Al-Darra (Ethelred the Pious)

Perched high in the Pyrennes, the city of Al-Darra marks the traditional northern limits of. Its name is Arabic for "The Woods", but it may in fact descend from the name of a pre-Roman Iberic tribe that lived in the region.

An extremely unimportant Christian city had occupied the spot of present-day Al-Darra since ancient times. The history of the city, however, begins in 977 during the reign of the Umayyad Caliph Hisham in Cordoba. Hisham's vizier Al-Mansur, the real power behind the throne, was finishing a magnificently successful campaign through the northern parts of Hispania. When his army reached a high pass through the mountains, Al-Mansur decided to advance no farther. He named the place Al-Darra and had a fortress built to defend the pass against the Frankish states to the north.

In 978 Al-Mansur decreed that Al-Darra would serve as the seat of government of the entire northern march. Construction began on a mosque to serve the soldiers; over the years the mosque would be rebuilt many times on an ever grander scale. In 980 work began on a palace for a regional governor whose territory included the entire mountain range.

For half a century the gubernatorial forces of Al-Darra posed a constant - if unheeded - threat to the struggling French kingdom. Through a series of incremental attacks and raids, Al-Darra's boundaries were pushed down the northern slope of the mountains and a few miles into the plain beyond. Arabs and Berbers from across the sea began moving to Al-Darra. By 1025 it was a thoroughly Muslim city.

In 1031, the Caliphate suddenly collapsed. Local leaders seized power in Andalusia, which became divided into an innumerable number of taifas competing for influence. Al-Darra was one of the strongest of the taifas. Its strength kept the Andalusian civilization alive in northern Spain.