2020 - Once upon a time in Islamic Gibraltar
Notes:
Map of the World (c977 AD - Al Istakhri)
The above map is very similar in style to those of Muqaddasi and others. I have flipped it so that the north is at the top. The area on the left with the three circles represents the Mediterranean with Malta, Crete and Cyprus identified as red circles. Gibraltar is absent but if it had been included it might have been placed somewhere to the north of the red circle representing Malta
Istakhri also produced what is perhaps the oldest known representation of the Rock of Gibraltar in one of his maps of Iberia and north Africa.
The Straits of Gibraltar with Iberia (top) and North Africa (bottom) . . . and Gibraltar as a huge rock (934 AD – Al Istakhri with a modern interpretation below)
He also mentioned Gibraltar in his surviving works - Masalik al-Mamalik (Routes of the Realms) and Suwar al-Aqaaleem (Pictures of the Regions)
Copy of a page from one of Istakhri’s books showing text and a map of al-Andalus on the right – and north Africa in the left. I can’t tell whether Gibraltar has been identified or not.
The following quotes are from - Mapping Mediterranean Geographies . . . between the Islamic World and Europe, c. 1100-1600 - by Jeremy Francis Ledger. It was published in 2016.
The writings of the tenth century Persian geographer al-Istakhri, for instance, located Yabal Tariq at the centre of the conquest. He wrote that:
When the Umayyad dynasty disappeared in the Orient, one of them crossed the sea toward al-Andalus from Azila of the Maghrib to the peninsula of Yabal Tariq. He took control of it and it is still in Umayyad hands, up to today. And from the peninsula of Yabal Tariq he conquered al-Andalus at the beginnings of Islam. Yabal Tariq is a prosperous mountain, fortified with farmsteads and cities and is the last port of al-Andalus.
Ledger is of the opinion that some of the geographer’s information does not measure up to reality – and I agree with him – it certainly doesn’t. I doubt very much that at the time Gibraltar was an economically prosperous place nor would it have been fortified with farmsteads nor cities – in fact, if one can believe most other contemporary Islamic reports it probably didn’t even have a proper town.
The huge area occupied by the Rock on the previous map suggests that Istakhri – who had never been to Gibraltar – may have thought of it as a province or an area of Iberia, rather than a small, practicably unpopulated rock. He may have been influenced by its legendary status as the place where the Islamic conquest of Iberia had begun.
Notes: “Azila” is probably Asilah which is an ancient town on the north west coast of Morocco just south of Tangier. Jeremy Francis Ledger continues:
For example, Gibraltar cannot sustain more than one city due to lack of water. . . The lack of readily accessible water sources posed a great challenge to the establishment of any permanent population of considerable size. In the eleventh century, the governor of Jabal Tariq ordered a fortress built to guard against an expected attack from the Almoravids of the western Maghrib. Recognising the shortage of water workmen built rain catchments and cisterns to store collected water.
Ledger gives H.T. Morris’s - Early Islamic Settlement in Gibraltar, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 91 (Jan-Jun.1961, p40) as his source for much of the above. Unfortunately, the following is what Norris actually had to say concerning the last quote:
In the 10th century the region (of Gibraltar) was included within Al Andalus by the Arab geographers Al-Istakhri and Al-Maqdisi (Al-Muqaddasi), and Ibn Hawqal refers to the peninsular as Jabal Tariq (Mountain of Tariq) . . . Gibraltar appears to have been refortified in the eleventh century by the governor of Algeciras when the “liberation” of Spain by the Almoravid (al-Murabit) ruler Yusuf b.Tashfin was anticipated.
In other words, Norris makes no mention of water shortages nor indeed details of any catchments or cisterns on the Rock.