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Islam Versus Europe
October 26, 2013
It’s very interesting to see the response of the so-called Counterjihad sites to this series of posts, or rather the lack thereof. If I had posted historical articles about African collaboration, or Chinese collaboration, or Coptic collaboration, or Socialist collaboration, or even Christian collaboration, with Muslims, you can be sure that some of these sites would pick them up and link to them. But post about Jewish collaboration and no one wants to hear.
I expect nothing better of the Jews or any other non-European people. We can assume that they will continue to do what everyone other than Europeans always has done, that is to say ruthlessly pursue their own ethnic interests regardless of truth or morality; and it is clearly not in their interests to have the truth about their past or present collaboration with Muslims or their intimate connection to destructive, left-wing, anti-European ideologies like Communism or multiculturalism to come to light. But those of you running Counterjihad websites who are not Jewish should be ashamed of yourselves for your cowardice.
This book was written by a Jewish historian who is obviously sympathetic to the Jews. It was translated from Hebrew by Jews and published by the Jewish Publication Society of America.
A month after the battle near Lago de Janda a troop of horsemen approached Cordova, the principal city of the province of Betica. The troop, numbering about seven hundred men, was led by Mughīth ar-Rūmī, an Arabic officer trained in the court of the caliph in Damascus. As he came near the city, which spread along the northern bank of the Guadalquivir River and was surrounded by a strong wall, he pitched his tent in a thicket on the southern bank and began to explore the environs of the city to search out a vulnerable spot. Moslem warriors marched around the city, while the Gothic forces on the walls watched them closely. The city was tightly shut; no one came out and no one entered. The governor of the city and his men had decided to fight to the last drop of blood and to sell their lives dearly. They were followers of King Roderick, who had formerly been the governor of this region, and were faithful to him even after his death.
All the while, numbers of Jews remained shut up in their houses, impatiently awaiting the outcome. Unlike the Goths and the clergy, they did not fear the invaders who besieged the city, but instead set their hopes on them. For the Visigothic kings had oppressed them sorely and had treated them with extreme cruelty. What memories must have passed through the minds of the Cordovan Jews on those nights as they sat in their houses and heard the footsteps of the guards on the walls….
The Jewish settlement on the Iberian peninsula was a very ancient one and in its early stages had prospered. Even after the Visigoths had established their rule over the land, the condition of the Jewish communities remained favorable for a long time. They earned their livelihood with dignity, and they fulfilled the laws of the Torah and observed its commandments without hindrance.
However, when the Visigothic rulers changed from Arianism to another form of Christianity,Catholicism, in 586, the situation of the Jews changed. A period of disturbances and persecutions began. The synods of the clergy that assembled from time to time in the capital determined the policy of the regime; as a result, at every council that convened, zealous bishops promulgated decrees against the Jews. For their part, the kings vied with the clergy and spurred them on to find ways and means to institute laws to eradicate Judaism from the land. Whether this came from sincere religious zeal or from the avarice with which they eyed the possessions of the Jews, kings and clergy were of one mind — to embitter the lives of the Jews and to provoke them to change their faith.
In 613 King Sisebut decreed that all the Jews must convert or leave the land. This edict was carried out; thousands were converted to Christianity and thousands left the country. Swintila,who succeeded Sisebut, annulled the edict of conversion, permitted converts to revert to the faith of their fathers, and allowed those who had gone into exile to return. But when King Sisenand came into power, he was inclined to be severe. The council that met in Toledo in 633 decided that the Jews who had become Christians as an outcome of the laws of Sisebut must remain Christians and should be carefully watched, lest they treat any of the laws of the church with disrespect. The king gave this his sanction.
A synod of the clergy in 638, known as the sixth Council of Toledo, decreed that the Visigoths should not tolerate any person who did not believe in Catholicism. It also declared that upon ascending the throne each king should be obliged to swear that he would carry out the laws against Judaism. At that time the ruler was Chintila, who fulfilled the wishes of the clergy. Thus it came about that many were compelled to become Christians and to sign the proclamations requiring their observance of Christian customs. But Chindaswinth, who succeeded Chintila, removed these restrictions. It appears that during his reign the converts returned to their faith and even the exiles came back to their places of habitation.
Chindaswinth’s successor, Receswinth, was more zealous than all his predecessors, however,and a veritable oppressor of the Jews. He appeared before the eighth Council of Toledo, which met in 653, and proposed that it renew the decrees of the council of 633 — namely, that the converts must adhere to their new faith and, moreover, that converts who continued with Jewish observances should be put to death at the hands of other converts. But all this was not enough for this zealot king. He enacted additional laws that would deny to unconverted Jews the possibility to practice their religion and would limit their civil rights.
In their despair, the Jews began to join forces with those who rebelled against the government. In the days of King Wamba, the Jews cooperated with the governor of the province, Nimes,who promised them religious freedom. After the rebellion was put down, the Jews were expelled from the city of Narbonne, which, together with a large area of southern Gaul, belonged to the kingdom of the Visigoths. Three months after ascending the throne King Ervig convened the twelfth Council of Toledo and urged it to use all possible means to extirpate the Jewish religion from Spain. Acting on his proposal, the council decreed that every Jew must convert within a year. It was also declared that the clergy should teach the Jews the tenets and practices of Christianity; converts were obligated to inform the authorities of the names of any former coreligionists who might transgress the laws of the church. Not only were Jews forced to become converted, but the civil rights of even these converts were limited.
