Islam was conceived as a universal religion and social organization, and an ideology of liberation rooted in the correct expression of divine sovereignty. The first era of Islam was characterized by a wave of conquest that only reinforced the faith's universal aspirations, Both Revelation and the practica led Muslims to develop a formal position in which some non-Muslims were incorporated into dar al-Islam as subject peoples (dhimmis) – a phase of ebullience coinciding with the formulation of Islamic law and institutions.
Beginning in the mid-eleventh century, Latin Christian powers began to expand at the expense of Muslim princes, conquering and colonizing considerable areas of the Islamic Mediterranean. For the first time Islam was confronted with the situation of substantial populations of Muslims living under non-Muslim rule (“mudéjares”/“mudajjan"), and Muslim princes becoming clients of Christian lords — a state of affairs that flew in the face of fundamental principles.
The proposed panel features five papers focusing on various aspects of the status and situation of Muslim subjects and clients of Christian sovereigns in the Medieval Latin Christian Mediterranean. Two papers: “'Rex Lupus, uasallus regi Ildefonso': Vassalage and clientage across religious lines in twelfth-century Iberia,” and “Vassalage and Friendship in Twelfth-Century Iberia: The Relationship between Sayf al-Dawla and Alfonso VII and the Construction of Imperial Sovereignty in the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris (ca. 1148)” will examine the relationships of Muslim client-kings with their Christian overlord, and the practical and ideological compromises that this entailed. “Al-Wahrānī’s Unsolicited Advice to the Moriscos” will examine perceptions of ordinary subject Muslims by their counterparts in dar al-Islam in the sixteenth century. Next, “Muslim Presence and Absence in Early Modern Europe” will visit the question of engagement and disengagement of Muslim merchants (specifically from the Ottoman Empire) with Christian principalities, and their presence and status in Italian port cities in the Early Modern period. Finally, “The Survival of Muslim Minorities in Latin Christian Lands – A Question of Convenience,” will propose a framework for understanding the fates of the various Muslim minority communities across pre-Modern Christendom – one that does not correspond to a presumed growing “intolerance” on the part of Christian society. Together the five papers examine the perception and experience of Muslim clients and subjects from a range of perspectives, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of this crucial development in the Islamic societies of the West.
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Dr. Brian Catlos
From the mid-eleventh to the early seventeenth century (if one accepts the Moriscos as a Muslim population), significant populations of subject Muslims thrived or survived under Christian rule in the Medieval Mediterranean. In some regions (e.g. Sicily) they were expelled quite early (early 1200s), whereas in others (notably the Crowns of Aragon and Castile) they persevered beyond the end of the Middle Ages. The present paper examines the fates of the various subject Muslim communities around the Latin Mediterranean with the aim of sketching out a model that accounts for the fact that some communities were remarkably durable and others fatally vulnerable. Clearly, neither the notion of a general decline of “tolerance” in Christian society nor the development of a “persecuting society” can account for this, given that the fates of local communities varied widely, that there was not a general trend towards marginalization and expulsion, and because the various communities (together with Jewish communities) suffered repression or enjoyed integration according to distinct time-scales.
Based on a tremendous amount of primary and secondary research (the basis of the first [forthcoming] scholarly monograph that surveys subject Muslim communities of Latin Christendom as a whole, this paper proposes a dynamic of “Convenience” (conveniencia to Americo Castro’s convivencia) to account for their varying experiences. This is to say, the status of subject Muslim communities was established by bilateral agreement at the time of their surrender, and subsequently came to be enshrined on the law of Christian principalities. Inevitably political and economic integration or engagement between subject Muslims and various factions, institutions and individuals among the ruling Christian elite and common people developed. This led to relationships of co-dependency between Muslims and Christians, and it was this element of symbiosis (at times coercive, and enforced violently) which set the conditions for the survival of these communities on both the “national” and local scales. It is a model that is data-driven, and eschews wooly and value-laden argument based on supposed notions of “tolerance” or of idealizations of either Islamic or Christian society and culture. As such it will contribute to moving the debate on the nature of the interaction of ethno-religious communities beyond its current historiographical and ideological swamp it has become mired in over the last decades.
