Abū ‘Āmir Ibn Gharsīyah al-Bashkunsī ( ar, أبو عامر بن غرسية البشكنسي ) (died 1084), popularly known as Ibn Gharsiya or Ibn García, was a
Muwallad poet and ''katib'' (writer) in the
Taifa court in Denia.
Ibn Gharsiya is known as a proponent for the
shu'ubiyya
''Shu'ubiyya'' ( ar, الشعوبية) was a literary-political movement which opposed the privileged status of Arabs within the Muslim community. The vast majority of the Shu'ubis were Persian.
Terminology
The name of the movement is derived fr ...
polemical thought in Al-Andalus, arguing in his ''Risala'' for the superiority of Byzantine and Persian culture over the culture of Arabs. Some scholars have interpreted the Risālah as a work by a freed slave arguing for the inclusion of his
ṣaqālibah freedmen rulers of Dénia in the dominant Arabic-Muslim culture of al-Andalus.
Personal background
Ibn Gharsiya was born into a Christian
Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
family, but was taken prisoner in his childhood and raised in the Islamic faith. He grew up proficient and eloquent in both
Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...
and the colloquial
Andalusi Arabic
Andalusi Arabic (), also known as Andalusian Arabic, was a variety or varieties of Arabic spoken mainly from the 9th to the 17th century in Al-Andalus, the regions of the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal) once under Muslim rule. It b ...
dialect. Ibn Gharsiya was proud of his Basque origin and remained a lifelong fervent Muslim throughout his lifetime. His surname ''al-Bashkunsi'' is the Arabic word for Basque, and therefore, signified his Basque heritage. He served under the
Slavic ''
Emir
Emir (; ar, أمير ' ), sometimes transliterated amir, amier, or ameer, is a word of Arabic origin that can refer to a male monarch, aristocrat, holder of high-ranking military or political office, or other person possessing actual or cerem ...
'' of
Denia,
Mujāhid al-‘Āmirī, and his son, Ali ibn Mujahid.
Like Ibn Gharsiya, the ruling family of Denia were also Muwallad and had broken free from the
Caliphate of Cordoba
A caliphate or khilāfah ( ar, خِلَافَة, ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with the title of caliph (; ar, خَلِيفَة , ), a person considered a political-religious successor to th ...
after the turbulent year of 1009. Like other ''taifas'', his kingdom had sought to distance itself from the
Umayyad period. Ibn Gharsiya subsequently spent most of his life as a ''katib'' at the court of Denia.
Ideology
Ibn Gharsiya was a leading proponent and advocate of the ''
Shu'ubiyya
''Shu'ubiyya'' ( ar, الشعوبية) was a literary-political movement which opposed the privileged status of Arabs within the Muslim community. The vast majority of the Shu'ubis were Persian.
Terminology
The name of the movement is derived fr ...
'' thought in Al-Andalus.
The ''Shu'ubiyya'' movement demanded equality of power, wealth and status of the Non-Arab Berbers and Muwalladun by Arabs.
In common with the Arabs, they were very active in promoting the Arab-Islamic culture and language and claimed cultural integration with the Arab ethnic groups—as had been achieved by the non-Arab
Semitic people
Semites, Semitic peoples or Semitic cultures is an obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group.[Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...]
.
The ''risala'' of Ibn Gharsiya
Between 1051 and 1056, Ibn Gharsiya wrote a ''
risala'' against the
Arab
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...
ascendancy in al-Andalus, which concurrently praises non-Arab Islam. Opponents of this work have called it violent, insulting, and bitter in its attack on the Arabs and, contrary to prevailing tradition, it criticises Arab Muslims as inferior in rank and lineage. Simultaneously, it glorifies non-Arab Muslims, such as the
Berbers
, image = File:Berber_flag.svg
, caption = The Berber ethnic flag
, population = 36 million
, region1 = Morocco
, pop1 = 14 million to 18 million
, region2 = Algeria
, pop2 ...
, and also those converts from the
Visigoths
The Visigoths (; la, Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, Wisi) were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is ...
,
Slavs
Slavs are the largest European ethnolinguistic group. They speak the various Slavic languages, belonging to the larger Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout northern Eurasia, main ...
, and
Romans
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
* Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
.
In the ''risala'', Ibn Gharsiya asserts cultural superiority of the Muwalladun over the Arabs by diminishing and belittling Arab culture.
While he boasts about the Muladi mastery of natural philosophy, exact logic, astronomy, music, arithmetic, and geometry, he ridicules Arabs as "experts in the description of towering camels."
