Violence and warfare in Medieval Western Islam

Abstract

ABSTRACT Studies bearing on the relationship between religion and violence in Islam are numerous. So are those on Ibn Khaldūn’s theory of the State, which bases the latter’s emergence on the ‘natural’ violence of peripheral tribes. This contribution aims to put the general theory that can be drawn from these studies into perspective by confronting it with some local examples: the Andalusian Taifas, the Almoravid emirate and the Almohad caliphate. These case studies highlight the diversity of forms taken by state violence and warfare in Islamic contexts. The integration of ´seculaŕ or profane patterns in the killing of enemies or in warfare, and the justification of violence sometimes by religion, sometimes by popular wisdom or common sense, contradict the fairly widespread essentialist discourses on the congenital relationship that Islam and violence maintained from the beginning. On the contrary, these processes highlight the complexity and diversity of the discursive justification of physical violence.