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Holy places in Umayyad al-Andalus*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2015

Maribel Fierro
Maribel Fierro*
Affiliation:
Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, Madrid
*
maribel.fierro@cchs.csic.es
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Abstract

While for the sixth/twelfth century onwards there is no lack of data allowing the recovery of the sacred geography of al-Andalus, such data are scarce for the earlier period. This article surveys the available information for Umayyad al-Andalus and how it relates to the different strata of the population, analysing it within the context of the Islamicization.

Keywords

Iberian PeninsulaIslamicizationPre-Islamic religionHoly placesSacred geographyMosquesGravesTreesRelics

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Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of SOAS , Volume 78 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 121 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS, University of London 2015 

The scholar al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Qurṭubī transmitted from his teacher, the famous jurist and traditionist ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Ḥabīb (d. 238/852),Footnote 1 that the Friday mosque of Cordoba was the “most meritorious of the temples of al-Andalus” (afḍal bayt yakūnu bil-Andalus). Almost four centuries later another scholar, Abū Sulaymān ibn Ḥawṭ Allāh (d. 612/1215), stated that had he the power (ḥukm) to do so, he would oblige the people of al-Andalus to perform pilgrimage (ziyāra) to that mosque.Footnote 2

Such ziyāra does not seem ever to have been established, in spite of the high symbolic value attached to a religious building which was erected by the first independent Umayyad ruler of al-Andalus, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I (r. 138/756–172/788), and which underwent remodelling and amplifications by some of his successors.Footnote 3 The Cordoban Friday mosque was associated closely and in many ways with Umayyad history, as well as with Umayyad political and religious authority and legitimacy.Footnote 4 Most especially, it was one of the means by which the Umayyad rulers of al-Andalus linked their capital city, Cordoba, to Medina, the town of the Prophet and also that of Mālik ibn Anas, the scholar considered to be the founder of the legal school that came to predominate in al-Andalus. This was so because the Cordoban mosque layout was associated with the mosque in Medina, while its famous minbar – ordered to be built by al-Ḥakam II (r. 350/961–366/976), the second Umayyad Cordoban caliph – evoked the pulpit of the Prophet Muḥammad.Footnote 5 The mosque also contained an ʿUthmānic Quranic codex.Footnote 6 Very few references to this Quran, however, are found in the earliest sources, while it rises to prominence in Almohad times. It was then paraded throughout the empire, accompanying the Almohad caliph in his travels and military campaigns, in order to impress on his subjects the link between the Almohad caliphate and that of the Cordoban Umayyads – also, ultimately, a link to the Prophet.Footnote 7

Abū Sulaymān Ibn Ḥawṭ Allāh, the scholar who wished to oblige people to perform pious visits or pilgrimages to the Cordoban mosque, lived under the Almohads, at a time – the sixth/twelfth century – when the existence of holy placesFootnote 8 in the Islamic West becomes a salient feature both in the literary sources at our disposal and in the archaeological remains. This was especially so in the Maghrib, on the other side of the Straits of Gibraltar, comprising what are now parts of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. The Muʾminid caliphs established a shrine in Tinmal (southern Morocco), a place that some scholars have described as “the Almohad Medina” because the Almohad Mahdī Ibn Tūmart (d. 524/1130) emigrated there from his home town in Igilliz and was later buried there. A mosque was later built, and starting with Ibn Tūmart's successor – ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, the first Almohad caliph – regular visits were paid to it. The site also became the Muʾminid dynastic burial site.Footnote 9 Marrakech, the capital city that the Almohads had taken from the previous dynasty, the Almoravids, prided itself on housing the graves of a number of great scholars, sufis and saints, buried intra muros.Footnote 10 Holy places were not lacking in other areas of the Maghrib. Massa on the southern coast of what is now Morocco was considered to be the place where the Mahdī would appear,Footnote 11 while the cemeteries of Ceuta hosted many graves of saints to which visits were paid by believers who wanted to benefit from their blessings (baraka); some of them even succeeded in being buried near those holy men.Footnote 12 Many more examples could be added to these, although we must regret the lack of a monograph devoted to mapping the sacred geographyFootnote 13 of the Islamic West during the medieval period.Footnote 14

With regard to al-Andalus, from the sixth/twelfth century onwards places considered to be holy can be documented in a variety of textual sources: historical, geographical, biographical, hagiographical, belles lettres or poetry. Graves stand out in this respect, as shown in the life of the saint Abū Marwān al-Yuḥānisī (seventh/thirteenth century),Footnote 15 or in the eschatological treatise by Ibn al-Kharrāṭ al-Ishbīlī (d. 581/1185). He recommended burying the dead near the graves of the pious (ṣāliḥūn) and doers of good deeds (ahl al-khayr) in order to obtain baraka and intercession (tawassul).Footnote 16 In order to facilitate this recommendation, the scholar Ibn al-Ṭaylasān (d. 642/1244) mapped the location of saintly graves in Cordoba in a work entitled Kitāb al-tabyīnʿan manāqib man ʿurifa qabruhu wa-shuhira faḍluhu wa-dhikruhu mimman kāna bi-Qurṭuba min al-tābiʿīn wal-ʿulamāʾ al-ṣāliḥīn wal-ʿubbād al-mutabattalīn wal-zuhhād al-mujtahidīn alladhīna taʿarrafat al-baraka wa-ijābat al-duʿāʾ ʿinda qubūrihimʿalā marr al-sanīn.Footnote 17 Among those who managed to fulfil the recommendation, the scholar Ibn al-Sharrāṭ (d. c. 586/1190) was buried in front of the grave of ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Ḥabīb.Footnote 18 It is reported that when some fifty years after ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Ḥabīb's death another scholar (Ibn Waḍḍāḥ) was buried beside him, his body and shroud were found to be intact, and a piece of the shroud was brought to the Umayyad emir ʿAbdallāh (r. 275/888–300/912).Footnote 19

