Volume 90, Number 1 - California Historical Society

Muhammad’s military campaigns, to remind the
faithful they had a duty to fight infidels and apostates.
Three in particular, the siyars of Abu Ishaq
al-Fazari, Abu al-Awzai, and Abdullah ibn al-
Mubarak, which, together, earned the title Kitab-
Fadl al-Jihad (Book on the Merit of Jihad), held
great appeal in Muslim Spain. Ibn abi Zamanin,
a tenth-century resident of Córdoba, contributed
to the corpus of militant works by composing
Qidwat al-Ghazi (The Fighter’s Exemplar). Sometime
in the twelfth century, Abu Muhammad
ibn Arabi, a scholar and mystic from Murcia,
elaborated on the Malikite theme of purity and
simplicity in Al Futuhat al Mekkiya (Meccan
Illuminations). At least a hundred years later,
Muhammad al-Qurtubi, another Malakite jurist
from Córdoba, composed Al-tadhkira fi awhal
al-mawtawaumar al-akhira (Remembrance of the
Affairs of the Dead and Matters of the Hereafter).
Al-Qurtubi argued that Islam’s promise to renew
humanity depended on the piety of Spanish Muslims.
Once they emulated the Prophet and his
companions, they would assume their destiny to
extend Dar al Islam. 28
Thus, the man making ribat in Spain had ample
reason to think war was an appropriate form
of worship. He dwelled on the margins of the
Islamic world where he faced the threat of Christian
attack. Feeling besieged or, if so inclined,
eager to prove his piety by going to battle, he
could overlook the Quranic injunctions commanding
that only a caliph, the recognized leader
of the Islamic community, had the authority to
declare war. He could follow his own conscience
to go on the attack or, more likely, heed a mystic
who reminded the faithful how a warrior could
find glory. 29
If battle loomed, the warrior could approach his
calling as would a pilgrim who left home to participate
in a sacred exercise. While any pilgrimage
in the Muslim or Christian world involves a
trip to a holy place, the greater and perhaps more
important element of the journey often requires
the believer to hunger and fast to repent for his
sins. If no different from a pilgrim who makes
penance, the murabit—the man making ribat—
would also see the violent deed, or the potential
of its unleashing, as a spiritual act. He reclined
in a sacred moment where the pious deed, even
if belligerent, promised redemption. Verse 21.1
of the Muwatta, for instance, discussed the similarities
when saying that the man on jihad was
like “someone who fasts and prays constantly.”
Other works expanded the theme. Al-Mubarak,
whose siyar was part of the Book on the Merit of
Jihad, argued that the murabit who “volunteered”
for battle resembled the pilgrim who fasted and
made the haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. 30 In The
Fighter’s Exemplar, al-Zamanin, the tenth-century
scholar from Córdoba, explained how the pilgrim
performing ribat during times of war could atone
for his sins. When making ribat, even if briefly,
he erased some of his sins and lessened the
chance of punishment in the afterlife. Indeed,
the longer his commitment, the more likely he
cleansed his soul. 31
By the eleventh century, the murabit, if he conducted
himself as a pilgrim on a sacred journey,
acquired the confidence that his salvation,
and that of those around him, lay in war. The
historian Maribel Fierro writes that a teaching
attributed to Muhammad—“Islam began as a
stranger and shall return to being a stranger
as it began”—convinced believers in Spain that
they could elide the boundary between mysticism
and warfare. To be fair, the teaching, what
Muslims call a hadith, had more innocent applications.
According to some Muslim scholars in
the Middle Ages, Muhammad prophesied that
Islam would become corrupt when the faithful
neglected to honor God. To see that believers
remembered their obligations, the scholars, and
any person who wished to share their sacrifice,
set a pious example by retreating from society to
pray and perform acts of charity. 32
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