The Empire That Crossed

The taifa kings sent the message in 1086. Alfonso VI of Castile was conquering the Muslim kingdoms of Spain one by one, and the divided princes of al-Andalus needed help they could not provide themselves.

The help was across the strait.

Yusuf ibn Tashfin crossed with an army of Saharan Berbers — men who had never seen snow, riding camels into a European war. At the Battle of Sagrajas on October 23, 1086, he destroyed Alfonso's army so completely that the Christian advance stopped for a generation.

Then Yusuf looked at the taifa kings who had invited him and decided to unify what they had divided. Within a decade, he had brought their kingdoms into his own empire. The Almoravid state now stretched from Senegal to Zaragoza — the largest empire in the western Islamic world.

The Almohads did the same thing fifty years later, but bigger. Under Abd al-Mu'min, they conquered Morocco, then crossed the strait and took all of Muslim Spain. Their capital alternated between Marrakech and Seville. The Giralda tower in Seville and the Koutoubia in Marrakech were built by the same architect, in the same decade, as twin symbols of a single empire.

For the people living in this empire, the strait was a commute. Scholars moved between Fes and Cordoba. Merchants shipped Moroccan leather to Barcelona and Spanish silk to Marrakech. The architecture was the same on both sides. The language — Arabic with regional accents — was mutually intelligible.

A 12th-century Andalusian poet wrote: "I would rather be a camel-driver in Africa than a swineherd in Castile." The line captures something: Africa was not the periphery. It was the center.

The empire fractured after the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, when a coalition of Christian kings broke the Almohad army. Within forty years, only Granada remained Muslim in Spain. The strait became a border again.

But the traces remain. Moroccan architecture carries Andalusian geometry. Spanish flamenco carries North African rhythms. The orange trees in Seville were planted by the Almohads. The zellige in Fes was refined by artisans who fled Cordoba.

Two continents, one civilization, three centuries. Then the bridge closed.