Zawiyas and rabitas, often associated with graves, punctuated Andalusī territory as shown not only by archaeological surveysFootnote 20 but also by literary sources, including legal discussions about practices related to them.Footnote 21 Most famous was the zāwiya of the Banū Sīdi Būnuh in Guadalest (near Denia, in the east of al-Andalus), founded by Abū Aḥmad Jaʿfar ibn ʿAbdallāh (d. 624/1227), a pupil of Abū Madyan during his riḥla to the East. He was buried there and his tomb became a centre for pilgrimage (ziyāra).Footnote 22 The existence of Muslim pilgrimages (romerías), some of which were allowed by the new non-Muslim rulers, is documented after the Christian conquest.Footnote 23 In 1336, King Peter IV imposed a fee of five dinars on any Muslim coming to visit the shrine at Atzeneta, “where a certain Saracen whom they hold as a prophet is said to have died, and who is venerated with prayers and other activities”.Footnote 24

Tracing a similar sacred geography in Umayyad al-Andalus is not an easy task. There is abundant information about performing the pilgrimage to MeccaFootnote 25 but almost no indication of visits to local Muslim shrines. One would expect them to be associated with local holy men, but, as Manuela Marín has pointed out, Andalusis seem to have been very restrained in this field, at least as reflected in the written record.Footnote 26 Ibn al-Faraḍī (d. 403/1013) tells us of a scholar who had settled in the ribāṭ of Gormaz and died there: his grave was visited but by Christians after their conquest in 399/1008–9.Footnote 27 This scarcity of data on Muslim holy places in Umayyad al-Andalus has to be related to the process of Islamicization.

During the period considered here (from the conquest in 92/711 to 422/1031, this last being the date when the Umayyad caliphate was abolished in Cordoba), Christians constituted the majority of the population and thus most holy places must have reflected their beliefs and practices, although again information is scarce.Footnote 28 One Christian source quoting the fourth/tenth-century Cordoban historian al-Rāzī states that the Muslim conquerors destroyed Christian churches and burned the bodies of Christian saints,Footnote 29 perhaps evoking the burning of the executed Cordoban Christians who had sought martyrdom during the third/ninth century. Through these burnings of Christians the Muslim authorities sought to prevent the emergence of a cult of their relics and the founding of sanctuaries associated with them.Footnote 30 But there is no real evidence of a systematic destruction of Christian churches and holy places by the Muslim conquerors, and very little evidence of the conversion of churches into mosques.Footnote 31 Christian converts to Islam probably shared with their former coreligionists their respect and veneration for places they held to be holy, in spite of normative disapproval of Muslims praying in churches and synagogues.Footnote 32 Umayyad legal sources document how Muslim jurists had to deal with the fact that converts to Islam, especially through their non-Muslim relatives, kept close links with their former places of worship: one jurist was asked whether a son could accompany his Christian mother to church.Footnote 33 A shared holy placeFootnote 34 was the so-called Kanīsat al-gurāb or Church of the Crows, situated on the Cape of San Vicente on the Atlantic Ocean. The Muslims who visited (yazūru) the mosque situated in front of the church – or perhaps the church itself – were counted by a crow, whose cawings told the Christian priests how much food they had to prepare for the visitors in order to fulfil their obligation of ḍiyāfa.Footnote 35 If data on Christian holy places is scarce, similar places not attached to monotheism but connected with pre-Christian beliefs and practices, whether those of the local population or those brought by the conquerors, are completely absent. Trees and stones are known to have been objects of veneration in both Arabia and North Africa.Footnote 36 In the Iberian Peninsula, the so-called olive tree of San Torcuato and its wonders are described in both Latin and Arabic sources.Footnote 37

The slow process of Islamicization of the Andalusi population can be grasped through onomastic data, the emergence of Muslim scholars and the building of mosques,Footnote 38 but the development of local Muslim holy places largely escapes us. Some examples, however, can be offered.

Ḥanash al-Ṣanʿānī, one of the Successors of the Prophet Muhammad, was buried in the town of Saragossa in the Ebro valley. He was alleged to have arrived in al-AndalusFootnote 39 and to have founded the local mosque and established the orientation of its miḥrāb. The location of his grave was known and visited by those who travelled to the town for different reasons.Footnote 40 By the mid-fifth/eleventh century, the traditionist and geographer al-ʿUdhrīFootnote 41 mentions that both Ḥanash's grave and that of another Successor of the Prophet, ʿAlī ibn Rabāḥ al-Lakhmī, also buried in the same town, were situated in the cemetery of the Bāb al-qibla and appeared as some sort of vertical elevation made of stone (ahdāf min al-ḥijāra).Footnote 42 Al-ʿUdhrī asked the qāḍī of Saragossa, in the presence of a group of jurists, why no funerary construction was built over them so as to serve as orientation for those who wanted to go there in search of blessing. The judge replied that one of the emirs of the town of Saragossa had intended to erect a mausoleum over the place where they were buried, in order to distinguish them from other graves and to signal them for those who had not seen them. But a pious (ṣāliḥa) woman went to see the emir and told him that the two buried men had visited her in her dreams, telling her that the idea of building something over their graves was repugnant to them and that they should stay as they were. When the woman finished her story, the emir declined to build the intended funerary constructions.

