The Status of Religious Minorities in Islamic Societies

Façade of the Bibliothèque Royale of Rabat (al-Khizāna al-Ḥasaniyya), Morocco.

Photograph by Dr. Mònica Colominas Aparicio.

How Jews, Christians and Muslims related to each other in Muslim Iberia Dr. Mònica Colominas Aparicio unravels historical relationships in the research project: The Status of Religious Minorities in Islamic Societies: Jews and Christians in Islamic Iberia (8th-15th c.). This time and place in history can help us understand how faith-based communities and cultures managed to co-exist, despite differences.

Muslim Iberia – also known as alAndalus – stretched over southwestern Europe, through Spain and Portugal and near the time of the first conquests even entered southern France. Throughout the 8th – 15th centuries, those parts controlled by Muslim rulers reduced dramatically but included, during the whole period, populations of Jews and Christians. It was a landscape of religious diversity that found a parallel in the territories under Christian rule as they advanced in their conquests and hosted larger populations of Muslims and Jews. The relationships of these three diverse faiths and cultures in Iberia, and in Muslim Iberia, have long been an area of heated academic discussion. It is a time and place where three distinctly different communities came into contact, with their own beliefs, norms and internal politics.

Certainly, this period witnessed episodes of persecution and violence toward Jewish and Christian communities alike but there was www.euresearcher.com

more to Muslim Iberia than violent struggle.

Threaded through the wars, powerplays and battles for political dominance and often buttressed by religious claims, there was also collaboration, tolerance, and agreements, raising important questions about how it was possible to coexist closely, in these turbulent times and shared territories.

The status of Jews and Christians There is evidence that Jews and Christians, also known as the ‘People of the Book’ in Islam, had a measure of protection under Islamic rule as dhimmis that was linked to certain conditions such as the payment of a tax. In fact, we are aware of relationships of a varied nature, of times when there were alliances, closeness and mutual aid between the communities, as well as times of opposition, exclusion and persecution of minorities. The period and place, therefore, provide for a fascinating case study. However, there are

gaps in knowledge and understanding, leaving several key questions open and unresolved for academics and the general public.

Dr. Mònica Colominas Aparicio has travelled to several libraries in different parts of Spain and North Africa, studying original historical texts, to find evidence and descriptions of how different religious communities lived together in that place and what it meant for people of the time.

“Access to and knowledge of the original sources is important. My aim with my work on these materials is to bring nuance to some big claims about the period,” explained Dr. Colominas Aparicio. “I am trying to do that by first forming an idea about what happened in this period as a whole. I do this by exploring a number of sources, most of which are in Arabic. Sometimes black-and-white answers have been sought, with some historians emphasising the blossoming of the cultures of the three groups and others emphasizing

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intolerance and persecution. I think what is most interesting is that such a well-defined picture does not come out from the historical evidence left to us. What we see is complex.”

Sources pose several challenges. Regarding relations between and within communities, information is limited. Where information is available, it is regularly presented from a singular or biased perspective. Dr. Colominas Aparicio is painstakingly piecing together what evidence there is from rarely explored books and sources. She has brought to light instances that help chart discourses on religious difference straddling between incidents of persecution and forced conversion, friendship, cooperation and even trust between Muslims, Christians and Jews.

“I am trying to identify periods of change and also continuity and how this reflects society.

One important conclusion is that there was no one framework or blueprint of rules that was robustly, systematically enforced.”

The illusion of hard borders The Muslim territories of the time, in reality, were multi-religious and multi-ethnic societies whose porous borders could change drastically in a short time. Friendships, marriages, trade and taxes took place, the region being full of such interactions between the religious communities and conversions to and from Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The idea that there was no room for acceptance of diversity and that conflict between self-enclosed groups was the expected norm in the region has turned out to conform poorly to historical facts.

Mònica discusses, for example, perspectives on the possibility of minority groups, even if they had their own jurisdiction, having recourse to judges of the majority Muslim faith to resolve specific cases, so that, for example, if the Christian authorities reached a decision unsatisfactory to the parties on a matter, e.g. the sanctioning of a marriage, the couple could seek its concession through this route. On the other hand, and more generally, the occurrence of intermarriage shows us the level of intertwining of communities, sometimes contested, but with obvious social embeddedness. What emerges from the research is that there were different types of understandings and levels of dedication and discipline in confessional practices among Muslims, Christians and Jews.

Besides, Christians and Jews of al-Andalus used Arabic and showed a capacity for adaptation and absorption of Islamic culture, creating hybrid identities out of practical necessity and unavoidable fusion.

There are also interesting ideas around conversion as a Christian or a Jew recently converted to Islam was not always expected to know beforehand the set of practices of devout Muslims, the emphasis lying on the sincere proclamation of the faith to be recognised and accepted by the community.

“At certain times lowering the threshold for neophytes makes sense in a society with practices that were often shared between communities,” said Dr. Colominas Aparicio.

