Notes on Contributors
Javier Albarrán
PhD in Medieval History, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2020, is a historian focused on the study of the medieval Islamic West, particularly on issues related to religious violence, the history of jihad, the figure and veneration of prophet Muhammad, the creation of sacred memory and spaces, and encounters between religions. He has been postdoctoral fellow at the RomanIslam Center (Hamburg University, 2020–21) and Assistant Professor of Medieval History at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (2022–24). Currently he holds a tenure-track position (Ramón y Cajal) at the Department of Medieval History of the University of Granada. He has published several books, book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Al-Qantara, al-Masaq, al-ʿUsur al-Wusta, Religions, Studia Historica, Der Islam or The Journal of Medieval Worlds. His last two books are Ejércitos benditos. Yihad y memoria en al-Andalus (siglos X–XIII), (University of Granada Press, 2020), and Al-Andalus y la Guerra (La Ergástula, 2024).
Xavier Ballestín Navarro
is a Serra Hunter Professor at the University of Barcelona, where he teaches Medieval History and Byzantium and Islam. His research deals with the intellectual culture and written production of Islamic scholars in the Iberian Northeast—Catalonia -, the understanding of the relationship between legitimacy, power exercise and state structures in al-Andalus and the Magrib, the network of tribal settlements, Arabic and Berber, in the Western Mediterranean during the High Middle Ages, and the seafaring ventures of the bahriyyun between the IX and X centuries. He has published Almansor i la destrucció de Barcelona (2015).
Amira K. Bennison
is Professor in the History and Culture of the Maghrib at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Magdalene College. She is also currently the Director of the Centre of Islamic Studies and Chair of the Academic Publishing Committee of Cambridge University Press and Assessment. Her work focuses on religious and political legitimacy in the pre-modern Maghrib. Her publications include Jihad and its Interpretations in Precolonial Morocco (2002), The Great Caliphs (2009) and The Almoravid and Almohad Empires (2016), edited volumes on cities in the Islamic world and the western Mediterranean, and numerous articles. She also lectures on cultural tours in Morocco and is a contributor to radio, TV and podcast documentaries on Islamic history and material culture.
Pascal Buresi
is Research Professor (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique CIHAM- UMR 5648, Lyon) and Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris). A historian specialist of the medieval Islamic West, Buresi was first interested in the border between Christendom and Islam in the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Age, then turned to the study of the Maghreb in the Almohad period (11th–13th century). He published Géo-histoire de l’Islam (Belin, 2018), Governing the Empire with Hicham El Aallaoui (Brill, 2013), Histoire du Maghreb médiéval (Xe–XVe siècle) with Mehdi Ghouirgate (Armand Colin, 2013). In 2018, he edited Histoire des pays d’Islam: de la conquête de Constantipole à l’âge des révolutions (Armand Colin).
Elsa Cardoso
has a tenure track position (Ramón y Cajal) at the School of Arabic Studies (Escuela de Estudios Árabes—EEA) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), in Granada. She earned her PhD from the University of Lisbon in 2020. She was a postdoctoral fellow of the German DFG Center RomanIslam, at the University of Hamburg (2021–2022), and a postdoctoral fellow (Juan de la Cierva) at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and the Near East (ILC) of the CSIC, in Madrid (2022–2024). Her research focuses on the history of Islam and the history of al-Andalus. She has worked and published on the court, diplomacy, politics and ceremonial of the Umayyads of Córdoba, considering a comparative perspective within the Mediterranean. She is also developing her research on the historiography of al-Andalus and the history of the Gharb al-Andalus.
Carlos de Ayala
PhD in Medieval History (1985) from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, is currently Professor of Medieval History at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. His research interests are monarchy, church and legitimization of political power in the early Middle Ages in the Iberian Peninsula; royalty and government in full-medieval Castile; and military orders, holy war and crusade in the Iberian Peninsula. He is the author of Las órdenes militares hispánicas en la Edad Media, siglos XII–XV (2003); Sacerdocio y Reino en la España Altomedieval. Iglesia y poder político en el Occidente peninsular, siglos VII–XII (2008); Órdenes militares, monarquía y espiritualidad militar en los reinos de Castilla y León, siglos XII–XIII (2015); Ibn Tūmart, el arzobispo Jiménez de Rada y la ‘cuestión sobre Dios’ (2017); and Las cruzadas. Origen, desarrollo y crisis (2024).
