The Christian-Muslim Frontier in Twelfth-Century Imagination: Military Mobilization, Victims of Violence, and the Intersection of Social Identities

This paper attempts to identify and analyze key elements in the transformation and emergence of the Muslim-Christian frontier in the imagination of the societies of the twelfth-century western Mediterranean. The paper posits that the long twelfth century of 1085-1248 was characterized by a profound transformation of the political and legal discourses of western Mediterranean communities, specifically through the mobilization of religio-political will in the direction of the frontier, both physical and psychological. The period between 1085-1248 was marked by the fall of the major Muslim urban centers of Iberia to Christian kingdoms and by the formation of large military coalitions, both Christian and Muslim, mobilized by ideologies of religious war based on universal religious identities. A comparison of Christian coalitions in contrast to the Muslim imperial polities (tribal confederations at heart) will be of interest in this context. Nevertheless, the solidification of this frontier in the shifting political and military control of cities and fortresses was accompanied by the development of religious, political, and legal discourses on both sides of the divide, which echoed each other in significant ways. This paper argues that the emergence of the frontier as a mobilizing force is especially visible in the articulation of theories of holy war and in a legal discourse concerned with the victims of the violence of the frontier, since its movement presented a variety of novel legal situations as Christian polities assumed sovereignty over large populations of non-Christians and Muslim polities and communities formulated their response.

         This paper relies principally on Arabic legal and historiographical texts and will pay special attention to the articulation of universal sectarian identities, their mobilization in the interests of western Mediterranean political regimes, and the intersection of these identities with corporate and local interests.