On account of the sins of the Christians, the Saracen people, the seed of the Ishmaelites, invaded all the province of the West in order to devour the earth, and to strike all with the sword, to carry off captives; thus our ambusher the most ancient serpent gave them victory. And they cast down the cities, destroyed walls and trampled us underfoot; they razed cities to the ground, they beheaded men and there was not a town, a village or castle that survived that devastation.
In the course of the raid, the nuns of Santa Cristina were carried off captive by the Muslims, with the exception of Flora’s mother, the wife of Baldredo, and their son Arias. Then, Flora relates, after a long time, God took mercy on them and they left that “evil captivity,” with the exception of two of them who remained in chains. Finding their monastery in León in ruins, the women chose to set up a new religious house at nearby Villar de Mazarife. In later life, after the death of her other family members, Flora recovered the remains of Arias, Baldredo, and Justa, who had been buried in the ruined monastery of Santa Cristina, and reinterred them in that of Santiago de León, whose community Flora herself joined and generously endowed. Flora’s account does not tell us what became of those who were carried off to al-Andalus. Some might have been made to work in agriculture or domestic service, but it is equally possible that one or more of them had ended up in the personal harem of al-Manṣūr or in that of another Andalusi notable.
The Leonese charter of 1023 is important to us not only because it sheds some light on the precise circumstances that led to the enslavement of Christian women, but also because it demonstrates the traumatic psychological effects that the campaigns launched by al-Manṣūr had upon the Christian communities of the North. And what happened in León was replicated in Santiago de Compostela, Astorga, Zamora, Pamplona, Barcelona, and all the other major population centers that were overrun by al-Manṣūr’s forces during the final two decades of the tenth century.142
Our sources tell us precious little about the lives of those Christian women who were taken as wives or concubines by Muslim lords. This is hardly surprising, given that, by and large, women registered but rarely on the consciousness of Andalusi writers, and those who did tended to belong to the upper classes, in particular the mothers, wives, and daughters of sovereigns. Members of the harem were not expected to meddle in political activity, and those who did—like Queen Egilona in the eighth century or Subḥ in the tenth—were invariably portrayed as ambitious schemers, who used their feminine wiles to feather their own nests or those of their kin.143 Although none of these women would have been obliged to renounce their faith, they would have been required to abide by Islamic social practices such as those concerning ritual purity and dietary laws, and their children would have been brought up as Muslims. The social pressures to convert to Islam may have been considerable, and it is likely that many women—legitimate wives and concubines alike—did so, particularly those who had borne children to their masters.144 One woman who is known to have converted in this way was al-Manṣūr’s Navarrese royal bride, known as ‘Abda, of whom it was later said by the historian Ibn al-Khaṭīb that “she became a good Muslim; she was of all al-Manṣūr’s wives the staunchest in faith and of most gentle birth.”145 She bore the ḥājib a son, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān—nicknamed Shanjūl/Sanchuelo after his paternal grandfather—who, as we have seen, came to play a key role in the events that led to the fall of the Umayyad caliphate in the early eleventh century.
Although severe restrictions were imposed on their mobility and social interaction, the brides and jawārī who entered the harem of the caliph or some other Muslim lord might live in some comfort. Ibn Ḥayyān, for one, mentions the fine clothes, jewels, and perfumes enjoyed by one of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III’s slave concubines, Marjān.146 Moreover, some concubines might enjoy special status, particularly those who held the status of umm walad; Marjān, who bore the caliph five children, including his son and heir al-Ḥakam II, was even awarded the title of “great lady” (al-sayyida al-kubrā).147 Al-Ḥakam II esteemed his own concubine Subḥ so highly that in 964 he granted her an exquisite ivory container, which may now be viewed in the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid.148 Other concubines were not so fortunate, however, and suffered victimization or even violence at the hands of their masters. According to Ibn Ḥayyān, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III had a particularly violent streak toward the women of his harem, subjecting one unfortunate concubine who rejected his advances at his palace at Madīnat al-Zahrā’ to cruel abuse, by having his eunuchs hold her while he burned her face with a candle.149 Al-Manṣūr is reported to have had two of his slave girls executed for having recited some verses that he deemed inappropriate; while such was the ill treatment suffered by the slave concubines of Abū Marwān al-Tubnī (d. 1065) that they conspired to murder him.150 The vulnerability of jawārī was magnified at times of political turmoil. For example, when Córdoba descended into the fitna (civil war) on the death of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān “Sanchuelo” in 1009, the members of the harems of several leading Muslims were violated.151 Concubines might sometimes live in the lap of luxury, but for many, clearly, the experience must have been a deeply traumatic one.
The Rationale for Sexual Mixing
How are we to explain the readiness of the Umayyad rulers and other élite Muslim families of al-Andalus to enter into cross-border interfaith marriage alliances or to take Christian slave concubines? In the case of powerful kin groups such as the Banū Qasī and the Banū Shabrīṭ, marriage ties with Christian lords were clearly designed to bolster their autonomy and security vis-à-vis other regional powers, be they the Umayyad emirs to the south or the Christian Franks and Asturians to the east and west respectively, all of whom, at one time or another, had sought to impose their authority over the region of the Upper Ebro. For the Umayyads, meanwhile, as well as for the ḥājib al-Manṣūr, exogamous marriages acted partly as a tool of diplomacy, which could help stabilize relations with the sometimes fractious Christian states to the north. This is very much what the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss had in mind when he declared that “a continuous transition exists from war to exchange, and from exchange to intermarriage, and the exchange of brides is merely the conclusion to an uninterrupted process of reciprocal gifts, which effects the transition from hostility to alliance, from anxiety to confidence, and from fear to friendship.”152
Yet peacemaking was only part of the equation. From another perspective, Umayyad policy in this regard provides a classic example of an “aggressive” marriage strategy that seems to have been a characteristic feature of many premodern Mediterranean societies.153 In the words of Julian Pitt-Rivers,
Marriage strategy can be either conciliatory, defensive or aggressive. To give women in exchange for political protection and/or economic advantage involves accepting domination and profiting from its counterpart…. A more defensive strategy attempts to reserve its women within the group and avoid outside involvement. But the aggressive strategy aims both to deny its women to outsiders and take in their women…. Competition for women, however it may be conceptualised by the people themselves, is competition for power.154
Ruth Mazo Karras puts it more baldly: “Penetration symbolizes power. For men of one group to have sex