Banu Qasi

The Banu Qasi, Banu Kasi, Beni Casi (Arabic: بني قسي or بنو قسي, meaning "sons" or "heirs of Cassius"), Banu Musa, or al-Qasawi were a Muladí (local convert) dynasty that in the 9th century ruled the Upper March, a frontier territory of the Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba, located on the upper Ebro Valley. At their height in the 850s, family head Musa ibn Musa al-Qasawi was so powerful and autonomous that he would be called 'The Third Monarch of Hispania'. In the first half of the 10th century, an intra-family succession squabble, rebellions and rivalries with competing families, in the face of vigorous monarchs to the north and south, led to the sequential loss of all of their land.

The family is said to descend from the Hispano-Roman nobleman named Cassius. Muslim chronicles and the Chronicle of Alfonso III suggest he was a Visigoth. According to the 10th century Muwallad historian, Ibn al-Qūṭiyya, Count Cassius converted to Islam in 714 as the mawlā (client) of the Umayyads, shortly after their conquest of Hispania. After his conversion, he is said to have traveled to Damascus to personally swear allegiance to the Umayyad Caliph, Al-Walid I.

Under the Banu Qasi, the region of Upper Ebro (modern districts of Logroño and southern Navarre, based in Tudela) formed a semi-autonomous principality. The tiny emirate was faced by enemies in several directions. Although never realized, the threat of Frankish attempts to regain control over the western Pyrenees was a real one. In actuality, even more menacing was the gradual eastwards expansion of the Asturian Kingdom; while in the south lay the Caliphate of Córdoba, ever anxious to impose its authority over the frontier regions.

As a local Muslim dynasty in the Ebro valley (the Upper March of Al-Andalus; Arabic: الثغر الأعلى, Aṯ-Ṯaḡr al-Aʿlà), the Banu Qasi were nominally clients of the emirate, but they thrived on regional rivalries and alliances with other Muwallad dynasties of the Upper March, the Vascon tribal chieftains of Pamplona and Aragon, as well as with the Catalan counts of Pallars-Ribagorza to the north and Barcelona to the east, the Kingdom of Asturias to the west and the Umayyads to the south over the next two centuries. They frequently intermarried with other regional nobility, both Muslim and Christian. Musa ibn Musa and the Pamplona king Íñigo Arista were maternal half-brothers, while Musa also married Arista's daughter, and his own daughter and nieces were married to other Pyrenean princes. The cultural ambivalence of the Banu Qasi is also demonstrated by their mixed use of names: for example, Arabic (Muhammad, Musa, Abd Allah), Latinate (Awriya, Furtun, Lubb), and Basque (Garshiya).

The Umayyads of Cordova sanctioned the rule of the Banu Qasi and repeatedly granted them autonomy by appointing them as governors, only to replace them as they expressed too much independence, or launch punitive military expeditions into the region. Such acts on the part of the Umayyads demonstrated their failure to ever fully resolve the problem of effective, central control of outlying regions.

The speculated homeland of Count Cassius was a narrow strip across the Ebro from Tudela. The Arab historian Ibn Hazm listed the sons of Count Cassius as Furtun, Abu Tawr, Abu Salama, Yunus and Yahya. Of these, it has been suggested that the second may be the Abu Tawr, Wali of Huesca, who invited Charlemagne to Zaragoza in 778. Likewise, the Banu Salama, removed from power in Huesca and Barbitanya (the area of Barbastro) at the end of the 8th century, may have derived from Abu Salama. Subsequent leaders of the family descend from the eldest son, Furtun. His son, Musa ibn Furtun ibn Qasi, first garnered notice in 788, when on behalf of emir Hisham I of Córdoba he put down the rebellion of the Banu Husain in Zaragoza. The fate of Musa ibn Furtun is debated. An account of the 788 rebellion tells of Musa's murder shortly thereafter at the hands of a Banu Husain follower, yet a "Furtun ibn Musa" is said to have been killed in his own 802 Zaragoza uprising, and it has been suggested that this name may be an error for Musa ibn Furtun. However, Ibn Hayyan also reports a Furtun 'the Lame' al-Qasawi (of the Banu Qasi) forming a coalition with Pamplona, Álava, Castile, Amaya and Cerdanya to fight against Amrus ibn Yusuf at this time, suggesting that this is instead a son of Musa ibn Furtun overlooked by Ibn Hazm, whose genealogy provides most of what we know about the clan.

In the next generation, Mutarrif ibn Musa, was likely a son of Musa ibn Furtun, although historian Ibn Hayyan only mentions his name and does not say that he was a member of the Banu Qasi clan. According to Ibn Hayyan, "in (183 H: 799-800) the people of Pamplona deceived Mutarrif ibn Musa and killed him". "This is perhaps one of the most quoted paragraphs by historians who on the basis of this brief news, have woven a complex web of relationships involving the Banu Qasi, the Arista and the Carolingians". Évariste Lévi-Provençal was the first to say that "Pamplona, the capital of Vasconia, had not been governed by the Muslims since 798 (...) and that its inhabitants had killed the representative of the Umayyad authorities, Mutarrif ben Musa Ben Qasi, and had chosen one of their own, named Velasco." This Velasco would be the same "enemy of God, Balashk al-Yalashqi, Lord of Pamplona", a pro-Carolingian against whom the Muslims launched a military campaign in 816. Spanish historian Claudio Sánchez Albornoz did not agree with this interpretation and believed that it had been the people of Pamplona, without any outside intervention, who took matters in their own hands. Nowhere does Ibn Hayyan mention that Mutarrif ibn Musa was the governor of Pamplona or that Velasco was pro-Carolingian.

It was Musa's son Musa ibn Musa al-Qasawi whose rule brought the family to the peak of its power.