Las Navas de Tolosa, the urban transformation of the Maghrib, and the territorial decline of al-Andalus

Abstract

The battle of Las Navas de Tolosa occurred in the context of a major transformation of the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghrib. This article foregrounds the urban transformation of the Far Maghrib, with the emergence of large-scale state formation, and argues that the displacement of Muslim political and military power from the peninsula to the Far Maghrib was a key reason for the marginalization and territorial decline of al-Andalus during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Viewed in this context, the loss at Las Navas de Tolosa was but one of the results of larger socio-historical processes. These included the intensification of commercial contacts – across the Sahara, the Strait of Gibraltar, and the Christian–Muslim frontier – the militarization and solidification of the frontier in the social imagination of Muslim and Christian societies, and the appearance of new popular religious movements.