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THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF MUSLIM IBERIA
This handbook offers an overview of the main issues regarding the political, economic, social, religious, intellectual and artistic history of the Iberian Peninsula during the period of Muslim rule (eighth—fifteenth centuries). A comprehensive list of primary and secondary sources attests the vitality of the academic study of al-Andalus (= Muslim Iberia) and its place in present-day discussions about the past and the present.
The contributors are all specialists with diverse backgrounds providing different perspectives and approaches. The volume includes chapters dealing with the destiny of the Muslim population after the Christian conquest and with the posterity of alAndalus in art, literature and different historiographical traditions. The chapters are organized in the following sections:
Political history, concentrating on rulers and armies ° Social, religious and economic groups
Intellectual and cultural developments
« Legacy and memory of al-Andalus
Offering a synthetic and updated academic treatment of the history and society of Muslim Iberia, this comprehensive and up-to-date collection provides an authoritative and interdisciplinary guide. It is a valuable resource for both specialists and the general public interested in the history of the Iberian Peninsula, Islamic and Medieval studies.
Maribel Fierro is a research professor at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterraneo-CSIC), Spain. Her research focuses on the political, religious and intellectual history of al-Andalus and the Maghrib, Islamic law, the construction of orthodoxy and the persecution of heresies, and violence and its representation in Medieval Arabic sources. Among her publications: The Almohad Revolution: Politics and religion in the Islamic West during the twelfth—thirteenth centuries (2012), and Abd al-Rahman UI: The first Cordoban caliph (2005). In 2014 she was the recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Anneliese Maier award.
CONTRIBUTORS
Camilla Adang is Professor of Islamic Studies at Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on the life and work of Ibn Hazm, the history of the Zahiri school in the Islamic West, and Muslim-Jewish relations. Among her publications: “A Fatwa by al-Mazari (d. 5536/1141) on a Jewish silk merchant in Gafsa” (2017) and “Reading the Qur’in with Ibn Hazm: The question of the sinlessness of the prophets” (2014). She co-edited Ibn Hazm of Cordoba: The life and works of a controversial thinker (2013).
Xavier Ballestin is a Serra Hunter Professor at the University of Barcelona where he teaches Medieval History, Byzantium and Islam and al-Andalus between the East and West. His research deals with the intellectual culture and written production of Islamic scholars in the Iberian Northeast—Catalonia, the understanding of the relationship between legitimacy, power exercise and state structures in alAndalus and the Maghrib and the network of tribal settlements, Arabic and Berber, in the Western Mediterranean during the High Middle Ages. He has published Almansor i la destruccié de Barcelona (2015).
Filomena Barros is Assistant Professor of Medieval History at the University of Evora (Portugal). Her research focuses on the medieval ethnic-religious minorities, with an emphasis on Muslims in the Portuguese kingdom, and on Moriscos, in the sixteenth century. She has published widely on these topics, including: “Muslim minority in the Portuguese kingdom (1170-1496): Identity and writing” (eJournal of Portuguese History 2015) and “Ethno-religious minorities” (The Historiography of Medieval Portugal, 2011). She is the co-editor of In the Iberian Peninsula and Beyond: A history of Jews and Muslims (15th-17th centuries) (2015) and of the online journal Hamsa: Journal of Judaic and Islamic Studies.
José Bellver is a research fellow at the ERC project “The origin and early development of philosophy in tenth-century al-Andalus: the impact of ill-defined materials and channels of transmission” (ERC 2016, AdG 740618) conducted by Godefroid de Callatay at the Catholic University of Louvain (Université catholique de Louvain). His primary research interest focuses on the intellectual history of Islam, particularly on the fields of Sufism, philosophy and history of science in al-Andalus. He has published on the Andalusi mathematician and astronomer Jabir b. Aflah and his criticisms of Ptolemy. In the field of Andalusi Sufism, he has devoted research to the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries, and particularly to Ibn Barrajan and his disciples, about whom he has published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society and Arabica, among others.
