Ibiza is known as the party isle, a home for free spirits and the intelligencia of Europe. However this was not always the case it could have been very different …. a dark Islamic state marked by persecution not parties and by Islam. It would be known as a dark isle not the white isle.
Ibiza has a rich history and culture and was the scene of an Islamic conquest in 902AD, when it was conquered by the Moors. Many Europeans forget that the forces of Islam almost reached Paris in the West and were at the gates of Vienna in the East – bent on a Muslim conquest of and destruction of Christian Europe. The Moors ruled Ibiza for over 300 years, forcing the locals to Islam.
Under Islamic rule, Ibiza was named Yabisah and was Islamicised with any form or reminder of the true faith was erased. The island came in close contact with the city of Dénia—the closest port in the nearby Iberian peninsula, located in the Valencian Community—and the two areas were administered jointly by the Taifa of Dénia which saw a period of intense persecution and the eradication of Christianity.
Muslim domination continued until the island was freed together with the islands of Formentera and Menorca by the Norwegian King Sigurd I of Norway in the spring of 1110 on his crusade to Jerusalem.
He was the first European king to undertake a Crusade and brought the bravery and military prowess of the Vikings to the Christian cause. He had previously conquered the cities of Sintra, Lisbon, and Alcácer do Sal and given them over to Christian rulers, in an effort to weaken the Muslim grip on the Iberian peninsula. King Sigurd continued to Sicily where he visited King Roger II of Sicily.
The power of Islam was not broken in Ibiza and as the fortunes of the Crusade rose and waned so to did Muslim influence in Ibiza. It was only a century later that Ibiza came under the Christian control of James I in 1235 with the Catalan Conquest. This happened when the Moors were betrayed by a jealous brother of the King, who allowed the Catalans to sack the city by showing them a secret gate located where the Chapel Of Saint Ciriac stands in Dalt Villa today.
Unlike the persecution and forced conversion of Islamic conquest the Christian powers offered The local Muslim population the option of emigration to Muslim lands and Christians arrived from Girona.
The island maintained its own self-government in several forms until 1715, when King Philip V of Spain abolished the local government’s autonomy. The arrival of democracy in the late 1970s led to the Statute of Autonomy of the Balearic Islands. Today, the island is part of the Balearic Autonomous Community, along with Majorca, Menorca, and Formentera.
This was only possible under European Christian rule which paved the way for modernisation Democracy and freedom to practice your faith.
