Source Translation: The Chronicle of Moissac and the Umayyads of Córdoba

In around the year 799 Charlemagne sent a letter to Tours, asking his old adviser Alcuin, now abbot of the monastery of Marmoutier, for help. The Frankish king requested a copy of the text of a religious debate held between Bishop Felix of Urgell and the Saracens. Felix was at this time languishing in exile in Lyon for his embrace of the Adoptionist heresy, but his arguments with Muslims in his old Iberian see were apparently of interest to Charlemagne. Sadly, Alcuin was unable to locate this text, gamely offering his monarch a recollection of a debate he had once seen with a Jew as an alternative.

As this incident suggests, despite the very real interest that the Carolingians had in al-Andalus, getting information about the place could be tricky for Frankish rulers like Charlemagne. Yet what held true in the halls of Aachen was not necessarily the case elsewhere in the empire. The regions of Septimania and the Spanish March lay on the frontier with Umayyad al-Andalus. They were not only geographically proximate with Muslim Spain. Ties of trade, history and culture linked their populations to those of the Iberian Peninsula.

The historical writing of the Carolingian period is dominated by centres far to the north of this liminal zone. There is however at least one exception, a set of annals compiled somewhere in Septimania known as the Chronicle of Moissac, that contains substantial information about the Iberian Peninsula. These passages are of considerable interest, granting us an insight into how al-Andalus was perceived by those just outside it, while also giving us important evidence for Carolingian interaction with the Umayyads of Spain from someone well placed to understand what was going on. For this reason, I’ve translated them here:

Chronicon Moissiacense

[Ed.: I’ve put the Arabic names here into their modern forms rather than keeping the Latin orthography.]

…At this time [i.e. the 750s] Yusuf ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman [al-Fihri, ruled al-Andalus 747-756], beginning his tyranny, reigned over the Saracens in Spain. A terrible famine then ravaged Spain…

[…]

At this time [i.e. around 793], Hisham [I, r. 788-796], the son of ʿAbd al-Rahman [I] ibn Muʿawiya [r. 756-788], reigned in Spain. This Ibn Muʿawiya defeated Yusuf Ibn [sic; i.e. Yusuf ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Fihri] and killed him and his son. And he reigned in Spain for 33 years and four months. This Ibn Muʿawiya was cruel to all the kings of the Saracens who were before him in Spain. He killed countless Saracens and Moors by various tortures. He also ordered his father’s son, his brother, after having his hands and feet cut off, to be burned in a fire. He oppressed the Christians in Spain and the Jews by exacting so much tribute that they sold their sons and daughters and slaves, and the few left were afflicted by poverty, and through his oppression, all Spain was disturbed and plundered. But Ibn Muʿawiya died, and Hisham, his son, reigned in his stead. And he did evil as his father had done.

When he heard that King Charle[magne] had gone to the lands of the Avars, and judging that the Avars had fought bravely against the king and for this reason he had not been allowed to return to Francia, he sent ʿAbd al-Malik [b. ʿAbd al-Wahid b. Mughith], one of his leading men, with a large army of Saracens to ravage Gaul. They came to Narbonne and set fire to its suburbs, and captured many Christians and great booty. They wished to proceed to the city of Carcassonne. William [of Gellone, count of Toulouse] and the other counts of the Franks went out to meet them. And they fought a battle with him on the river Orbieu. And the battle was fierce and terrible, and the greatest part of the Christian people fell that day. But William fought bravely that day. Seeing, however, that he could not overcome them because his companions had forsaken him and fled, he departed from them. The Saracens thus gathered their spoils and returned to Spain.

[…]

[796: Charlemagne sends armies to fight the Avars and the Saxons.] And in the same summer he sent into Spain, into the borders of the Saracens, a third army, with his missi, who also did likewise. They devastated that land and returned in peace to King Charles at the palace of Aachen.

[…]

In these days [i.e. around 803], Abu al-As [i.e. al-Hakam I, r. 796-822], the son of Hisham, reigned over the Saracens in Spain. After the death of Hisham, this Abu al-As, his son, came to the throne and did evil as his father and grandfather had done. In that year, while he reigned in Spain, the Emperor Charles sent Louis [the Pious], his son, king of Aquitaine [r. 781-814], to besiege and capture the city of Barcelona. He assembled an army from Aquitaine, Vasconia, as well as from Burgundy, Provence, and Gothia, and sent them before him to besiege the city. They left, and the army surrounded the city and besieged it for seven months. And they took the king of that city, whose name was Saʿdun [al-Ruʿayni, governor of Barcelona]. And when the bread had run out in the city, and the city was also about to fall, they sent to King Louis to come to Barcelona, because the city was about to fall, so that when it had been taken, the victory might be attributed to his name. And the aforesaid King Louis came to the city, and the city was delivered into his hand. And there he appointed a guard and an arsenal. But he sent the king of that city, Saʿdun, defeated in fetters, to his father King Charles, emperor in Francia. He himself returned to his own lands in peace and triumph.

[…]

In the same year [i.e. 812] Abu al-As [i.e. al-Hakam], king of the Saracens, hearing from Spain reports and rumours of the virtues of the lord Emperor Charles, sent his messengers, asking to make peace with him, which the most pious emperor himself did not want to deny, but made peace with him for three years…

Although the Chronicle of Moissac has no actual connection to the monastery in Moissac there was no way I was going to turn down an opportunity to use this gorgeous image of the twelfth-century tympanum to illustrate this post. (source)

What exactly are we reading here? The Chronicle of Moissac is a universal history, which primarily draws upon Bede’s Chronica Maiora, but which supplements it with a wide range of other material, including the Chronicle of Fredegar, the Continuations to that chronicle, and the Annals of Lorsch. Running throughout all of this is unique material that pertains to southern Gaul and the Iberian Peninsula. From 803 to 818, where the Chronicle of Moissac ends, the text appears to be entirely new.