He also tries to show that non-Arab rule in Denia was much better than those of the other ''taifas''. By doing so, he attempted to formulate and legitimise a non-Arab alternative to Arab rule which involved combining Arab and non-Arab traditions, which were mainly
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
and
Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
. This gave him an opportunity to debate with the Arab Islamic scholar Abu Jaʻfar Ahmad ibn al-Jazzar, who had been present at the court of Ibn Sumadih, ''Emir'' of
Almeria. However, according to the Escorial manuscript, the letter was addressed to a certain Abu ʻAbd Allah Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn al-Haddad al-Qaisi. However, despite this difference, it is clear that the addressee was linked to the court of Ibn Sumadih and to the ''taifa'' state of Almeria.
Ibn Gharsiya's epistle addresses some of the most fundamental and important questions in the Muslim community of al-Andalus at the time, such as the relationship between the Arabs and Berbers of the Islamic faith with the Muwalladun, who were the descendants of the indigenous
Iberian converts to
Islam
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...
. Ibn Gharsiya stressed that a sound interpretation of Islam should also be of value to the non-Arab Muslims. This epistle represents the adoption of the Eastern ''Shuʻubi'' ideology by many indigenous Andalusian Muslims, which argued against Arab exclusivity, as expressed in their treatises comparing the Arabs unfavourably with the Persians and the Byzantines.
Ibn Gharsiya's ''risala'' was written in Arabic courtly prose; thus it did not represent a rejection of Arabic literary culture, but only of Arab lineage. According to the ''Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature'', this ''risala'' was of minor importance, and its few exponents tended to repeat clichés adopted from the earlier Islamic East. The ''risala'' elicited at least seven refutations, only five of which actually survive.
Like the original, the refutations seem to have been written in imitation of eastern models.
Only one of the refutations was specifically directed against Ibn Gharsiya.
American scholar
James T. Monroe states that the fact of Ibn Gharsiya's ''risala'' against the Arabs going unpunished, indicates that the cause of
Arabism
Pan-Arabism ( ar, الوحدة العربية or ) is an ideology that espouses the unification of the countries of North Africa and Western Asia from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea, which is referred to as the Arab world. It is closely c ...
as a meaningful social force had ceased to have any political significance.
Göran Larsson, an associate professor of religious studies at the
University of Gothenburg
The University of Gothenburg ( sv, Göteborgs universitet) is a university in Sweden's second largest city, Gothenburg. Founded in 1891, the university is the third-oldest of the current Swedish universities and with 37,000 students and 6000 st ...
,
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
, points out that in spite of his extensive use of Persian traditions in his ''risala'', Ibn Gharsiya was not promoting a specifically Persian sovereign, merely a non-Arab model of rule.
To this, Monroe adds:
Legacy
Besides the epistle, the only words from Ibn Gharsiya that has been preserved are some lines by the 12th century Andalusian geographer, historian and writer,
Ibn Said al-Maghribi
Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Mūsā ibn Saʿīd al-Maghribī ( ar, علي بن موسى المغربي بن سعيد) (1213–1286), also known as Ibn Saʿīd al-Andalusī, was an Arab geographer, historian, poet, and the most important collector o ...
. These lines are believed to have been composed in praise of Ibn Gharsiya's lord, Ali ibn Mujahid.
In praise of Ibn Gharsiya, Ibn Said states:
See also
*
Arabic literature
Arabic literature ( ar, الأدب العربي / ALA-LC: ''al-Adab al-‘Arabī'') is the writing, both as prose and poetry, produced by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is '' Adab'', which is derived from ...
*
Bashar ibn Burd
Bashār ibn Burd ( ar, بشار بن برد; 714–783), nicknamed al-Mura'ath, meaning "the wattled", was a Persian poet of the late Umayyad and early Abbasid periods who wrote in Arabic. Bashar was of Persian ethnicity; his grandfather was taken ...
– famous ''Shu'ubi'' poet.
*
Banu Qasi
The Banu Qasi, Banu Kasi, Beni Casi ( ar, بني قسي or بنو قسي, meaning "sons" or "heirs of Cassius"), Banu Musa, or al-Qasawi were a Muladí (local convert) dynasty that in the 9th century ruled the Upper March, a frontier ter ...
– Basque Muslim dynasty.
*
Count Cassius – progenitor of the Banu Qasi dynasty.
*
Umar ibn Hafsun
Umar ibn Hafsun ibn Ja'far ibn Salim ( ar, عمر بن حَفْصُون بن جَعْفَ بن سالم) (c. 850 – 917), known in Spanish history as Omar ben Hafsun, was a 9th-century political and military leader ...
– Anti-Umayyad rebel leader.
Footnotes
: a Cf., ''The Shu'ubiyya in al-Andalus. The risala of Ibn Garcia and five refutations'' (University of California Press 1970), translated with an introduction and notes by
James T. Monroe.
Citations
References
*
*.
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ibn Gharsiya
Basque Muslims
People of Basque descent
Poets from al-Andalus
11th-century Arabic poets
Shu'ubiyya
Taifa of Dénia