A major question mark concerns the pressure for conversion from Muslim rulers or by a faith that was in the majority at a

The Status of Religious Minorities in Islamic Societies: Jews and Christians in Islamic Iberia (8th-15th century)

Project Objectives

Religious diversity in Islam is often controversial. Al-Andalus serves as a model in societal debates about minorities, but solid studies about the period are lacking.

This project investigates the social reality of Jews and Christians in al-Andalus and wants to clarify knowledge about the history of minorities in Islamic societies.

Project Funding

This project is funded by The Dutch Research Council (NWO)

A special tax for protection Instead of forced conversion or expulsion, it was used to apply a system of taxation to those Jews and Christians who resided permanently in Muslim territory. The so-called ‘Pact of ‘Umar’ gives the basic guidelines for the obligation of the ruling Muslims to protect the life and property of the dhimmis (meaning protected persons) and their freedom of religion, for which a tax, or ‘jizya’ had to be paid.

We do not actually know if the pact was implemented or how exactly the taxes were collected in al-Andalus, and what it meant in day-to-day relations between communities, seemed to depend largely on time and place. Despite irregularities, the presence of tributaries throughout most of the period attests to a sustained system of living religious diversity according to an Islamicbased social ideal.

The main hall of the Bibliothèque Royale of Rabat (al-Khizāna al-Ḥasaniyya), Morocco.

Photograph by Dr. Mònica Colominas Aparicio.

One important conclusion is that there was no one framework or blueprint of rules that was

robustly, systematically enforced.

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The Status of Religious Minorities in Islamic Societies

given time. Broadly speaking, the pressure for conversion was more social and restrictive than physical, using humiliating or demeaning language and epithets against other faiths along with economic pressure and disadvantages. It is also unlikely that conversion was imposed at all times of conflict between religious communities. “In certain periods of peace, covenants were signed in which both Muslims and Christians seemed to adhere to a generalised understanding that, at least on a formal and normative level, the maintenance of each other’s beliefs would be respected when crossing territorial borders.”

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The Alhambra, Granada, 1564, Braun, Georg. Civitates orbis terrarium, vol. 5-6. Coloniae Agrippinae, 1612-1618, p. 35.

“The payment of taxes that ensured the visibility of the various religious communities was the order of the day, both in Muslim and Christian territories. It is a matter of dealing with a reality because you cannot change society completely at once. When the Muslim groups arrived and conquered new areas, they subdued the population and tried to share the resources. In Christian areas, there is ample evidence also that Jews and Muslims lived as minorities and paid taxes as well.”

The prevalence of taxing other groups, or receiving resources as payment for remaining in the area, provides an idea that the practical benefits of these arrangements outweighed possible claims of religious monoculture.

“From the 13th to the 15th century the political situation on the peninsula remained comparatively more stable, but many interesting phenomena occurred in this border region. For example, there were many Christians in the area who were not tributaries strictly speaking. They were seen as important merchants coming from areas such as Venice, and there are reports that they may have enjoyed conditions that benefited them, such as having their own church.”

The importance of social status Social status often played an important role and those Christians and Jews who joined the ruling Muslims, important merchants or individuals close to the court environment, for example, were sometimes held in higher regard and esteem than poorer and lower ranking Muslims.

Not surprisingly, this could cause friction and resentment among some Muslims, particularly

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in those periods of political instability or crisis.

The framing of emotions and the behavioural norms they establish is an important context, and although difficult to quantify in research terms, it is an area that the project aims to understand.

“I have also been working on emotions.

These minorities were part of the emotions and the expectations of how to behave, both for members of these groups and, in turn, for pious Muslims. It is interesting to see how emotions are framed in broader discourses and how they are made to match with the ethical standards of the ruling communities.”

What can be learned is often presented from the point of view of the rulers of the time, in the sense that ‘history is written by the victors’. Much of the information is obtained by ‘reading between the lines’ and across sources of a different nature and origin to sketch as far as possible a more balanced portrait of social life at the time.

No doubt Iberia was turbulent in these centuries, but what is most fascinating is that multiculturalism was a real phenomenon until the early-modern period, and no matter how faithful communities were to their beliefs, norms and values, overlaps between communities occurred regularly. People recognised each other, fell in love, worked and lived together and even fought together against common enemies with common goals and an understanding of how to work together. In the context of contemporary globalisation, it is important to see how diverse and sometimes contrasting worldviews can coexist within the frameworks of law, economics and resource sharing, alongside waging war.

Principal Researcher/Investigator, Dr. M. (Mònica) Colominas Aparicio Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies Department of Christianity and the History of Ideas Oude Boteringestraat 38 9712 GK Groningen The Netherlands T: +31 50 36 32293 E: m.colominas.aparicio@rug.nl W: https://www.nwo.nl/en/projects/viveni191f001

Dr. Mònica Colominas Aparicio

Dr. Mònica Colominas Aparicio researches the complex and often misunderstood relationships between Muslims, Jews and Christians in Islamic Iberia in the period between 8th-15th c.

This was a time and place in history with diverse layers of interwoven faiths and cultures that would sometimes converge and adapt to coexist.

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