Granada - king or Emir ?

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Leo van de Pas

Granada - king or Emir ?

Legg inn av Leo van de Pas » 24 jan 2008 21:15:00

As happens frequently, I am confused. I was sure that _king_ was a term not used in the Muslim world.For a biography of a Spanish king, I stumbled across a reference to "the King of Granada".

I went to Google, as one does, and found there are 55,800 entries for King of Granada, and onlyu 3,020 for Emir of Granada. Even the wicked Wikipedia uses King of Granada.

Also I found a description about "Ibn Nasr al Jazrayi al Ansari, as soon as he became Sultan of Al-Andalus and Emir of Granada-----"
What was their title? I looked in the book by Zambour but could not see what title he applied,

Can anyone help?
With best wishes
Leo van de Pas,
Canberra, Australia

Francisco Tavares de Alme

Re: Granada - king or Emir ?

Legg inn av Francisco Tavares de Alme » 24 jan 2008 22:25:07

On 24 Jan, 20:15, "Leo van de Pas" <leovd...@netspeed.com.au> wrote:
As happens frequently, I am confused. I was sure that _king_ was a term not used in the Muslim world.For a biography of a Spanish king, I stumbled across a reference to "the King of Granada".

I went to Google, as one does, and found there are 55,800 entries for King of Granada, and onlyu 3,020 for Emir of Granada. Even the wicked Wikipedia uses King of Granada.

Also I found a description about "Ibn Nasr al Jazrayi al Ansari, as soon as he became Sultan of Al-Andalus and Emir of Granada-----"
What was their title? I looked in the book by Zambour but could not see what title he applied,

Can anyone help?
With best wishes
Leo van de Pas,
Canberra, Australia

It is confused. Emir - can also be spelled amir - means king. Under a
christian point of view Granada was a kingdom and the emir of Granada
was referred as king of Granada. Now, why Granada and not other
kingdoms, most commonly referred as emirates?
Basically because Granada was the last muslim kingdom in Iberia and it
was conquested almost 2 centuries after Portugal conquested all the
Algarve (Al-Gharb). So for much longer than any other muslim state,
Granada was mentioned in european native languages when these
represented already the dominant culture even in Iberia.

After the crusades, in the Orient, kings were christian, emirs were
arabic muslims and sultans were muslim turcs (seljucids?).
Now to call sultan to your Ibn-Nasr, later known as Ibn Yussuf b.
1194, in my opinion, is wrong and a not very apt way of meaning he was
a sort of "emperor" of al-Andalus.

Best regards,
Francisco

Gjest

What was a king anyhow? (was Re: Granada - king or Emir ?)

Legg inn av Gjest » 25 jan 2008 05:00:03

On Jan 24, 12:15 pm, "Leo van de Pas" <leovd...@netspeed.com.au>
wrote:

Also I found a description about "Ibn Nasr al Jazrayi al Ansari, as soon as he became Sultan of Al-Andalus and Emir of Granada-----"
What was their title? I looked in the book by Zambour but could not see what title he applied,


While not directly relevant to Leo's question, this raises the issue
of what a "king" really was in Iberia. By the 13th century, it was
pretty clear, but as you get earlier, it becomes more vague.

Ramiro I of Aragon is called king by his vassals, his neighbors, the
church, and even his own sons, but if you look to the identifying
phrase of his charter, he refers to himself as simply "I Ramiro, son
of king Sancho", and always refers to his property as being held in
stewardship, not even as a county. (Garcia refers to him once as
'regulus', and once as 'ruling as if he were king'.) His son Sancho
likewise is simply "I Sancho, son of king Ramiro". THis is
particularly curious, as he is clearly occupying the same role as is
father, he calls his father 'king', yet he is unwilling to claim this
status for himself. (This is not just a false-humility affectation,
hinting at personal kingship by naming his father as king, his
illegitimate half-brother uses exactly the same form.) Later he is
"Sancho, by God's grace, of Aragon", again without any further title.
It is not until he acquires Navarre that he calls himself 'rex' of
Navarre and Aragon.

A few generations earlier, you have Sancho Garces (II), King of
Navarre, with younger brother Ramiro Garces, King of Viguera, but
clearly Ramiro was not autonomous, but rather a sub-king or underking
- little more than a glorified count (ala the Castile counts, who were
little less than independent monarchs until the death of Sancho
Garcia). Here is the real twist, though. Their brother Jimeno Garces
appears in a contemporary document as Jimeno rex, and there is no
indication that he had any territory equivalent to Ramiro's Viguera,
or any territory at all, for that matter.

Turn the clock back earlier, and we have Sancho Garces (I) being
followed by "king" Jimeno Garces. Typically Jimeno is described as
'acting king' as regent for his nephew, but was he? For the majority
of his reign, there is no indication that he was anything but a full
king, and when Garcia appears, it is as a secondary participant, and
without title, up until the last charter, in which Jimeno rex is still
the primary, but Garcia does also appear as rex. I have to wonder if
we aren't applying modern concepts of legitimate succession on a fluid
situation - when a king gains the crown due to the influence of a
foreign ally and his maternal uncle, then legitimizes his succession
by marrying an heiress of the former line (ala Henry VII), is he
automatically, in the early 10th century, going to be followed by his
infant son when the king's brother is also nephew of the same maternal
uncle, ally of the same foreign king, and married to a sister of his
brother's legitimizing wife? By the logic applied, one would have to
consider Eadred 'regent' for Eadwige.


More puzzling, their older brother Inigo Garces is referred to as
"king" by the Roda Codex, and there is no evidence that he ever
controlled Navarre, as king or regent. Remembering that his father is
called by the same document "king in another part" of the kingdom, one
wonders if Inigo's role was similar, but what is this title really
equivalent to? Lacarra, in his second paper on the Roda document,
suggests that it has many similarities to the works of the Muslim
genealogist Ibn Hazm, and that it probably represents an Ebro valley
Muslim compilation that then passed back to the Cristian realm in the
11th century. If so, then "king" in this case may not represent their
true status, but rather their status translated into Arabic, then
translated back to regional Latin a century or so later. Could it
have started as 'chieftain', been translated to 'emir', and then when
it passed back, been represented as 'king'? (It could be argued that
using "king" for the rulers of Dal Riada or early Wessex is equally
anachronistically generous.)

taf

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