from ʿAbbās ibn al-Walīd that she said:
“I ask Allah’s forgiveness for the scant sincerity I show when I utter, ‘I ask Allah’s forgiveness.’ ”
The Kings of al-Andalus
- ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muʿāwiyah ibn Hishām al-Umawī*—son of ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam ibn Abī al-ʿĀṣ ibn Umayyah ibn ʿAbd Shams ibn ʿAbd Manāf—was the governor and sovereign of al-Andalus. His kunya was Abū al-Muṭarrif; he belonged to the Marwānī branch and was famously called al-Dākhil (“the One Who Entered”), because when the Umayyad caliphate vanished and Marwān al-Ḥimār was killed while the ʿAbbāsid dynasty was rising, he fled, escaped, reached al-Andalus, and seized power there.
He slipped out of Egypt at the end of the year 132 AH, made his way to Barqah (Cyrenaica) and stayed there for five years. He then proceeded to the Maghrib, dispatching his client Badr to scout matters for him. Badr asked the Mudarī Arabs, “If you found a man from the House of the Caliphate, would you pledge allegiance to him?” They replied, “Where could we find such a man?” He answered, “This is ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muʿāwiyah.” They went to him, pledged allegiance, and he ruled al-Andalus for thirty-three years. The throne remained in his line until the year 400 AH.
Neither he nor most of his descendants adopted the title of caliph; they were simply addressed as “the Emir So-and-so.” The first of them to assume the title Amīr al-Muʾminīn (Commander of the Faithful) was al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh, around 320 AH, after he learned of the weakness of the caliphs of his age and declared, “I am more entitled to command the believers.”