7th part of the bookscans of Al Andalus. Historical Figures, here's the previous part
He taught the Andalusians the most sophisticated recipes of Baghdad cuisine, as well as the order at the table and the etiquette that had to be followed. The food should not even served or taken all mixed, as the diners wanted, but they had to follow certain guidelines: first the soups followed by the hors d'oeuvres, then the fish dishes, the meats and, finally, the desserts, fruits flavored with vanilla and stuffed with alphoncigas and hazelnuts, or sweets, such as almond, walnut and honey pastries, accompanied by small glasses of liquor. The tablecloths should not be of a coarse woven linen or cotton,nbut of very fine leather and the cups, better of fine crystal than of heavy metal, even if they were gold or silver.
As for his beauty institute, Ziryab taught the Andalusian to shave their hair, use toothpaste and to comb their hair. The strands that fell on both sides of the face ended... Now the hair had to be cut, worn curly, revealing the eyebrows, the nape of the neck and the ears. Nails should be polished and filed and the skin had to be cleaned and softened with creams and lotions.
Fashion in clothing also changed under the influence of Ziryab. Since the first days from June to September, they had to dress in light colors, preferably in white, spring being the best time for suits of gauzy silk and brightly colored tunics. For winter, they reserved the darker tones, the quilted pelisses and the fur coats and decorations.
Everyone asked him for advice when it came to dressing, fitting shoes, giving a banquet... and everyone followed his instructions fully. It became a real
arbiter of elegance and under his influence, the Andalusians, and also the
Christians, changed their clothes, their furniture, their fashions and ways of living, their kitchen and their etiquette. No one did more to spread refinement and elegance of the Abbasid court, nor did he influence in a more profound and intense way than this singer arrived from Baghdad and maintained by the munificence of the Emir of Córdoba.
Also attributed to him, imported from Persia, are many customs and
superstitions that still exist among us and that are too known, such as the fear of cravings in pregnant women, the belief thatbthe boy who played with fire wet the bed, the tails of raisin increase memory... It is believed that both the game of polo and the game of chess entered Muslim Spain at the hands of Ziryab.
He never felt tempted by power, despite the much premedication that he had in Andalusian society, nor did he take part in the frequent and dark courtesans intrigues, and he always thanked the emir for providing him with a better, calm, happy and comfortable life for him and his people.
Tarub: the favorite of Abd al-Rahman II
All historians recognize that this emir was a complete womanizer. The young virgins, arriving from all corners, populated the harem of this man, so different from his father, the strict al-Hakam, who had bequeathed him a kingdom almost pacified, with the Treasury coffers filled to overflowing, which allowed him dedicate to all the pleasures that life can offer. Of his many concubines, wives and favorites, there was one whom it seems he loved more than all the others, Tarub, whose success with the caliph was perhaps due to her being surly, selfish and desired.
She must have been very beautiful, at least in the eyes of the enamored emir who, a man of great education and good poet, said of her: "Whenever I see the sun rise that illuminates reminds me of Tarub, a girl adorned with the trappings of beauty:
"The eye that contemplates it believes it sees a beautiful gazelle in it".
When he was not on an expedition, Abd al-Rahman II, like all sovereigns and
nobles of the era, went hunting, to the mountains of Sierra Morena or to the marshes of the Guadal-
quivir... but more than once, the memory of Tarub made him return to the palace,
eager to possess that beauty who did not always respond to his amorous requirements.
Life inside that immense harem it couldn't have been easy for the women locked up there no matter how generous the emir had been or was towards them. There is no need to forget that for another of his favorites, al-Shifa, as beautiful as prudent and pious, Abd al-Rahman bought a mythical jewel, the dragon necklace, which had belonged to the wife of the caliph Harun al-Rashid, and that it came from the robbery and looting of the badgadi palaces during the period of the civil struggles that preceded the accession to the throne of the caliph al-Ma'mun. But many times, the jewels and riches that these women
accumulated did not make up for the feeling of feeling relegated, supplanted in the affection or whim of the emir, by others younger and perhaps more beautiful.
Surrounded and guarded by a legion of eunuchs, who were the only ones who could move freely through that place, their whole dream was to be able to give
a male child to their lord, with which they became umm walad, that is, "princess mother." These lucky ones enjoyed great privileges. To the death of the emir were emancipated and could freely dispose of
her personal fortune that used to be very large. But with or without a child, the
ambitious heart of Tarub wanted to “make a future for herself.” The princesses
mothers, as the years went by, saw themselves replaced in the prime of life,
with an intact beauty that time had not yet withered. Tarub knew it and despite
Abd al-Rahman's multiple attentions towards her, she considered that everything was insufficient to satisfy it.
One night the emir went to his favorite's chambers and called insistently at the door, but the elusive girl did not open it. In vain her lover spoke tender words to her, and made vehement protests of love. Unmovable, the requested one kept the door firmly closed. Then Abd al-Rahman, who clearly knew her well, ordered that several eunuchs carried bags of gold coins. There were many bags that were accumulating before the gate of Tarub that he finally opened, while thousands of coins fell into the bedroom, exposing the figure of the emir who waited, impatiently, behind the bags of coins, for his beloved would deign to receive him. It must have been a night of passion for both of us.
parts, because the emir's wish must have been fulfilled and Tarub's too!
But the story continues. Although other women arrived, Tarub always retained a great ancestry over Abd al-Rahman from whom he had a son. Time passed and the emir could not decide to name a successor. It is not surprising that he had his doubts, since among his forty heirs it couldn't be easy to select the most suitable one to occupy the throne.