According to normative Maliki (and more generally Sunnī) regulations, graves had to be excavated underground and were supposed to lack any external mark. More importantly no building of any sort could be erected over them, as no distinction should be made among believers after death.Footnote 43 In this case, the ahdāf min al-ḥijāra would have allowed visitors to identify them, as al-ʿUdhrī’s text indicates that they went there on purpose looking for their baraka. This suggests ziyārat al-qubūr, i.e., intentional visiting of the graves of the two Prophet's Successors who were buried in Saragossa. But when the ziyāra practice stimulated the initiative of building funerary constructions over the graves, a miraculous intervention was needed to stop it: the pious woman's dream powerfully conveys the dangers of following a practice unequivocally condemned as un-Islamic.

Such condemnation can be linked with some of the materials found in the Cordoban Ibn Waḍḍāḥ’ṣ (d. 287/900) treatise against religious innovations, under the heading of the rejection of ittibāʿ āthār al-nabī.Footnote 44 Ibn Waḍḍāḥ collected reports in which Mālik ibn Anas disapproved of intentional visiting of certain places visited by the Prophet or having a special significance during his life, transforming them into shrines where people prayed. The opposition is formulated as a rejection of practices followed by Jews and Christians, who fell into perdition as believers because they adopted innovations. If one of their prophets had once prayed in a place just by chance, they converted the place into a temple or shrine where they went deliberately to pray. The second rightly guided caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb exhorted the faithful not to follow their example: in this spirit he ordered the tree of Ḥudaybiyya – under which Muslims had sworn obedience to the Prophet – to be cut down because it had become a place of pilgrimage.Footnote 45 Mālik and other Medinan scholars declared themselves opposed to practices that tended to convert the numerous traces (āthār) of the Prophet in Medina into places of worship; the only exceptions were the mosque of Qubā and the graves of the martyrs at Uḥud, although not even then was there consensus about excluding them. No exception is made in Ibn Waddah's text, even for Jerusalem: it cannot become a pilgrimage centre.Footnote 46 Mālik's opposition to any such innovative practice even if performed with good intentions (wa-in kānat fi khayr) – praying in a place connected with the Prophet seems in principle to be a good practice – is motivated by the danger that such practice may become a custom, eventually acquiring the condition of an established tradition or a recommended precept (sunna). The dangerous possibility is lurking here of creating practices that will rival those prescribed as obligatory by the Revealed Law.Footnote 47 What is to be feared is the creation of shrines that compete with those of Mecca and Medina, and of pilgrimages to them that compete with that to the Kaʿba. Associated practices, such as performing the rituals of ʿArafa outside the Ḥijāz, are also condemned,Footnote 48 as it may mean the transfer of sacred time and space outside its proper context.

The attention Ibn Waḍḍāḥ devoted to this problem can be related to a contemporary Andalusi practice. A younger Cordoban, the famous esoteric (bāṭinī) thinker Ibn Masarra (d. 319/931), clearly believed that certain places had special meanings and powers. In his dwelling in Cordoba he reproduced the room of Mary the Copt, the Christian slave who bore the Prophet his son Ibrāhīm. The information comes from Muḥammad ibn Ḥazm al-Tanūkhī, known as Ibn al-Madīnī, who reported that:

Ibn Masarra, during his stay in Medina, used to visit the places connected with the Prophet (kāna … yatatabbaʿu āthār al-nabī). Someone among the inhabitants of Medina showed him the house (dār) of Māriya, the mother of Ibrāhīm, slave-concubine of the Prophet. He went to visit it and saw that it was an elegant (laṭīfa) little house, surrounded by gardens, in the eastern part of the town, which measured exactly the same in length and width. It was divided in the middle by a wall supporting a platform of thick wood. One ascended there by an elegant exterior staircase, and in the upper part there were two rooms (baytāni) and a roofed gallery where the Prophet used to sit in the summer. I saw how Ibn Masarra, after praying in those two rooms, in the roofed gallery and in every corner of the house, measured one of the two rooms with his palms. Afterwards, when Ibn Masarra had settled in the Jabal and I returned, I asked him to reveal to me the meaning of all that and he answered: “This room where you see me now, I built in the shape of that one, without adding or diminishing in its length or width”.Footnote 49

Mary the Copt was a slave and a non-Arab, like Ibn Masarra, of muwallad origin. The site of her house was one of the places visited by Muslims during their pilgrimage.Footnote 50 Mary had borne the Prophet his son Ibrāhīm and she was treated in some sources as a link between Muslims and Christians, as if Ibrāhīm's birth had made them kindred, thus strengthening the kinship tie established through Hagar, who was also a Copt according to some accounts, and who as the mother of Abraham's son Ismāʿīl was the ancestress of the Arabs.Footnote 51 Mary the Copt was also associated with the alchemical and magical traditions of Egypt through an alchemical tract attributed to someone with the same name,Footnote 52 and one of the sources quoted by Maslama al-Qurṭubī (d. 353/964) in his alchemical tract Rutbat al-ḥakīm is precisely Mary the Copt.

