Leaving Iberia: Islamic Law and Christian Conquest in North West Africa examines Islamic legal responses to Muslims living under Christian rule in medieval and early modern Iberia and North Africa. The fall of al-Andalus, or reconquista, has long been considered a turning point, when the first substantial Muslim populations fell under permanent Christian rule. Yet a near-exclusive focus on conquered Iberian Muslims has led scholars to overlook a substantial body of legal opinions issued in response to Portuguese and Spanish occupation in Morocco itself, beginning in the early fifteenth century.

By moving beyond Iberia and following Christian conquerors and Muslim emigrants into North Africa, Leaving Iberia links the juristic discourses on conquered Muslims on both sides of the Mediterranean, critiques the perceived exceptionalism of the Iberian Muslim predicament, and adds a significant chapter to the story of Christian-Muslim relations in the medieval Mediterranean. The final portion of the book explains the disparate fates of these medieval legal opinions in colonial Algeria and Mauritania, where jurists granted lasting authority to some opinions and discarded others. Based on research in the Arabic manuscript libraries of five countries, Leaving Iberia offers the first fully annotated translations of the major legal texts under analysis.

About the Author
Jocelyn Hendrickson is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Alberta.

Reviews
This book masterfully demonstrates that the histories of Iberian-born Muslims, Moriscos, and Muslims living under Christian rule in the Maghreb can benefit from being studied together...Particularly relevant reading to those interested in colonial contexts and resistance to colonial powers. -- Ana Struillou * Journal of Early Modern History *
A tour-de-force...[this book] is a magnificent scholarly achievement that will shift the historiographical parameters for studying the Maliki West...Whether or not historians fully accept all of Hendrickson's contentions, they are likely to become the new bar against which scholars will measure their research in the future. -- Ari Schriber * Islamic Law and Society *
A work of impressive scope...Hendrickson's research is rigorous and her analysis is incisive...[the author] has produced a book of critical importance to the study of Islamic law and Iberian, North African, and West African history and which contributes meaningfully to interreligious studies and the history of Christian-Muslim relations. -- Ariela Marcus-Sells * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *
[Brings] together an unprecedented range of sources, some of them previously unpublished and unstudied, offering a meticulous, deeply informed reinterpretation of those sources that have been most scrutinized. The masterful result should now be considered a first port of call for anyone dealing with these materials...a powerful picture of Islamic law as purposeful yet subject to the vicissitudes of history, creative yet constrained by the expectations and structures of genre, legally cogent yet animated by extra-legal concerns - in short, as deeply human. -- Caitlyn Olson * Al-Qantara *
Gets us to consider medieval Spain and Portugal as part of African history, rather than seeing Muslim rule of the Iberian Peninsula as a historically unusual and unique event unrelated to anything else...a rare find...[this book is] an intellectual treat layered with depth and breadth, and should become a go-to text for the study of Islamic law and historical Muslim responses to global events. -- Usman Butt * Middle East Monitor *


Awards
Winner of Middle East Medievalists Book Prize 2023 (United States) and W. Wesley Pue Book Prize 2022 (United States) and Canadian Association of Hispanists Best Book Award 2022 (United States). Short-listed for Wallace K. Ferguson Prize 2022 (United States).



Book Information
ISBN 9780674248205
Author Jocelyn Hendrickson
Format Hardback
Page Count 432
Imprint Harvard University Press
Publisher Harvard University Press