The Chronicle only survives in two much later manuscripts, both of which contain texts that differ from each other in important ways. Paris BNF Latin 4886 is from the eleventh century, and was found in the monastery of Moissac, while Paris BNF Latin 5941 is twelfth-century and contains the variant known as the Annals of Aniane. There is no reason to connect the Chronicle to Moissac itself and it’s possible that (confusingly) it was compiled at the monastery of Aniane, in the circle of Benedict of Aniane (d.821), a mentor of Louis the Pious. To avoid confusion, this translation is from the text in Paris BNF Latin 4886, using the edition prepared by Kats and Claszen (2012), available online for free here.

This is not all the material in the chronicle that relates to Muslim Spain. There is a lot of interesting stuff from before 751 which I haven’t included mostly due to reasons of time and space, but also because I haven’t worked with it in my research and therefore I’m less familiar with it. I should also say that grabbing the original text concerned with al-Andalus and translating it in isolation as I have done above presents a slightly misleading image of the Chronicle of Moissac. This is a universal history, and its compiler(s) were interested in affairs across the Frankish world, integrating their knowledge of the Iberian Peninsula into a much wider story of the rise of the Carolingians.

That said, this is very clearly a perspective from the Spanish March. The first thing that leaps out from this material is how much the writer of the Chronicle of Moissac knows about al-Andalus. This includes details such as the names of relatively obscure figures such as Yusuf al-Fihri and ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAbd al-Wahid. Strikingly, they are familiar with how Arabic names work. They understand that a nasab (such as ‘Ibn Muʿawiya’) is a patronymic, something most other Frankish sources struggle with. Their estimation of the length of ʿAbd al-Rahman I’s reign is only out by a year (it was actually 32 years and four months). The biggest error is dating the fall of Barcelona to 803 rather than 801, something I’m not quite sure how to explain.

Sometimes the information available to the annalist is demonstrated by absence. I haven’t included their entry for Charlemagne’s 778 invasion of Spain because it’s largely the same as that in the Annals of Lorsch, but interestingly the Chronicle of Moissac leaves out the false information reported by the Lorsch annals that Sulayman al-ʿArabi had been taken prisoner by the Frankish king. Whoever was writing the Chronicle of Moissac was probably familiar with Sulayman’s later career in the Iberian Peninsula and therefore knew he couldn’t have been carried off as a Frankish captive.

That familiarity did not preclude contempt. The Chronicle of Moissac is extremely hostile to the Saracens in general and the Umayyads in particular, portraying them as tyrants. The depiction of ʿAbd al-Rahman I coming to power by brutally crushing all of his rivals is not far off the mark. The story about his brother is new to me, and one I’m inclined to discount, as the only other Umayyad who reached the Iberian Peninsula that I can think of at this time was an uncle. Few of ʿAbd al-Rahman’s successors lacked his ruthless streak. The plight of the Christians and Jews of al-Andalus is overstated. Both were most definitely second-class citizens, forced to pay taxes that Muslims did not have to, and strict limits on how far they could advance in society. This subordinate status was enshrined in law and enforced by violence, including legally sanctioned torture and execution. That said, Christians and Jews continued to survive and often flourish in al-Andalus, with the former remaining the majority of the population throughout this period.

The depiction of desolation and oppression in al-Andalus offers an interesting clue as to the source of the Chronicle of Moissac’s knowledge. At least to begin with, it suggests that information was coming from Christian Goths who had left the Iberian Peninsula after the conquest and had settled in Septimania. Members of this group can be identified across the Carolingian world, with a particular concentration in the Spanish March and places like Lyon. Indeed, the chronicler themselves could well have been one of them. It also probably hints at continued communication with the Christians of al-Andalus. Charlemagne was in (acrimonious) correspondence with Elipandus, the Adoptionist Archbishop of Toledo. Later in the ninth century Iberian Christians with connections to movements like the Martyrs of Córdoba would try to recruit Frankish support for their liberation. The narrative of the tyranny of the Umayyads would come very naturally from them.

If the Emirs of Córdoba are the villains, the heroes are most definitely on the Carolingian side. Count William of Toulouse comes out well, despite losing the Battle of Orbieu in 793. Broadly the kings of the Franks also get a good write up, even if the depiction of Louis the Pious only showing up at Barcelona when it was about to fall has a decidedly ironic undertone to a modern reader. Relations with the Umayyads form part of a wider story of the rise of the Carolingians. We watch as, after much fighting and some defeats, the Carolingians tame the aggression of the tyrannical Umayyads, culminating in al-Hakam I being so impressed by the culture and justice of Charlemagne that he demands a peace treaty.

As mentioned above, the omissions are as important as the inclusions. The Chronicle of Moissac presents the treaty of 812 as a final moment of triumph, in which peace is finally achieved. In reality, the 810s were a frustrating period for Carolingian-Umayyad relations. Peace was also made in 810 and 817 and swiftly broken, normally by Umayyad attacks that Charlemagne and Louis the Pious had limited capacity to respond to. The Chronicle’s depiction is a very selective one, designed to package Frankish dealings with Córdoba as part of an ever-escalating story of success.

This is perhaps one of the things I find most interesting about this material from the Chronicle of Moissac. Its author lived on the farthest fringe of the Carolingian empire, in a milieu dominated by Goths rather than Franks, and clearly had a very close perspective on the Iberian Peninsula. Yet despite this, their perspective of history was a fundamentally Carolingian one, albeit occasionally an idiosyncratic one. I think this speaks to the power of the Carolingian project, that it could inspire and motivate people on the very edge of its world.