No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2016
An extraordinary letter was discovered in a neglected pile of medieval diplomatic correspondence in the Vatican Libraries: a letter from Al-Murtada the Almohad, Muslim Caliph in Marrakech to Pope Innocent IV (1243–1254). The letter, written in finest official calligraphy, proposes an alliance between the Caliph and the Vicar of Christ, the leader of an institution that had called for organized crusades against the Islamic world. While the history of Pope Innocent IV’s contacts with the Muslim rulers of Marrakech remains obscure, the sources indicate that Pope Innocent IV sent envoys south to Marrakech. One of these envoys was Lope d’Ayn. Lope became Bishop of Marrakech, shepherd of a flock of paid Christian mercenaries who were sent to Marrakech by that sometime leader of the reconquista, Ferdinand III of Castile, in a deal he had struck with the Almohads. Although they now had Christians fighting for them and cathedral bells competing with the call to prayer, the Almohads were powerful agitators of jihad against the Christians only decades before. Scholars know only a little about Lope d’Ayn’s story or the historical context of this letter between Caliph Murtada and the Pope. Although very recent research is encouraging, there is a great deal to know about the history of the mercenaries of Marrakech or the interactions between Jews, Muslims and Christians that occurred in early thirteenth century Marrakech. The neglect of Lope d’Ayn and the contacts between the Papacy and the Almohads is only one example of a much wider neglect of North Africa contacts with Europe in the secondary literature in English. While scholarship in English has focused on correspondence, commerce and travel from West to East, between Europe, the Levant and Egypt, there were also important cultural bridges being crossed between North and South, between North Africa and Europe in the Medieval Western Mediterranean.
1 Thomson, Williell, Friars in the Cathedral, The First Franciscan Bishops, 1226–1261, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1975, p. 32.Google Scholar Thomson describes an intriguing meeting between Lope and Murtada. Also, see the recent issue of the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, Vol. 2, Issue 2, June 2010, edited by Amira Bennison and Maria A. Gallego, that focuses on minorities under the Almohads including Christian mercenaries.
2 For a examination of this contact during the Almohad period in particular see Fromherz, Allen, “North Africa and the Twelfth-century Renaissance: Christian Europe and the Almohad Islamic Empire,” in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Vol. 20, issue 1, 2009, pp. 43–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Abulafia, David, “Christian Merchants in the Almohad Cities” injournal of Medieval Iberian Studies, Vol. 2, Issue 2, June 2010, pp. 251–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 I Diplomi Arabi del Archivio Fiorentino, Florence, 1863–67.
5 Archive of the Crown of Aragon, Arabie Documents Collection, no. 158.
6 Capmany, Antiguos tratodes de paces y alianzas entre algunos reyes de Aragon y differentes principes infieles de Asiay África desde el siglo XIII hasta el XV, Madrid, 1786.
7 Catlos, Brian, “To Catch a Spy: The Case of Zayn al Din and Ibn Dukhan” in Medieval Encounters, Vol. 2, 1996, pp. 99–114, 110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 The Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Vol. II, University of California Press, 1995, p. 1244.Google Scholar
9 Wiley-Blackwell, 2000.
10 Paris, 1886.
11 Ibid., p. ii.
12 lbid., p. v.
13 L’Histoire du Maghreb: un Essai de Synthèse, Casablanca, 1995.
14 Sewell, William H., Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation, University of Chicago Press, 1995, p. 125.Google Scholar
15 Orientalism, Pantheon Books, 1978, p. 40.
16 Bhabha, Homi, The Location of Culture, Routledge, 2004, p. 163.Google Scholar
17 Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 216.
18 Doumerc, Bernard, Venise et l’émirat hafside de Tunis (1231–1535), Paris, 1999, p. 21.Google Scholar
19 Dufourcq, Charles, L’Espagne catalane et le Maghrib aux XII et XIV siècles, Paris, 1966, p. 475.Google Scholar