ABBADIDES, a Mahommedan dynasty which arose in Spain on the
downfall of the western caliphate. It lasted from about 1023
till 1091, but during the short period of its existence was
singularly active and typical of its time. The founder of
the house was Abd-ul-Qasim Mahommed, the cadi of Seville in
1023. He was the chief of an Arab family settled in the city
from the first days of the conquest. The Beni-abbad were not
of ancient descent, though the poets, whom they paid largely,
made an illustrious pedigree for them when they had become
powerful. They were, however, very rich. Abd-ul-Qasim gained
the confidence of the townsmen by organizing a successful
resistance to the Berber soldiers of fortune who were grasping
at the fragments of the caliphate. At first he professed to
rule only with the advice of a council formed of the nobles,
but when his power became established he dispensed with this
show of republican government, and then gave himself the
appearance of a legitimate title by protecting an impostor
who professed to be the caliph Hisham II. When Abd-ul-Qasim
died in 1042 he had created a state which, though weak in
itself, was strong as compared to the little powers about
it. He had made his family the recognized leaders of the
Mahommedans of Arab and native Spanish descent against
the Berber element, whose chief was the king of Granada.
Abbad, surnamed El Motaddid, his son and successor, is
one of the most remarkable figures in Spanish Mahommedan
history. He had a striking resemblance to the Italian princes
of the later middle ages and the early renaissance, of the
stamp of Fiiipo Maria Visconti. El Motaddid was a poet and
a lover of letters, who was also a poisoner, a drinker of
wine, a sceptic and treacherous to the utmost degree. Though
he waged war all through his reign he very rarely appeared in
the field, but directed the generals, whom he never trusted,
from his ``lair'' in the fortified palace, the Alcazar of
Seville. He killed with his own hand one of his sons who had
rebelled against him. On one occasion he trapped a number
of his enemies, the Berber chiefs of the Ronda, into visiting
him, and got rid of them by smothering them in the hot room
of a bath. It was his taste to preserve the skulls of the
enemies he had killed--those of the meaner men to be used as
flower-pots, while those of the princes were kept in special
chests. His reign until his death on the 28th of February
1069 was mainly spent in extending his power at the expense
of his smaller neighbours, and in conflicts with his chief
rival the king of Granada. These incessant wars weakened the
Mahommedans, to the great advantage of the rising power of
the Christian kings of Leon and Castile, but they gave the
kingdom of Seville a certain superiority over the other little
states. After 1063 he was assailed by Fernando El Magno of
Castile and Leon, who marched to the gates of Seville, and
forced him to pay tribute. His son, Mahommed Abd-ul-Qasim
Abenebet---who reigned by the title of El Motamid--was the
third and last of the Abbadides, He was a no less remarkable
person than his father and much more amiable. Like him he was
a poet, and a favourer of poets. El Motamid went, however,
considerably further in patronage of literature than his father,
for he chose as his favourite and prime minister the poet Ibn
Ammar. In the end the vanity and featherheadedness of Ibn
Ammar drove his master to kill him. El Motamid was even
more influenced by his favourite wife, Romaica, than by his
vizir. He had met her paddling in the Guadalquivir, purchased
her from her master, and made her his wife. The caprices
of Romaica, and the lavish extravagance of Motamid in his
efforts to please her, form the subject of many stories.
In politics he carried on the feuds of his family with the
Berbers, and in his efforts to extend his dominions could be
as faithless as his father. His wars and his extravagance
exhausted his treasury, and he oppressed his subjects by
taxes. In 1080 he brought down upon himself the vengeance of
Alphonso VI. of Castile by a typical piece of flighty oriental
barbarity. He had endeavoured to pay part of his tribute to the
Christian king with false money. The fraud was detected by a
Jew, who was one of the envoys of Alphonso. El Motamid, in
a moment of folly and rage, crucified the Jew and imprisoned
the Christian members of the mission. Alphonso retaliated
by a destructive raid. When Alphonso took Toledo in 1085,
El Motamid called in Yusef ibn Tashfin, the Almoravide (see
SPAIN, History, and ALMORAVIDES). During the six years
which preceded his deposition in 1091, El Motamid behaved
with valour on the field, but with much meanness and political
folly. He endeavoured to curry favour with Yusef by betraying
the other Mahommedan princes to him, and intrigued to secure
the alliance of Alphonso against the Almoravide. It was
probably during this period that he surrendered his beautiful
daughter Zaida to the Christian king, who made her his
concubine, and is said by some authorities to have married
her after she bore him a son, Sancho. The vacillations and
submissions of El Motamid did not save him from the fate
which overtook his fellow-princes. Their scepticism and
extortion had tired their subjects, and the mullahs gave Yusef
a ``fetva'' authorzing him to remove them in the interest of
religion. In 1091 the Almoravides stormed Seville. El
Motamid, who had fought bravely, was weak enough to order his
sons to surrender the fortresses they still held, in order
to save his own life. He died in prison in Africa in 1095.
Source: An unnamed encyclopedia from a project that puts out-of-copyright texts into the public domain.
This is from a *very* old source, and reflects the thinking of the turn of the last century. --
BryceHarrington
![[Home]](wikipedia.png)