Pascal Buresi is Research Professor at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique CIHAM-UMR 5648, Lyon) and Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris). A historian specialist of the medieval Islamic West, he was first interested in the border between Christianity and Islam in the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages, then turned to the study of the Maghrib in the Almohad period (eleventh—thirteenth centuries). In 2005, he published a Géo-histoire de V’Islam, reprinted in 2018, Governing the Empire, with Hicham El] Aallaoui, and Histoire du Maghreb médiéval (Xe—XVe siecle) with Mehdi Ghouirgate, in 2013.
Susana Calvo Capilla is Professor of Art History at the University Complutense of Madrid. Her research focuses on Andalusi visual culture and Islamic religious architecture. Among her publications: Mezquitas de al-Andalus (2015) and “Reuse of Classical Antiquity in the palace of Madinat al-Zahra’ and its role in the construction of caliphal legitimacy” (Mugarnas, 2014). She has edited Las artes en AlAndalus y Egipto: Contextos e intercambios (2017).
José C. Carvajal Lopez is Lecturer in Historical Archaeology at the University of Leicester, UK, with teaching covering Islamic and historical archaeology, material culture and archaeological science (mainly around ceramic studies). He has developed his work mainly in areas of al-Andalus, Qatar, Palestine and Albania. He has published extensively on the Islamization of Iberia from the perspective of ceramic studies (most recently in 2019 and in preparation) and on the archaeology of the earliest Islamic period in Qatar (2017 and in preparation). He is currently preparing a monograph about the study of Islamization as a sociocultural issue from the point of view of archaeology.
Victor de Castro Leén (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Department II) is currently researcher in the project “Mediterranean nautical cartography in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish: islands or gateways of knowledge in the sea of transcultural and translinguistic translation processes?” directed by S. Brentjes. He is also a member of the research project “Local contexts and global dynamics: alAndalus and the Maghrib in the Islamic East” (FF12016-78878-R AEI/FEDER UE) at the CSIC, Spain. His research focuses on Andalusi historiography, the history of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada (thirteenth—fifteenth centuries) and the intellectual production of the Islamic West. Among his recent publications: “Ibn al-Khatib and his Kitab A’mal al-a’lam: The figure of Almanzor” (2017, in Spanish).
Manuela Ceballos is Assistant Professor of Islam at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her work focuses on ideas about lineage, purity and pollution in sixteenth-century Sufi and Christian mystical communities in the Western Mediterranean. Among her recent publications are “Theology from the margins: Sidf Ridwan al-Januwi and his community of outsiders” (2018) and “Questions of taste: Critical pedagogy and Islamic studies” (2019).
Christina Civantos is a Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami (Florida, USA). She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley and specializes in modern Hispanic and Arabic literary and cultural studies, with a focus on the Arab diaspora in the Americas, empire and postcolonial studies, nationalisms, language ideologies and memory studies. Her publications include numerous articles and the books Between Argentines and Arabs: Argentine Orientalism, Arab immigrants, and the writing of identity (2006) and The Afterlife of al-Andalus: Muslim Iberia in contemporary Arab and Hispanic narratives (2017).
Jessica A. Coope is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, with teaching fields in Medieval Europe, history of Islam, and world history. Her research focuses on religious identity in al-Andalus. Among her publications are The Martyrs of Cordoba: Community and family conflict in an age of mass conversion (1995), and The Most Noble of People: Religious, ethnic, and gender identity in Muslim Spain (2017).
