The Birth of a City of Learning and Culture in Muslim Spain: The Case of Granada

Abstract

This article examines the process of building the city of Granada by focusing on its centers of learning. The city was not referred to as a city in Muslim Spanish sources until the 5th/11th century, a period which started with the collapse of the Umayyad state and the emergence of Party Kings (Mulūk al-ṭawāʾif). The political and social turmoil in Cordaba at the beginning of 5th/11th century led the Umayyad state in Spain into a period of decline and impacted the entirety of Muslim Spain. Granada grew into a city during this period. The city of Granada, which remained under Muslim rule the longest, was connected to Elvira from its first conquest until the 5th/11th century. Several sources mentioned its name but only as a small town. The process of building a city in Granada began when the Zirids, one of Berber tribes, moved from Elvira, where they had just settled, to the area and began to rule under their name in the 5th/11th century. Granada acquired the characteristics of a city in a short period of time, facilitated by the rule of the Zirids. In fact, the Zirids were among the emirates resisting the expansionist policies of the Abbadids, the most powerful emirate of the region. As a result of immigration from Elvira at the beginning of the 5th/11th century, Granada under Zirid rule increasingly attracted scholars and grew to be a center of learning, a fact facilitated by the social problems in Cordoba during the same period. 

The changing political and administrative status of Granada was reflected in the scholarly activities in the city. The most important result of the turmoil in Cordoba on the scholarly activities was the waning of Elvira’s bright days and the flourishing of Granada. While no remarkable scholarly activity was recorded in Granada before the period of Party Kings, an active scholarly sphere developed under the Zirid rule. This change in both cities can be seen clearly in the biographical dictionaries on scholars living in Muslim Spain. While Elvira had active scholarly circles until the beginning of the 5th/11th century, it appeared less often in biographical dictionaries after that time. However, scholars from Elvira were still recorded — though at a diminishing rate — starting from the 5th/11th century until the middle of the 6th/12th century. Unlike the trend in Elvira, Granada, where scholarly activities were rarely recorded in biographical dictionaries until the 5th/11th century, began to appear in this genre as a hub of scholarly activity. The fact that many active scholars in Granada at the beginning of the 5th/11th century were from Elvira facilitated the flowering of scholarly activities in Granada. On the other hand, Iberian and Moroccan students who tended to go to other cities in Muslim Spain had not yet come to Granada to study with teachers who died in the first half of the 6th/12th century, a fact that shows that the city was still in the formative period in the 5th/11th century.  

To explore the scholarly life in Granada, one first needs to look at the activities of learning in the city during the 5th/11th century. In this period, students from Granada carried an abundant scholarly legacy to their hometowns by conducting several trips to cities within and beyond Muslim Spain, and therefore scholarly families in Granada began to form. In this context, it is worth mentioning the existence of students from Granada who had close contacts in other Iberian cities, particularly Cordoba, and advanced their studies by traveling to certain regions outside of Muslim Spain, such as the Hijaz and Egypt. Most of the classes in Granada were based on the method of qirā’a (reading by the student to his teacher). In addition, it should be pointed out that the main handbooks which all students read, such as al-Muwattaʾ and al-Mudawwana, were studied through disputation (al-munāẓara). The records of Ibn ‘Atiyya, one of the outstanding scholars of the time, show that al-Bukhārī’s al-Ṣaḥīḥ was in circulation through various ways of transmission in the 5th/11th-century Muslim Spain. This was also true for Saḥnūn’s al-Mudawwana. The existence of many cases in which a work studied with a teacher in Granada could also be studied again with a teacher coming to the city from outside or when a student went to another place indicates that students of Granada carried a rich scholarly tradition into the city. 

Extant biographical dictionaries confirm that almost all of the scholars living in Granada in the 5th/11th century were experts of religious sciences. A statistical analysis based on these records, however, would be far from perfect. The fact that biographical dictionaries focusing on the scholars who were experts of rational sciences in Muslim Spain ends with Saʿīd al-Andalusī’s Ṭabaqāt al-umam questions the argument that such scholars were not prevalent in Granada. It is also possible that some of the biographers may not have had access to information about scholars living in other cities, which reduces the reliability of these statistics. However, biographical notes in a source on the history of Granada, titled al-Iḥāṭa fī akhbār Ghirnata by Ibn al-Khaṭīb, a writer, historian and statesman from the 8th/14th century, do not offer an account distinctively different from other sources, which suggests that the arguments outlined in this article remain valid.

Keywords

• Muslim Spain,Granada,Elvira,Zirids,Party Kings,scholarly life

Endülüs’te Bir İlim ve Kültür Şehrinin Doğuşu: Gırnata Örneği

Abstract

Bu makalede V. (XI.) yüzyıla kadar Endülüs kaynaklarında bir şehir olarak adına rastlanmayan Gırnata’nın (Granada) Endülüs Emevî Devleti’nin yıkılış yılları ile başlayan ve mülûkü’t-tavâif dönemi boyunca devam eden şehirleşme süreci ilmî faaliyetler merkezinde ele alınmaktadır. Endülüs’te İslam hâkimiyetinin en uzun sürdüğü şehir olan Gırnata’nın fetihten V. (XI.) yüzyıla kadarki dönemde idarî açıdan İlbîre’ye (Elvira) bağlı ve kaynaklarda adı ancak birkaç yerde geçen küçük bir yerleşim birimi olduğu görülür. Gırnata’da şehirleşme, V. (XI.) yüzyılın ilk çeyreğinde, Endülüs Emevî Devleti’nin yıkılış sürecinde öne çıkan Berberî ailelerden biri olan Zîrîler’in, kısa bir süre önce yerleştikleri İlbîre’den ayrılarak buraya yerleşmeleriyle başlamıştır. Gırnata’nın değişen idarî ve siyasî konumu şehirde sürdürülen ilmî faaliyetlere de yansımıştır. Gırnata’da mülûkü’t-tavâif dönemine kadar kayda değer herhangi bir ilmî faaliyete rastlanmazken, bahsi geçen dönemde Zîrîler’in idaresi altında canlı bir ilmî hareketlilik başlamıştır. Bu dönemde Gırnatalı öğrencilerin Endülüs içinde ve dışına gerçekleştirdikleri rihleler yoluyla Gırnata’ya zengin bir ilmî birikim taşınmış ve Gırnatalı ulema aileleri ortaya çıkmıştır. Zîrîler’in idaresi altında Gırnata, V. (XI.) asır başlarında İlbîre’den aldığı göç sonucu ve aynı yıllarda Kurtuba’da (Córdoba) yaşanan sosyal problemler sebebiyle buradan ayrılan çok sayıda ilim adamının yerleştikleri şehirlerden biri haline gelmiş ve süratle bir ilim merkezi olma yoluna girmiştir.

Keywords

• Endülüs,Gırnata,İlbîre,Zîrîler,mülûkü’t-tavâif,ilmî hayat

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