Mothers of a Hybrid Dynasty: Race, Genealogy, and Acculturation in al-Andalus

Abstract

One of the enduring debates among historians of Iberian culture is the question of how acculturation (or transculturation) occurred in the Iberian Peninsula, where large populations of Christians descended from HispanoRomans and Visigoths lived alongside Muslim Arabs, Muslim Berbers, and Jews from 711–1492 and after. At the extremes of the political and intellectual camps, Iberian culture has been characterized as either the product of a dark-skinned, Muslim, North African people who conquered the Iberian Peninsula in the early eighth century and were only partially expelled after 1492, or an essence that is European, Christian, and white.1 Today most scholars adopt the more reasonable position that Spain and Portugal are the result of an intermingling of those peoples with a generous admixture of Jews.2 These perspectives describe the consequence of convivencia (cohabitation) but they rarely address the question of how such cultural diversity occurred. Convivencia is a loose term that suggests that by virtue of living in close proximity the people of the Iberian peninsula enjoyed cultural diversity and a corresponding richness of artistic forms and styles between the arrival of Islam in 711 and the expulsions in 1492. But history shows that, just as military and political frontiers do not necessarily prevent trade on the popular level, the proximity of diverse groups does not in and of itself cause interchange.3 With respect to al-Andalus, historians have rarely agreed on how diversity was achieved. One argument is that Arabs and Muslim Berbers came to Spain in 711, met a population descended from Roman and Visigothic Christians, married and produced children with the genes and cultural formation of both groups, and suddenly Spain became a melting pot of many ethnic flavors. Opponents to this model point out that the Muslim army that crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 711 did not consist solely of men; the soldiers traveled with their families, and so, instead of an