The conflicts between Islamic and Christian kings looked like a holy war, but religion was just one element; greed, ambition and family were just as important. Often there were Muslims, Christians and Jews, not to speak of Berbers and Normans, on both sides at each battle. Samuel ibn Naghrillah was a Jew born among the palace elite in Cordoba who escaped the turbulence there to set up a sweetshop in Granada. There he was invited to write letters for the local king, and ended up becoming his secretary and then vizier. Holding court in his palace the Alhambra, for thirty years he ruled Granada, won battles against Christians and Muslims and wrote erotic poetry to boys and girls, while naturally assuming the leadership of the Sephardim, Spanish Jews, to whom he was haNagid – the prince. After his death in 1056, his young son Joseph succeeded him for a decade until this Jewish vizier was accused of planning a coup, whereupon the Granadans stormed the Alhambra and crucified Joseph – not only as a reprisal against Jewish presumption but as the traditional punishment for treason.
While the Jewish prince was ruling Granada, a Castilian knight named Rodrigo Díaz was serving the kings of Castile, the largest of the Christian kingdoms in northern Spain. When he was exiled in a court intrigue, he changed sides and fought for the Islamic kings. Never losing a battle, Díaz won the nickname El Campeador – Champion – among the Spaniards and El Sayyid – the Lord – among the Arabs, Hispanicized into El Cid. In 1085, his former master, Alfonso VI el Bravo, who had united the kingdoms of Castile and León, took Toledo from the Muslims. But instead of expelling Muslim subjects, Alfonso declared himself Emperor of the Two Faiths, a vision reflected in his own love life: in addition to five wives, he also kept Muslim concubines.
The Islamic collapse so alarmed the poetry-spouting king of Seville, al-Mutamid, that he appealed to a horde of fundamentalist tribesmen, the rising power of north Africa. He was playing with fire. ‘I’ve no desire to be the man who delivered al-Andalus to the infidels,’ he said. ‘I’d rather be a camel driver in Africa than a swineherd in Castile.’
An African army prepared to invade Europe.
ROGER’S FART, ZAYNAB’S MAGIC AND EL CID’S SWORD
An extraordinary quartet – two brothers, a nephew and the wife of two of them – had radically changed west Africa before they even reached Spain. In the deserts of Mauritania, on the borders of the kingdom of Wagadu, a Berber convert named Abdullah ibn Yasin launched a jihad among recently converted Berber tribes who called themselves al-Murabitin. Wearing their blue tagelmust veil below the eyes, the Murabits – now led by Abdullah – quickly conquered the vital trading towns Sijilmasa and Awdaghost, before turning north and defeating the Maghrebi kings.* After Abdullah was killed in battle, his brother Abu Bakr besieged the Maghrebi capital Aghmat, defended by its governor Luqut. When it fell in 1058, Abu Bakr married Luqut’s widow Zaynab an-Nafzawiyya, daughter of a Berber merchant from Tunisia, beautiful, intelligent and rich in gold, experience and supernatural powers. Nicknamed the Magician, she refused to entertain offers of marriage until Abu Bakr had conquered much of the country, at which she blindfolded him and took him to a treasure-filled cave, where she unveiled him: all now belonged to him. That was a legend, but she negotiated with existing elites on Abu Bakr’s behalf. The Berbers, like the pre-Islamic Arabs, had a tradition of female leaders, including the queens who had resisted Arab conquest.
While fighting to the south, Abu Bakr appointed his nephew Yusuf ibn Tashfin as his co-ruler, giving him his wife Zaynab, who became his co-ruler. Yusuf gradually conquered much of the Maghreb, but finding the capital Aghmat too suffocating, he created a new one – Marrakesh, the city that gave Morocco its name.
In 1076, Abu Bakr, now calling himself Amir al-Muslim – Commander of the Muslims – pushed southwards along the caravan route into west Africa, where he broke the Wagadu kingdom of the
