A Vertical Sea: North Africa and the Medieval Mediterranean

Abstract

An extraordinary letter was discovered in a neglected pile of medieval diplomatic correspondence in the Vatican Libraries: a letter from Al-Murtada the Almohad, Muslim Caliph in Marrakech to Pope Innocent IV (1243–1254). The letter, written in finest official calligraphy, proposes an alliance between the Caliph and the Vicar of Christ, the leader of an institution that had called for organized crusades against the Islamic world. While the history of Pope Innocent IV’s contacts with the Muslim rulers of Marrakech remains obscure, the sources indicate that Pope Innocent IV sent envoys south to Marrakech. One of these envoys was Lope d’Ayn. Lope became Bishop of Marrakech, shepherd of a flock of paid Christian mercenaries who were sent to Marrakech by that sometime leader of the reconquista, Ferdinand III of Castile, in a deal he had struck with the Almohads. Although they now had Christians fighting for them and cathedral bells competing with the call to prayer, the Almohads were powerful agitators of jihad against the Christians only decades before. Scholars know only a little about Lope d’Ayn’s story or the historical context of this letter between Caliph Murtada and the Pope. Although very recent research is encouraging, there is a great deal to know about the history of the mercenaries of Marrakech or the interactions between Jews, Muslims and Christians that occurred in early thirteenth century Marrakech. The neglect of Lope d’Ayn and the contacts between the Papacy and the Almohads is only one example of a much wider neglect of North Africa contacts with Europe in the secondary literature in English. While scholarship in English has focused on correspondence, commerce and travel from West to East, between Europe, the Levant and Egypt, there were also important cultural bridges being crossed between North and South, between North Africa and Europe in the Medieval Western Mediterranean.