, historians tell us that the new Arab (Syrian and Yemeni) ruling class trusted more the Muladis (Hispano-Goths converts to Islam) than the Berbers who, after all, were recent converts to Islam themselves.

And this brings us to yet another issue, which is the obvious question of how did a small Arabic ruling class manage to maintain their power in the early stages, until there were enough Hispano-Goths converted to Islam. But the question is not as obvious as it seems at first. Many historians argue that there had already been a penetration of the Islamic religion in Spain, before 711 AD. And in fact, this would make sense for the Gothic nobility that rebelled against Rodrigo, especially if we take into account that the Arian heressy which was the religion of the Goths, would still be alive at least in its unitarian beliefs in the mind of many Goths. It would be naïve to believe that the official abhorring of Arianism by King Recaredo in 589 AD would have produced a mass effect of conversion of all Goths to the Catholic faith of the Hispano-Romans.

Cities of Light - The Berber Revolt in Islamic Spain

+ YouTube Video