In order to carry out his teachings, Ibn Masarra had left Cordoba and established himself in the mountains near the Umayyad capital (hence his nisba al-Jabalī), a move that has been interpreted by some as seeking not only isolation but also escape from religious control. It was in that mountainous location – where Christian monasteries had functioned since pre-Islamic times – that he reconstructed the space associated with Mary the Copt's house. It was also in the mountains near Cordoba that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III built his caliphal town of Madīnat al-Zahrā. For Ibn Masarra, the attainment of knowledge consists of an ascent through the ladder of creation, from the plants to the contemplation of the stars. We might ask if such a concept was related to Ibn Masarra's choice of dwelling in an elevated place close to the sky and also to the site of Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ chosen by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III, a location that together with other elements suggests that the palatine town was identified with Paradise.Footnote 53 This starting point would later lead to the identification of the whole of al-Andalus with Paradise, especially when the Christian conquests and the military advance of another religion motivated some to clamour for armed militancy and martyrdom.Footnote 54

Another aspect of interest is that there is no indication whatsoever in the two examples of fully Islamic sites (the graves of the Prophet's Successors in Saragossa and Ibn Masarra's reconstruction in the Cordoban mountains of a Medinan place linked with the Prophet's life) that they were associated with pre-Islamic holy places in the Iberian Peninsula – an association that has been shown to exist in so many other cases in human history.Footnote 55 This assertion does not imply that such an association did not exist, only that the Arabic and other sources do not tell us anything that may lead us to believe that it existed. What the Arabic sources reveal is a link with Muslim sacred history that had taken place elsewhere. Through such a link, two local places acquired a religious meaning, even if contested.

There were places that commemorated local Islamic history also, such as the Mosque of the Banners in Algeciras (masjid al-rāyāt) associated with the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula and with a prestigious Muslim, Mūsā ibn Nuṣayr, considered by some to have been a Successor of the Prophet Muḥammad. He would have established the qibla of the mosque, as the Successors (tābiʿūn) who came to al-Andalus would do in Saragossa and Madīnat Ilbīra (Granada).Footnote 56 Other special places in al-Andalus lead us to the sphere of mirabilia, to the association of al-Andalus with legends about Solomon and Alexander the Great. All of them are of great interest and have been much studied, but they mostly tell us how al-Andalus was imagined by outsiders, especially in Egypt.Footnote 57 For the period considered here, we may recall the case of the so-called idol of Cádiz. The Umayyad emir Muḥammad is said to have left Cordoba to hunt until he reached the region of Cádiz. They planted tents around the idol (ṣanam) that stood there, an idol that was connected with ancestral wisdom (lahu sha'n fī l-ḥikma). The emir contemplated the monument for a long time, walked around it and finally decided to use fire to check how solid it was and what it was made of. He ordered the people of the place to gather wood and pile it up around the idol. The accumulated wood reached the height of the statue situated on top of the monument, representing a man pointing with one hand and holding a key in the other. The emir ordered the fire lit, but then a wind came from the statue that extinguished the fire but blew the embers onto the royal tents, burning many of them. The emir and his retinue, terrified by what they had seen, mounted their horses and rode away.Footnote 58

This report associating the idol of Cádiz with some supernatural acts would allow us to include it in a repertoire of sacred or holy places in al-Andalus, but we are still left with a reduced number of sites in a “sacred” geography (one or two mosques, two or three graves, an idol, a tree…). More importantly, the sources at our disposal tell us nothing of how the common people attached holiness to the places where they lived – if they did. An ethnographic perspective is almost completely missing for this early period.

This view changes somewhat if we move from the common people to the rulers. At the time of the disintegration of Umayyad rule, members of the Prophet's House, the Ḥammūdids, were proclaimed as caliphs and managed to control most of the area of the Straits of Gibraltar. Some of the coins they minted show a fish that has been explained as evoking the story of Moses and al-Khiḍr that is associated with the merging of two seas and therefore would impress a sacred history onto that region.Footnote 59

Before the Ḥammūdid rise to power, the third Umayyad Cordoban caliph Hishām II attempted to overcome his deficit in legitimacy – he had succeeded his father al-Ḥakam II when he was a minor – and to counteract the claims to sacred power on the part of his dangerous rivals, the Ismaili Fatimids established in Ifrīqiya. He did so by collecting relics associated with pre-Islamic prophets: Noah's ark, the horns of Isaac's ram, the hoofs of ʿUzayr's ass, the legs of Ṣāliḥ’s she-camel.Footnote 60 This activity – which for the East, Rubin sees as linked to the Umayyads’ concern to establish a connection between themselves and the line of pre-Islamic ProphetsFootnote 61 – had been started by his father's construction of the new minbar of the Cordoban mosque, made to evoke the minbar of the Prophet treated as a relic, thus becoming a relic itself.Footnote 62 Of Hishām it is also reported that once he had sexual relations with an extremely beautiful slave that he owned and found her not to be a virgin as he had expected. When he demanded an explanation, the slave girl answered that one day she fell asleep under a certain tree in the garden where they now found themselves. She told the caliph: “Someone whose mention may God keep removed from this place (wa-idhā bi-man nazzaha Allāh dhikrahuʿan hādhā l-makān)Footnote 63 had sexual intercourse with me and deflowered me while I slept.” When she awoke she found blood between her legs and because she was afraid of the dishonour involved, she kept silent. The caliph wept when she finished the story, moved by the fact that God had considered him worthy of sending someone to his garden to deflower his slave girl. He manumitted the slave and ordered an oratory (rābiṭa) to be built in the garden where the intimate encounter had taken place in order to benefit from its baraka.Footnote 64 This story has to be related to Hishām II's fateful accession to the throne as a minor, which allowed the rise of the powerful minister Ibn Abī ʿĀmir (Almanzor) and his attainment of effective rule over al-Andalus. Ibn Abī ʿĀmir's descendant ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Sanchuelo convinced the Umayyad caliph to name him as his successor, thus opening the door to the civil wars that would eventually lead to the abolition of the Umayyad caliphate. That Hishām II could believe the story told by the slave girl clearly demonstrated that he was unfit to stop the destruction of the Cordoban Umayyad dynasty. We have here another representation of Hishām II as a simpletonFootnote 65 and a gullible person: he is called “retarded” (al-mutakhallif) for having been so credulous as to transform the site where the miraculous loss of virginity had allegedly taken place into a shrine. But even if this story was invented to emphasize the unworthiness of the Umayyad, who was unable to ensure the survival of the dynasty he was in charge of defending, it suggests the awareness that unusual events could give birth to holy places. We are tempted to extrapolate from it that such a reaction was an event common enough to be lampooned.