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The enigmatic Muslim ruler known in Arabic as Muḥammad ibn Sa’d ibn Mardanīsh and in Latin as Rex Lupus fought the Almohads through alliance with Christians. His closest ally was King Alfonso VIII of Castile. Ibn Mardanīsh paid Alfonso tribute and granted him important fortresses, like other Muslim tributaries to Christian rulers. Yet the relationship between these two rulers is more complex than a simple tributary model would suggest. Alfonso had been orphaned and named king at age three in 1158, and his minority was marked by a fierce battle between would-be regents. Ibn Mardanīsh, ruler of Murcia since 1147, appears to have been present frequently at the court of the young king and to have participated in the debates over his regency. Ibn Mardanīsh’s presence is recorded at events like Alfonso’s 1160 donation of a church to a monastery – a transaction between Christians, in which Ibn Mardanīsh had no stake. Even so, a Latin chronicler wrote that Ibn Mardanīsh confirmed this donation, referring to him as a vassal of the king. Chronicles report that Ibn Mardanīsh entered Toledo in 1167, perhaps to adjudicate between the noble families of the Laras and the Castros, who fought each other over the right to the regency. In later years, the Ibn Mardanīsh and Alfonso VIII fought alongside each other against both Christian and Muslim foes, and Alfonso VIII intervened with the king of Aragon to make him stop attacking Ibn Mardanīsh’s territory.
Both rulers were criticized for their alliance, and encouraged to focus on fighting the infidel rather than their coreligionists. Yet signs of their close relationship continued even after the death of Ibn Mardanīsh in 1172. Two years later, Alfonso VIII began minting gold coins on the model of his former vassal’s dinars. These coins, inscribed with Christian messages in Arabic, were some of the earliest Christian gold coins minted in Europe, and followed the language and iconography of Ibn Mardanīsh’s coins closely.
This paper uses Arabic, Latin and Castilian chronicles and diplomatic treaties alongside material sources to assess the complexities of interreligious vassalage and alliance during a time of great Christian-Muslim conflict. Although chronicles emphasize the enmity between Christians and Muslims, a close examination of the relationship between Ibn Mardanīsh and Alfonso VIII shows that many of the Reconquista’s successes were instead born from Christian-Muslim alliance.
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Dr. Fariba Zarinebaf
There is an ongoing debate among the scholars of the Middle East about the absence of Muslim traders from European ports in the early modern period while an increasing number of European merchants were settling in the ports of Levant. Some scholars have emphasized the lack of interest among Muslim merchants in trading with Europe ( Bernard Lewis) while others (Timur Kuran) have blamed the Islamic institutions ( inheritance laws and vakf) for preventing the accumulation of capital. They have also claimed that the Ottoman- European treaties known as ahdname or Capitulations placed the European traders in an advantageous position vis-a- vis Ottoman merchants. In this paper, I will show that in fact Muslim merchants did become part of the European trading networks as silent partners and a few traded directly with European ports. But European traders preferred to use non- Muslim Ottoman subjects as their agents, dragoman, and brokers partly because Muslims were not tolerated in European ports. In other words, it appears that the plural legal system that the ahdnames created in Ottoman ports was largely absent from European ports even through the origins of the ahdnames was partly Mediterranean. This paper will first examine the context on the negotiation of these treaties and the Ottoman economic vision behind them. I will argue that the Ottoman empire had created an early modern international legal system that allowed for the rise of free trade zones in some of its ports. The ahdnames and berats functioned like commercial charters that pledged European traders temporary exemption from a slew of personal taxes, promised safe conduct, freedom of trade, freedom of religious practice and the protection of property (houses, shops, churches, garden). Did Ottoman traders enjoy the same rights in Europe? The final part of this paper will focus on the bilateral aspects of these treaties, the status of dragoman, and the rise of Ottoman beratli merchants. I will finally examine the legal disputes that European and Ottoman merchants submitted to the Ottoman courts to shed light on the challenges of a plural legal system in Ottoman ports comparing them with the encounters of Ottoman merchants in European ports based on Ottoman archival sources.
