Sea of Faith

by Stephen O'Shea

  Success, in the end, was not dependent on their leadership. After taking Barcelona, then Girona, the Berbers and their Arab masters poured over the Pyrenees. The Visigothic kingdom of Septimania—Languedoc—fell to them promptly. In its capital, Narbonne, one later chronicler, mindful of the looming rendezvous in Poitiers, had the conquering horsemen coming across a ruined classical temple that, improbably, possessed an inscription in Arabic: "Here you are, o sons of Ishmael, arrived at the end of your journey! Turn back." This ex post facto oracle might equally have been inspired by events in Toulouse, where the Muslim advance on land met its gravest reverse since the days of the prophetess-queen Kahina. In 721 Duke Eudo of Aquitaine dealt the invaders a severe defeat before his capital, the Muslim forces escaping extermination through a fighting retreat organized by a cool-headed young commander named Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi. Although one papal source claimed, absurdly, that 375,000 Muslim warriors died at Toulouse, we can nonetheless assume that it was a very bloody affair. For the next few years the raiders gave Aquitaine a wide berth, preferring to launch lightning strikes up the Rhone Valley.

  With Eudo's victory, the already poor relations between Berber and Arab in the Muslim camp became further strained over a sizable bone of contention: the greater share of booty, women, and slaves—and the better parcels of land—had gone to the Arab minority, rather than to the Berber majority, in the conquering armies. A Berber chieftain named Munuza, dissatisfied with the division of spoils, set himself up in an independent principality in the vicinity of what is now Andorra. This unique north African realm in the Pyrenees was made even more extraordinary when the Christian duke Eudo gave to the Muslim Munuza his daughter in marriage. Although the temptation to see the union as a love match is almost irresistible—Othello meets Desdemona—the clear-sighted Eudo undoubtedly wanted to secure his southern border through this alliance, for to his north his troubles were multiple, and they all stemmed from one root: Charles Martel.

  Since his accession to power in the second decade of the eighth century, Martel had been single-minded in his attempt to win a kingdom for himself and his sons. In the north he had succeeded; in the south stood an independent and prosperous Aquitaine, a goad to his ambition. Duke Eudo's Aquitaine, which had long before slipped from Visigothic control, remained a stubbornly Romanized place, in its customs and laws and language—and undoubtedly in its condescension toward the shaggy northerners ruled by mayors of the Merovingian palace. In the 720s Frankish warriors repeatedly harassed Aquitaine, motivated, according to Martel's greatest apologist (the continuator of the chronicler Fredegarius), by Christian outrage at Eudo's alliance with the Muslim Munuza. This explanation is implausible in the extreme, for Martel's early career had scarcely a trace of militant piety. As with the Arabian move out of the Hijaz a century earlier, opportunity and cohesion were compelling enough reasons for war in this era of near-permanent conflict: under Martel, the Franks were united, and weaker neighbors, such as Aquitaine, became the prey.

  A fanciful rendering of Charles Martel, the hero of Poitiers.

  The pieces on the chessboard of westernmost Europe were thus arrayed on the eve of the Battle of Poitiers. The first to be swept away was Munuza. The Arab leaders of Spain could not long tolerate a Berber princeling reserving a large chunk of conquered land for himself. Laying siege to a stronghold in his unique Pyrenean dominion, the Arabs and their allies hunted down Munuza and killed him. Lampegie, Munuza's Christian widow, was packed off to the women's quarters on Straight Street. In Toulouse, Duke Eudo no doubt bewailed his daughter's departure for Damascus, but the disappearance of his Berber son-in-law may have caused him even greater distress. There was no longer a buffer between Aquitaine and the Arabs, which meant the Eudo was beset by enemies in both the north and the south.

