The Making of a Mediterranean Emirate
Ifriqiya and Its Andalusis, 12-14

Ramzi Rouighi (Author)

9780812243109

Hardback, published 13 May 2011

248 pages, 3 maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.6 cm, 0.584 kg

"This book is a much needed contribution to an understudied field. The use of narrative histories as source material is where Rouighi's remarkable talents as a historian emerge. He demonstrates that by asking the right questions, one can write social and economic history using sources focused on other agendas. Not only does he painstakingly extract information on land tenure, commerce, commodities, and rural life that the chronicles almost never address directly, he also explains the historical contexts in which the sources themselves came into being and what kinds of biases are embedded in them. Herein lies one of this book's major contributions: its simultaneous treatment of history and historiography." (Marina Rustow, Johns Hopkins University) "An engaging and fresh look at the creation of the history of medieval Ifrīqiyā and the nature of political power and intellectual culture in the premodern Maghrib-a must-read for students and scholars of the region. Rouighi argues convincingly against the grain of the nation-centered historical paradigm, highlighting the challenges that faced Hafsid rule, and teasing out the subtleties of the intellectual tradition that emerged as the dynasty's standard-bearer." (The Medieval Review)

The thirteenth century marks a turning point in the history of the western Mediterranean. The armies of Castile and Aragon won significant and decisive victories over Muslims in Iberia and took over a number of important cities including Cordoba, Seville, Jaen, and Murcia. Chased out of their native cities, a large number of Andalusis migrated to Ifr&#299qiyā in northern Africa. There, a newly founded Hafsid dynasty (1229-1574) welcomed members of the Andalusi elite and showered them with honors and high positions at court.
While historians have tended to conceive of Ifr&#299qiyā as a region ruled by the Hafsids, Ramzi Rouighi argues in The Making of a Mediterranean Emirate that the Andalusis who joined the Hafsid court supported economic arrangements and political relationships that effectively prevented regional integration from taking place during this period. Rouighi examines an array of documentary, literary, and legal sources to argue that Ifr&#299qiyā was integrated neither politically nor economically and that, consequently, it was not a region in a meaningful sense. Through a close reading of narrative sources, especially historical chronicles, Rouighi further argues that the emergence in the late fourteenth century of the political ideology of Emirism accounts for the representation of the rule of the Hafsid dynasty over cities as its rule over the whole of Ifr&#299qiyā. Setting the activities of Andalusis such as the celebrated historian Ibn Khaldūn (1332-1406) in relation to specific political, economic, and intellectual developments in Ifr&#299qiyā, The Making of a Mediterranean Emirate proposes a counter to the dynastic-centric view of the period that pervades medieval sources and continues to inform most modern generalizations about the Maghrib and the Mediterranean.

Introduction: Orientations
PART I. THE LIMITS OF REGIONAL INTEGRATION
Chapter 1. The Politics of the Emirate
Chapter 2. Taxation and Land Tenure
Chapter 3. Between Land and Sea
PART II. EMIRISM AND THE MAKING OF A REGION
Chapter 4. The Age of the Emir
Chapter 5. Learning and the Emirate
Chapter 6. Emirism and the Writing of History
Conclusion: Departures
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index