By way of conclusion, during the Almohad period there is clear evidence of an urge to record the existence of holy Islamic places in al-Andalus, some of which were linked to the Umayyad past. No similar interest existed during the first three centuries of Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula: to judge from the extant sources one might conclude that there were almost no holy places in Umayyad al-Andalus. Does this silence reflect reality or create it? On the one hand, Christians in Umayyad times constituted the majority of the population and thus most holy places must have reflected their beliefs and practices, of no interest for Muslim authors except when some Muslims visited them. On the other hand, the development of local Muslim holy places can be traced through the prism of its control on the part of a well-developed and structured legal establishment devoted to ensure that practices and doctrines adhered to Maliki norms of proper religious behaviour and belief, as exemplified by Ibn Waḍḍāḥ's writings. Were such efforts that concentrated on censorship and condemnation successful in controlling and reducing the appearance of local Muslim holy places? Some degree of success could have been obtained in the urban centres that counted a noticeable number of religious scholars, but that was not the case with the major part of the territory.Footnote 66 There, places considered to be holy by the local Muslim population could have developed, leaving no written trace unless an unconventional scholar like Ibn Hazm took care to record that which was left unnoticed by the rest.Footnote 67 After all, what we know about Umayyad al-Andalus is largely the representation modelled by its scholarly establishment and in such representation – “orthodox” al-Andalus against the heresies and innovations that plagued the ʿAbbāsid East and the Ismaili Ifriqiya – holy places could hardly be acknowledged.

Footnotes

*

This paper has been carried out within the research project “Knowledge, Heresy and Political Culture in the Islamic West (eighth–fifteenth centuries)”, funded by the European Research Council. I wish to thank Luis Molina for his valuable advice and Consuelo López Morillas for her linguistic revision. It constitutes a preliminary approach to a subject closely related to my research on burials and religious practices associated with graves in al-Andalus, as well as to my research on the Cordoban Umayyads. With it I pay homage to Gerald Hawting, given his interest in the history of Islamic ritual practices and his contribution to Umayyad history.

References

1 The most up-to-date study is Arcas Campoy, M. and Serrano Niza, D., “Ibn Ḥabīb al-Ilbīrī, ʿAbd al-Malik”, in Lirola Delgado, Jorge and PuertaVílchez, José Miguel (eds), Biblioteca de al-Andalus, 7 vols and 2 appendices (Almería, 2004–2013), III, 219–27Google Scholar, n. 509.

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7 After an almost complete absence of any reference to this Almohad practice, in the space of two years four articles appeared devoted to it: Bennison, Amira, “The Almohads and the Qur'an of ʿUthmān: the legacy of the Umayyads of Cordoba in twelfth century Maghrib”, Al-Masaq 19/2, 2007, 131–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Buresi, Pascal, “Une relique almohade: l'utilisation du Coran (attribué a ʿUṯmān b. ʿAffān) de la Grande Mosquée de Cordoue”, Oriente Moderno LXXXVIII/2, 2008, 297–309Google Scholar; Buresi, Pascal, “D'une péninsule à l'autre: Cordoue, ʿUṯmān (644–656) et les Arabes à l’époque almohade (XIIe–XIIe siècle)”, Al-Qanṭara 31/1, 2010, 7–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zadeh, Travis, “From drops of blood: charisma and political legitimacy in the translatio of the ‘Uthmānic codex of al-Andalus”, Journal of Arabic Literature 39/3, 2008, 321–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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11 Ferhat, Halima, “Littérature eschatologique et espace sacré au Maroc: le cas de Massa”, Studia Islamica 80, 1994, 47–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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14 There are studies devoted to specific areas and cases. To give just two recent examples: Maghribi shrines have been studied by, among others, Bulle Tuil, “Inhumation et baraka. La tombe du saint dans la ville de l'Occident musulman au Moyen-Âge (XII–XVe siècle)”, PhD thesis, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, 2011, while the cave as a sacred space has been analysed by a number of scholars in papers published in Cuadernos de Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ 7, 2010, including Jean-Pierre van Staëvel, “La caverne, refuge de ‘l'ami de Dieu’: une forme particulière de l’érémitisme au temps des Almoravides et des Almohades (Maghreb extrême, XIe–XIIIe siècles)”, 311–26.

15 Boloix Gallardo, Bárbara, Prodigios del maestro sufí Abū Marwān al-Yuḥānisī de Almería. Estudio crítico y traducción de la Tuhfat al-mugtarib de Ahmad al-Qastali (Madrid, 2010)Google Scholar, 194, 204, 255.

16 Ibn al-Kharrāṭ, Kitāb al-ʿāqiba fī dhikr al-mawt wa-mā baʿdahā, ed. ʿUbayd Allāh Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Miṣrī al-Atharī (Ṭanṭā, 1410/1990), 128.

17 On its author, see Ávila, M.L., “Ibn al-Ṭaylasān, al-Qāsim”, Biblioteca de al-Andalus, 5, 491–6Google Scholar, n.1258, and also Fierro, M., “Una fuente perdida sobre los ulemas de al-Andalus: el manuscrito del Museo Jalduní de Túnez”, Al-Qanṭara 12, 1991, 273–6Google Scholar, for a possible MS of this work.