Maribel Fierro (Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterraneo-CSIC) 1s Research Professor at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas-Spain. Her research focuses on the political, religious and intellectual history of alAndalus and the Maghrib, Islamic law, the construction of orthodoxy and the persecution of heresies, and violence and its representation in Medieval Arabic sources. Among her publications: The Almohad Revolution: Politics and religion in the Islamic West during the twelfth—thirteenth centuries (2012), and Abd al-Rahman LI: The first Cordoban caliph (2005). She has been the recipient of the Anneliese Maier Award 2014 of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Alejandro Garcia-Sanjuan earned a PhD in Medieval history from the University of Seville in 1998 and is currently Senior Lecturer (Profesor Titular) of Medieval History at the University of Huelva (Spain). His work centers on medieval Iberian history with a special focus on the history of al-Andalus. Among his main publications are Till God inherits the earth: Islamic pious endowments in al-Andalus (10-15th centuries) (2007), La conquista islamica de la peninsula ibérica y la tergiversacién del pasado (2019) and Yihad: La regulacién de la guerra en la doctrina islamica clasica (2020).
Teresa Garulo is Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, at the Department of General Linguistics and Oriental Studies, Universidad Complutense of Madrid (Spain). Her work focuses on Arabic poetry from al-Andalus. She has worked also on Andalusi woman-poets, and on humor and obscene poetry. Among her books are La literatura arabe de al-Andalus durante el siglo XI (1998) and Diwan de las poetisas de al-Andalus (2nd edition, 1998), and the translation of poems by Abi Tammam ibn Rabah de Calatrava, El cdlamo del poeta (2008) and Ibn Sara aS-Santarini, Poemas del fuego y otras casidas (2001).
Camilo Gémez-Rivas is Associate Professor of Mediterranean studies in the department of literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He specializes in the cultures, history, and literatures of the medieval and early modern western Mediterranean. His research has centered on the Almoravids, Islamic Law, and on the movement and displacement of people, institutions and ideas in the medieval western Mediterranean. His book, Law and the Islamization of Morocco under the Almoravids (2014), explores Tberian—North African relations through the lens of the development of the Maliki network. His article, “The Islamic roots of Spanish protocols of possession: The Requerimiento as dialogue of legal-political cultures with a missing interlocutor”, appeared in a special issue of Republic of Letters: A_Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politics, and the Arts (Vol. 5, Issue 3), and his book The Almoravid Maghreb (a short history) is forthcoming.
Mayte Green-Mercado is Assistant Professor of Islamic History in the Federated History Department at Rutgers University—Newark, New Jersey. She specializes in the history of the Early Modern Mediterranean, with a particular focus on the connected histories of religious minorities. She has written articles on Morisco political culture and the circulation of apocalyptic prophecies, and she recently edited a special issue titled “Speaking the end times: Early modern politics and religion from Iberia to Central Asia” (JESHO, 2018). Her first book is titled A Morisco Apocalypse: The politics of prophecy in the Early Modern Mediterranean (2019).
Pierre Guichard is Professor of Medieval History at the Université Lyon 2 (1972-2004) and Correspondant de l'Institut de France. Among his many publications: Al-Andalus: Estructura antropologica de una sociedad islamica en Occidente (1976, repr. 1995), in French Structures sociales “orientales” et “occidentales” dans I’Espagne musulmane (1977), L’ Espagne et la Sicile musulmanes aux XIéme et XIéme siécles (1990), Les musulmans de Valence et la Reconquéte (XI—XIIL siécles) (1990-1991). In collaboration with Thierry Bianquis and Mathieu Tillier he directed Les débuts du monde musulman (VIT—X* siécle) (2012).
Tawfiq Ibrahim is an independent scholar with an MA in Areas Studies from SOAS and a post-graduate diploma in Developed Administration from London School of Economics. Presently he is linked to the Royal Academy of History as “Correspondiente”. His area of research is Andalusian numismatics, with numerous publications on this subject. In recent years he has developed research on the seals of conquest. Among his most recent publications: “Nuevos documentos sobre la Conquista Omeya de Hispania: Los precintos de plomo” (2011) and Los precintos de la conquista omeya y la formacién de al-Andalus (711-756) (with Ph.Sénac). He also directed the reedition of “Los Reyes de Taifas: Laminas y Suplemento de Antonio Prieto y Vives” (2003).
