Count Cassius and the beginnings of the Banu Qasi dynasty
At the time of the Islamic conquest of Hispania there were some local lords who opted for the path of submission, negotiation, capitulation, conversion to Islam to maintain their status of privilege. One of them was the famous Tudmir (Teodomiro), whose terms of surrender to the Muslim conquerors to maintain his lordship in the area of Murcia and Orihuela we know thanks to the fact that they were preserved in a kind of capitulation treaty that has come down to us. . Another one of those Visigothic potentates who chose to become a mawali (maulas in Spanish) was the little known Count Casio , of whom later chroniclers say that he traveled to Damascus to pay his respects and submission to the caliph al-Walid, becoming his client, a kind of vassal, in exchange for continuing to hold power in some territories that would end up being part of the called Marca Superior de al-Andalus, which will have the Ebro as its physical border and Zaragoza as the most important city. In this way Count Casio and his descendants would be important figures in a territory located in the middle valley of the Ebro, dominating the regions of present-day Navarra, Aragón and La Rioja. We know almost nothing about this Count Cassius, of whom some later Christian chronicles affirm that he belonged to the "Gothic nation" but that he had embraced the religion of Mohammed.
The first decades of the Banu Qasi family are somewhat obscure due to the sparseness of the sources. The names of some of Cassio's descendants are preserved, who were involved in different rebellion events, at a time when the emiral power was in the process of consolidation and had to face different Muladí uprisings. These years at the end of the 8th century and the beginning of the 9th coincide with a growing presence of the Carolingian empire led by Charlemagne in the area between the Pyrenees and the Ebro, a region that would end up forming part of the domains of the Frankish sovereign, and that will be called “Hispanic Brand”.
Musa ibn Musa ibn Qasi, “the third king of Spain” (816-872)
It will be at the beginning of the 9th century when the time of consolidation and apogee of the Banu Qasi begins, during the mandate of Musa ibn Musa , one of Count Casio's grandsons. It must be said that the name of Musa was quite recurrent in the family since the times of the direct descendants of Count Casio, and that this would denote a certain homage or reverence to the conqueror Musa ibn Nusair (c. 640-c. 716), with whom the Visigoth count himself would have established the conditions of capitulation and submission to the incipient Muslim power in the Iberian Peninsula. Around the year 842 the base of Musa ibn Musa's power would be located in the Riojan castle of Arnedo. In that same year Musa ibn Musa declared himself in rebellion against the power of Abderramán II, and established a military alliance with his relative García Íñiguez, called Garsiya ibn Wannaqo by Islamic sources. Between the two of them they managed to defeat a punitive expedition sent from Córdoba, and capture the leader of that Emirate army. That news so irritated Abderramán II that he himself, accompanied by two of his sons, decided to lead a campaign to punish and subdue the rebel Banu Qasi and Banu Wannaqo. The punitive action would take place in the spring of 843. After a devastating raid, Abderramán II submitted Musa ibn Musa , naming him governor (walí ) from Arnedo in exchange for fidelity and the release of the men who had been captured in the previous campaign.
The stability would not last long, because the following year Musa and his Basque relatives rose again against the emir, around Pamplona, being answered with a new emir raid that became a new submission. Meanwhile, Norman ships attacked Lisbon, Cádiz and Seville, forcing Abderramán to divide his forces to respond to the intense Viking looting . All this would happen during the summer of the year 844, a time of effervescence of Scandinavian expeditions against the peninsular coasts. And it is precisely that Musa ibn Qasi would be claimed by Abderramán to add his forces to the Emirate army and confront the Vikings. Once again Musa will show his independent nature and military talents, by separating from the emir's host to organize a successful ambush against the Vikings in the vicinity of Morón de la Frontera.
Musa would not take long to revolt against Abderramán II, with uprisings occurring in the following years that caused the consequent armed response by the emir, on at least two occasions, in the year 847 and in the year 850. Musa's priority objective with these rebellions was to gain control of the important square of Tudela, something that he would end up achieving and that would lead him to reach his highest levels of power in the middle area of the Ebro. The years 851-852 would be fundamental, since the deaths of Abderramán II and Íñigo Arista, the latter the uterine brother of Musa himself, and called Wannaqo ibn Wannaqo by Islamic texts. Between the years 852 and 859 Musa will reach the zenith of his power , being appointed governor of Zaragoza by the new emir, Muhammad I, and acting de facto as the highest power in the middle Ebro basin, and calling himself, significantly, “the third king of Spain” , the others being the emir Muhammad and the Asturian monarch Ordoño I. These two dates correspond to two battles called "of Albelda", the first elevating the muladí and the second demolishing him. Those would be very propitious years for Musa, constituting in Albelda a new base of his power, controlling Zaragoza and Huesca and articulating a kind of independent taifa in the Ebro valley, also achieving that his son Lope was governor of Toledo. During those years he would establish diplomatic relations with the Carolingian rulers, receiving gifts and congratulations from them, ultimately acting as "the third king of Spain".
