ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the distinctively Islamic aspects of the culture of the Muslims were prominent early in the emirate. On the contrary it becomes more and more clear that to begin with the main cultural influence was what has already been called Arabism. Even under the emir 'Abd-ar-Rahman there was no class of jurists, though there were a few men who had studied jurisprudence in the heartlands of the Islamic world. One such was Sa'sa'a, who studied in Syria under al-Awzai and others, presumably before the fall of the Umayyads there in 750. The establishment of a body of Malikite jurists may thus be regarded as the chief intellectual activity in the sphere of religion in al-Andalus under the Umayyads. Essentially, the Arabic poetry produced in al-Andalus was an offshoot of that produced in the East; and in the period now under review, it was little more than that.
