Event Host: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Short Description: During the Umayyad caliphate of Cordoba (929-1031), the Umayyad power and the Christian Kingdoms of Leon and Pamplona maintained complex relationships, with moments of strife, but also of peaceful co-existence.
Dr. Eneko López Martínez de Marigorta is Assistant Professor at the University of the Basque Country. In the lecture, he discusses the Umayyad caliphate.
During the Umayyad caliphate of Cordoba (929-1031), the Umayyad power and the Christian Kingdoms of Leon and Pamplona maintained complex relationships, with moments of strife, but also of peaceful co-existence. The prevailing historiography so far has understood the institutional development and the strengthening of these Christian powers as a result of their belligerency against al- Andalus. However, by bringing together Arabic and Latin sources, one may suggest that, for most of the caliphal period, the Umayyads were able to impose their hegemony throughout the Iberian Peninsula, and that there was an increasing commitment of Christian communities to the Umayyad sovereign. This predominance was possible thanks to the ability of the caliph to temporarily integrate some Christian elites into the hierarchy of the Umayyad power, so that the former began acting as regional representatives for the Caliphate.
