Abu ʾl-Jaysh Mujāhid ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿĀmirī, surnamed ''al-Muwaffaḳ'' (died AD 1044/5 AH 436">Anno_Hegirae.html" ;"title="small> AH 436, was the Taifa of Dénia">ruler of Dénia and the Balearic Islands from late 1014 (early AH 405) until his death. With the exception of his early and disastrous invasion of Sardinia, his reign was mostly peaceful. His court became a centre of scholarship and literary production and he himself wrote a book about poetry (now lost).D. J. Wasserstein, "Mudjāhid, al-Muwaffaḳ ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿĀmiri, Abu ʾl-Djaysh", ''The Encyclopaedia of Islam'', Vol. VII (Leiden: Brill, 1993), pp. 292–93.

Origins and rise

Mujāhid was a ''

ṣaḳlabī'', a slave of Slavs">Slavic Slavic, Slav or Slavonic may refer to: Peoples * Slavic peoples, an ethno-linguistic group living in Europe and Asia ** East Slavic peoples, eastern group of Slavic peoples ** South Slavic peoples, southern group of Slavic peoples ** West Slav ...

origin. His patronymic, Ibn ʿAbd Allāh, does not refer to his actual father. His mother was a captured Christian.Travis Bruce
"The Politics of Violence and Trade: Denia and Pisa in the Eleventh Century"
''Journal of Medieval History'', 32 (2006): 127–42. He was purchased and converted to Islam by the ''

ḥājib Hajib or hadjib (, ) was a court official, equivalent to a chamberlain, in the early Muslim world, which evolved to fulfil various functions, often serving as chief ministers or enjoying dictatorial powers. The post appeared under the Umayyad Ca ...

al-Manṣūr Abū Jaʿfar ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Manṣūr (; ‎; 714 – 6 October 775) usually known simply as by his laqab al-Manṣūr () was the second Abbasid caliph, reigning from 754 to 775 succeeding his brother al-Saffah (). He is known ...

, who also had him educated. He may have served as governor of Dénia under al-Manṣūr's sons after 1002. After the death of al-Manṣūr's second son, Sanchuelo, in March 1009, he took control of Dénia. Within a few years he had set up his own rival puppet caliph,

al-Muʿayṭī Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn al-Walīd al-Muʿayṭī, also spelled al-Muʿiṭī (died AD 1041 Hijri_year.html" ;"title="small>Hijri year">AH 432, was an Umayyad dynasty">Umayyad caliph reigning in Dénia from 10 ...

Sardinian expeditions

In 1015 (AH 406), Mujāhid launched an expedition to conquer the island of

Sardinia Sardinia ( ; ; ) is the Mediterranean islands#By area, second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the Regions of Italy, twenty regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia an ...

in the name of the caliph al-Muʿayṭī. He landed with 120 ships and occupied the southern coastal plain, but was defeated by Pisan and Genoese forces from Italy. The following year he returned with a large force of cavalry, defeated the army of the

judge of Cagliari The kings or ''judges'' (''iudices'' or ''judikes'') of Kingdom of Cagliari, Cagliari were the local rulers of the south of Sardinia during the Middle Ages. Theirs was the largest kingdom and for the eleventh through twelfth centuries contested t ...

and fortified the conquered area. He even sent a force to attack Luni on the Italian coast. The German chronicler

Thietmar of Merseburg Thietmar (also Dietmar or Dithmar; 25 July 9751 December 1018), Prince-Bishop of Merseburg from 1009 until his death in 1018, was an important chronicler recording the reigns of German kings and Holy Roman Emperors of the Ottonian (Saxon) dynas ...

wrote that he sent a sack of chestnuts to the pope to illustrate the number of Muslim soldiers he would unleash on Christendom, but that

Benedict VIII Pope Benedict VIII (; – 9 April 1024) was bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 18 May 1012 until his death. He was born Theophylact to the noble family of the counts of Tusculum. Unusually for a medieval pope, he had strong autho ...

sent back a sack of millet representing the number of Christian soldiers that would meet them. In May 1016, the Italians returned to Sardinia. Mujāhid, facing mutiny among his men, fled by sea. His fleet was devastated in a storm and the remaining ships were picked off by the Pisan and Genoese fleets. His mother and his son and eventual successor

ʿAlī Ali ibn Abi Talib (; ) was the fourth Rashidun caliph who ruled from until his assassination in 661, as well as the first Shia Imam. He was the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Born to Abu Talib ibn Abd al-Muttalib an ...

were captured, but Mujāhid made it back to Dénia. ʿAlī remained a prisoner for many years. During Mujāhid's absence in Sardinia and probably informed of his difficulties, al-Muʿayṭī tried to seize actual authority in Dénia for himself. Following his return, Mujāhid sent the caliph into exile in Africa.

