The Wolf King - (Medieval Societies, Religions, and Cultures) by Abigail Krasner Balbale (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Wallace K. Ferguson Prize

Winner of the Dionisius A. Agius Book Prize

The Wolf King explores how political power was conceptualized, constructed, and wielded in twelfth-century al-Andalus, focusing on the eventful reign of Muhammad ibn Sad ibn Ahmad ibn Mardanīsh (r. 1147-1172). Celebrated in Castilian and Latin sources as el rey lobo/rex lupus and denigrated by Almohad and later Arabic sources as irreligious and disloyal to fellow Muslims because he fought the Almohads and served as vassal to the Castilians, Ibn Mardanīsh ruled a kingdom that at its peak constituted nearly half of al-Andalus and served as an important buffer between the Almohads and the Christian kingdoms of Castile and Aragon.

Through a close examination of contemporary sources across the region, Abigail Krasner Balbale shows that Ibn Mardanīsh's short-lived dynasty was actually an attempt to integrate al-Andalus more closely with the Islamic East--particularly the Abbasid caliphate. At stake in his battles against the Almohads was the very idea of the caliphate in this period, as well as who could define righteous religious authority. The Wolf King makes effective use of chronicles, chancery documents, poetry, architecture, coinage, and artifacts to uncover how Ibn Mardanīsh adapted language and cultural forms from around the Islamic world to assert and consolidate power--and then tracks how these strategies, and the memory of Ibn Mardanīsh more generally, influenced expressions of kingship in subsequent periods.

Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Review Quotes

This stimulating book focuses on the political significance of Muammad ibn Mardanīsh, the fascinating Andalusī leader of the Taifa state of Murcia, who resisted the Almohad Empire.

In this richly sourced, nuanced, and insightful study of the twelfth-century Wolf King Ibn Mardanīsh, Abigail Balbale has given us the gift of a rigorous and methodologically innovative historical study that deepens our understanding not just of the subject of her study but the subfield to which he belongs as well.

The Wolf King is an important work of interdisciplinary and comparative history that employs an array of textual, visual, and material evidence to reincorporate al-Andalus into the broader world of the medieval Mediterranean.

This meticulous exploration of the figure of Ibn Mardanīsh allows us to reformulate the understanding we have of the history of Islam in the West in one of the last phases of Muslim supremacy in the Iberian Peninsula, showing the plurality of strategies adopted by the political authorities of the time to respond to the changing times.

About the Author

Abigail Krasner Balbale is Associate Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University and the coauthor of The Arts of Intimacy.