Jesus Lorenzo Jiménez has a Ph.D. in History from the University of the Basque Country (2008). He is presently a member of the Research Team UPV/ EHU GIU 17/006. His research focuses on the history of the first centuries in alAndalus in close connection with the history of the rest of the Islamic world. He has studied an early dynasty in the Upper March in his monograph La dawla de los Banu Qasi (2010).
Manuela Marin is Research Professor at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean-CSIC. Her interests are the social and religious history of alAndalus and the Maghrib, gender studies, the history of food in the Mediterranean, the Spanish protectorate in Morocco and the history of Spanish Arabism. Among her many publications: Individuo y sociedad en al-Andalus (1992) and Mujeres en al-Andalus (2000).
Ifaki Martin Viso is Senior Lecturer (Profesor Titular) of Medieval History at the University of Salamanca. His interests are the early medieval rural landscape, including cemeteries and settlements, and the social and political complexity in early medieval Iberia in comparison with European cases. He is the author of a monograph on rural settlements and landscapes in the medieval West: Asentamientos y paisajes rurales en el Occidente medieval (2016) and he has recently published a handbook about early medieval Iberia: La Peninsula Ibérica en la Edad Media (700-1250) (2019) with Ana Echevarria.
Luis Molina is Scientific Researcher at the School of Arabic Studies (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Granada). His interests are: edition and analysis of Arabic sources related to the history of al-Andalus, both chronicles (Dhikr bilad al-Andalus, 1983; Fath al-Andalus, 1994) and biographical dictionaries (Ibn Harith al-Khushant’s Akhbar al-fugaha’, 1992). He has also devoted a number of studies to Andalusi historiography centered in authors such as Ibn Hayyan (“Dos fragmentos inéditos del volumen II del Mugtabis de Ibn Hayyan” (AIQantara, 2011) and “The Codex Unicus of the Second Volume of Ibn Hayyan’s Muqtabis: An example of cooperative copying” (Journal of Islamic Manuscripts, 2015, with M. Penelas)), Ibn Hazm (“The Reception of Ibn Hazm in Arabic Chronicles”, in Ibn Hazm of Cordoba, 2013) and Ibn al-Qitiyya (“Talat y el judio: Analisis de la evolucion historiografica de un relato” (Al-Qantara, 2011)).
Ruth Pliego is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Seville. With an archaeological background, her research has focused on the numismatics of the Early Middle Ages of the Iberian Peninsula and, more recently, she is interested in the transition to the Arab period. Among her publications: La Moneda Visigoda (2009), “El tremis de los tltimos afios del reino visigodo (702—714)” (2015) and “La Ciudad a través de las emisiones monetarias y sigilograficas de la Peninsula Ibérica: de la Antigiiedad Tardia a la conquista omeya” (with T. Ibrahim) (2018).
José Miguel Puerta Vilchez is Doctor in Arabic Philology and Professor at the Department of Art History in the University of Granada. His research deals with the aesthetic thought, the calligraphy and the arts of Classical and Modern Islam. Among his books: Los cédigos de utopia de la Alhambra de Granada (1990), Reading the Alhambra (transl. by Jon Trout, 2015), Aesthetics in Arabic Thought from PreIslamic Arabia through al-Andalus (transl. by Consuelo Lopez Morillas, 2017) and La aventura del calamo (2007). Among his recent articles: “La construcci6n poética de la Alhambra” (2013), “La epigrafia de la Alhambra y de la mezquita de Cordoba en los trabajos de los académicos del siglo XVIII’ (2015) and “La Alhambra como paraiso en el imaginario arabe” (2017). He has been co-director of the Biblioteca de al-Andalus (9 vols, 2004-2012) and responsible for the exhibitions of Kamal Boullata and Adonis, Doce candiles para Granada (1998) and Artes y culturas de al-Andalus: EI poder de la Alhambra (2013-2014).
