Conquest, Kinship, and Conversion: Comparative Perspectives on Muslim-Christian Relations in the Medieval Mediterranean

Christians and Muslims conquered each other in the Middle Ages, but the social and political outcomes these conquests varied in interesting ways.  Muslims tended to conquer and colonize partly through marriage and inclusive kinship—they took wives from among the subject Christians.   Christian tended not to do this, making the experience of subordination in the two contexts quite different.  This paper, therefore, will focus on patterns of kinship and marriage to discuss Christian and Muslim conquest, rather than the ways in which the Christian surrender treaty system did, or did not, parallel the dhimmah system of subordination prescribed by Muslim law, the standard focus of such comparisons.  The implications of the inclusive-kinship  approach of Muslims and the very different approach of Christians had far-reaching consequences for conversion, social stability, and state-mandated expulsions, and are, I will suggest, the best optic through which to view the broader aspects of Christian-Muslims relations in this period.