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Las Navas de Tolosa, the urban transformation of the Maghrib, and the territorial decline of al-Andalus

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 4; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17546559.2012.677165

1754-6567

Camilo Gómez-Rivas,

Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender

AbstractThe battle of Las Navas de Tolosa occurred in the context of a major transformation of the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghrib. This article foregrounds the urban transformation of the Far Maghrib, with the emergence of large-scale state formation, and argues that the displacement of Muslim political and military power from the peninsula to the Far Maghrib was a key reason for the marginalization and territorial decline of al-Andalus during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Viewed in this context, the loss at Las Navas de Tolosa was but one of the results of larger socio-historical processes. These included the intensification of commercial contacts – across the Sahara, the Strait of Gibraltar, and the Christian–Muslim frontier – the militarization and solidification of the frontier in the social imagination of Muslim and Christian societies, and the appearance of new popular religious movements.Keywords: UrbanizationAlmoravidsAlmohadsMālikismtrans-Saharan tradeʿUlamāʾSufismLas Navas de Tolosa Notes1On Sijilmāsa see Miller, “Trading Through Islam.” On the development of Marrakesh see Deverdun, Marrakech, des origines à 1912, and Triki, “Marrakech.” On the history of Fez, see O'Meara, Space and Muslim Urban Life.2Messier, “The Almoravids,” 34.3Ya'la, Tres textos árabes.4Austen, Trans-Saharan Africa in World History.5Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period, 69.6Reilly, The Medieval Spains, 96.7Reilly, The Medieval Spains, 142.8Boone, Myers and Redman, “Archeological and Historical Approaches to Complex Societies;” Boone and Benco, “Islamic Settlement in North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula.”9Deverdun, Marrakech, des origines à 1912. Triki, “Marrakech: Retrato histórico,” and “Marrakech.”10Such as Alfonso VI's 1125 incursion and siege of Granada, the fall of Lisbon to Alfonso Henriques in 1147, and Fernando III's capture of Cordoba and Seville in 1236 and 1248, during which the Almohad center was critically weakened.11Bennison, “Liminal States.”12Such as regulating urban markets. See Gómez-Rivas, “The Fatwās of Ibn Rushd Al-Jadd to the Far Maghrib,” 50.13Serrano Ruano, “Why Did the Scholars of Al-Andalus Distrust Al-Ghazālī?” and Cornell, Realm of the Saint.14Fierro, “The Legal Policies of the Almohad Caliphs.”