Monica Rius-Piniés is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Barcelona. Her research interests center on contemporary Arabic literature, gender studies and social history of science and medicine. Among her publications: La alquibla en al-Andalus y al-Magrib al-Agsa (2000); “Qibla in the Mediterranean”, Handbook of Archeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy (2015) and “Qurtuba y la ciencia medieval: Reminiscencias del pasado en el presente”, Awraq (2013).
Fernando Rodriguez Mediano is a Research Scientist at the Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterraneo-CSIC. His areas of expertise are: Sociology of religious elites in Morocco; Spanish Protectorate over Northern Morocco; history of Spanish Early Modern Orientalism. He is author of Familias de Fez (ss. XV— XVII) (1995), Humanismo y progreso: Las ciencias humanas en Espatia (2002), and coauthor, with Mercedes Garcia-Arenal, of The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, The forged lead books of Granada, and the rise of Orientalism (2013). He has been director of the journal of Arabic Studies Al-Qantara.
Bruna Soravia is an independent scholar, whose wide-ranging research interests have especially focused on Andalusi intellectual and literary history, to the end of the seventh/thirteenth century. Among her publications on the subject: “A portrait of the ‘alim as a young man: The formative years of Ibn Hazm” (in Ibn Hazm of Cordoba, 2013); (with Pierre Guichard) Les royaumes de taifas (2007); “Les manuels arabes 4 usage des fonctionnaires de l’administration (adab al-katib) 4 lage classique de l’Islam” (Arabica, 2005).
Sarah Stroumsa is the Alice and Jack Ormut Professor Emerita of Arabic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she served as the Rector of the University from 2008 until 2012. Her area of academic focus includes the history of philosophical and theological thought in Arabic in the early Islamic Middle Ages, medieval Judeo-Arabic literature, and intellectual history of Muslims and Jews in Islamic Spain. Among her publications are Freethinkers of medieval Islam: Ibn al-Rawandt, Abii Bakr al-Razi and their impact on Islamic thought (1999), Maimonides in his world: Portrait of a Mediterranean thinker (2009), and Andalus and Sefarad: On philosophy and its history in Islamic Spain (2019).
Francisco Vidal-Castro is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Jaén (Spain). His research focuses on Islamic law and the political history of Nasrid al-Andalus (thirteenth-fifteenth centuries). Among his publications: “Les terres de PAlitaje (Grenade) et le pouvoir socio-politique et économique dans l’al-Andalus nasride” (Arabica 2018, with M.D. Rodriguez Gomez); “Emires, principes, princesas ... los Bani -Ahmar y el papel politico de las élites locales en la sociedad andalusi” (Revista Instituto Egipcio Estudios Islamicos 2013); “Water and farm estates in the Arabic documents of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada” (From al-Andalus to Khurasan 2007).
David J. Wasserstein is Professor of History, Jewish Studies, and Classical and Mediterranean Studies and holder of the Eugene Greener, Jr. chair in Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. His principal fields of interest are Islam in Iberia, minorities—especially Jews—in the Islamic world, and Islamic numismatics. He is the author of several books, including The rise and fall of the Party-Kings: Politics and society in Islamic Spain, 1001-1086 (1985), The caliphate in the west: An Islamic political institution in the Iberian Peninsula (1993), and Black banners of ISIS (2017).
INTRODUCTION
Languages, academic traditions and disciplinary backgrounds in the study of al-Andalus
Maribel Fierro
Among the monuments built by the Muslims during the time they ruled in the Iberian Peninsula, the tower of the former mosque of Seville was kept by the Christian conquerors of the town and transformed into that of the cathedral that replaced the Islamic building. Known as the Giralda, it has inspired — like other iconic buildings such as the mosque of Cordoba and the Alhambra in Granada — architects all over the world, such as those responsible for the Wrigley Building in Chicago. The Giralda and the Wrigley tower have been selected for the cover of this book devoted not only to the history of al-Andalus’ (or Muslim Iberia) but also to that of its aftermath.
