ʿAbbādid

ABBADIDES, a Mahommedan dynasty which arose in Spain on the

downfall of the western caliphate. It lasted from about 1023

till 1091, but during the short period of its existence was

singularly active and typical of its time. The founder of

the house was Abd-ul-Qasim Mahommed, the cadi of Seville in

1023. He was the chief of an Arab family settled in the city

from the first days of the conquest. The Beni-abbad were not

of ancient descent, though the poets, whom they paid largely,

made an illustrious pedigree for them when they had become

powerful. They were, however, very rich.

Abd-ul-Qasim gained

the confidence of the townsmen by organizing a successful

resistance to the Berber soldiers of fortune who were grasping

at the fragments of the caliphate. At first he professed to

rule only with the advice of a council formed of the nobles,

but when his power became established he dispensed with this

show of republican government, and then gave himself the

appearance of a legitimate title by protecting an impostor

who professed to be the caliph Hisham II. When Abd-ul-Qasim

died in 1042 he had created a state which, though weak in

itself, was strong as compared to the little powers about

it. He had made his family the recognized leaders of the

Mahommedans of Arab and native Spanish descent against

the Berber element, whose chief was the king of Granada.

Abbad, surnamed El Motaddid, his son and successor, is

one of the most remarkable figures in Spanish Mahommedan

history. He had a striking resemblance to the Italian princes

of the later middle ages and the early renaissance, of the

stamp of Fiiipo Maria Visconti.

El Motaddid was a poet and

a lover of letters, who was also a poisoner, a drinker of

wine, a sceptic and treacherous to the utmost degree. Though

he waged war all through his reign he very rarely appeared in

the field, but directed the generals, whom he never trusted,

from his ``lair in the fortified palace, the Alcazar of

Seville. He killed with his own hand one of his sons who had

rebelled against him. On one occasion he trapped a number

of his enemies, the Berber chiefs of the Ronda, into visiting

him, and got rid of them by smothering them in the hot room

of a bath. It was his taste to preserve the skulls of the

enemies he had killed--those of the meaner men to be used as

flower-pots, while those of the princes were kept in special

chests. His reign until his death on the 28th of February

1069 was mainly spent in extending his power at the expense

of his smaller neighbours, and in conflicts with his chief

rival the king of Granada. These incessant wars weakened the

Mahommedans, to the great advantage of the rising power of

the Christian kings of Leon and Castile, but they gave the

kingdom of Seville a certain superiority over the other little

states. After 1063 he was assailed by Fernando El Magno of

Castile and Leon, who marched to the gates of Seville, and

forced him to pay tribute.

His son, Mahommed Abd-ul-Qasim

Abenebet---who reigned by the title of El Motamid--was the

third and last of the Abbadides, He was a no less remarkable

person than his father and much more amiable. Like him he was

a poet, and a favourer of poets. El Motamid went, however,

considerably further in patronage of literature than his father,

for he chose as his favourite and prime minister the poet Ibn

Ammar. In the end the vanity and featherheadedness of Ibn

Ammar drove his master to kill him. El Motamid was even

more influenced by his favourite wife, Romaica, than by his

vizir. He had met her paddling in the Guadalquivir, purchased

her from her master, and made her his wife. The caprices

of Romaica, and the lavish extravagance of Motamid in his

efforts to please her, form the subject of many stories.

In politics he carried on the feuds of his family with the

Berbers, and in his efforts to extend his dominions could be

as faithless as his father. His wars and his extravagance

exhausted his treasury, and he oppressed his subjects by

taxes. In 1080 he brought down upon himself the vengeance of

Alphonso VI. of Castile by a typical piece of flighty oriental

barbarity. He had endeavoured to pay part of his tribute to the

Christian king with false money. The fraud was detected by a

Jew, who was one of the envoys of Alphonso. El Motamid, in

a moment of folly and rage, crucified the Jew and imprisoned

the Christian members of the mission. Alphonso retaliated

by a destructive raid.

When Alphonso took Toledo in 1085,

El Motamid called in Yusef ibn Tashfin, the Almoravide (see

SPAIN, History, and ALMORAVIDES). During the six years

which preceded his deposition in 1091, El Motamid behaved

with valour on the field, but with much meanness and political

folly. He endeavoured to curry favour with Yusef by betraying

the other Mahommedan princes to him, and intrigued to secure

the alliance of Alphonso against the Almoravide. It was

probably during this period that he surrendered his beautiful

daughter Zaida to the Christian king, who made her his

concubine, and is said by some authorities to have married

her after she bore him a son, Sancho. The vacillations and

submissions of El Motamid did not save him from the fate

which overtook his fellow-princes. Their scepticism and

extortion had tired their subjects, and the mullahs gave Yusef

a ``fetva authorzing him to remove them in the interest of

religion. In 1091 the Almoravides stormed Seville. El

Motamid, who had fought bravely, was weak enough to order his

sons to surrender the fortresses they still held, in order

to save his own life. He died in prison in Africa in 1095.

---

Source: An unnamed encyclopedia from a project that puts out-of-copyright texts into the public domain.

This is from a *very* old source, and reflects the thinking of the turn of the last century. -- BryceHarrington