It always seems that the emir was inclined towards his son Muhammad, but, of course, Tarub wanted the choice to fall to Prince Abd Allah, who was her son.
The head of the palace servants was the eunuch Nasr. Following the attempt to
landing of the viking pirates in
al-Andalus, Nasr had distinguished himself by his heroic behavior and by having defeated them in the battle that took place near Tablada. All this did that the emir appreciated him in a special way and that his influence at court was increasingly greater. Nasr and Tarub got along very well, they were both ambitious, and the princess mother, desperate to see her son named
successor decided, with the support of the eunuch, to plot a plot, quite sinister indeed, to ensure the much-desired succession to his son Abd Allah. The plot involved poisoning the prince who was presumed to be possible heir, Muhammad,... and by the way, and just in case the fact aroused suspicion, also ending the father, that is, the emir.
It was a very risky plan for Tarub but she was sure that with the complicity of Nasr, one of the strongest men at court and,
possibly the closest to the emir, she could not fail. And it happened that, in
those days, a very famous doctor, Harrán, arrived at the Cordoban court, who
came from Mesopotamia. Nasr asked him to prepare a drink poisoned and the doctor did not dare to deny him. Afterwards, he felt remorse and confessed the plot to another of the princess mothers, Farj, who
informed the emir of the conspiracy that was being hatched against him. The eunuch presented the deadly concoction to the emir, offering it to him as the ideal medicine to cure an ailment that he had been suffering from for some time, but Abd al-Rahman II ordered him to take it himself. Nasr was trapped and had no more remedy than drinking the poisoned drink. It was of little use to him to run in searchbof the antidote, because the counterpoison prepared by the doctor al-Harraní, wasn't effective and the eunuch died.
According to the news that has reached us, Tarub, the instigator of all this murky affair, was forgiven by the emir and did not suffer any type of punishment, such was
the affection that the emir felt for her.
Only two years later, Abd al Rahman died, unexpectedly. The Christians attributed this sudden death to divine anger, in
revenge for the death of the last Christian martyrs. According to Eulogio, the emir went up to the terrace of the palace and, looking at the landscape that stretched before him, noticed the scaffolds from which hung the corpses of the Christians who had blasphemed against Muhammad within the same mosque. He gave the order to burn them and, immediately, in a sudden manner, he was attacked by an apoplexy that killed that same night.
He was succeeded by his son Muhammad. It is not known if he died as a result of a conspiracy, and it is the most
possible, because, despite the regrets, Tarub, on the same night in which the
emir, continued to intrigue so that his son would be named successor and, with Nasr missing, she sought the help of other eunuchs, but they were afraid that the people would became angry if the will of the late emir was not respected. A few hours after the death of Abd al-Rahman II, before dawn, his son Muhammad wasinstalled in the palace and the next day the population was informed of the
death of the emir and the ascension to the throne of the son designated by him.
Tarub, who had been so loved, conquered with wealth by an emir in love, proved to have a heart of stone because, in her eagerness to see his son in the lead
of the emirate of Cordoba, we do not know if due to an understandable love as a mother, or simply, to the ambition that she always displayed, she did not hesitate to consider the death of the one to whom she owed everything.
Abbas ben Firnas: the first aviator
Abd al-Rahman II was, without a doubt, the most cultured of all the emirs and
Hispano-Umayyad caliphs. Only one of his descendants, al-Hakam II, could compare him in terms of intellectual curiosity.
Poets, writers, philosophers, who in turn were also almost all astrologers, to whom
which the Muslims attached so much importance, were part of the court
by Abd al-Rahman. We will mention some of them, of great talent, who excelled in different areas of knowledge, such as Abd Allah ben al-Shamir, magnificent versifier; Ibrahim ben Sulayman al-Shamí, whose religious and mystical poems achieved great relevance throughout the Muslim world; Uthman ben al-Muthanna, grammarian, who became a preceptor to the royal princes; Said ben Farach al-Rashshash, who knew more than 4,000 mnemonics poems by heart and his brother Muhammad, who established the measurement of the Andalusian cubit, whose pattern was engraved on one of the walls of the main mosque from Córdoba... The list of wise men would be very long. But among all of them the figure of Abbas ben Firnas is especially important.
If we had to describe the personality of Abbas ben Firnas we could say that it was a being in every way singular. He was of Berber origin and belonged to a family that lived in the district of what is now Ronda. His creative ability and his inventiveness had no limits, and in addition, he was endowed with physical dexterity out of the ordinary. Skilled conjurer, he amazed anyone with his ingenious sleight of hand and occult sciences were his specialty. Was
as admired as envied by other wise men like him.
The strangest and most difficult enigmas seemed to show themselves, with complete clarity, before their understanding, as could be verified with the treatise on Arabic metrics of Jalil. This book arrived in Spain, like so many others that Abd al-Rahman II had brought
from Persia and Baghdad, through a merchant, and no one was able to decipher his content. The book was abandoned, as useless, in one of the libraries of palace, until our man came across it, read it carefully, and instantly understood what its pages said, deciphering it before a
audience that was left with their mouths open.
With a series of devices of his invention, he discovered the formula for the manufacturing glass and built, in a vaulted room in his house, a dome that imitated the sky, which at will made it clear or cloudy, adding lightning and thunder. But this invention that left everyone stunned, aroused the envy of another competitor, because then just as that now, there is no creation or discovery that does not have its detractors, motivated more by spite than by a healthy desire to improve what was
