The Lower March (Arabic : الثغر الأدنى, al-Thaghr al-Adnā; Portuguese : Marca Inferior) was a march of al-Andalus. It included territory that is now in Portugal. [1]
As a borderland territory, it was home to the so-called muwalladun or indigenous converts and their descendants, some of whom eventually established dynastic lordships. This was the case of Ibn Marwan al-Jilliqi who ruled the Cora of Mérida during the early part of the ninth century, a region with its capital in modern Mérida, including the area of modern Badajoz. [2] Several rebellions occurred in the territory, most notably caused by Umar ibn Hafsun and two of his sons refusing to recognize the Emir of Cordoba's sovereignty; [3] even after Ibn Hafsun's death, small pockets of independent resistance persisted. [3] It was not until a decade after Ibn Hafsun’s demise that the Emir of Cordoba was able to completely quell the rebellion in the Lower March. [3]
In the reign of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (912–961), the Lower March was combined with the Central March to form an enlarged march with its capital at Medinaceli in the former Central March. It retained the name of the Lower March. [4] [5]
Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu'awiya ibn Hisham, commonly known as Abd al-Rahman I, was the founder and first emir of the Emirate of Córdoba, ruling from 756 to 788. He established the Umayyad dynasty in al-Andalus, which continued for nearly three centuries.
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ḥakam al-Rabdī ibn Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Dākhil, or simply ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III, was the Umayyad Emir of Córdoba from 912 to 929, at which point he founded the Caliphate of Córdoba, serving as its first caliph until his death. Abd al-Rahman won the laqab (sobriquet) al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh in his early 20s when he supported the Maghrawa Berbers in North Africa against Fatimid expansion and later claimed the title of Caliph for himself. His half-century reign was known for its religious tolerance.
The term Moor is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim populations of the Maghreb, al-Andalus, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a single, distinct or self-defined people. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica observed that the term had "no real ethnological value." Europeans of the Middle Ages and the early modern period variously applied the name to Arabs, Berbers, and Muslim Europeans.
Al-Andalus was the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula. The name describes the different Muslim states that controlled these territories at various times between 711 and 1492. At its greatest geographical extent, it occupied most of the peninsula as well as Septimania under Umayyad rule. These boundaries changed constantly through a series of conquests Western historiography has traditionally characterized as the Reconquista, eventually shrinking to the south and finally to the Emirate of Granada.
Abu al-As al-Hakam ibn Hisham ibn Abd al-Rahman was Umayyad Emir of Cordoba from 796 until 822 in Al-Andalus.
Al-Mundhir was Emir of Córdoba from 886 to 888. He was a member of the Umayyad dynasty of Al-Andalus, the son of Muhamad bin Abd al-Rahman.
Abd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman was the seventh emir of Córdoba, reigning from 888 to 912 in Al-Andalus.
This is a timeline of notable events during the period of Muslim presence in Iberia, starting with the Umayyad conquest in the 8th century.
The Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, also known as the Arab conquest of Spain, by the Umayyad Caliphate occurred between approximately 711 and the 720s. The conquest resulted in the destruction of the Christian Visigothic Kingdom of Spain and led to the establishment of a Muslim Arabian-Moorish state, Al-Andalus.
This is a historical timeline of Portugal.
Gharb al-Andalus, or just al-Gharb, was the name given by the Muslims of Iberia to the region of southern modern-day Portugal and part of West-central modern day Spain during their rule of the territory, from 711 to 1249. This period started with the fall of the Visigothic kingdom after Tariq ibn-Ziyad's invasion of Iberia and the establishment of the Umayyad control in the territory. The present day Algarve derives its name from this Arabic name. The region had a population of about 500,000 people.
