A spontaneous Christian martyr movement in Córdoba was unprecedented in the Muslim world

Evidence

Perfectus was not the first Christian to be executed for blasphemy; there were isolated similar cases in Syria and Iraq, as well as two earlier cases in Spain in the 820s. Perfectus’s case could well have remained another isolated martyrdom, but it did not. The following year saw fifteen executions: ten of monks from nearby monasteries. Most of these monks deliberately sought out martyrdom, going to the qâdî and insulting Islam and Muhammad (whom they referred to, according to Eulogius, as a precursor of Antichrist, praeuium Antichristi). This spontaneous martyr movement was unprecedented anywhere in the Muslim world. Other martyrs were offspring of mixed marriages (usually Muslim father and Christian mother) who were legally considered Muslim; if they practiced Christianity, they were apostates and subject to the death penalty according to Muslim law. Such illegal practices had been tolerated, it seems, previously; but now these children of mixed marriages, caught in the middle, were forced to choose which side they were on. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 508

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why did this martyr movement emerge in Córdoba specifically, when similar blasphemy cases elsewhere stayed isolated? What changed?
• DEFINE: Explains the legal category of ‘apostate’ as applied to children of Muslim-father/Christian-mother marriages.