  In 731 the caliph raised Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi to the office of governor (emir) of al-Andalus, as Muslim Iberia was by then known. Abd al-Rahman had saved the day before Toulouse some ten years previously and was reputed to temper his proven martial ability with sincere piety and even-handed governance. Dealing with restive local chieftains in these early years of al-Andalus occupied the energies of the caliph's appointed representatives, unless some larger object diverted attentions and appetites. As Musa ibn Nusayr had done in north Africa—allaying rebelliousness by offering new vistas of loot—the emir chose to broaden everyone's horizons: he called for all able-bodied adventurers of al-Andalus to assemble in Pamplona for an expedition into Aquitaine. The perpetrators of the occasional razzia into France had brought back not only riches but also tempting tales of wealthy monasteries and pilgrimage churches farther afield, stories that would have quickened the stride of Berbers, Arabs, and freelance Visigoths heading to Pamplona.

  A large host set out under the emir's banner in the spring of 732. Abd al-Rahman elected to cross the Pyrenees in the west, over the pass of Roncesvalles.* The Andalusi army crossed the Pyrenees without incident and soon closed with the enemy. Abd al-Rahman's second encounter with Duke Eudo had a decidedly different outcome. The attackers overwhelmed Aquitaine; several towns of the duchy—Oloron, Auch, Dax—were sacked. A large battle took place near the meeting of the rivers Dordogne and Garonne, its result the flight of Eudo's men and the burning of Bordeaux. Another engagement raged later that summer near the rich settlement of Agen, and once again Abd al-Rahman prevailed. This time Eudo fled north, with the invaders in pursuit, although they tarried a few days to loot and burn the episcopal see of An-gouleme. The invading armies had by then heard of the jewel-bedecked shrines in Poitiers and Tours, the latter the richest prize in all of Gaul. For his part, the duke of Aquitaine, having lost his daughter and his lands, was forced to let go of his pride as well—he had no recourse but to appeal to his enemy, Charles Martel, to help him resist the juggernaut from the south.

  Ensuring his place in history, Martel moved fast. As the men of al-Andalus rode north from Angouleme, the Franks forded the Loire at Orleans and hurried south. At Cenon they crossed the confluence of the Clain and Vienne, no doubt aware that the Church of St. Hilaire, then outside the walls of Poitiers, had been emptied and put to the torch. Incredibly, the century of conquest had reached the rolling greens of the Poitou. The scouts of the two armies skirmished to the immediate north of the city, then retired to their respective commanders. Abd al-Rahman, electing to leave the Poitevins shivering in fright behind their fortifications, wanted to make haste along the Roman road to Tours; Martel and Eudo, like Khalid Ibn al-Walid at Yarmuk, chose the spot where he would have to come and move them out of the way. The Muslim army swung around the walls of Poitiers, then headed north along what Arab chroniclers later would call balat ech shuada, "the road of the martyrs of the faith." The Franks waited. In all likelihood they spread out over a narrow front of a few hundred meters, between a hillock and a river, on either side of the road, below the chessboard at Moussais.

  The main battle occurred on a Saturday in October—in the first day of the month of Ramadan—in 732 or, according to some, 733. A prelude of up to a week preceded the decisive encounter as the two sides sized each other up, maneuvering and feinting in the surrounding forests. Little else is known with certainty, although a consensual narrative of the event has emerged, relying principally on the Chronicle of 754, so named for its date of composition. The author, whose identity is unknown, appears to have been a Mozarab, a Christian living under Muslim rule in al-Andalus. Believed to be a Cordoban, he was a near-contemporary of the participants and thus may have been aware of how the survivors remembered the clash. Several Frankish annals, many of them less one-sided than the continuator of Fredegarius, recorded the event fairly shortly after its occurrence, while the Muslim sources date from at least two or three centuries later. From these narratives, what happened on that terrible Saturday and strange Sunday can be reconstructed.

  The Muslims attacked first. Prayers said, the sun rising in the sky, by the thousands they leaped onto mounts that had been rested and watered in anticip
ation of this moment and wheeled them around to trot northward along the Roman road leading from Poitiers. Picking up speed in the open fields, they let out bloodcurdling cries—confessions of faith, shouts of encouragement—to discountenance the Franks, who had never faced such an enemy. This was the paradigmatic moment of the early centuries around the sea of faith—two great masses of soldiery, most of whom had no familiarity whatsoever with their opponents. The thought of their being siblings in faith would have been utterly alien—only later, through generations of contact, collision, and commingling, could the notion even be entertained.

