Volume 90, Number 1 - California Historical Society

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The historian Elena Lourie notes that Muslims
may have used the practice of ribat to conquer
Spain in the eighth century. 18 The Almoravides,
a fundamentalist group from northern Africa
that came to Spain in 1086, considered ribat an
important act of worship. They used the practice
of ribat to train young men in a monastic
setting where they prayed and participated in
military drills. 19 As for the Almohades, another
fundamentalist group from Africa that arrived in
Spain in 1147, it is not clear how they regarded
ribat. But it is unlikely they would let the practice
lapse. 20 Some scholars contend that ribat
lost its military character by the twelfth century
and emphasized prayer and study. Nevertheless,
the more militant expressions of ribat endured
for some time. As late as 1354, Ibn Hudhayi,
a scholar from Almería in southern Spain,
described ribats as fortresses that defended Muslims
from Christian advances. 21
If Muslims in Spain associated ribat with war,
they could consult sacred texts to confirm the
connection. 22 It is not enough to cite Quranic
passages that speak about the believer’s duty
to do battle. 23 The attitudes that emerge in the
Qur’an are more telling. The religious scholar
Richard Martin explains that in the first centuries
after Muhammad’s death many Muslims believed
that it was their duty to supersede the flawed
tenets of Christianity and Judaism and convert
humanity to Islam. Once the world accepted the
one true faith, Muslims would restore the perfection
that God had created at the beginning of
time. To set individuals “on the path of God,” it
was incumbent on believers to “command the
good and forbid evil.” 24
When Islam was slow to spread, at least by the
reckoning of some Muslims, the world could
assume a stark, violent cast. The faithful, along
with unbelievers who acknowledged Muslim
authority, dwelled within Dar al-Islam, the House
California History • volume 90 number 1 2012
of Islam. Beyond emerged Dar al-Harb, the
House of War, the regions where infidels resisted
Islam’s advance. With humanity divided, and
abiding in uneasy accord, Muslims could use
violence to subsume the House of War within the
House of Islam. Until the conversion of all, or
at minimum until the infidels honored Islam’s
primacy, peace would never prevail. Any cessation
of hostilities would be but a truce, according
to Martin, and once conditions proved favorable,
the faithful would press the attack to make Islam
supreme. 25
If war was to be, the believer could learn how
his efforts on the battlefield would bring divine
reward. Many Muslims in Spain followed the
Malikite school of jurisprudence, one of four
schools of thought recognized by the Sunnis,
the largest branch of Islam. The Malikites took
their name from Malik ibn Anas, a Muslim
scholar from the eighth century who compiled
the Muwatta, a collection of teachings attributed
to the prophet Muhammad and his companions.
26 Malik emphasized the simple, unadorned
piety of the first Muslims—Muwatta means “the
simplified”—in which the faithful remembered
their obligation to make Islam a universal religion.
By the ninth century, the Malikites had
established themselves in Spain as the jurists
and scholars whose interpretation of Islamic
law influenced the course of daily life. With the
Muwatta in hand, some Malikites declared that
should a believer kill or be killed, the shedding of
blood amounted to a sacrifice whose significance
increased his status and the blessings he would
accrue in the afterlife. Verse 21.15.34 instructs
the warrior that “the bold one fights for the sake
of combat, not for the spoils. Being slain is but
one way of meeting death, and the martyr is the
one who gives of himself, expectant of reward
from Allah.” 27
The consecration of war deepened over time. By
the mid-ninth century, scholars in ancient Persia
and elsewhere composed siyars, histories of