Perhaps that success made him adopt increasingly arrogant behaviors, which led his traditional allies from Pamplona to abandon him and get closer and closer to King Ordoño I. In the year 859 Ordoño I, who had been defeated and humiliated by Musa in the the first battle of Albelda, and the king of Pamplona, García Íñiguez, joined forces to attack Musa ibn Musa. They divided their troops in two, besieging one part of Albelda and preparing the other to face Musa's armed response. The Christian hosts crushed those of Musa , who was seriously injured in the fight and was forced to flee. They then entered Albelda and looted and destroyed it to the ground, thus wiping out from the map the proud city that Musa had ordered built as a show of his new might. From then on Musa ibn Musa could no longer act as a proud and independent prince, even being abandoned by his son Lope, recently appointed governor of Toledo, and who understood that times were changing and it was more convenient for him to get closer to the victorious and expansive Ordoño I.
The defeat at Albelda gave impetus to Asturians and Pamploneses, and Musa was forced to submit to Emir Muhammad I and to ask him for help against Christian enemies who increasingly pressed their dominions in the Ebro Valley. In the year 860 Musa he was dispossessed of his position as governor of the Upper March, and two years later, in September 862, he died in Tudela , as a result of a spear received during a confrontation with his son-in-law in Guadalajara a few weeks before. Alberto Cañada Juste, one of the authors who has deepened the most in the study of Musa ibn Musa and the Banu Qasi family, considers the defining characteristics of the character to be “a mixture of rebellion, loyalty at times, disloyalty when it suited him, ambition, arrogance and above all a bravery to all test”. All these qualities, and his particular life trajectory, make Musa ibn Musa a very attractive character, who even gave rise to a trilogy of historical novels based on his life and that of his family, published since 2009 by the writer from Tudela, Carlos Aurensanz. .
The lion cubs. The sons of Musa ibn Musa (Banu Musa)
The setbacks suffered by Musa in his last years will bring a situation of subjugation of his children to the power of the Emirate of Cordoba. Two of them had fallen hostage to Muhammad I. Thus, the decade between 862 and 872 will be marked by the submission and obedience of the Banu Musa to the emir of Córdoba. However, during these years the Banu Musa will not forget their father and the work built by him, and will begin to maneuver to recover what was lost, getting closer to the Christian king Alfonso III, evaluating the possibility of rising again against the emir Muhammad. It will be between the end of 871 and the beginning of 872 when a new rebellion organized by the Banu Musa, Lope, Fortún, Mutarrif and Ismail, led by Lope, the eldest of the brothers, who had been governor of Toledo during his father's lifetime and thanks to him. From their emblematic fort in Arnedo, Lope and his brothers managed to seize important places in the Marca Superior, such as Zaragoza, Huesca and Tudela, in a short time . This speed was possible because the brothers knew how to divide their forces to attack the aforementioned positions in a parallel and coordinated manner, also counting on the support of the king of Pamplona, García Íñiguez, who was his brother-in-law, by virtue of his marriage to his sister Oria Banu. Muse. All of these factors, as well as speed, surprise and the occasional deception, were fundamental elements that explain how the Banu Musa were able to obtain such important positions in a few days. The Banu Musa thus came to dominate the Upper March, controlling enclaves as important as Zaragoza, Huesca, Tudela, Monzón, Arnedo and Viguera.
It is not surprising that the reaction of the emir Muhammad I was not long in coming. Irritated by that rebellion and the subsequent loss of control in the area, he empowered and rewarded the Tuchubíes clan, men of his trust and Arab lineage, to act from positions such as Calatayud and Daroca, located in the southern borders of the rebels, constituting these places that had to be reinforced and fortified to prevent with it a possible expansion of the Banu Musa towards the south. Daroca and Calatayud will therefore become essential bases of operations from which the Tuchubí faithful to Muhammad I will fight the rebels . The emir supplemented these preliminary provisions by organizing a military campaign of punishment and subjugation that he himself would command in the spring of the following year. Although he was in favor of sending his sons on such expeditions, Muhammad I understood that the seriousness of the events required his physical presence in the area, commanding a powerful army that would devastate the lands of the Banu Musa and, incidentally, also those of its allies from Pamplona.