  Even before the Berbers and the Arabs came into sight, to be espied for the first time by Martel's Franks, they would have been heard, their drums pounding, horns blowing, and cymbals crashing. As the snapping pennants and shining spears of al-Andalus finally appeared in the clearing, in a rolling cacophony of dust, horse, and rider, the Franks must have muttered their own prayers. Martel had ordered them to stand fast in a solid mass, shoulder to shoulder, their shields planted in the ground before them like a palisade, their two-bladed battle-axes ready to be hurled into the onslaught.

  The impact of the charge would have been tremendous, confused, murderous. Arab tactics called for dislodging the enemy from his fixed positions, luring groups of foolhardy defenders into counterattack by feigning retreat, then whirling about to surround and submerge them once isolated. In the ensuing melees, an archipelago of fighting far from the point of initial contact, the advantages of lightly armed horsemen came to the fore. Wielding swords or spears, or loosing arrows from their bows, they could swarm and scatter with great speed, weakening and wounding the adversary until even the most compact unit disintegrated into a brace of individuals running for their lives, vulnerable and alone. As a tactic, it mirrored the larger one of breaking up a massed army into unorganized groups of pursuers.

  But the Franks, famously, did not budge. They may have staggered back from the brunt of the assault, but they resisted the mirage of pursuit when the horsemen withdrew. The Berbers and the Arabs charged again and again—they couldn't break the Frankish lines. These "Europenses," according to the Mozarab chronicler, stood immobile, like "a wall of ice." In front of them, along the balat ech shuada, the wounded and the dying of al-Andalus grew in number, as yet more attacks were ordered and bloodily repulsed. The road of the martyrs to the faith had earned its name.

  The gruesome business lasted one long autumn day. At some point a detachment of cavalry, perhaps led by Duke Eudo, dashed out of the yellowing woods to storm the Arab encampment. As this was stocked with the riches looted in the past few months of campaigning, its loss would have been a catastrophic blow to Muslim morale. According to tradition, Abd al-Rahman himself headed the charge that beat back the interlopers. Seeking to rally his men—many of whom might have been content to turn back home with their takings rather than risk battle in the first place—the governor of al-Andalus led the last few desperate attacks as daylight failed. Somewhere amid the flailing of sword on shield, as the heavy Frankish cavalry lumbered forward to help the infantry, Abd al-Rahman was killed.

  Night fell. The armies disengaged, carrying off their dead and injured in the gloom. When dawn broke on Sunday morning, the battlefield would have been quieter than it is today. Martel had his men get into formation behind their wall of shields and bucklers. All waited to hear the enemy approaching in full cry. The minutes passed. Scouts were sent out, their horses disappearing from view, then returning at a gallop. The enemy camp, its hundreds of colorful tents still standing, appeared deserted. More Frankish riders tentatively moved forward, ordered to scour the surrounding woods for ambushes and hidden traps. The morning was spent cautiously looking for the concealed adversary, trying to divine the ruse behind his empty encampment. But no—the men of al-Andalus had vanished silently, like wraiths, in the middle of the night. The irrecoverable blow had been the loss of their chief, depriving them of the will to fight any longer in this strange land. They had slipped away in a hushed panic, leaving much of their treasure behind, to be divided among the victors.

  However anticlimactic, it was a telling moment. Martel and Eudo had succeeded where Cyrus of Alexandria, Gregory of Africa, Kahina of the Aures, and Rodrigo of Spain had failed. The momentum of Muslim victory may have been slowing anyway, but the Frankish wall of ice had brought it to a full stop. Only two Byzantine leaders—the young Constantine IV and the iconoclast Leo III—had dealt the Umayyads significant defeats; now a chieftain at the head of a ragged confederacy joined their ranks. Eudo regained Aquitaine; Martel and his son, Pepin the Short, would wrest Provence and Septimania from Muslim suzerainty within a generation. Shortly thereafter Charlemagne would do the same for Catalonia, chasing the conquerors from Barcelona and creating what was known for centuries as the Spanish March, the borderland of Christendom in the westernmost Mediterranean. The lines had been drawn, indistinct and impermanent, but far sturdier than those of the preceding century of conquest. If the Battle of Poitiers was not the cause of this new alignment, it was certainly an agent in helping it come about.