This collective volume aims, first, at offering to readers not necessarily specialists on the topic an overview of the different dynasties that ruled in al-Andalus and how they succeeded or failed in maintaining their power through their armies and the legitimacy they claimed and that was reflected, among other means, in their coins. Then, it moves to deal with the most important components of the societies over which those rulers exercised their power, and of the cultural and intellectual developments that took place in them. Parts I-HI are thus devoted to Rulers, Society and Culture,” respectively, while Part IV addresses the aftermath of alAndalus, from the Mudejars and Moriscos to the memory of al-Andalus in the Islamic world, in Spain, the Americas and ‘the West’, as well as its mythification and use for political and ideological contemporary purposes.
This structure aims at facilitating the non-specialized readers to grasp the most relevant data and interpretations, while the specialist or those who want to become specialists will find updated materials and discussions by scholars all of whom are involved in research on the topic they deal with. Fifty boxes are devoted to certain figures, towns, texts, objects or topics that highlight different aspects of the history and cultural production of al-Andalus and its impact. Maps, dynastic tables and illustrations, as well as a glossary of technical terms, have been also included while the general bibliography documents the vitality of the modern study of al-Andalus. Scholars are now able to approach such study with instruments that our predecessors did not have.
One is the collective enterprise that led to the publication of the Biblioteca de al-Andalus by the Fundacion Ibn Tufayl thanks to the vision of Jorge Lirola and José Miguel Puerta Vilchez, a reference work of great value that hopefully one day will be available in digitized form to become even more useful. Two similar resources that can be consulted online and with free access are the Prosopography of the ‘Ulama’ of al-Andalus (PUA), directed by Maria Luisa Avila (Escuela de Estudios Arabes, CSIC-Granada), and the History of the Authors and Transmitters of al-Andalus (HATA) that I direct, that allow easy access to the wealth of information found in the biographical and bio-bibliographical dictionaries as well as in other sources. In the next few decades, the significant number of printed Arabic books related to the history of al-Andalus that have been digitized and are increasingly fully searchable will allow new approaches not only in terms of saving time in our research (this is already happening) but in the questions asked from the sources and in the possible answers obtained from machine-readable corpora in areas such as inter-textuality that will allow us to refine our grasp of the sources.
I am grateful to Routledge for having approached me to carry out this collective enterprise that inevitably reflects in some ways my own perspective on how to study and understand al-Andalus, but in which I have also tried to have represented the most important scholarly debates and points of view. Nevertheless, the study of alAndalus includes more than is found in this volume, both at the scholarly and nonscholarly levels, the latter having been especially active in the last two decades as we live in an age in which the past — and specifically the medieval past — is again being heavily mobilized to talk about present concerns. Such mobilization is an interesting object of study in itself, and apparently especially attractive to those who approach it from a geographical or academic distance. But it loses any possible appeal for those who have to suffer its implications in terms of domestic policies or the scholarly training of new generations. This book hopes to move the reader to look for more on the topic and, hopefully, if in her or his search that reader encounters approaches that aim to consciously manipulate, distort or falsify what is historically well established — according to the rules of scholarly research — she or he will be able to draw his or her own conclusions.
A collective volume like this represents — with limitations as we shall see — the outlooks, styles and aims of different traditions and disciplines in the Western academic world, while also reflecting some of the problems posed by the plurilingual scholarship dealing with al-Andalus.
