Volume 90, Number 1 - California Historical Society

64
notes
17 Marín, “La práctica del ribat en al-Anda-
lus,” esp. 196–97.
18 Lourie, “The Confraternity,” 167–68.
19
Dodds, Menocal, and Balbale, The Arts
of Intimacy, 130. For more examples of
Almoravid fervor, see Alejandro García-
Sanjuán, “Jews and Christians in Almoravid
Seville as Portrayed by the Islamic Jurist
Ibn ‘Abdun,” Medieval Encounters 14 (2008):
78–98, esp. 82. On another note, the word
Almoravid may come from the Arabic al-
Murabitun, meaning “those bound together”
or “those who perform ribat.”
20
Fernández-Morera, “The Myth of the
Andalusian Paradise,” 24. One scholar suggests
that the Almohades practiced some
form of ribat; see Gerald Elmore, “New
Evidence on the Early Life of Ibn al-‘Arabi,”
Journal of the American Oriental Society 117,
no. 2 (Apr.–June 1997): 347–49.
21
José Enrique López de Coca Castañer,
“Institutions on the Castilian-Granadan
Frontier,” in Medieval Frontier Societies, eds.
Robert Bartlett and Angus Mackay (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1989), 127, and “Ibn Hudhayl
al-Andalusi, 1354–1362,” Schola Forum,
Martial Arts, History and Warfare for Adults,
http://www.fioredeiliberi.org/phpBB3/
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=18439.
22
Richard Martin, “The Religious Foundations
of War, Peace, and Statecraft in Islam,”
in Just War and Jihad, Historical and Theoretical
Perspectives on War and Peace in Western
and Islamic Traditions, eds. John Kelsay and
James Turner Johnson (New York: Greenwood
Press, 1991), 96–97.
23
By no means do we wish to promote the
idea that Islam is a faith dedicated to war.
Other commentators, though, have no trouble
making the claim. See Pamela Geller,
Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical
Guide to the Resistance (Washington, DC:
WNDBooks, 2011), and Robert Spencer, The
Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the
Crusades) (Washington, DC: Regnery Press,
2005). Mr. Spencer also maintains the website
Jihad Watch. In any event, one does not
have to read far to find verses like 4:95, in
which God says that He will honor “those
who fight, above those who stay at home,”
or 9:5, also known as “the sword verse,”
where the faithful learn that “when the
sacred months are over, slay the idolaters
wherever you find them.” Also see Helen
Adolf, “Christendom and Islam in the Mid-
California History • volume 90 number 1 2012
dle Ages: New Light on ‘Grail Stone’ and
‘Hidden Host,’” Speculum 32, no. 1 (January
1957): 103–15, esp. 107–8.
24
All ideas about using war to “command
the good and forbid evil” come from Martin,
“The Religious Foundations of War, Peace,
and Statecraft in Islam,” 96–97, 106–7.
One version of the phrase can be found in
Qur’an, 3:104.
25
Martin, “The Religious Foundations of
War, Peace, and Statecraft in Islam,” esp.
102–11.
26
Malik produced the Muwatta sometime
in the eighth century. See Maribel Fierro,
“Mawali and Muwalladun in al-Andalus” in
Patronate and Patronage in Early and Classical
Islam, eds. Monique Bernards and John
Nawas (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, Academic
Publishers, 2005), 202–4 and Fernández-
Morera, “The Myth of the Andalusian
Paradise,” 28. On another note, some commentators
say Sunnis have more than four
schools of thought. We let others decide the
debate. For more views of Malik, see Mu’li
Yusuf ‘Izz al-Din, Islamic Law from Historical
Foundations to Contemporary Practice
(Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University
Press, 2004); Fierro, “Mawali and Muwalladun
in al-Andalus,” esp. 202–4.
27
Admittedly, warriors did not receive
license to indulge in unrestrained carnage.
Their violence occurred within a holy, limited
moment where they alone risked death
and destruction. The weak, or any other
person or thing incapable of giving offense,
should suffer no harm. In the Muwatta,
verse 21:3.11 says that men at war must
not “kill women and children, or an aged,
infirm person.” Furthermore, the warriors
learn that they cannot “cut down fruitbearing
trees” and “destroy an inhabited
place.” Even the distribution of treasure and
livestock seized from the enemy followed a
certain protocol. Verse 21:6 counseled that
only “free men who have been present at
battle” could receive a share of booty. Still,
the Muwatta praised the warrior’s efforts.
In Verse 21.1, the Muwatta proclaims that
“someone who does jihad” follows the way
of God. Muhammad adds: “Allah laughs at
two men. One of them kills the other, but
each of them will enter the garden; one
fights in the way of Allah and is killed, then
Allah turns [in forgiveness] to the killer
so he fights [in the way of Allah] and also
becomes a martyr.” Verse 21.14.27 features
Muhammad saying, “I would like to fight in
the way of Allah and be killed, then brought
to life again so I could be killed, and then
brought to life again so I could be killed
again.”
28
Some siyars seemed spurious, a question
that need not concern us at this time. For a
more thorough discussion, see Muhammad
Munir, “Islamic International Law (Siyar):
An Introduction,” Research Papers, Human
Rights Prevention Centre (HRCPC) 7, no. 1–2
(2007): 923–40, http://papers.ssrn.com/
sol3/papers.cfm; Bonner, Jihad in Islamic
History, 111; Jean-Pierre Filiu, Apocalypse in
Islam, tr. M. B. DeBevoise (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2011), 32, 36–37.
29
Michael Bonner, “Some observations
concerning the early development of Jihad
on the Arab-Byzantine Frontier,” Studia Islamica
no. 75 (1992): 5–31, esp. 7.
30
Ibid., 23–26.
31
Marín, “La práctica del ribat en al-Andalus,”
197.
32
For more comment on this subject of
holy men going to fight, see,Bonner, “Some
observations,” 7; Maribel Fierro, “Spiritual
Alienation and Political Activism: The
guraba in al-andalus during the Sixth/
Twelfth Century,” Arabica 47, no. 2 (2000):
230–60, esp. 233–34, 236.
33
Fierro, “Spiritual Alienation,” 247.
34 Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History, 112.
35 Fierro, “Spiritual Alienation,” 257.
36
Castro, The Structure of Spanish History,
204. The Diccionario de la Lengua Española,
2 vols. (Madrid: Real Academia Española,
1992) provides the etymology for each of
the above words and illustrates their Arabic
origins.
37
Thomas Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain
in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1979), 50–55.
38
Mariam Rosser-Owen, Islamic Arts
from Spain (London: V&A Publishing,
2010), 21; Maria Rosa Menocal, The Ornament
of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and
Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in
Medieval Spain (New York: Little, Brown,
and Company, 2002); Álvaro of Córdoba
quoted in William Dalrymple, “Inside the
Madrasas,” The New York Review of Books, 52
(Dec. 1, 2005), http://www.nybooks.com/
articles/18514; Alejandro García-Sanjuán,
“Jews and Christians in Almoravid Seville as
Portrayed by the Islamic Jurist Ibn ‘Abdun,”
Medieval Encounters 14 (2008): 78–98, esp.