Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

50
LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT IN MUSLIM SPAIN
THE UMAYYADS IN SPAIN
The Abbasids Revolution had changed the course of Umayyad structure of state and afterwards its complete destruction. The Umayyad power was destroyed by the revolt of the Khurasanians, although the revolt was set on foot and engineered from Kufa. It is, therefore, necessary to take note of the situation in Khurasan at the time when the Abbasids began to organize their movement which led to the eventual disappearance of the Umayyads.1
When in 750 the Abbasids signalized their accession by a general massacre of the members of the house of Umayyad, one of the very few, who escaped was, Abdur Rahman *bn Mu’awiya, grandson of Hisham, the tenth caliph of Damascus. Twenty-year-old youth and of his five year’s wandering in disguise through Palestine, Egypt and North Africa, where more the once the barely escaped the vigilant eyes of Abbasid spies, forms one of the most aromatic episodes in Arabic annals, the fight began from a Bedouin Camp on the left bank of the Euphrates where Abdur Rahman had sought refuge. One day the black standards of the Abbasids suddenly •appeared close by the camp. With his thirteen year old brother, Abdur Rahman dashed into the river. The younger, evidently a poor swimmer, believed the purchaser’s promise of amnesty and returned from, mid stream, only to be slain, the elder kept on and gained the opposite bank.
M. Shaban, The Abbasid Revolution, P 168.

644 Political and Cultural History of Islam
The conquest of Spain by the Arabs was one of the most remarkable event recorded in history. At this time the Iberian throne was occupied by Roderick, who had deposed and murdered Witiza. The Gothic kings had killed industrial activity by vexatious and grinding imposts; there was no commerce or manufacture to engage the minds or develop the resources of the people. Cultivation was in the hands either of serfs, tied to the soil, or of miserable herds of slaves who served under the lashes of pitiless overseers, as was the case in later times on the plantation of North Africa. The Jews who had settled in large number, in the Peninsula, where the victims of frequent and ruthless persecutions.
Saracenic Africa, on the other hand, enjoyed the blessings of a tolerant government and many Spaniards, Jew and Christian, found refuge there from the oppressive rule of their kings and bishops, Julian, the Governor of Ceuta, smarting under a cruel wrong inflicted on him by Roderick, in the person of his daughter Florida, joined in the appeal of the Spanish refugees to the Saracenic viceroy to liberate Spain from the hated yoke of the usurper. In answer to their prayers Musa bin Nusair, who then ruled over the vast dependency of the Caliph, dispatched the memorable expedition under Tariq, which opened up a new chapter in the history of Spain. The battle of Madina Sidonia decided the fate of the Iberian Peninsula. The Gothic host was completely routed, and Roderick was drowned in the waters of the Guadalate. City after city opened its gates to the Saracens, and in less than two years the whole of the Peninsula as far as the Pyrenees acknowledged the sway of the Caliph of Damascus.2
The Arab* conquest was unattended with any of the consequences which usually accompany a foreign invasion. There was no molestation of inoffensive citizens, no insult to women, no spoliation of private property; whilst the economic revolution it affected has parallels. It emancipated the serfs and slaves from the cruel bondage under which they had so long laboured; it relieved the industrial classes from the heavy burdens which had hitherto ground them down. It swept away the intolerable rights and privileges of the nobles, and made ^11 the Caliph’s subjects equal in the eye of the law. A just and equitable system of taxation revived industry and fostered the growth of corn mefce and manufacture. Muslim and non-Muslim alike were subject to the land-tax, which was regulated by
Dozy, Spainsh Islam, p 105