This essay explores two legal opinions found in Wansharisi's fatwa collection, the Mi'yar issued by Abu Abd Allah Mohamed al-Haffar and by Ibn Siraj. Both fatwas deal with one specific question, namely the Maliki order of precedence of custodians, which favors women and her bloodline, over men and his bloodline, by several degrees. In the first fatwa, a man's wife died, leaving behind two children. Upon her death, the custody of the children passed to the maternal grandmother, who lived in the same location as the father. When the father wished to relocate to a different town, the question became whether the father should take the children with him, or leave them with their maternal grandmother. The grandmother's willingness to travel played a role in the legal opinion. Would her refusal to travel with the father and the children result in an exemption of the father's wilayah responsibilities? In the second fatwa, al-Haffar is asked about a man whose wife died, leaving behind a number of male children. Their maternal grandmother, who lived in the countryside, claimed their custody. Yet, there was a significance distance between the countryside and the father's location. Who was to keep the children, the father or the maternal grandmother? These questions, and their respective answers, allow us to examine how these muftis understood and applied the Maliki law of hadanah in the presence of conflicting claims by involved parties, and what role, if any, the purpose of the law played in its application through ifta.

In recent years popular scholarship on the Alhambra has used the metaphor of the book to describe the experience of visiting this palace complex notable for its poetic epigraphs inscribed on its walls. At the same time, recent work by Art Historians has rethought the relationship between the epigraphs and the surrounding architecture and decor, moving away from traditional mimetic interpretations (that is, the epigraphs describe what is seen). In this paper, I will re-theorize what it means to "read" the Alhambra based on the epigraphic/architectural models of the pre-Islamic Ka'ba and the Dome of the Rock. This in turn relies on models of writing/reading/transmission based on the Qur'an and pre-Islamic poetry. With reference to epigraphs in the Hall of Ambassadors, the Mirador of Daraxa and the Tower of the Captive, I examine how the texts encourage the reader/reciter to place himself in an imagined unitary universe dependent on interrelationships among the architecture, decor and epigraphs, without reducing them to explanations of each other.

Biographies of medieval saints often swell over time: accounts of dramatic encounters, pithy sayings, miracles and other accretions turn local mystics, poets, and ascetics into heroic or legendary figures. Regardless of their historical accuracy, these stories do important cultural work: confirming societal notions of saintliness, providing useful narratives of exemplary behavior and signposts for understanding momentous social and cultural changes. Modern scholars of these figures, however, face a choice between whittling these biographies down to what is well-supported by credible evidence--and risking being left with relatively little that is certain--or approaching these narratives as evidence in their own right, but evidence of the social shaping of these heroic figures. Several recent Moroccan writers have pioneered a new way of approaching these saintly medieval figures: the historical novel. While both Ahmed Tawfiq, the Minister of Endowments and Religious Affairs, and Salem Himmich, a prominent philosopher, have achieved international recognition for their work, the new wave of Sufi historical novels includes other noteworthy figures. This talk examines two works by the Moroccan historian and Sufi scholar 'Abd al-Ilah Bin 'Arafah, "Jabal Q f" (2002) and the recently published "BilBd S?dd" (2009). The talk analyzes how Bin 'Arafah uses the colorfully imagined lives of the Andalusian Sufis Muhyiddin Ibn al-'Arabi (1165-1240) and Abu al-Hasan al-Shushtari (1212-1269) to explore the complex and tumultuous intellectual, religious and political landscape of the period. In elegant and sensuous prose studded with well-chosen poetic fragments, the author highlights the aesthetic dimension of the mystical hermeneutic as embodied in these two crucial--yet very different--figures. At the same time these novels provide a powerful commentary on current cultural, political and religious tensions in Morocco at a time in which Sufism and the Andalusian cultural legacy have been actively promoted by the monarchy as symbols of a tolerant and culturally pluralistic modernity.

The figure of the Moor has appeared in Portuguese literature for centuries, long before and after the Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula by Christian kings. This paper examines how gender is a component in the description of the Moor. Selected poems or "cantigas de amor" from the Cancioneiro da Ajuda, the epic poem, "Os Lusiadas" by Luis de Camoes, and the oral tale, "A Moura Torta" are three of the literary sources analyzed using a feminist approach. How is the "moura" or Moorish woman presented in the selections? What is the relationship between Christian knights and Moorish women? How does the Reconquest of Portugal affect the description of both male and female Moors in Portuguese literature? This paper suggests that the Moor was not only presented as a military threat to the Portuguese but rather a seductive and subversive object of desire that was dangerous to Christian values and morals.

This paper explores the image and legal status of Muslim refugees from al-Andalus during the first half of its territorial contraction between 1085-1232. The Taifa and Almoravid periods witnessed a wave of migration from territories newly conquered by the Christian kingdoms of northern Iberia as well as the displacement of populations within. The period was also characterized by vigorous interaction between al-Andalus and the Maghrib, along with the forceful articulation of an ideology of defense against an ascendant Europe by Muslim states both in the western and eastern Mediterranean. The concomitant militarization of the Iberian frontier had a profound impact on both Muslim and Christian societies. This paper argues that the concept of refuge-taking and asylum, within the broader discourse of inter-religious conflict, became more developed as a result of this impact. The paper will analyze legal debates concerning the need for Muslims to emigrate to Muslim-governed lands, the implicit obligation to receive those displaced, their material circumstances, and their representations in the contemporary literature. Of special interest will be the evolving interaction between representation and legal status. The paper will focus on one or two case studies that highlight this interaction. The texts will be selected from M?likk case literature (from the fatwt collections of al-Wansharhsr, al-Burzulu, Ibn Rushd al-Jadd, and the nawhzil of Qil fIy?) and will be contextualized by other Andalusi and Maghribi sources (primarily histories and biographical dictionaries). This paper forms part of a larger comparative project on understanding the predecessors of the modern concepts of refuge, sanctuary, and asylum through a study of displaced religious minorities in the Mediterranean during the time of the Crusades and the Reconquista. Through it I hope to argue that the experience of expulsion and displacement across confessional lines in this environment of intense ideological competition between religio-political communities forms a key episode in the origin of the modern conception of refugees and of the community's obligation to them.