The Berber Revolts in al-Andalus from The Advent of Islam Until The Fall of The Umayyads

Abstract

In the timeline of the Islamic era in Al-Andalus, there was a long glorified and esteemed history of multi-ethnicity and multi-religious population who lived under Muslim rule. In this society, the most dominant and often acting as the higher-up was visibly the Arabs. Among all the ethnic groups in this society, there was a group named the Berbers, who were often credited as the cause of various rebellions in Islamic Spanish studies and painted the Andalusian history with numerous events. It created the image of the Berbers as a rebellious community and led to other stereotypes. Therefore, this paper discusses a new overview of the Berbers, specifically the Andalusian Berbers, regarding their involvement and roles in many of the rebellions that happened there. It focuses on impactful events where the Berbers directly acted as the rebels and as part of the mercenaries under other people’s leadership. The objective is to give a more accurate interpretation of their involvement in those events without getting caught up in absolute stereotypical views of Berbers. In getting all the information about the events and the descriptions of the Berbers’ involvement, this article generally used library research and a content-analysis approach based on primary and secondary sources on Islamic Spanish history. It is within the limitation of this study, however, that it only focuses on the events between the advent of the Muslims in 711 and the collapse of the Umayyad caliphate in 1031.