Religion, Ethnicity, and Allegiance in Almohad Iberia

The twelfth century battles between the Berber Almohads and the kings of Christian Spain over the fragmented kingdoms of al-Andalus were couched in the rhetoric of religious conflict.  Nevertheless, the southeastern coast, outside of Almohad rule, presents a more complicated vision of religious allegiance.  Ibn Mardanīsh (r. 1146-1172), the most successful independent Muslim ruler of the Almohad period, was likely the great-grandson of a convert from Christianity to Islam (Mardanīsh is probably an Arabization of Martinus).  His kingdom formed military alliances with Castile and Leon and Barcelona, and trade agreements with Genoa and Pisa. 

Christian and Muslim sources depict Ibn Mardanīsh in dramatically different ways.  He is described in Latin and Castilian sources as rex lupus or rey lobo, presumably because of his ferocity in battle, and is presented with some admiration.  Arabic sources, on the other hand, many of them commissioned by the Almohads he was fighting, suggest that any rebellion against their rule constitutes religious sedition, and make Ibn Mardanīsh’s Muslim identity suspect. 

This paper uses discussions of Ibn Mardanīsh by Muslim and Christian contemporaries to examine the interplay of ethnicity, religion and political allegiance during the Almohad period.  While Arabic sources take pains to indicate Ibn Mardanīsh’s Christian roots, Latin and Castilian sources call him Saracen or Moor.  Almohad sources suggest that Ibn Mardanīsh’s blood determines his religious identity – an idea that would find considerable currency in Spain during the Inquisition.  But Christian sources never suggest that his genealogy affected his allegiance, or that his ethnicity differs from that of the Almohads. Ibn Mardanīsh’s intermediate role, between the Almohads and the kings of Christian Spain, is mirrored by his liminal religious position.  The example of Ibn Mardanīsh therefore allows a close study of perceptions of ethnicity and religion in medieval Iberia.