18 Velázquez Basanta, F.N., “al-Šarrāṭ, Abū l-Qāsim”, Biblioteca de al-Andalus, 7, 345–7Google Scholar, n.1720.

19 M. Arcas Campoy and D. Serrano Niza, “Ibn Ḥabīb al-Ilbīrī, ʿAbd al-Malik”, 222b. These sources are Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (d. 544/1149), Tartīb al-madārik li-maʿrifat aʿlām madhhab Mālik, 8 vols (Rabat, 1983), IV, 141, and Ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 776/1374), al-Iḥāṭa fī akhbār Gharnāṭa, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ʿInān , 4 vols (Cairo, 1973–77), III, 552.

20 Rodríguez López, J. and Cara Barrionuevo, L., “El fenómeno místico-religioso rural en los últimos siglos del Islam andalusí: introducción al estudio arqueológico de las rábitas alpujarreñas”, Almería entre culturas (siglos XIII–XVI) Actas del Coloquio (Almería, 19–21 April 1990) (Almería, 1990), 227–54Google Scholar; Martínez Enamorado, Virgilio and Becerra Parra, Manuel, “En torno al morabitismo en la Serranía de Ronda. Una propuesta para el análisis de sus rábitas y zawiya-s”, Takurunna 1, 2011, 1–30Google Scholar. More generally, Franco Sánchez, F. (ed.), La rábita en el Islam. Estudios interdisciplinares (Sant Carles de la Ràpita/Alicante, 2004)Google Scholar.

21 Khalid Masud, Muhammad, Islamic Legal Philosophy: a Study of Abu Ishaq al-Shatibi's Life and Thought (Islamabad, 1977), 63–4Google Scholar. For the Maghrib, see Ferhat, Halima, Le soufisme et les zaouyas au Maghreb: mérité individuel et patrimoine sacré (Casablanca, 2003)Google Scholar.

22 Calero Secall, María Isabel, “Los Banū Sīd Būna”, Sharq al-Andalus 4, 1987, 35–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Franco Sánchez, F. and Benarafa, A., “Ibn Sīd Būnuh, Abū Aḥmad”, Biblioteca de al-Andalus, 5, 337–44Google Scholar, n. 1152.

23 Remie Constable, Olivia, “Regulating religious noise: the council of Vienne, the mosque call and Muslim pilgrimage in the late medieval Mediterranean world”, Medieval Encounters 16, 2010, 64–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with reference to the charter of Chivert.

24 Constable, “Regulating religious noise”, 88.

25 Molina, Luis, “Lugares de destino de los viajeros andalusíes en el Taʾrīj de Ibn al-Faraḍī”, in Marín, Manuela (ed.), Estudios onomástico-biográficos de al-Andalus (Madrid, 1988), 585–610Google Scholar.

26 See her articles, “Zuhhād de al-Andalus (300/912–420/1029)”, Al-Qanṭara 12, 1991, 439–69Google Scholar; “The early development of zuhd in al-Andalus”, in De Jong, F. (ed.), Shiʿa Islam, Sects and Sufism. Historical Dimensions, Religious Practice and Methodological Considerations (Utrecht, 1992), 83–94Google Scholar; “Muslim religious practices in al-Andalus (2nd/8th–4th/10th centuries)”, in Jayyusi, S.K. (ed.), The Legacy of Muslim Spain (Leiden, 1992), 878–94Google Scholar.

27 Ibn Bashkuwāl (d. 578/1183), Kitāb al-ṣilafī taʾrīkh aʾimmat al-Andalus wa-ʿulamāʾihim wa-muḥaddithihim wa-fuqahāʾihim wa-udabāʾihim, ed. ʿIzzat al-ʿAṭṭār al-Ḥusaynī, 2 vols (Cairo, 1374/1955), n. 449; reference taken from Marín, Manuela, “La práctica del ribāṭ en al-Andalus (siglos III–V/IX–XI)”, in Azuar, Rafael (ed.), El ribāṭ califal. Excavaciones e investigaciones (1984–1992) (Madrid, 2004), 191–201Google Scholar, n. 38.

28 Javier Simonet, Francisco, Historia de los mozárabes de España, 4 vols (Madrid, 1983)Google Scholar (reprint of the edition Madrid, 1897–1903), I, 161 (shrine of San Torcuato in Guadix), II, 251–2, III, 615–17 (data from the Calendar of Cordoba), 620–1, 647–65 (Taifa period); the monasteries of Cordoba are dealt with in II, 328–36. On the sanctuary of Santa Eulalia in Mérida, see Cruz, Pedro Mateos and Calzado, Miguel Alba, “De Emerita Augusta a Mārida”, in Visigodos y Omeyas. Un debate entre la Antigüedad Tardía y la Alta Edad Media (Mérida, 1999) (Madrid, 2000), 143–68Google Scholar.

29 Capilla, Susana Calvo, “Les premières mosquées et la transformation des sanctuaires wisigothiques (92H/711–170H/785)”, Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 41/2, 2011, 131–63Google Scholar, quoting Crónica de 1344, ed. Diego Catalán and María Soledad de Andrés (Madrid, 1971), 183.

30 On the Cordoban Christian martyrs, see Simonet's work and K.B. Wolf, Christian Martyrs in Muslim Spain (Cambridge, 1988).

31 Calvo Capilla, “Les premières mosques”, 152. The often-told story of how the Cordoban mosque was built on the site of the church of San Vicente does not rest on archaeological evidence and is largely legendary, as already suggested by Ocaña, Manuel, “La basílica de San Vicente y la gran mezquita de Córdoba (nuevo examen de textos)”, Al-Andalus 7, 1942, 347–66Google Scholar.

32 Bashear, Suliman, “Qibla musharriqa and early Muslim prayer in churches”, The Muslim World 81, 1991, 267–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for al-Andalus, see Félix, Ana Fernández, Cuestiones jurídicas del islam temprano. La ʿUtbiyya y el proceso de formación de la sociedad islámica andalusí (Madrid, 2003), 481Google Scholar.

