al-Mu’tamid of Seville (reigned 1069-1091)

Muhammad ibn Abbād III “al-Mu’tamid” was the last native Andalusî ruler of Seville before
the invasion of the North African Berber Almoravids (sp. almorávides). He invited Yusuf ibn
Tashufīn (the ‘Rey Yúcef’ of the Poema del Cid) to help him against Alfonso VI (the ‘Rey
Alfonso’ of the Poema del Cid), and with the help of ibn Tashufīn was able to defeat Alfonso
in the Battle of Zallāqah (1086).

After the Caliphate in Córdoba disintegrated in 1031, al-Andalus was politically fragmented
into a number of city-state kindgoms, Reinos de Taifas (Ar. mulūk al-tawā’if) that competed
with each other to retain the best poets, musicians, and scholars at court. As a result, the
th
second half of the 11 century was something of a Golden Age for Andalusî poetry. In
addition to his reputation as a patron of poets and scholars at his court, Al-Mu’tamid
became known as an accomplished poet in his own right. While most of the leading working
poets attempted to outdo each other in artifice, building ever more complex inventories of
meta-metaphors based on already established metaphors from Classical Arabic tradition, as
King al-Mu’tamid had no need to keep pace in this respect and was free to choose his own
style. As a result his poetry is characterized by a simple elegance and emotional sincerity
that makes it somewhat more accessible than the poetry of his contemporaries who had to
follow current literary trends in order to get paid.

Al-Mu’tamid will be best remembered for two anecdotes. The first is his justification for
having invited the Almoravids to aid him in his struggle against the Christian kingdoms.
Andalusīs considered themselves far more cultured and free-thinking than the Berber
fundamentalist Almoravids, many of whom were barely Arabized and not particularly fond of
courtly material culture, let alone highly refined poetic language. When asked how he
justified risking turning his country over to such an uncouth rabble, he allegedly replied: “I
would sooner be a camel driver for the Almoravids than a pig herder for the Christians.” The
second is his famous passion for his favorite wife, Rumaiqiyya, nicknamed I’timād, from
whose name he takes his nickname, “al-Mu’tamid,” or ‘the one completely obsessed with
I’timād’ (roughly). Their love relationship was the stuff of legend, and the separations
between them caused by military campaigns and other royal duties moved al-Mu’tamid to
write some of the most beautiful love poetry of his day. The anecdote regarding al-
Mu’tamid’s devotion to Rumaiqiyya included in Don Juan Manuel’s Conde Lucanor (exemplo
XXX) survives in Moroccan folkloric tradition, where the anecdotal proverb “wa lā nahār at-
tīn” (‘and what about the day of the mud?’) is something equivalent to “have you forgotten
everything I’ve done for you?”

David A. Wacks
Associate Professor of Spanish
Department of Romance Languages
University of Oregon