Mulūk Al-Ṭawā'if
MULŪK AL-ṬAWĀ'IF
MULŪK AL-ṬAWĀ'IF (Ar. "kings of parties," petty kings; Sp. reyes de taifas ), term referring to the petty kingdoms that arose on the ruins of the *Umayyad caliphate in al-Andalus, Islamic *Spain, in the early 11th century, some of them surviving until the end of that century. The dynasties were of varying origins – *Berber, Arab, so-called "Slav" (generally European slaves) – and states little more than cities with their surroundings, larger in thinly populated areas and dependent on agriculture, smaller in the port cities of the eastern coast. The taifa states sought to replicate the political might and cultural wealth of the Umayyads; their large number and their small size encouraged greater reliance on Jews as servants of the ruler. Jews might be more loyal than others, having little potential or temptation for political plotting. In consequence Jewish viziers are found in several of these states. The most famous are *Samuel ha-Nagid (d. 1056) and his son Jehoseph (murdered in a pogrom in 1066) in *Granada, but Jews with the title of vizier are found in Seville, Saragossa, Almeria, and elsewhere. Samuel ha-Nagid stands out as not only a political figure but also a military commander, almost unique in Jewish history between the second century c.e. and the modern period.
The period of the mulūk al-ţawā'if was one of great cultural flowering for Iberian Muslims. It offered the Jews greatly increased opportunity, too. Political participation gave Jewish viziers means and reason to offer patronage to Jewish poets and others, who not only sang the praises of their successful co-religionists but also became immensely productive across the whole range of cultural activity. We find many works by Jews in al-Andalus from this period not only in poetry, religious and secular, but also in Hebrew grammar, philosophy, theology, and the sciences.
The period encouraged social and cultural closeness between Jews and their neighbors. Jews wrote not only in Hebrew but also in Judeo-Arabic (the problems of the kharja, a peculiarly Iberian addition to Arabic poetic genres, were resolved by S.M. Stern thanks in part to material written by Jews), and in Arabic, and took part in cultural and educational activities alongside Muslims. Nonetheless, this central period of what is known as the Golden Age of Jewish life in Spain went unnoticed by Muslims. The invasions of the *Almoravids at the end of the 11th century destroyed the taifa system, and Iberian Jewish life began to enter into a decline.
bibliography:
Ibn Daud, The Book of Tradition, Sefer ha-Qabbalah, ed. G.D. Cohen (1967), 71–90. Moses Ibn Ezra, Kitāb al-Muḥādara wa'l-Mudhākara, ed. and trans. (Hebrew) A.S. Halkin, 1975; D. Wasserstein, The Rise and Fall of the Party-Kings, Politics and Society in Islamic Spain, 1002–1086 (1985), 190–223; idem, "Samuel Ibn Naghrila ha-Nagid and Islamic Historiography in al-Andalus," in: al-Qantara, 14 (1993), 109–25; idem, "The Muslims and the Golden Age of the Jews in al-Andalus," in: Israel Oriental Studies, 17 (1997), 179–96; R. Brann, Power in the Portrayal. Representations of Jews and Muslims in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Islamic Spain (2002).
[David J. Wasserstein (2nd ed.)]