33 Fernández Félix, Cuestiones jurídicas del islam temprano, 483.

34 On the permeability of borders across religious divides, see Albera, D. and Couroucli, Maria (eds), Sharing Sacred Spaces in the Mediterranean: Christians, Muslims, and Jews at Shrines and Sanctuaries (Bloomington, 2012)Google Scholar; Cormack, M. (ed.), Muslims and Others in Sacred Space (New York, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Simonet, Historia de los mozárabes de España, II, 252–4; IV, 814–15, quoting a text found in Abū Ḥāmid al-Gharnāṭī (d. 565/1169) which Simonet knows through Ibn al-Wardī; another version in al-Idrīsī (d. c. 560/1164).

36 Westermarck, Edward's works (Pagan Survivals in Mohammedan Civilisation (London, 1933)Google Scholar, Ritual and Belief in Morocco (London, 1926)Google Scholar and Fahd, T., Le panthéon de l'Arabie Centrale à la Veille de l'Hégire (Paris, 1968)Google Scholar are still informative. The work by al-Labīdī (d. 440/1048) and al-Fārisī (d. around 440–50/1048–58), Manaqib d́Abu Ishaq al-Jabanyani par Abu l-Qasim al-Labidi et Manaqib de Muhriz b. Halaf par Abu l-Tahir al-Farisi, ed. Roger Idris, Hady (Paris, 1959)Google Scholar that memorializes Ifriqiyan saints has information about the cult of trees in North Africa. For a critical view of the Islamic portrayal of paganism, see Hawting, Gerald, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam. From Polemic to History (Cambridge, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Simonet, Historia de los mozárabes de España, IV, 805. See also J.E. Salisbury, Iberian Popular Religion 600 b.c. to 700 a.d.: Celts, Romans and Visigoths (New York and Toronto, 1985).

38 Fierro, Maribel and Marín, Manuela, “La islamización de las ciudades andalusíes a través de sus ulemas (ss. II/VIII–comienzos s. IV/X)”, in Cressier, P. and García-Arenal, M. (eds), Genèse de la ville islamique en al-Andalus et au Maghreb occidental (Madrid, 1998), 65–98Google Scholar. Also by the transportation of Christian relics to the north: Simonet, Historia de los mozárabes de España, I, 161, 211–2, II, 251–9.

39 Marín, Manuela, “Ṣaḥāba et tābiʿūn dans al-Andalus: histoire et légende”, Studia Islamica 54, 1981, 5–49Google Scholar.

40 al-Ḍabbī (d. 599/1203), Kitāb bughyat al-multamis fī taʾrīkh rijāl ahl al-Andalus, ed. Codera, Francisco and Ribera, Julián (Madrid, 1884)Google Scholar, n. 687; al-Bakrī, Jugrāfiyat al-Andalus wa-Urubba min Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik, ed. al-Ḥajjī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ʿAlī (Beirut, 1387/1968), 132Google Scholar; al-Ḥimyarī, Kitāb al-rawḍ al-miʿṭār, ed. and trans. Lévi-Provençal, E., La Péninsule Iberique au moyen age (Leiden, 1938)Google Scholar, 97 (Arabic text)/119 (French translation); Souto, J.A., “Las almacabras saraqustíes en el contexto de las almacabras de al-Andalus”, Las necrópolis de Zaragoza (Zaragoza, 1991), 49–65Google Scholar. According to the eighth/fourteenth-century chronicle Dhikr bilād al-Andalus, ed. and trans. Molina, Luis, 2 vols (Madrid, 1983)Google Scholar, 70 (ed.) and 76 (trans.), his grave was situated in the qibla of the Friday mosque just in front of the miḥrāb (see also Souto, Juan Antonio, “Textos árabes relativos a la mezquita aljama de Zaragoza”, Madrider Mitteilungen 30, 1989, 391–420)Google Scholar in what seems to be a misreading of previous reports mixed with a literary transfer from Christian funerary practices in churches.

41 al-ʿUdhrī (d. 478/1085), Tarsīʿ al-ajbār wa-tanwīʿ al-āthār, ed. al-Ahwānī, ʿA. (Madrid, 1965), 22–3Google Scholar, Spanish trans. de la Granja, F., La marca superior en la obra de al- ‘Udri (Zaragoza, 1966)Google Scholar, 11.

42 I depart from de la Granja's translation: he understood ahdāf min al-ḥijāra to mean piles of stones (“montones de piedras”). Following Reinhardt Dozy (Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes, 2 vols, Leiden 1881, II, 750), I understand ahdāf to mean an undulation on a surface. There is the possibility that ahdāf refers to some sort of vertical piece of stone such as a tombstone: on tombstones in al-Andalus see Martínez Núñez, María Antonia, “La estela funeraria en el mundo andalusí”, in de la Casa, Carlos (ed.), Actas V Congreso Internacional de Estelas Funerarias (Soria 28 de abril al 1 de mayo, 1993) (Soria, 1994), 419–44Google Scholar; and Delgado Valero, Clara, “La Columna sepulcral: una forma funeraria del arte helenístico y del arte islámico”, in Arte hispano-musulmán (Madrid, 2001), 105–16Google Scholar. However, this possibility does not seem to fit well with the proposal that follows to give some visibility to the graves. I thank Luis Molina for discussing this issue with me.

