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Destroyed by the Sword, Revived by the Word: The Almohad Conquest of al-Andalus in Al-mann bil-imama
Abstract
The swift takeover of North Africa and al-Andalus by the Almohads in the twelfth century has been referred to as a “revolution” by some scholars. The new regime was rooted in a Berber-led politico-religious movement that claimed the caliphate after a single generation. The Almohads sought to distinguish themselves from the preceding Almoravid dynasty in every respect, waging holy war against all those who opposed them and their doctrine of tawhid, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Almohad sources certainly depict their conquests as momentous, and in some cases explicitly as resurrections, as in the Almohad scribe and chronicler Ibn Sahib al-Sala's Al-mann bil-imama. He describes how entire Andalusi cities were destroyed and depopulated by the Almohads in the face of rebellion, then miraculously revived as news of the Almohad victories spread. In Al-mann bil-imama, the power of both the written and the spoken word is asserted at every turn, and harnessed by the Almohads. We are told that letters relating military conquests were circulated throughout the empire, poets praised the caliphs at length, and officials traveled the countryside to report new decrees. In each of these cases, the chronicler is careful to note the eloquence and power of the language used, and its ability to unite people of al-Andalus under the Almohad banner. Thus, for Ibn Sahib al-Sala, the written and spoken expressions of Almohad success are rendered more influential than the deeds themselves, a productive force to overcome a destructive one. And by collecting and recording them all, Ibn Sahib al-Sala perpetuates an Almohad imperial “wordscape” in which language not only communicated Almohad power but embodied and effected it. As a scribe himself, Ibn Sahib al-Sala would naturally have respected the power of words as a tool of legitimation. Nonetheless, his account in fact mirrors much of what we know about Almohad administrative practices, suggesting that the self-sustaining “wordscape” is not merely a rhetorical device in his text, but a key component of the Almohad imperial program.
Discipline
History
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None
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