Carolina Domenech Belda
is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Alicante (Spain). She specialises in medieval Numismatics, more specifically in Islamic coins, which have been at the core of most of her research activity. Her main lines of research are the analysis of the Islamisation process through currency registries, the evolution of monetary systems, and the different money circulation models used by the Islamic governments in Al-Andalus. She has also conducted research on Numismatics in regions other than Al-Andalus, namely on Fatimid currency and the role of foreign currencies in the Al-Andalus monetary economy.
Maribel Fierro
is Research Professor at the Institute for the Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean—Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). She has published on the political and intellectual history of the pre-modern Islamic West (al-Andalus and North Africa). Among her books: ¿Qué sabemos de … al-Andalus? (La Catarata 2024) and ʽAbd al-Mu’min. Mahdism and caliphate in the Islamic West (Oneworld 2021). She has edited The Routledge Handbook on Muslim Iberia (2020); with S. Brentjes and T. Seidensticker, Rulers as authors in Islamic societies (Brill, 2024), and with M. Penelas, The Maghrib in the Mashriq. Knowledge, travel and identity (De Gruyter, 2021).
Miquel Forcada
is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Barcelona and coeditor of Suhayl, Journal for the History of Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilisation. He is specialized in the history of science in al-Andalus and the Magrib. His research interests include Arabic Folk astronomy, the history of scientific ideas, the interrelation between science, medicine and philosophy and the socio-cultural contexts of scientific practice.
Alejandro García-Sanjuán
is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Huelva (Spain). His main field of research is Medieval Iberia, with a special focus on al-Andalus. His featured publications include Till God Inherits the Earth. Islamic Pious Endowments in al-Andalus (9th–15th century) (Brill, 2007). His book La conquista islámica de la peninsula ibérica y la tergiversación del pasado (Marcial Pons, 2013) earned the 2014 Drouin Award from l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres of Paris. Together with Maribel Fierro, he edited Hispania, Al-Andalus y España. Identidad y Nacionalismo en la historia peninsular (Marcial Pons, 2020) and together with Husein Fancy, What Was the Islamic Conquest of Iberia? Understanding the New Debate (Routledge, 2021).
Teresa Garulo
PhD, Universidad Complutense, is Emeritus Professor of Arabic language and literature, at the Department of General Linguistic and Oriental Studies (Universidad Complutense de Madrid). Her work focuses on Arabic poetry from al-Andalus, some of whose poets she has studied and translated (al-Ruṣāfī of Valencia; Ibn Sahl of Seville), or edited (Ibn Ṣāra al-Shantarīnī; Abū Tammām b. Rabāḥ of Calatrava), as well as the poetry written by Andalusī women (Dīwān de las poetisas de al-Andalus, Hiperión 1986; 2nd reimpr. 2019): She had also written about humor and obscene poetry. More recently, she works on Andalusī (strophic) poetry and its migration to the East.
Carlos Laliena Corbera
is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). His main field of research is Medieval Iberia, with a special focus on the Crown or Aragon. His publications included La formación del Estado feudal. Aragón y Navarra en la época de Pedro I (Huesca, 1996); Siervos medievales de Aragón y Navarra en los siglos XI–XIII (Zaragoza, 2012); 1064, Barbastro. Guerre sainte et djihâd en Espagne (with Philippe Sénac, Paris, 2018). He has edited (with Guillermo Tomás), Rogar al rey, suplicar a la reina. El gobierno por la gracia en la Corona de Aragón, siglos XIII–XV (Zaragoza, 2021). He is currently writing a book on “Power and Institutions in the Crown of Aragon in the 13th Century”.
