Umar ibn Hafsun

`Umar ibn Hafsun ibn Ja'far ibn Salim (Arabic: عمر بن حَفْصُون بن جعفر بن سالم) (c. 850 – 917), known in Spanish history as Omar ben Hafsun, was a 9th-century Christian leader of anti-Ummayad forces in southern Iberia. However, according to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, his conversion to Christianity was "far from being historically proved", and his revolt was described as a "simple political revolt", where "he never sought to ally himself with the Christian kingdoms of Spain and remained under Islamic sovereignty."

The background of Umar ibn Hafsun has been the subject of conflicting claims. His contemporary, the poet Ibn Abd Rabbih (860-940) referred to him as a Sawada, a descendant of black Africans. Writing a century later, Ibn Hayyan recorded a pedigree for Umar ibn Hafsun, tracing his descent to a great-grandfather, Ja'far ibn Salim, who had converted to Islam and settled in the Ronda area of the Málaga province in southern Spain. The pedigree then traces back several additional generations to one Count Marcellus (or perhaps Frugelo), son of Alfonso, apparently a Christian Visigoth. This pedigree was copied by later historians, including Ibn Idhari, Ibn Khatib, and Ibn Khaldun, as well as the A'lam Malaga (History of Malaga) begun by ibn 'Askar and completed by Ibn Khamis, and more recent authors such as Dozy, in his Histoire des Mussulmans d'Espagne (History of the Muslims of Spain). However, Wasserstein recently concluded that the pre-conversion portion of this pedigree was probably invented by Umar himself. Conde in 1820 indicated that Umar ibn Hafsun was "a man of pagan origin, of obscure and unknown ancestry." Regardless, his family owned lands in Iznate, Málaga where ibn Hafsun grew up.

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