Banu Qasi - Dynastic Beginnings

Dynastic Beginnings

The family is said to descend from the Hispano-Roman or Visigothic nobleman named Cassius. According to the 10th century Muwallad historian Ibn al-Qutiyya, Count Cassius converted to Islam in 714 as the mawali (client) of the Umayyads, shortly after the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. After his conversion, he is said to have traveled to Damascus to personally swear allegiance to the Umayyad Caliph, Al-Walid I.

Under the Banu Qasi, the region of Upper Ebro (modern districts of Logroño and Southern Navarra) formed a semi-autonomous principality. The tiny Basque emirate was faced by enemies in several directions. Although never realized, the threat of Frankish attempts to regain control over the Western Pyrenees was a real one. In actuality, even more menacing was the gradual eastwards expansion of the Asturian Kingdom; while in the south lay the Caliphate of Córdoba, ever anxious to impose its authority over the frontier regions. The Banu Qasi were a local, rather than a foreign-imposed, Muslim regime, and while nominally clients of the caliphate, they continually shifted alliances among the Basques of Pamplona, Aragon and Ribagorza to the north, other muladi dynasties of the Ebro Valley, and the Umayyads to the south over the next two centuries. Though Muslim, they frequently intermarried with the Christian Basque nobility. Musa ibn Musa and Pamplona king Íñigo Arista were maternal half-brothers, while Musa also married Arista's daughter, and married a daughter and nieces to other Basque princes. The cultural ambivalence of the Banu Qasi is also demonstrated by their mixed use of names: for example, Arabic (Muhammad, Musa, Abd Allah), Latinate (Auria, Lubb), and Basque (Garsiya).

The Umayyads of Córdoba sanctioned the rule of the Banu Qasi and repeatedly granted them autonomy by appointing them as governors, only to replace them as they expressed too much independence, or launch punitive military expeditions into the region. Such acts on the part of the Umayyads demonstrated their failure to ever fully resolve the problem of effective, central control of outlying regions.