Eneko Lopez-Marigorta
is Associate Professor of Economic History and Institutions at the University of the Basque Country. His research focuses on the tributary policy promoted by state institutions in al-Andalus and the trans-Mediterranean trade promoted by medieval Islamic institutions. He is the author of Mercaderes, artesanos y ulemas. Las ciudades de las coras de Ilbira y Pechina en época omeya (University of Jaén, 2020) and co-author of the chapter on the cities of al-Andalus and Sicily within Cambridge Urban History of Europe. Volume 2 (c.700–1850) (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). He is also the co-editor of Between Change and Permanence. Early Foundations of an Islamic and Arab Society in al-Andalus (Brepols, forthcoming) and the editor of Una nueva mirada a la formación de al-Andalus. La arabización y la islamización desde la interdisciplinariedad (UPV/EHU, 2022).
María Marcos Cobaleda
holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Granada (Spain, 2010), awarded with the Extraordinary Doctorate Award. In 2012, she obtained a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the CRH—EHESS (Paris), and in 2016 she was granted with the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship from the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program (European Commission) to develop the research project Analysis of the Artistic Exchanges in the Medieval Mediterranean between 12th and 15th Centuries through the Geographical Information Systems (GIS): A Critical Review of “Centre” and “Peripheries” (ArtMedGIS Project) at the Medieval Studies Institute of the New University of Lisbon (Portugal). Currently, she is Assistant Professor at the University of Málaga (Spain). Her research focuses on medieval Islamic art and architecture and the application of the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to the research in Art History. Among her most important publications, it can be highlighted the books Los almorávides: arquitectura de un Imperio (University of Granada—Casa Árabe Madrid, 2015); Al-Murābiṭūn (los almorávides): un Imperio islámico occidental. Memorias en honor al Profesor Henri Terrasse (ed., Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife, 2018); and Artistic and Cultural Dialogues in the Late Medieval Mediterranean (ed., Palgrave MacMillan, 2021).
María Antonia Martínez Núñez
Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Málaga, is currently an Honorary Collaborator at this institution since her retirement in October 2021. Her research focuses on two priority lines: Arabic epigraphy of al-Andalus and the Maghreb and contemporary Arab ideology and thought. He has participated in national and international funded research projects on these topics. In the epigraphic field, recent publications on the early Middle Ages in al-Andalus and those dedicated to the Marinid epigraphy of the Maghreb are worth mentioning. The epigraphy of the Umayyad caliphate of al-Andalus, especially that of the archaeological complex of Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ, and that of the various Taifa kingdoms, as well as the official inscriptions of the Almohad Muʾminī caliphate, have constituted the central theme of a good number of her publications.
Aurélien Montel
investigated the networks that connected al-Andalus and the Maghrib from the 9th to the 11th century CE. In 2019, he dedicated a PhD dissertation to that topic (al-Andalus et le Maghreb à l’époque des Omeyyades de Cordoue, University of Lyon, France). Being a founding member of the “LibMed” international team, his current fields of interest lie in the medieval history of the territories that are forming what is now called “Libya”, especially Cyrenaica (Barqa).
Julián M. Ortega
has a degree in Geography and History from the University of Zaragoza. He obtained his PhD from the same university with a thesis on the Taifa of Albarracín. He is a specialist in the History of al-Andalus and Medieval Archaeology, disciplines on which he has published numerous articles and two monographs: Operis terre turolis, on late medieval ceramics in the city of Teruel, and Anatomía del Esplendor, focused on the medieval archaeology of Albarracín. He is currently coordinating a research project on the Andalusian settlement in southern Aragon.
Mayte Penelas
PhD Autónoma University of Madrid, 1998, is tenured scientist at the School of Arabic Studies (Granada, Spain). Currently, she is also the director of this research institute that belongs to the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). She specializes in Arab cultural history in Medieval Iberia, manuscript studies, and textual transmission in the Mediterranean, with a focus on Andalusi historical literature and its impact on the Islamic East. Her most recent publications include Al-Maqrīzī’s al-Ḫabar ʿan al-bašar, Vol. V, Chapter 6: Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, and Goths (Brill, 2020. BIMA 7); the edition, together with Maribel Fierro, of The Maghrib in the Mashriq. Knowledge, Travel and Identity (De Gruyter, 2021); and the edition of El legado de las palabras (Editorial CSIC, 2024).
