Was medieval Iberia more valuable than Constantinople?

by WhiteyFiskk

In regards to the territorial changes between the Christian and Muslim medieval worlds, who got the better deal in this ""trade""? (As seen at the time and/or in retrospect).

A follow up: If Iberia was more valuable, did the Ottomans ever use their power to respond to the reconquista? And inversely was there desire for another crusade after Constantinoples fall since protecting the Byzantines was the cause of the first one?

Sorry for cramming 3 questions in, just reading about the rise of the Ottomans and this piqued my interest.

thefeckamIdoing

The problem with this is that it supposes there was a unity within both European/Christian sides and Muslim sides that wasn’t there and also that the two events took place close to one another.

Examining the conquest of the Iberian peninsular by Muslim forces- it is very easy (read: lazy) to assume it was part of some great westward operating Jihad but all the evidence suggest it was an accidental set of circumstances that led to it.

To be more precise; the Visigoth ruler Roderic had taken power in a coup and was opposed by a broad coalition of forces including Basques, other Visigoths and Franks (especially the Franks living in Aquitaine which had been Gothic lands until comparatively recently).

This included Berber tribesmen and Roderic’s forces, tapped as they were between Berbers in the south and Basques in the north, ended up destroyed.

Crucially his fall created a power vacuum which the Arabs in North Africa saw as an opportunity to exploit. The mainstay of the anti-Roderic forces (the Basques and the Aquitainians) didn’t really care as the Basques felt safe and Aquitaine was more focused on breaking away from Frankish rule and establishing independence (which they did soon after Roderic had been toppled; the Frankish kingdom being split in civil war at the time).

Without an effective Visigothian resistance the Muslims were able to take much of Iberia; crucially however since Aquitaine was formally part of Gothic lands their conquest reached its high water mark with them crossing the Pyrenees in 721 and attacking Toulouse.

It was here that Odo of Aquitaine inflicted the staggering defeat upon the invading forces which ended all territorial ambition north for the Muslims.

Muslim control of Iberia was divided in the early days as there were serious unresolved issues within their forces between the Berbers (who saw themselves as having done most of the fighting) and the Arabs (who were going through a whole ‘first among equals’ routine back in the Middle East as the ‘Arab first’ policies of al-Hajjaj were making headway).

This led directly to the alliance of the Aquitainians and Uthman ibn Naissa’s Berbers in northern Spain as both groups saw themselves facing larger groups who wanted to rule them (the Franks and the Arabs respectively).

The response to this threat to Arab dominance was Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi’s campaign to cut down Uthman’s Berbers (which he did). Rahman had been a survivor of the defeat at Toulouse and knew how dangerous Aquitaine could be. The purge of Berbers had, however depleted available forces in Iberia and it was for this reason Rahman had to call upon Arab reinforcements from Yemen and Syria before he could launch a punitive raid upon Aquitaine.

Since Odo was occupied fighting off multiple attempts by Charles Martel to re-take the now independent region the raid was able to make good ground. Odo did ask for Frankish help but, as had happened in 721, Charles Martel refused point blank to aid him.

Martel’s priorities were always that the region should bend the knee- he really didn’t care what the Muslims were doing.

After several defeats (the 721 campaign had been marked by Muslim hubris, allowing Odo achieve his victory, a lesson Rahman learned well and had prevented in the 732 raid), Odo was finally forced to submit to Martel in order to gain military aid.

Having conquered Aquitaine without having to fight for it, it was only then that Martel commuted his forces to stopping the raid. At Tours he did (it must be said, an example of how great a propagandist Charles Martel was is found by his supporters basically taking the numbers of Muslims killed at Toulouse and saying that was the number killed at Tours; also, the battle was won by Odo whose flanking action caused the disorganised retreat by the Muslims which led to the death of Rahman).

Most folks forget/don’t realise that Martel’s forces were all in foot without any significant cavalry. All they did was take a beating and hold in position.

With their commander dead, the Muslims retreat, and Martel is able to claim Aquitaine. Yet Muslim Iberia’s was not a unified whole for quite some time afterwards.

There were several large scale Berber revolts against Arab overlordship, including a serious weakening of the strength of al-Andalus in 741-743. And indeed when the Umayyad Caliphate was toppled in the 750’s the Umayyad’s were able to basically take over al-Andalusia and declare themselves independent of the Abbasid Caliphs.

This is how we end up with the Caliphate of Córdoba.

The Ottoman conquest of the Middle East took place some centuries later and by the time they had expanded far enough to extend their sphere of influence to Iberia? Muslim al-Andalus was no more.

Thus I don’t think any kind of trade would have been possible.