Table of Contents

Section 1: Laying the Groundwork1: Amira K. Bennison: Introduction2: Maya Shatzmiller: Islam and the 'Great Divergence': The case of the Moroccan Marinid Empire 1269-1465 CE.3: Allen J. Fromherz: Writing History as a Political Act: Ibn Khaldun, Asabiyya, and Legitimacy.Section 2: Genealogy, Titulature and Propaganda4: Bárbara Boloix-Gallardo: The Genealogical Legitimisation of the Nasrid Dynasty: The Alleged Ansari Origins of the Banu Nasr.5: Abigail Krasner Balbale: Jihad as a Means of Political Legitimation in Thirteenth-Century Sharq al-Andalus.6: Stephen Cory: Honouring the Prophet's Family: A Comparison of the approaches to Political Legitimacy of Abul-Hasan Ali al-Marini and Ahmad al-Mansur al-Sa'di.Section 3: Ceremonies and Ritual Performances7: James A. O. C. Brown: 'Azafid Ceuta, Mawlid al-Nabi and the Development of Marinid Strategies of Legitimation.8: Cynthia Robinson and Amalia Zomeño: On Muhammad V, Ibn al-Khatib and Sufism.9: Mohamed El Mansour: Hospitality, Charity and Political Legitimacy in Pre-modern Morocco.Section 4: Legitimation outside the City10: Amira K. Bennison: Drums, Banners and Baraka: Symbols of authority during the first century of Marinid rule, 1250-1350.11: Camilo Gómez-Rivas: The Ransom Industry and the Expectation of Refuge on the Western Mediterranean Muslim-Christian Frontier 1085-1350.12: Russell Hopley: Nomadic Populations and the Challenge to Political Legitimacy: Three Cases from the Medieval Islamic West.

About the Author

Contributors: Abigail Krasner Balbale is Postdoctoral Fellow in Islamic Arts and Material Culture at Bard Graduate Center in New York City. Amira K. Bennison is Reader in the History and Culture of the Maghrib at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge and a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. James Brown completed his PhD in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge in 2009. Bárbara Boloix-Gallardo has a PhD in the history of al-Andalus from the University of Granada and the University of London (2007). Stephen Cory teaches in the History and Religious Studies Departments at Cleveland State University, specialising in the Islamic Middle East and North Africa during the late medieval/early modern period. Allen Fromherz is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Medieval Mediterranean History at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Camilo Gómez-Rivas is Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern History at the American University in Cairo. Russell Hopley is a lecturer in Arabic studies at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, USA. Mohamed El Mansour is Senior Professor of Modern History at Mohammed V University, Rabat, Morocco. Cynthia Robinson is Chair and Professor of Medieval and Islamic Art at Cornell University. Maya Shatzmiller is Professor of Islamic History at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Amalia Zomeño is a researcher at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Madrid).