Julio Samsó
is Emeritus Professor of the University of Barcelona since 2012. His research has dealt mainly with the History of Medieval Science and, especially, with the History of Astronomy in al-Andalus and the Maghrib. He has published 15 books and about 200 articles. His most relevant publications are: Islamic Astronomy and Medieval Spain. Variorum. Aldershot, 1994; Astronomy and Astrology in al-Andalus and the Maghrib. Ashgate Variorum. Aldershot, 2007; Astrometeorología y astrología medievales. Universitat de Barcelona. Barcelona, 2008; Las Ciencias de los Antiguos en al-Andalus. Revised second edition. Fundación Ibn Tufayl. Almería 2011; (With Chedli Guesmi), Astrometeorología en al-Andalus y el Magrib entre los siglos VIII y XV. El Kitāb al-amṭār wa l-asʽār (“Libro de las lluvias y de los precios”) de Abū ʽAbd Allāh al-Baqqār (fl. 1411–1418). Brepols, Turnhout, 2018; On both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar. Studies in the history of medieval astronomy in the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghrib. Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2020.
Bilal Sarr
is Associate Professor at the University of Granada. BA in History (2004) and BA in Arabic Studies (2007). Master’s degree in Archaeology, he completed his PhD degree in Medieval History at the University of Granada (2009) about Zirid Granada. His research revolves around the history and archaeology of al-Andalus, the Amazigh settlement in Iberia and Maghreb and the relationships between sub-Saharan Africa, Maghreb, and Al-Andalus. He is the author and editor of numerous works in different publishing houses and prestigious journals. These include Arabización, islamización y resistencias en al-Andalus y el Magreb (Granada, 2020), La Granada zirí (1013–1090) (Granada, 2011).
Bruna Soravia
is a historian of medieval Islam focusing on the political and intellectual history of al-Andalus, between the end of the Marwanid period and the Almoravid domination. Among her publications, Literatura e cultura no Gharb al-Andalus (Hugin, 2005), edited together with Adel Sidarus; Les royaumes de taifas (Geuthner, 2007), coauthored with Pierre Guichard. She has also written extensively on Andalusi administrative literature and has recently published the annotated translation of the epistolary treatise by the Almoravid secretary Ibn ‘Abd al-Ghafur al-Kala‘i, La maitrise de l’art de la prose (Ihkam san’at al-kalam) (UCO Press, 2024), together with Mohamed Zekraoui.
Víctor Rabasco García
holds a PhD in History of Art from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a Master’s Degree in Medieval Hispanic Studies from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Currently, he is lecturer in History of Art at Departamento de Patrimonio Artístico y Documental of the Universidad de León. His principal area of research focuses on al-Andalus in the 11th Century, particularly exploring the meaning of power and its artistic expressions through courtly architecture promoted by the Taifa Kingdoms. In this sense, he have published recently La cultura artística del reino andalusí de Toledo: promoción e innovación en la corte de los Banū Ḏū-l-Nūn.
Philippe Sénac
is Professor emeritus of Medieval History at the University of Sorbonne (Paris). His main field of research concerns the early history of al-Andalus and the study of relations between the Christian West and Islam before the Crusades. Among his many books are L’image de l’autre (1983), La frontière et les hommes, VIIIè–XIIè siècle (2000), Le monde musulmane des origins au XIè siècle (2018, 4th ed.), Al-Mansur (2006), Charlemagne et Mahomet en Espagne, VIIIè–IXè siècle (2015), L’autre bataille de Poitiers (2023). He also wrote in collaboration with Carlos Laliena Barbastro 1064 (2018) and with Tawfiq Ibrahim Los precintos de la conquista omeya y la formación de al-Andalus (2017, 2nd ed. 2023). He also directed several archaeological excavation sites in Spain particularly in Aragón.