Parias

thumb|300px|Map (in Spanish) of the taifa kingdoms and the Christians states at the time of the breakup of the Caliphate (1031). In medieval Spain, parias (from medieval Latin pariāre, "to make equal [an account]", i.e. pay) were a form of tribute paid by the taifas of al-Andalus to the Christian kingdoms of the north. Parias dominated relations between the Islamic and the Christian states in the years following the disintegration of the Caliphate of Córdoba (1031) until the reunification of Islamic Spain under the Almoravid dynasty (beginning in 1086). The parias were a form of protection money established by treaty. The payee owed the tributary military protection against foes both Islamic and Christian. Usually the original exaction was forced, either by a large razzia or the threat of one, or as the cost of supporting one Islamic party against another. (The word "taifa" means "party [kingdom]" and refers to the prevalence of factionalism in Islamic Spain during the taifas era.)

==History== The earliest evidence of parias pertains to eastern Spain, to the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona, which exacted a very early one—called the vetus paria or "old paria"—from the taifa of Zaragoza. While parias may have been paid by the local Muslim leaders just west of the Llobregat after Raymond Borrel's razzia on Córdoba in 1010, the earliest paria that can be dated was collected by Raymond Berengar I of Barcelona from Lleida and Zaragoza after his attack on those territories in 1045. In the 1060s he was still demanding parias from Lleida and Zaragoza, as well as the taifa of Tortosa. The Aragonese king Sancho Ramírez also took parias from the king of Zaragoza's underlings at Huesca and Tudela.