Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 69 h The Odyssey of the Andalusian Conquerors of Crete... they abandon Cordoba. 38 While Ibn Sa‘īd and Ibn Ḥayyān 39 briefly report that about 15,000 left Cordoba and sailed to Alexandria, Ibn al-Qūṭīyah clearly reports that the “fugitives”, as he calls them, were split into two groups, one sailed to Morocco and the other to Alexandria. 40 Thus, it is clear from the Arabic sources that there was first an exodus im- mediately after the granting of amān to those who had survived the slaughter. Most probably, all the fugitives headed first to Toledo; from there they pro- ceeded towards the coast of Spain in two different groups. The first under- took a shorter voyage to Morocco ( Maghrib ), and the second continued to Alexandria, Egypt. The name of Abū Ḥafṣ ‘Umar b. Shu‘ayb al-Ballūṭi does not appear among the two groups and it seems that he did not assume leadership until a later time. Actually, had he been a prominent leader at this early stage, he would have been killed by Ḥakam I. Unfortunately, none of the sources report the port of embarkation of the refugees. The port of Almería, which in later times developed into an increasingly prominent international port, 41 is the most 38 Ibn Sa‘īd (Abu’l-Ḥasan ‘Alī), Al-Mughrib , 42: “ An yaḥrujū min Qurṭuba .” 39 Ibn Sa‘īd (Abu’l-Ḥasan ‘Alī), Al-Mughrib, 42; Ibn Ḥayyān, Crónica de los emires Alḥakam I y ‘Abdarraḥmān II entre los años 796 y 847 , 65. 40 Ibn al-Qūṭīyah (Abū Bakr b. ‘Umar), Ta’rīkh Iftitāḥ al-Andalus , Spanish translation in Crónica de los emires Alḥakam I y ‘Abdarraḥmān II entre los años 796 y 847 , 65–66: “La mayor parte de los fugitivos del Arrabal salieron de Alandalús, tras su enfrentamiento, y fueron a las riberas de Berbería, en la costa norteafricana, por las que se dispersaron, siendo acogidos por su población. Un grupo grande de ellos, de unos quince mil, se embarcó hacia Oriente hasta llegar a Alejandria.” 41 For the port of Almería, see J. Bosch Vilá, “Marīyah”, EI 2 , VI (1986), 375–376; for the later impressive development of Almería, see E. Molina, “Almería en la etapa naṣri (siglos XIII–XV)”, in Actas del Coloquio Almería entre culturas , Almería 1990, 15–65. Fig. 2. The port of Almería depicted on a stamp of the 19th century. (From Jorge Lirola Delgado, “Islas y litorales: el Mediterráneo dominado”, in El splendor de los Omeyas cordobeses, Granada 2001, p. 61)