Umayyad soldier from Al-Andalus

ANDALUSIAN SOLDIER from the UMAYYAD CALIPHATE OF CÓRDOBA (10th century AD), based on the soldier represented on the Leyre Casket, an Umayyad ivory reliquary. The spearhead is based on a find from Liétor (Albacete, Spain), the sword combines different finds, the overall shape is based on a sword found at Martin’s Cave in Gibraltar, with a scabbard chape and a decorated crossguard based on two different finds from Córdoba. For the belt I used 9th century belt plaques from Iran, now in the Metropolitan Museum, that are very similar to the belt of the warrior from the Leyre Casket. The tunic is made of blue Indian resist-dyed cotton, which was imported by sea to the Eastern Mediterranean since Antiquity but became especially popular during the Islamic period, mostly in Egypt and the Levant. The tunic is also trimmed with silk brocade that copies motifs from Sasanian Persia. For the shield, also based on the warrior from the Leyre Casket, I used a Kufic inscription drawn by the Arabist Mabel Villagra.
THE UMAYYADS were the dynasty that ruled the second Islamic caliphate after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. The first caliphate was ruled by the Rashidun dynasty, which conquered Persia, Mesopotamia, the Levant and Egypt. The Umayyads expanded the Islamic world further, conquering the Maghreb, Visigothic Hispania (later named Al-Andalus), Central Asia and northwest India. From their capital in Damascus, the Umayyads ruled between 661 AD and 750 AD the largest empire the world had ever known, extending from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas. The Umayyads conquered the Visigothic kingdom of Toledo from 711 AD to 720 AD, with an army mainly composed of newly Islamised Berbers led by Tariq ibn Ziyad, and then launched a military expedition into Gaul, which was stopped by a Frankish army led by Charles Martel, grandfather of the future Carolingian emperor Charlemagne, at the battle of Poitiers (732 AD), in western France. In 750 AD, the last Umayyad caliph of Damascus Marwan II was killed in Egypt, victim of the Abbasid Revolution. The Abbasid dynasty overthrew the Umayyads, established the Abbasid Caliphate in most of the Islamic world, and executed all the members of the Umayyad family except one, Abd al-Rahman I, who managed to escape to Córdoba, where he founded a new independent Umayyad Emirate in 756 AD, which would later become the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba when Abd al-Rahman III adopted the title of caliph in 929 AD. The Umayyads of Córdoba not only were the nemesis of their Christian neighbours, but also had to face the constant threat of Viking raids, including the capture of Seville in 844 AD and the incursion of Al-Andalus by Björn “Ironside” Ragnarsson in 859 AD. The Caliphate of Córdoba ended with the regime of a Yemeni usurper known in Spanish historiography as “Almanzor”, famous for his military campaigns against the County of Barcelona and the kingdoms of León, Galicia and Pamplona. The caliphate finally disintegrated into many “taifa” kingdoms in 1031 AD.