Introduction

Abstract

The Reconquista, or Christian conquest of Muslim Iberia, precipitated a great intellectual crisis for Muslims.1 For most of Islamic history, the vast majority of Muslims had lived under some kind of Islamic ruler. Islam's religious and legal institutions, which had developed under such political conditions, had naturally taken a Muslim ruler as a given. As a result of the Reconquista, Islamic scholars had to contemplate what it would mean for Islam to be practiced without such a ruler. They had to determine whether a Muslim ruler was assumed in Islamic legal texts simply as a result of historical circumstances or because the ruler was an essential part of the Islamic legal system. This book examines the way in which jurists of the Maliki legal school, the legal school which came to predominate in the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghrib,2 developed Islamic law in response to the political, theological, and practical difficulties posed by the Reconquista. It shows how religious concepts, even those very central to the Islamic religious experience, could be rethought and reinterpreted in order to respond to the changing needs of Muslims. Although most of this book focuses on the Reconquista period, its final chapter examines how the legal positions formulated by the jurists of this period shaped nineteenth-century Muslim responses to French rule in the Maghrib.