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Mohamad Ballan
One of the most important examples of Muslim vassalage to Christian kings in twelfth-century Iberia is that of Sayf al-Dawla Ahmad al-Mustansir billah, a descendant of the royal line of the Banu Hud, who was one of the clients of Alfonso VII (r. 1126–1157). In this paper, I propose to re-examine the dynamics of the relationship which existed between Sayf al-Dawla and Alfonso VII as represented by one particular text, the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris. Although I will also bring other texts into conversation with the representation of Sayf al-Dawla provided by the chronicle, I am primarily concerned with explaining how the CAI seeks to construct an image of Alfonso VII as imperator totius hispaniae, emperor of Iberia, through its discussion of the Leonese monarch’s relationship with this Muslim prince. Moreover, I hope to shed important light on the nature of the relationship between Alfonso VII and Sayf al-Dawla, especially as constructed by the chronicle. Throughout the text, Sayf al-Dawla plays a prominent role as a member of Alfonso’s court, war council, and is often present on the campaigns of the king into Andalusia. His role as an intermediary between Alfonso VII and the Andalusian princes living under Almoravid rule is also highlighted throughout the text, and he emerges as an essential figure in the development of Alfonso’s policies towards al-Andalus. More notably, Sayf al-Dawla is identified in the text itself by Alfonso VII as his “friend,” a proclamation which simultaneously highlights the relationship between the two sovereigns and the unique dynamic of Muslim-Christian interaction in the Iberian peninsula during the twelfth century.
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Dr. Jocelyn Hendrickson
Ibn Abi Jum’a al-Maghrawi al-Wahrani’s (d. 917/1511) “1504 fatwa” to the Moriscos is among the most widely discussed texts on the legal status of Muslims living under non-Muslim rule in the medieval Mediterranean. L.P. Harvey has called it the “key theological document for the study of Spanish Islam” in the post-Reconquest period. Scholars have agreed that al-Wahrani must have been writing in response to a legal question, now lost, posed by Granadan Muslims, who became Iberia’s first Moriscos when they were converted forcibly to Christianity in 1501-1502. Al-Wahrani praises them for their steadfast faith and offers them practical advice as to how they might maintain adherence to Islam without being detected, and despite being forced to perform such acts as praying in church or drinking wine. He assures the Moriscos that as long as their intentions are pure, they will not sin in doing what they must to avoid persecution.
I argue that the “1504 fatwa” is not a fatwa at all (a response to a question), but al-Wahrānī’s unsolicited response to a copy of the 1501 Morisco appeal to the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II. The striking correspondence between al-Wahrani’s advice and the specific hardships described by the Moriscos in this earlier text, composed in the form of a qasida, suggests a direct textual relationship. Despite substantial, continued interest al-Wahrani’s text, and a growing interest in the 1501 appeal for aid, the connection between these two key texts has remained unnoticed and unexplored. My paper will advance the case for a textual relationship and will explore the implications of reading al-Wahrani’s “fatwa” as a response to a formal poem meant to move a sultan, not a practical question posed to a jurist.
If the Moriscos never asked al-Wahrani a question, his text would not constitute evidence that these Muslims perceived a need for legal advice, or that they assigned greater authority to North African jurists (as has been argued). Nor could we use al-Wahrani’s answer to reconstruct the question to which it logically responds, thereby illuminating the Morisco predicament (as has been done). Reading al-Wahrani’s text as unsolicited advice thus has significant implications for our understanding of Iberia’s first Moriscos and their relationships with their co-religionists in Muslim-ruled territory.