King Egica followed a different line. Instead of converting Jews by force, he sought to end their stubborn resistance by means of special privileges, which he offered to converts who would consent to be faithful to Christian practice. He annulled the limitations on the rights of converts but passed stringent laws against Jews who clung to their faith. They were required to sell to the king’s exchequer all servants, houses, and land which they had bought from Christians — all to be handed over to the clergy. The king also ordained that Jews were forbidden to trade with the Christian inhabitants of the Visigothic realm; nor were they to deal in commerce with foreign countries.
The very severity of these enactments is proof that they were not fully executed, and despite the decrees of kings and councils many Jews remained in Spain. Indeed, from the decisions of the councils we learn that Jews bribed the nobles who held the reins of government, and even the clergy themselves, not to enforce these laws strictly. Nevertheless, their plight worsened and they looked for a source of deliverance.
In 694 the Visigothic authorities unearthed a plot by the Jews who were preparing to overthrow the government. According to the Christian authorities, the Jews had joined forces with their coreligionists on the other side of the straits in North Africa and were planning a military invasion that would free them from their oppressors. The seventeenth Council of Toledo, which met at the end of that year, therefore determined to employ more stringent measures. All Jews were turned over to Christian masters as their slaves and were scattered throughout the kingdom. Their masters were obligated to insure that they would observe the practices of the church and to take an oath swearing that they would not set the Jews free. The council further decreed that children over the age of seven be taken from the Jews in order that they might be reared in the spirit of Christianity and married to Christians. Jewish properties were confiscated.
But once again the wheel of fortune took a favorable turn. King Witiza was a more lenient ruler, and the clergy hated him. Christian writers of the Middle Ages claim that he annulled the enactments of Egica. But with the ascent of Roderick, the zealots — that faction whose goal it was to obliterate Judaism from the soil of Spain — came into power.
Such were the memories that passed through the minds of the Jews of Cordova. With all their hearts they sided with the Moslems at the gates of the city, but they were powerless to act. Gothic soldiers stood between them and the African besiegers.
One night the skies became overcast and the rains came, followed by hail. The guards on the wall sought refuge from the weather and abandoned their rounds. The Africans took advantage of the darkness, crossing the river at a shallow point. The southern wall of the city was built some fifteen yards or less from the river’s edge. When Mughīth’s men arrived at the northern bank of the river, they hastened to a point where there was a breach in the upper level of the wall. A fig tree grew near the breach. Quickly they climbed the tree and sprang onto the wall. The first man drew the second one up after him, and within moments a group of men stood on the wall. Immediately they dropped down inside, fell on the surprised guards of the nearest gate, and slew them. They opened the gate, and through it, with drawn swords, streamed the forces of Mughīth.
Here and there an individual sought to resist — only to be beheaded. Most of the populace barred the doors of their houses and remained quietly within. However, the governor escaped with his forces to a church in the western quarter of the city and fortified himself inside. On the following morning, when the inhabitants of Cordova emerged from their houses into the streets of the city and saw that Mughīth had occupied the governor’s palace, they felt the first taste of subjugation. The Jews of the city, on the other hand, exulted. This was the day they had hoped for. They immediately made contact with the Moslem officer, who mobilized them into his army and turned over to them the task of guarding the city.
Mughīth established his forces within the city and lay siege to the church in which the Gothic governor of the city had taken refuge. It was a sturdy edifice, and the Christians within, who numbered about four hundred, defended themselves courageously. The siege lasted three months; then the Moslems succeeded in cutting off the water supply of the Christians, who were compelled to surrender. They were put to death. The governor attempted to flee but was caught and later taken to the caliph in Damascus.
The events at Cordova were repeated in other Spanish cities. Everywhere the Jews rose up and volunteered aid to the Moslems in their war of conquest. Arab chroniclers only relate what happened in the principal cities, but it is quite likely that the same thing occurred in smaller cities and in villages. An early Arabic historian relates that wherever the Moslems came upon Jews, they appointed them as a militia and left a few of their own soldiers with them; then the majority continued on their march of conquest. Another Arabic historian, who (though writing at a later date) drew upon early and reliable sources, repeats these facts, but adds that where no Jews were available, the Moslems had to leave a greater number of their own forces.
From these historical records it is evident that the aid of the Jews was highly important for the Moslems. Since Ṭāriḳ had to leave behind soldiers in cities he had already taken while sending ahead troops to conquer other cities, the vanguard of whose forces threatened his lines of communication, the Moslem commander’s small forces grew ever smaller as he penetrated deep into the heart of the country. The cooperation of the Jews was very advantageous to him, since it enabled him to release some of his soldiers from guard duty in the conquered cities and to utilize them as an attacking force in new conquests. It is clear that here and there the Jews gave the invaders important information and also acted as spies – as did the followers of Witiza, who themselves came to the aid of Ṭāriḳ’s forces wherever they went.
So it was that in many cities small groups of Moslems, with the aid of their allies, the partisans of the House of Witiza and the Jews, set up the new order. Moreover, because as many of the nobles and officials, the wealthy, and the clergy fled to the north of the country, large numbers of houses and much property were abandoned, and it is certain that the Jews and everyone who helped in the conquest took possession of them. But it was the desire for revenge that primarily motivated the Jews to help the armies of Ṭāriḳ The Moslem invasion gave them the opportunity to repay their oppressors for the wrongs that had been perpetrated upon them and their forebears for many generations.
Source: The Jews of Moslem Spain. Volume 1 by Eliyahu Ashtor, translated by Aaron Klein Jenny Machlowitz Klein, published by the Jewish Publication Society of America.
I certainly find the story of the Cordoban fig tree curious. How likely is it that an army expecting an attack is going to leave standing a fig tree within jumping distance of the walls? On the other hand, there was, as this chronicler admits, a hostile population inside the walls. The story of the fig tree may well have been invented to serve as a – pardon the expression – fig leaf for what in reality was betrayal by this enemy within.
