The
Mozarabs (in
Spanish mozárabes; in
Portuguese moçárabes; from
Arabic musta'rib"??????", “arabicized”?) were
Iberian Christians who lived under
Muslim rule in
Al-Andalus. Their descendants remained unconverted to
Islam, but did however adopt elements of Arabic language and
culture.
[citation needed]As Christians were regarded by the Muslims as dhimmi or tolerated non-Muslims living under the rule of a Muslim government, they and Jews were allowed among Muslims if they paid the jizyah, a personal tax.
As the universal nature of Roman law was eroded and replaced by Islamic law in the Iberian Peninsula, religious pluralism allowed most ethnic groups in the medieval Islamic world to be judged by their own judges, under their own law Mozarabs had their own tribunals and authorities. Some of them held high offices in Muslim courts. Conversion to Islam was encouraged by the Ummayad caliphs and emirs of Córdoba. Apostasy, however, for one who had been raised as a Muslim or had embraced Islam, was a crime punishable by death.
Until the mid-ninth century, relations between Muslims and the Christian population of al-Andalus, still in the majority, were cordial. Christian resistance to the first wave of Muslim conquerors was unsuccessful. In Murcia, a single surviving capitulation document must stand for many such agreements to render tribute in exchange for the protection of traditional liberties; in it, Theodomirus (Todmir in Arabic), count of Orihuela agrees to recognize Abd al-Aziz as overlord and to pay tribute consisting of a yearly cash payment supplemented with specific agricultural products. In exchange, Theodomir received Abd al-Aziz' promise to respect both his property and his jurisdiction in the province of Murcia (Wolf). There was no change in the composition of the people on the land, and in cases like this one, even their Visigothic lords remained.
