“Supernatural Powers in Christian Muslim Warfare: Crusades and Beyond” Annals Islamologiques, 43 (2009, Oct 29, (original) (raw)
The Almohads and the "Qur'anization" of War Narrative and Ritual
The Almohad movement (12th–13th centuries, Islamic West) had in the return to the direct study of the primary sources of Islam—the Qur’an and the Sunna—and in jihād, two of its most important pillars of legitimation and action. In this sense, it is an ideal period to study how both realities—Qur’an and jihād—were linked in a given historical context. During the Almohad period, the use of Qur’anic verses in accounts related to war episodes became widespread. We thus witness a “Qur’anization” of the war narrative, a resource adding greater religiosity and spirituality to the context of jihād, to its elaboration and discursive representation, and to its memory and remembrance through written testimonies. In this paper I study, through the main narrative and documentary sources of the period, how the Qur’an was inserted into and adapted to the Almohad war discourse. Likewise, this approach allows me to explore how the Qur’an came to life within the framework of the Almohad jihād, how it served for its justification and legitimation, and how it formed part of the ceremony and the war protocol of the Maghrebi caliphate, thus linking itself with other discursive and propaganda mechanisms such as architecture or military parades.
The Memory of the Crusades in the Arabic Folk Epics: Images and Patterns (Oriens, 2022, No. 6)
Sokolov O.A. The Memory of the Crusades in the Arabic Folk Epics: Images and Patterns. Vostok (Oriens). 2022. No. 6. Pp. 172–181., 2022
Considering the importance of the Crusades' topos for the Arab discourses of the 19th-21st centuries and its influence on the collective memory in modern Arab countries, the challenge of finding the roots of this phenomenon is valid. This research problem can be solved through the analysis of the memory of the Crusades in Arab culture from the late 13th to the 19th centuries. Therefore, it is relevant to study the preservation of the Crusades' memory in one of the most important types of works of Arabic literature, Arabic Folk Epics. The analysis of the Franks' image in these sources shows that during the era of the Crusades itself and in the subsequent centuries, a huge number of the Arab tribal pre-Islamic narratives and notions about the struggle against Byzantium were transformed into the ones dedicated to Jihad against the Franks. The Crusades created a demand for a Mujahid character in Arab Folk culture in the 12th-13th centuries, and the images of the pre-Islamic heroes were thus reshaped and reimagined for the new realities. It can be assumed that at first the Crusades had reshaped this kind of narratives, and then the Arab tradition itself began to reproduce the image of the Christian-European Crusader in the collective memory of Egypt and Levant due to high popularity of the Folk Epics, which may have created a horizon of expectation for the perception of European colonial policy of the 19th-20th centuries as "the return of the Crusaders".
Vanquishers of the Crusaders: Mujāhidūn-Characters in Arabic Folk Epics (Religions, 2023, Vol. 14)
Sokolov, O. Vanquishers of the Crusaders: Mujāhidūn Characters in Arabic Folk Epics. Religions 2023, 14, 1042. , 2023
Although the militant jihād remains one of the most popular topics in modern Islamic studies, most of the works focus on ideologies and actions, leaving out the popular perception of this phenomenon. My study of the storylines about confronting the Franks (ifranj) in the Arabic Folk Epics, inspired by the Crusades, shows that the protagonists of the Epics are presented in the narratives precisely as the holy warriors i.e. mujāhidūn, whose key attributes are the power of faith, which often goes through tests in the fights against the infidels, as well as the Divine support and readiness for martyrdom on the path of jihād. The widespread jihād and anti-frankish rhetorics in the Epics make them a valuable source for the study of the Crusades memory in the Medieval Arab culture.
One of the hegemonic historiographical ideas about the Iberian Middle Ages is that the Andalusi population lacked of a "warrior spirit". This historiographical topic emphasizes the contrast that supposedly existed between feudal Western societies, organized for war and with militarized structures, and Muslim societies in which military activity was never conclusive in the setup of the community of believers or in the formation of their social standards. Focusing on the Iberian Peninsula, the poor militarization of the Andalusi society in comparison with the Christian kingdoms of the Northern Iberia has been underlined as one of the historical and structural reasons of the disappearance of al-Andalus, that is, of the triumph of the so-called Reconquista. This issue has also led some scholars to state that in the Muslim populations of al-Andalus there was a certain difficulty in assuming ideological and discursive statements such as that of jihād. The hypothesis that I present in this talk is that, despite what this historiographical topic has stated, there was in al-Andalus a “warrior and jihād spirit”, a spirit that in some cases was also independent of that sustained and generated by the central power. Likewise, and as I will try to show, this “warrior spirit” and this ideology of jihād made the realization of holy war a means of acquiring status, reputation, and social promotion. In order to confirm this hypothesis I will analyze a genre of source that allows us to explore a social reality and an ideology more detached from the courtly and dynastic character of the chronicles: the biographical dictionaries. In particular, I will analyze the Akhbār al-fuqahā’ wa-l-muḥaddithīn by al-Khushanī (d. 971), the Ta’rīkh ‘Ulamā’ al-Andalus by Ibn al-Faraḍī (d. 1012) and the Ŷadhwat al-muqtabis fī ta’rīkh ʻulamāʼ al-Andalus by al-Ḥumaydī (d. 1095).