  Appropriately, a sense that history changes course at certain moments, in certain places, can be felt at Moussais-la-Bataille today. But its clever memorial also contains laudable reminders that an event is no more important than the way it is remembered and taught, and by whom. On a July day in 2002 a group of Chinese exchange students, on an outing from a summer-school language course at the University of Poitiers, carefully paced the chessboard squares overlooking the empty fields, reading the inscriptions and absorbing the ambiguous history attached to the site. Nearby a bend in the river Clain is named for drowned Moors; no doubt old-timers in the area will remember a local World War II French Resistance unit called the Bataillon Charles Martel. Many of the grown sons and daughters of the Muslim immigrants in the housing projects of Poitiers will probably have heard of a far-right racist cybergroup that styles itself Martel. And even the hardened hacks of French politics can cite a Mitterrand-era stroke of trade protectionism that sent all Japanese VCRs bound for the French market to a customs pen in Poitiers. The administrative order was numbered 732. Poitiers lives on, the chess game of memory continues.

  *Some sixty-five years later Charles Martel's grandson, Charlemagne, would take the same route out of Spain—and the slaughter of his rear guard at Roncesvalles by the Basques would later be commemorated in The Song of Roland, a chanson de geste composed in the era of the Crusades that propagandistically transforms merciless Basques into murderous Muslims.

  CHAPTER THREE

  CÓRDOBA

  A golden age of coexistence; the mare nostrum

  as a Muslim lake, y50—1030

  C onvivencia is the term given to "living together," a Spanish word with suggestions of conviviality and complicity. Usually used to characterize Christian hegemony over the Muslims of Spain in the later Middle Ages, for our purposes it describes any society where the appetite for war gave way to the taste for intelligent coexistence between different communities of faith. In several parts of the Mediterranean, the bruising century and a half following the Prophet's death was followed by a time of consolidation, when the clash of armies momentarily ceded ground to more humane pursuits. Christian and Muslim and Jew looked at one another over a changed landscape. War and carnage would continue in many quarters, as would the usual brutal power struggles in the capitals of ambition, but the contours of a new Mediterranean world had begun taking shape. Most important, the mare nostrum was gone.

  That reality took a while to sink in. In the lands bordering the northern shore of the inland sea, much of Europe remained in a restless slumber, its Carolingian stirring under Martel's grandson Charlemagne all too brief. The jolts of Viking raids in the north and pirate incursions in the south spread terror throughout the continent, adding to a sense among the literate few that the passing of an old world had meant the passing of the world itself. The final days as outlined in the Book of Revelation, an eschatological phant
asmagoria still favored by those unhappy with their times, were thought to be imminent. A commonplace of monastic chronicles and letters spoke of mundus senescit, the world grown old. That glum sentiment would have been deemed peculiar outside of western Christendom. The idea that a dying civilization was "saved," by the Irish or whomever, is parochial and would have been thought as such by the denizens of the Mediterranean. By the yardstick of trade, intellectual inquisitiveness, and cultural interchange, civilization was doing quite well in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, with or without the monks.

  In the east during this time, a revived Constantinople turned its attention to its Balkan and Danubian possessions, its status as Europe's greatest city dented but not destroyed by the loss of its influence in the world of Arab, Syriac, and Copt. In Anatolia, still the Greek homeland of Christianity, the armies of the basileus fanned what had become a low-level conflagration with the Muslims into a blazing fire only every other generation or so. The age-old animosity between rival empires of East and West, which predated the rise of Islam, was still keenly felt—in an opening reminiscent of Chosroes' poisonous letters to Heraclius, a Muslim caliph addressed the Christian basileus as follows: "In the name of the most merciful God, Harun al-Rashid, Commander of the Faithful, to Nicephorus, the Roman dog. I have read thy letter, O thou son of an unbelieving mother." Nothwithstanding these bilious pleasantries, successive leaders of the Byzantines sought to compose with rather than confront their enemy to the east. The fate of their Italian possessions, menaced by the Lombards and Franks, were of more moment to the counselors of the basileus than any revanchard dreams of retaking Jerusalem.