Although that campaign would serve the emir to capture Mutarrif Banu Musa, control Huesca and somehow recover lost honor, it would be the years that would end up putting an end to most of the Banu Musa. Thus Mutarrif and some of his sons were executed by order of Muhammad I in September 873; in the spring of the year 875 it was the eldest of the brothers, Lope, who met his death, because he disjointed his arm while hunting deer, and that serious wound ended his life. Fortún would remain, ruling Tudela, and Ismail, as the only survivors of the lineage of Musa ibn Musa. It must be said, however, that not all scholars agree that Fortún outlived his other siblings. What we do know for sure is that Ismail will act as the leader of the family, establishing his power in Zaragoza , an important city that managed to resist some attacks launched by the troops of Muhammad I and his faithful, remaining in that situation until it was sold to the Cordovan emir in the year 875. From that moment on, Ismail based his power on positions such as Lérida and Monzón , followed by years of relative tranquility in the area, coinciding with the intensity of the Muladí uprisings that were beginning to develop in the south of the peninsula.
In the summer of 886, Emir Muhammad I died, being succeeded by his son al-Mundir. In his brief two-year term, al-Mundir had to face an intense Muladi rebellion commanded by Umar ibn Hafsún from the impregnable fortress of Bobastro, in the mountains of Málaga, a nest of eagles before whose walls the emir was seriously injured, dying as a result of those injuries. In the year 888 the deceased al-Mundir was succeeded in the emirate by his brother Abd-Allah, who would have to face the hardest stage of the uprising led by Ibn Hafsun. The need to focus their efforts on fighting the mulladi rebels will bring a period of tranquility and independence to the Upper March, taking advantage of this situation Muhammad ibn Lope, Musa's grandson, and Ismail ibn Musa, the only surviving son of Musa the Great, both belonging, therefore, to the Banu Qasi family, controlling respectively the western and eastern sectors of the family's traditional domains. This situation would stop the advance of the Christians, especially those from Pamplona, and not because the Banu Qasi wanted to fight on behalf of the Emir Abd-Allah, but because that resistance was essential for the preservation of their possessions and their independence.
In the year 889, Ismail ibn Musa, the last of the sons of Musa ibn Musa the Great, died in Monzón, old and crippled. His domains in Barbitania, a region located between the current provinces of Huesca and Lérida, had somewhat diminished in his last years. From then on, the decline of a clan that had had a marked role in the middle valley of the Ebro for an interval of almost two centuries began. Muhammad ibn Lope will remain the only Banu Qasi in the area, trying to recover Zaragoza on different occasions over eight years. The new clan of the Tuchibíes, who had been elevated by Muhammad I to stop the Banu Qasi from the positions of Daroca and Calatayud, now ruled a Zaragoza coveted by the grandson of the great Musa ibn Musa. The Tuchibíes and the Banu Qasi illustrate the gestation of family clans anchored in territories, some of genuine Arab origin and others of Muladi origin, showing diverse dynamics in the configuration of changing local powers in the Islamic world of the emirate. It would be in one of his attempts to recover Zaragoza when Muhammad ibn Lope will meet his death, in the year 898, having left his son Lope ibn Muhammad as Lord of Toledo. Lope will star in some military action against Barcelona, killing Wifredo el Velloso, count of Barcelona and Gerona, in one of his incursions, in the year 897 . In the year 898 Lope traveled to the area of Jaén to speak with the Muladí rebel Umar ibn Hafsún, to join forces in the fight against the Umayyad emir Abd Allah. That Muladí coalition frightened the chroniclers of the time loyal to the Umayyads, some of whom referred to Ibn Hafsún as "the chief of the criminals of the South", and to Lope ibn Muhammad as "the outlaw of the North". But the death of Lope's father in the siege of Zaragoza required the return of his son to the Ebro valley, to lead the siege that his father had initiated. Death came to Muhammad from a spear struck unexpectedly by a man from Zaragoza, his head being severed and sent to Córdoba as a gift to the Emir Abd Allah. In Córdoba, the head of the fearsome enemy was exposed for eight days, to later be buried with the honors deserved by that brave enemy of Emiral power.