Muladí were the native population of the Iberian Peninsula who adopted Islam after the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the early 8th century. The demarcation of muladíes from the population of Arab and Berber extraction was relevant in the first centuries of Islamic rule, however, by the 10th century, they diluted into the bulk of the society of al-Andalus. In Sicily, Muslims of local descent or of mixed Arab, and Sicilian origin were also sometimes referred to as Muwallad. They were also called Musalimah ('Islamized'). In broader usage, the word muwallad is used to describe Arabs of mixed parentage, especially those not living in their ancestral homelands.
Marvão is a municipality in Portalegre District in Portugal. The population in 2020 was 2,972, in an area of 154.90 km2. The present Mayor is Luís Vitorino, elected by the Social Democratic Party. The municipal holiday is September 8.
Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn Nasr, also known as Ibn al-Ahmar and by his honorific al-Ghalib billah, was the first ruler of the Emirate of Granada, the last independent Muslim state on the Iberian Peninsula, and the founder of its ruling Nasrid dynasty. He lived during a time when Iberia's Christian kingdoms—especially Portugal, Castile and Aragon—were expanding at the expense of the Islamic territory in Iberia, called Al-Andalus. Muhammad ibn Yusuf took power in his native Arjona in 1232 when he rebelled against the de facto leader of Al-Andalus, Ibn Hud. During this rebellion, he was able to take control of Córdoba and Seville briefly, before he lost both cities to Ibn Hud. Forced to acknowledge Ibn Hud's suzerainty, Muhammad was able to retain Arjona and Jaén. In 1236, he betrayed Ibn Hud by helping Ferdinand III of Castile take Córdoba. In the years that followed, Muhammad was able to gain control over southern cities, including Granada (1237), Almería (1238), and Málaga (1239). In 1244, he lost Arjona to Castile. Two years later, in 1246, he agreed to surrender Jaén and accept Ferdinand's overlordship in exchange for a 20-year truce.
Umar ibn Hafsun ibn Ja'far ibn Salim, known in Spanish history as Omar ben Hafsun, was a 9th-century political and military leader who contested Umayyad power in Iberia.
Abū ’Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf ibn Hūd al-Judhamī, commonly known as Ibn Hud, was a taifa emir who controlled much of al-Andalus from 1228 to 1238. He was a descendant of the Hudid dynasty which ruled the Taifa of Zaragoza until 1118.
The Taifa of Seville was an Arab kingdom which was ruled by the Abbadid dynasty. It was established in 1023 and lasted until 1091, in what is today southern Spain and Portugal. It gained independence from the Caliphate of Cordoba and it expanded the territory it ruled in the mid-11th century. The emerging power of Castile led Seville to ask military assistance from the Almoravids, who then occupied Seville.
The Taifa of Toledo was an islamic polity (taifa) located in the centre of the Iberian Peninsula in the high middle ages. It was ruled by the Dhulnunids, a Hawwara Berber clan. It emerged after 1018 upon the fracturing of the Caliphate of Córdoba, when the Dhulnunids, already strong in the lands of Santaver, Cuenca, Huete and Uclés, seized control over the city of Toledo, the capital of the Middle March of Al-Andalus. Upon later territorial conquest, the taifa also expanded to the land of Calatrava. It lasted until the Christian conquest of Toledo in 1085.
The Upper March was an administrative and military division in northeast Al-Andalus, roughly corresponding to the Ebro valley and adjacent Mediterranean coast, from the 8th century to the early 11th century. It was established as a frontier province, or march, of the Emirate, later Caliphate of Córdoba, facing the Christian lands of the Carolingian Empire's Marca Hispanica, the Asturo-Leonese marches of Castile and Álava, and the nascent autonomous Pyrenean principalities. In 1018, the decline of the central Cordoban state allowed the lords of the Upper March to establish in its place the Taifa of Zaragoza.
The Central March or Middle March was the central of the three marches along the northern frontier of the Emirate and Caliphate of Córdoba between the 8th and 11th centuries. It lay between the Lower March to the southwest and the Upper March to the northeast. Its administrative centre was at first Toledo, later Medinaceli.