Papers by Janina Safran
Islamic Law and Society
This essay traces the incorporation of a sixth/twelfth century fatwā supporting the construction ... more This essay traces the incorporation of a sixth/twelfth century fatwā supporting the construction of churches in North Africa in the Mālikī madhhab and provides insight into practices of Mālikī legal interpretation in the Maghrib in the ninth/fifteenth century. In his fatwā, the Cordoban jurist Ibn al-Ḥājj (d. 529/1134) addressed a novel situation involving the relocation of Christians from al-Andalus. This fatwā was selected by the Tunisian jurist al-Burzulī (d. 841/1438) for commentary in his Jāmiʿ masāʾil al-aḥkām. He discussed Ibn al-Ḥājj’s opinions with reference to al-Mudawwana and al-Wāḍiḥa, and later commentaries, and made a connection to church building in Tunis. In the late ninth/fifteenth century, three jurists writing in response to anti-Jewish attacks in Tamanṭīṭ, in the Tuwāt oasis (Algeria), cited Ibn al-Ḥājj’s fatwā, as redacted by al-Burzulī, in their opinions on the destruction of a local synagogue. Each jurist treated Ibn al-Ḥājj’s fatwā as a relevant legal precede...
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International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1998
In 929, the eighth Umayyad ruler of al-Andalus, ʿAbd al-Rahman III (r. 912–61) formally assumed t... more In 929, the eighth Umayyad ruler of al-Andalus, ʿAbd al-Rahman III (r. 912–61) formally assumed the exclusive caliphal prerogatives of khuṭba and sikka. After nearly two centuries of independent Umayyad rule in the Iberian peninsula, ʿAbd al-Rahman III issued a circular to his governors directing them to address him forthwith as amīr al-muʾminīn, or Commander of the Faithful, and to ensure that the khuṭba, or Friday sermon, in every congregational mosque invoked his name with this designation. With this he reclaimed the Umayyad dynasty's rights to the caliphal title: “We have understood that to continue not to use this title, which is incumbent upon us, is to allow one of our rights to decay and a firm designation to become lost.” Later the same year, he established a mint in Cordoba and ordered the striking of gold dinars in his name (sikka), resuming the minting of gold coins in al-Andalus, which had been suspended since the overthrow of the Umayyad caliphate in Syria.
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Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 2019
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Interfaith Relationships and Perceptions of the Other in the Medieval Mediterranean
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Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 2019
This essay takes up the subject of the conquest of al-Andalus as a conceptually originative act i... more This essay takes up the subject of the conquest of al-Andalus as a conceptually originative act in a discussion of group identity and memory. The focus is not on Umayyad rule and memory, except in so far as Umayyad rule structured the historical perspectives of Andalusi writers, but on Andalusi Mālikī jurists and their social memory. The way Andalusi Mālikī jurists represented their community, its origins, and their relation to the past changed and varied over the period of the rise and fall of Umayyad rule in Iberia and the establishment of Almoravid rule, as their own structures of power developed with the systematization of legal learning and practice. The essay demonstrates these developments through analysis of biographical texts written by jurists in the ninth, tenth, and twelfth centuries and suggests how the conquest of al-Andalus, real and imagined, fits into a history of Mālikī community, “textual polity,” and “empire.”
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Book Reviews by Janina Safran
JAOS, 2019
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Papers by Janina Safran
Book Reviews by Janina Safran