43 Ragib, Y., “Structure de la tombe d'après le droit musulman”, Arabica 39, 1992, 393–403CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leisten, Th., “Between orthodoxy and exegesis: some aspects of attitudes in the sharīa toward funerary architecture”, Muqarnas. An Annual on Islamic Art and Architecture 7, 1990, 12–22Google Scholar. For the case of al-Andalus, Fierro, Maribel, “El espacio de los muertos: fetuas andalusíes sobre tumbas y cementerios”, in Cressier, P., Fierro, M. and van Staevel, J.P. (eds), L'urbanisme dans l'Occident musulman au Moyen Âge. Aspects juridiques (Madrid, 2000), 153–90Google Scholar.

44 Muḥammad ibn Waḍḍāḥ al-Qurṭubī (d. 287/900), Kitāb al-bidaʿ (Tratado contra las innovaciones), ed. and trans. Fierro, M.I. (Madrid, 1988), 110–11Google Scholar.

45 On the veneration of trees see above, n. 36, and Goldziher, Ignaz, Muslim Studies, trans. Stern, S.M., 2 vols (London, 1967–71) 2, 311–19Google Scholar; al-Ṭurṭūshī, Kitāb al-ḥawādith wa-l-bidaʿ, trans. Fierro, M.I. (Madrid, 1993), 134Google Scholar, with references to the veneration of the tree called dhāt anwāṭ.

46 On this debate, Kister, M.J. “‘You shall only set for three mosques’, a study of an early tradition”, Le Museón 82, 1969, 173–96Google Scholar; Elad, Amikam, Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship: Holy Places, Ceremonies, Pilgrimage (Leiden, 1995)Google Scholar.

47 A powerful presentation of this concern can be found in Ibn Taymiyya's (d. 728/1328) Kitāb iqtiḍāʾ al-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm mukhālafat aṣḥāb al-jahīm, partial trans. by Umar Memon, Muhammad, Ibn Taymīyaʾs Struggle against Popular Religion (The Hague, 1976)Google Scholar, see especially 250.

48 See, on the taʿrif bidʿa, Fierro, M.,“The treatises against innovations (kutub al-bidaʿ)”, Der Islam 69, 1992, 204–46, 226–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Fierro, M.I., “Una refutación contra Ibn Masarra”, Al-Qantara 10, 1989, 273–5Google Scholar, quoting Ibn al-Abbār, al-Takmila li-Kitāb al-Ṣila, ed. al-Aṭṭār al-Ḥusaynī, I. (Cairo, 1375/1955)Google Scholar, n. 991; al-Maqqarī, Nafḥ al-ṭīb, 8 vols (Beirut, 1968), II, 150–1Google Scholar. The text was first translated by Asín Palacios, Abenmasarra, 36, n. 1. I am quoting here from the English translation I provided in Fierro, M., “Plants, Mary the Copt, Abraham, donkeys and knowledge: again on Batinism during the Umayyad caliphate in al-Andalus”, Differenz und Dynamik im Islam. Festschrift für Heinz Halmzum 70. Geburtstag /Difference and Dynamics in Islam. Festschrift for Heinz Halm on his 70th birthday (Würzburg, 2012), 125–44Google Scholar, at 134.

50 Hidayatullah, Aisha, “Māriyya the Copt: gender, sex and heritage in the legacy of Muhammad's umm walad”, Islam and Christian – Muslim Relations 21/3, 2010, 221–43, 238CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The house of Khadīja was also visited and readings of ḥadīth took place there.

51 Hidayatullah, “Māriyya the Copt” 223 and 235–7.

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53 Fierro, Maribel, “Madīnat al-zahrāʾ, el Paraíso y los fatimíes”, Al-Qanṭara 25, 2004, 299–327CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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55 As in the case of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico. Calvo Capilla, “Les premières mosquées et la transformation des sanctuaries wisigothiques”, as indicated above, notes that mosques were not usually built over previous churches, as these kept functioning as such.

56 Calvo Capilla, Susana, “Las primeras mezquitas de al-Andalus a través de las fuentes árabes (92/711–170/785)”, Al-Qanṭara 28/1, 2007, 143–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Juberías, Julia Hernández, La Península imaginaria: mitos y leyendas sobre al-Andalus (Madrid, 1996)Google Scholar, has collected such legends.

58 Ibn Ḥayyān (d. 469/1076), al-Muqtabas min anbāʾ ahl al-Andalus [al-Muqtabis II-2], ed. Makki, M.ʿA., (Beirut, 1393/1973), 278–9Google Scholar. This English version is based on the unpublished Spanish translation of the Arabic text made by Luis Molina.

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62 See the reference in note 6.

63 In this passage – of which I offer a tentative translation – the slave girl seems to be cleverly suggesting a divine intervention by using theological terminology: the verb nazzaha is used in kalām to refer to God's transcendence (tanzīh) and also to refer to tanzīh al-malāʾika, the impeccability of angels. In the background, there may also be a reference to what happened to Mary, the mother of Jesus.

64 Ibn Saʿīd (d. 685/1286), al-Mughrib fī ḥulā l-Maghrib, ed. Ḍayf, Shawqī, 2 vols (Cairo, 1953–55)Google Scholar, I, 196, analysed in Garulo, T., “El humor en el Mugrib de Ibn Saʿīd”, in Toro Ceballos, F. and Rodríguez Molina, José (eds), VII Estudios de Frontera. Islam y Cristiandad. Siglos XII–XVI. Homenaje a María Jesús Viguera Molíns, Congreso celebrado en Alcalá la Real en noviembre de 2008 (Jaén, 2009), 311–30, 321Google Scholar.

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66 As shown in the study quoted in note 38.

67 Were it not for Ibn Hazm no record of the eleventh century Masarris active in Pechina with their peculiar beliefs and practices would exist: Fierro, Heterodoxia, 166-8.