A young Lope surrounded by enemies, Christians and Muslims, will remain at the head of the Banu Qasi clan and domains , all over. Pressured by the Tuchibíes from the south, by Alfonso III from the west, by the people of Pamplona from the north, the situation was complicated for a Lope for whom the dramatic death of his father had been a blow. Even so, in the early 90s of the 9th century he was able to defeat an army of Alfonso III in Tarazona and control the government of Toledo, returning the important city of the Tagus, the former capital of the Visigoth kingdom, to the hands of the Banu Qasi family. In this way, four generations of Banu Qasi, from Musa ibn Musa, were lords of Toledo. However, that control of Toledo was short-lived, and Lope had to face new attacks launched on his lands in Rioja and Alava by the Asturian king Alfonso III.
The death of Lope ibn Muhammad and the slow death throes of the Banu Qasi clan (907-924)
In those years, Sancho I Garcés ascended to the throne of Pamplona, becoming another new enemy for the last great leader of the Banu Qasi. In the summer of the year 907 Lope ibn Muhammad attacked the people of Pamplona in his own capital, Pamplona. Having camped near the city, Lope fell into a couple of ambushes set by the troops of Sancho Garcés I, dying in one of those traps, similar to others that had given Lope such good results in the past. From then on the decline of the Banu Qasi family was unstoppable . The clan gradually lost possessions, as the death of their leader gave wings to their enemies, who took advantage of the moment of confusion and weakness to seize important positions from the Banu Qasi. He would remain at the head of the Abd Allah family, Lope's brother, conserving possessions in La Rioja, Ribera Navarre and the Tarazona area, maintaining submission to the Emir of Córdoba and occasionally confronting the Pamplona king Sancho I Garcés. In one of these confrontations, in the year 915, Abd Allah was captured by men of Sancho I Garcés, to be freed by his brother Mutarrif after paying a ransom to the Basque king. Two months later Abd Allah will die in Tudela, according to a Muslim author as a result of a poison that had been administered to him while he was being held prisoner by the king of Pamplona.
From then on, a process of disintegration of the Banu Qasi lordship began, divided between brothers and sons of the late Abd Allah. The time comes for expansive powers on both sides of the blurred borders that separated the lands of the Christians and the Muslims. In the year 912 Abderramán III became emir of Córdoba , and from 915 he will be in a position to serve the unstable northern borders of the emirate. A year earlier, Ordoño II, a king who, in addition to establishing the capital of the kingdom in the city of León, would carry out an expansive military policy, had ascended the Asturian throne. Sancho I Garcés de Pamplona will do nothing but take positions away from the Banu Qasi, becoming the main scourge of a dynasty doomed to disappear. Thus, by the year 923, the king of the Vascones and Pamploneses had finished with the last leaders of the Banu Qasi clan, conquering some of their most important positions in different military campaigns.
The chronicler Ibn al-Qutiyya summarizes the keys to the beginning of the extinction of the Banu Qasi lordship, saying that:
In fact, those successes of Sancho I Garcés motivated Abderramán III to speed up preparations to launch an intense attack against Pamplona. Thus, in April of the year 924, an immense army commanded by the emir himself left Córdoba for the north . That campaign devastated the lands of Navarra and destroyed Pamplona. Returning from that devastation, the emir stopped in Tudela and dismissed the last Banu Qasi, taking them with him to Córdoba to serve him in his armies. He handed over Tudela to the Tuchubíes of Zaragoza, that Arab clan that had shown so much fidelity to the emirs of Cordoba since the time of Muhammad I. In this way Abderramán III, self-proclaimed caliph five years later, put an end to two hundred years of a muladí lordship that it had acted as a kind of buffer state for the emirs of Córdoba against the beginnings of Christian expansion, and as a protective barrier for an incipient kingdom of Pamplona against the Muslims. In fact, the genesis of what would later be called the Kingdom of Navarre cannot be understood without the existence of that Banu Qasi lordship, related to al-Andalus and Pamplona and, in a certain way, autonomous from everyone. Abderramán III had not yet finished subjugating the muladí sons of Umar ibn Hafsún in Andalusia, and he had to understand that the only thing that the muladí lordships had given their predecessors had been many problems, in the form of rebellions and wars that eroded the emiral power , and that forced him to concentrate efforts and resources against them. Thus ended the historical journey of a dynasty that knew how to navigate between two waters , that of the seniors Vascones, with whom they were related on several occasions, and the Muslim emirs of the south. Musa ibn Musa, the self-proclaimed “third king of Spain”, the most important figure in the history of the Banu Qasi, had laid the foundations for a fairly autonomous mestizo lordship in the middle valley of the Ebro, and his successors had managed to survive several decades thanks to the charisma and military leadership of their bosses, taking advantage of existing weaknesses on both sides of changing and unstable borders.
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