Of the thirty scholars who have contributed to this Handbook, there is a gender balance (sixteen men, fourteen women) that came out not because of quotas but because it is as easy to find good specialists who are men as those who are women: this is the reality of the field. In terms of geographical distribution, the lion’s share goes to Spain with a total of seventeen scholars. This share reflects the amount of research on al-Andalus that is being produced inside the Iberian Peninsula, including Portugal, here represented by one scholar. As for the Spaniards, together with two independent scholars, they come from institutions located all over the peninsula (Barcelona, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Madrid, Salamanca, Vitoria). This shows that interest for al-Andalus in its many dimensions is well represented in the Spanish academic milieu, involving universities and the High Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) — a state organization with institutes all over the peninsula. All these institutions have strong local ties with the Autonomous Governments (Comunidades Aut6nomas) where they are located, a situation that often gives shape to the research produced there. The Spanish scholars have also different academic backgrounds, some having been trained as Arabists, i.e., their studies focused on the learning of the Arabic language and thus were trained in Faculties of Philology or Letters and Humanities, and some as Medievalists and Archaeologists who study in Faculties of History. Academic separation and difference in training have, for a long time, made it difficult to achieve a convergence between the two. In the past decades, there has been a slow and still minority interest on the part of some Medievalists to acquaint themselves with the knowledge of the Arabic language to a degree that allows them to have direct access to the Arabic sources.
This has been a very salutary development that goes together with the acknowledgment on the part of those trained as Arabists that mastery of the language does not transform them automatically into historians or specialists in the study of literature, philosophy, the sciences and so on. A growing convergence in readings, training and methodologies is making conversation across disciplinary boundaries possible — a development that is to be expected to grow in the future given that public funding through Spanish and European institutions favours inter-disciplinarity and transversality. Another development to note regarding the Spanish contributors is that many of them are able to write their papers in English — even if revision is still needed.
This indicates how the Spanish academic milieu has grown more ‘global’ since the advent of democracy in 1978 — the year in which the Spanish Constitution was voted during the so-called “Transition’ period that led from the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975) to a democratic political system and eventually to the integration of Spain into the European Community (1986). Moreover, three of the Spanish scholars included in this volume are presently located in academic institutions outside Spain. This is another sign of the changes that have taken place in the Spanish academic milieu, especially after the Socialist Party came to power in 1982, and even more after the approval of the ‘Ley de la Ciencia’ (The Law for Science) (1986) with the promotion of the internationalization of Spanish scholarship by supporting research stays of young and senior scholars in different institutions across the world, thus facilitating the acquisition of other languages, and strengthening the convergence of Spanish scholars in their outlooks and methodologies with those of the scholars from other Western countries. In more recent decades, a slow increase in the numbers of non-Spaniards integrated in Spanish academic institutions is perceptible, although this is a process that still encounters many internal resistances and obstacles. A final point to be made is that Spanish scholars tend to be inclusive in their bibliographical references, as they are aware that for a long time the more stimulating approaches to their subject of study came from outside Spain: dictatorships are very bad for allowing the production of innovative research.
Scholars from academic institutions in the United States come second, six in total. This number is partly due to editorial policies, but the fact is that al-Andalus has long attracted the interest of North American scholars. This has much to do with the impact of the teaching of Américo Castro (1885-1972), a literary critic and cultural historian who had sided with the Spanish Republic and who left Spain when the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) started, teaching for the rest of his life in the universities of Wisconsin-Madison, Texas and Princeton. Citizens of Hispanic descent — easily recognizable by their family names — are well represented among the US scholars who specialize in the study of al-Andalus and related topics such as the history of the Muslim communities after the fall of alAndalus, the history of Islamic North Africa and the impact of the Andalusi experience in the Spanish conquest and empire-building in America. This volume bears witness to this reality.
In Europe, the history of al-Andalus has long been conducted by French scholars who have greatly enriched our understanding of its political, economic, social and cultural developments, and who have combined the study of texts with archaeological work with fruitful results. A French academic institution located in Spain, the Casa de Velazquez, has been extremely influential in this regard. This French seminal scholarship is here represented by two scholars. One of them is the historian Pierre Guichard, whose work had a tremendous impact in modern approaches to the history of the Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula. The number of French scholars could have been higher, given that the study of alAndalus and Islamic North Africa is still very much active across the Pyrenees with the particularity that they combine both (the history of al-Andalus and North Africa), something that is not always the case in Spain. But the trend to connect more and more al-Andalus and the Maghrib can be ascertained in a growing number of publications, in funded projects in both Spain and France, and in The Spain and North Africa Project (SNAP), a scholarly initiative started by US scholars to encourage the study of the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghrib as a unified region.
