Al-Andalus, the Arabic name for the medieval Islamic state in Iberia, endured for over 750 years following the Arab and Berber conquest of Hispania in 711. While the popular perception of al-Andalus ...is that of a land of religious tolerance and cultural cooperation, the fact is that we know relatively little about how Muslims governed Christians and Jews in al-Andalus and about social relations among Muslims, Christians, and Jews. InDefining Boundaries in al-Andalus, Janina M. Safran takes a close look at the structure and practice of Muslim political and legal-religious authority and offers a rare look at intercommunal life in Iberia during the first three centuries of Islamic rule.
Safran makes creative use of a body of evidence that until now has gone largely untapped by historians-the writings and opinions of Andalusi and Maghribi jurists during the Umayyad dynasty. These sources enable her to bring to life a society undergoing dramatic transformation. Obvious differences between conquerors and conquered and Muslims and non-Muslims became blurred over time by transculturation, intermarriage, and conversion. Safran examines ample evidence of intimate contact between individuals of different religious communities and of legal-juridical accommodation to develop an argument about how legal-religious authorities interpreted the social contract between the Muslim regime and the Christian and Jewish populations. Providing a variety of examples of boundary-testing and negotiation and bringing judges, jurists, and their legal opinions and texts into the narrative of Andalusi history, Safran deepens our understanding of the politics of Umayyad rule, makes Islamic law tangibly social, and renders intercommunal relations vividly personal.
The Almoravid and Almohad Empires. By Amira K. Bennison. The Edinburgh History of the Islamic Empires. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016. Pp. xiv + 382. $150, £90 (cloth); $49.95, £29.99 ...(paper).
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This essay takes up the subject of the conquest of al-Andalus as a conceptually originative act in a discussion of group identity and memory. The focus is not on Umayyad rule and memory, except in so ...far as Umayyad rule structured the historical perspectives of Andalusi writers, but on Andalusi Mālikī jurists and their social memory. The way Andalusi Mālikī jurists represented their community, its origins, and their relation to the past changed and varied over the period of the rise and fall of Umayyad rule in Iberia and the establishment of Almoravid rule, as their own structures of power developed with the systematization of legal learning and practice. The essay demonstrates these developments through analysis of biographical texts written by jurists in the ninth, tenth, and twelfth centuries and suggests how the conquest of al-Andalus, real and imagined, fits into a history of Mālikī community, "textual polity," and "empire."
Six public book burnings took place in al-Andalus and the Maghrib from the middle of the tenth to the end of the twelfth century under five different regimes: Umayyad, Amirid, Abbadid, Almoravid, and ...Almohad. Examining each book burning in its political context provides insight into how rulers and jurists negotiated power in varied ways. Locating each burning in a developing series deepens understanding of its significance as a particular expression of negotiated power in comparative terms, and demonstrates how book burning became a symbol linking successive regimes.
The related phenomena of acculturation, interfaith marriage, and conversion defined the ninth century as a period of social change in al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia). In general, the direction of change ...favored Arabic-Islamic culture and Islam, and this period has been identified as one of crisis for the Iberian church and Christian community. At one extreme, the local church received scathing condemnations from Rome and Frankfurt for permitting Christians too much association with Muslims and Jews. At the other, a total of forty-eight Christian men and women intentionally sought their executions in Córdoba during the 850s by publicly insulting the prophet Muhammad and denying the truth of Islam or by refusing to return to Islam after apostasizing. Their actions ignited tensions within the Andalusi Christian community about Christian identity in the Muslim polity and Islamic cultural environment, as evident in the writings of the priest Eulogius and the layman Paulus Alvarus, the primary sources of information for these events. In their arguments for the martyrdom of these Christians and commemoration of their deaths, Eulogius and Paulus Alvarus contrasted accommodation to Muslim rule and acculturation with true Christian identity. They criticized the church for undermining the faith and Latin-Christian culture through its policy of accommodation, and they denounced those among their coreligionists who found sophistication in Arabic language and learning, “were ignorant of the beauties of the church,” and did not know their “own law” or use their own Latin tongue. The circumstances of the martyrs themselves suggest that the Christian community struggled with questions of identity and differentiation posed, not only by accommodation and acculturation, but also by interfaith marriage and conversion. Most of the martyrs executed for apostasy came from religiously mixed families; some were technically Muslim by birth, while a few had experimented with conversion to Islam and subsequently reconverted to Christianity.
Safran examines the rules of pollution and purification in Maliki juridical texts, specifically on their discussion of whether the Christian is impure and polluting. This is a striking question given ...the conventional understanding of the consensus of Sunni Islam by the late Middle Ages.
This article investigates the sacred and profane in Islamic Cordoba in the ninth and tenth centuries of the Common Era to develop a distinct perspective on Muslim communal identity in al-Andalus ...(Islamic Spain and Portugal), and as an inquiry into how the definition of the sacred and profane in an Islamic city may be informed by, or speak to, the context of a multi-confessional society. The study approaches the sacred as a social construct with social meaning, and thus directs our view to the mundane dimensions of the sacred.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Safran investigates the cases of three former enemies of the Umayyad caliphate of al-Andalus who came to Cordoba from North Africa as supplicants in the period between 971 and 974.