Rule in Dénia

Mujāhid's rule in Dénia following the dismissal of al-Muʿayṭī is not well recorded. Unusually, few coins of his survive and none in his name that can be dated to between the years AH 407 (1016–17) and 434 (1042–43). Only the years 406 (1015–16) and 435 (1043–44) at the beginning and end of his reign are attested in the surviving dated coinage. He minted ''

dirham The dirham, dirhem or drahm is a unit of currency and of mass. It is the name of the currencies of Moroccan dirham, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates dirham, United Arab Emirates and Armenian dram, Armenia, and is the name of a currency subdivisi ...

s'' at a mint named "Elota" that remains unidentified. In AH 410 (1019–20), Mujāhid became co-ruler of the ''taifa'' of Valencia alongside Labīb al-Fatā al-Ṣaqlabī. This arrangement only lasted until AH 411 (1020–21), when Labīb was forced to leave Valencia and return to

Tortosa Tortosa (, ) is the capital of the '' comarca'' of Baix Ebre, in Catalonia, Spain. Tortosa is located at above sea level, by the Ebro river, protected on its northern side by the mountains of the Cardó Massif, of which Buinaca, one of the hi ...

. Soon after this, Mujāhid was replaced by

ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Abī ʿĀmir Abd-al-Aziz al-Mansur was the king of the Taifa of Valencia between 1021 and 1061. He was the son of Abd al-Rahman Sanchuelo. He was two years old at the time of his father's violent death and was taken for safekeeping to Zaragoza, where he grew u ...

as the ruler of Valencia.Vicente Coscollá Sanz ''Valencia musulmana'' (Carena, 2003), p. 2. In 1033, Abu ʾl-Ḳāsim, the ruler of

Seville Seville ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Spain, Spanish autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the Guadalquivir, River Guadalquivir, ...

, put forward an impostor claiming he was the caliph Hishām II, who had actually died in 1013. Mujāhid accepted the nominal authority of the fake Hishām II, probably as part of a series of marital alliances with the

Abbadid dynasty The Abbadid dynasty or Abbadids () was an Arab dynasty from the tribe of Banu Lakhm of al-Hirah, which ruled the Taifa of Seville in al-Andalus following the fall of the Caliphate of Cordoba in 1031. After the collapse, they were the most powerful ...

ruling Seville. The peace of his reign was broken only towards the end of his life, when he temporarily occupied

Murcia Murcia ( , , ) is a city in south-eastern Spain, the Capital (political), capital and most populous city of the autonomous community of the Region of Murcia, and the Ranked lists of Spanish municipalities#By population, seventh largest city i ...

and also became preoccupied by a dispute with his younger son, Ḥasan. He was succeeded by ʿAlī, who continued to make the court of Dénia a centre of culture.

Patronage of scholarship

Mujāhid was a patron of theological and literary studies, especially of ''

qirāʾāt In Islam, (pl. ; ) refers to the ways or fashions that the Quran, the holy book of Islam, is recited. More technically, the term designates the different linguistic, lexical, phonetic, morphological and syntactical forms permitted with rec ...

'' (recitation). His interest in this last practice may have stemmed from his name, since one of the most influential students of ''qirāʾāt'' was Ibn Mujāhid (died 936).

Ibn Gharsiya Abū ‘Āmir Ibn Gharsīyah al-Bashkunsī () (died 1084), popularly known as Ibn Gharsiya or Ibn García, was a Muwallad poet and ''katib'' (writer) in the Taifa court in Denia. Ibn Gharsiya is known as a proponent for the shu'ubiyya polemi ...

and Ibn Burd al-Aṣghar are known to have composed works at Mujāhid's court. Ibn Gharsiya's famous '' risāla'' (treatise) on the '' shuʿūbiyya'' (non-Arab nations), criticising Arab ascendancy in Spain and praising non-Arabs, like Berbers and Slavs, was written there. Ibn Burd dedicated his ''Risālat al-Sayf wa ʾl-ḳalam'' to Mujāhid and is known to have composed other works at Dénia and elsewhere under Mujāhid's patronage. The polymath Ibn Ḥazm and the jurist

Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr Yūsuf ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Abū ʿUmar al-Namarī al-Andalusī al-Qurṭubī al-Mālikī, commonly known as Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr ()

are also known spent time at his court. Mujāhid himself wrote a now lost work on ''

ʿarūḍ (, ) or () is the study of poetic meters, which identifies the meter of a poem and determines whether the meter is sound or broken in lines of the poem. It is often called the ''Science of Poetry'' (, ). Its laws were laid down by Al-Khalīl i ...

'' (Arabic metre).

Origins and rise

Sardinian expeditions

Rule in Dénia

Patronage of scholarship

References

Further reading