One of the scholars in this volume is Italian, but was partly trained in France, representing the dynamics and dynamism of the Italian academic milieu that produces excellent scholars with a strong linguistic background and often an international profile, although is unable to incorporate all of them. This is also the case of Dutch universities. One of the two scholars located in Israel is, in fact, Dutch. The importance of the Jewish communities in Spanish medieval and early modern history explains a sustained interest in al-Andalus among Israeli, and Jewish scholars more generally, especially regarding intellectual developments, the plight of the Jews who were forced to convert and the resulting diaspora.
Great Britain and Germany, as well as other European countries and Japan, also count among their scholars some who have dealt with Andalusi issues and topics. Such scholars are numerous in the Arab and Islamic world, carrying out extremely valuable work producing many editions of Arabic texts while also producing myriad significant studies on almost every possible aspect. However, while scholars from Western academic institutions often interact among themselves through emails, associations, participation in conferences, reviews, etc., this is regrettably most often not the case with non-Western scholars. Scholars who work in the universities of the Arab and Islamic world suffer from a number of shortcomings for which they are not responsible, such as lack of access to Western publications, often too expensive for the limited budgets of their libraries, and lack of funding for participating in international conferences. There are also linguistic barriers. The ability to read medieval Arabic sources does not always go together with the ability to speak it on the part of Western scholars. The predominance of English in the academic world can also be an obstacle for scholars who have been trained in a post-colonial setting that stressed Arabization. At a certain moment, it also stressed re-Islamization. It is difficult for Western scholars to have a conversation with scholars from the Islamic world who still conceive of the Muslim conquests as fath, a religiously charged concept. To be fair, it is also difficult to have a conversation with scholars who conceive of the Christian conquest of al-Andalus as a ‘Reconquista’, an equally religiously charged concept, without acknowledging its ideological background. However, in this case other commonalities — the ability to communicate in the same language and the sharing of common references — seem to attenuate the difficulty and to elevate the degree of tolerance.
Spanish and Portuguese scholars, and those from the Arab and Islamic world, tend to produce detailed studies that concentrate in depth on certain topics, from the historical value of Andalusi poetry to the sanitary system in Andalusi towns, from the naming patterns of the local Muslim population to the irrigation practices of a specific locality. Western scholars from outside the Iberian Peninsula usually bring with them other types of interest and questions that put the Andalusi case in a wider perspective. However, there is still scarce integration of the historical knowledge gained about the Islamic societies that developed in al-Andalus and the Maghrib (the Islamic West) in the writing of the history of the Islamic world in general. This shortcoming is slowly diminishing and is likely to be further eroded in the near future, as interest in the region continues to increase especially on the part of archaeologists, given the present-day difficulty of conducting research in other areas of the Islamic world that have for long elicited much more interest. There is much to gain from this growing interest, but for those scholars whose main production is in languages other than English it comes also with a threat, that of seeing their research reduced to being quoted in footnotes in texts written in English that eventually become the standard works of reference.
When I started this project in 2015, I did not know that it was going to take five years to see it finished. Coordinating thirty contributors, each of whom had other commitments and their own priorities, proved to be very demanding and not always successful. There were also withdrawals in the process. I am particularly grateful to those who joined the project at a late stage and who were extremely generous with their time. My thanks to Victor de Castro for his help and to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation that made it possible through the Anneliese Maier Award granted to me in 2014. Luis Molina as always has been there when I needed him. Francisco Vidal has been extremely generous with his time and his resources. I wish also to thank Joe Whiting and Titanilla Panczel from Routledge for their support, as well as all those who have been involved in the publication of this book. Finally, my thanks to my son Andrés for his patience in those many days when, immersed in the preparation of this book, I only uttered monosyllables and he only saw my back while sitting for hours at the computer.
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