Accommodation - Mallorca - page 366

Caliph Abdallah entrusted him with the task and Al-Jaulani returned with a landing party
in 902 or 903.
The port town fell easily but Al-Jaulani, who was made wāli (governor) of what the
Arabs dubbed the Eastern Islands of Al-Andalus, remained engaged in guerrilla-style
warfare against pockets of Christian resistance on the islands for eight years. By the time
he died in 913, the islands had been pacified and he had begun work to expand and im-
prove the archipelago's only city, now called Medina Mayurka (City of Mallorca).
The Muslims divided the island into 12 districts and in the ensuing century Mallorca
thrived. They brought advanced irrigation methods and the alqueries, the farms they es-
tablished, flourished. Medina Mayurka became one of Europe's most cosmopolitan cit-
ies. By the end of the 12th century, the city had a population of 35,000, putting it on a par
with Barcelona and London. The al-qasr (castle-palace; Palau de l'Almudaina) was built
over a Roman fort and the grand mosque was built where Palma Catedral now stands.
With the raising of walls around the new Rabad al-Jadid quarter (roughly Es Puig de Sant
Pere), the city reached the extents it would maintain until the late 19th century. It was a
typical medieval Muslim city, a medina like Marrakech or Fez. Few of those narrow
streets that made up its labyrinth, now called estrets (narrows), remain. Medina Mayurka
enjoyed close relations with the rest of the Muslim world in the western Mediterranean,
although by 1075 the emirs (princes) of the Eastern Islands were independent of main-
land jurisdiction.
Al-Jaulani's successors dedicated considerable energy to piracy, which by the opening
of the 12th century was the islands' principal source of revenue, although such activities
aroused the wrath of Christian merchant powers. In 1114, 500 vessels carrying a reported
65,000 Pisan and Catalan troops landed on Mallorca and launched a bloody campaign. In
April the following year they entered Medina Mayurka. Exhausted after 10 months'
fighting, they left Mallorca laden with booty, prisoners and freed Christian slaves when
news came that a Muslim relief fleet was on the way from North Africa.
In 1116 a new era dawned in Mallorca, as the Almoravids (a Berber tribe from Mo-
rocco) from mainland Spain took control. The Balearics reached new heights in prosper-
ity, particularly under the Wāli Ishaq, who ruled from 1152 to 1185. In 1203 Mallorca
fell under the sway of the Almohads who had taken control of Al-Andalus.
No doubt all this internecine strife between Muslim factions had not gone unnoticed in
Christian Spain, where the Reconquista (the reconquest of Muslim-held territory by the
Christian kingdoms) had taken on new impetus after the rout of Almohad armies in the
Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. By 1250 the Christians would take Valencia, Ex-
tremadura, Córdoba and Seville, and the last Muslims would be expelled from Portugal.
In such a context it is hardly surprising that a plan should be hatched to take the Balearic