Jihād between Muslims at the Time of the Reconquista

Both medieval and modern accounts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Iberia and North Africa tend to focus on the great battles between Muslim and Christian armies that accompanied the Christian conquest of al-Andalus. Examining sources beyond the chronicles, however, reveals networks of allegiance and enmity that these polarized narratives obscure. Treaties, chancery documents, poetry and material sources demonstrate that Muslims could see their coreligionists as their greatest enemies. The Almohads and their Muslim challengers conceived of their struggles against each other as jihād, with the Almohads explicitly arguing that jihād against rebellious Muslims was “greater, by many times, than jihād against the Christians.” Yet, because this jihād fit neither the standard juridical definition nor the teleological narrative of the conquest of al-Andalus, medieval chroniclers often glossed over intra-Muslim conflicts and highlighted jihād against Christians. Further complicating this narrative, both the Almohads and their Muslim rivals periodically allied with Christians to gain the upper hand in their confrontation. These alliances suggest that debates over what constituted just authority in Islam were so fierce they could supersede the danger posed by the Christian kings of Iberia.