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The Articulation of Power in Medieval Iberia and the Maghrib

Online ISBN:
9780191771897
Print ISBN:
9780197265697
Publisher:
British Academy
Book

The Articulation of Power in Medieval Iberia and the Maghrib

Amira K. Bennison (ed.)
Amira K. Bennison
(ed.)

Reader in the History and Culture of the Maghrib

Reader in the History and Culture of the Maghrib, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge
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Published online:
22 January 2015
Published in print:
29 May 2014
Online ISBN:
9780191771897
Print ISBN:
9780197265697
Publisher:
British Academy

Abstract

This volume explores how rulers in medieval Iberia and the Maghrib presented their rule and what strategies they adopted to persuade their subjects of their legitimacy. It focuses on the Na?rids of Granada and the Mar?nids of Morocco who both ruled from the mid-thirteenth to the later fifteenth century. One of the book's main arguments is that the legitimating strategies of these monarchs developed out of a common political culture that straddled the straits of Gibraltar. This culture was mediated by constant transfers of people, ideas and commodities across the straits and a political historiography in which deliberate parallels and comparisons were drawn between Iberia and North Africa. The book challenges a tendency to see the Iberian and North African cultural and political spheres as inherently different and, implicitly, as precursors to later European and African identities. While several chapters in the volume do flag up contrasts in practice, they also highlight the structural similarities in the Na?rid and Mar?nid approach to legitimation in this period. The volume is divided into several sections, each of which approaches the theme of legitimation from a separate angle. The first section contains an introduction to the theme as well as analyses of the material and intellectual background to discourses of legitimation. The next section focuses on rhetorical bids for legitimacy such as the deployment of prestigious genealogies, the use of religiopolitical titles, and other forms of propaganda. That is followed by a detailed look at ceremonial and the calculated patronage of religious festivals by rulers. A final section grapples with the problem of legitimation outside the environs of the city, among illiterate and frequently armed populations.

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