Graduation Year
Spring 2014
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Late Antique-Medieval Studies
Second Department
History
Reader 1
Heather Ferguson
Reader 2
Kenneth Wolf
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2014 Rolando J. Gutierrez
Abstract
This study seeks to clarify the identities of the Almoravid and Almohad Berber movements in the larger Crusade narrative. The two North African Islamic groups are often carelessly placed within the group identified as “Islam” in discussions about the series of military campaigns that took place not only in the traditional Holy Land but also throughout regions of the Mediterranean such as Spain; this generalized identifier of “Islam” is placed against a much more complex group of generally Christian parties, all of them seen as separate, unique groups under the umbrella identifier of Christianity. This foray into a late 13thcentury North African Arabic history of the two groups will attempt to build a more robust identity for the two groups. The way in which they were remembered by their immediate successors will reveal far more interesting parties than simply zealous Muslims waging jihad. Their presence in the region is primarily remembered by their military involvement with Christian forces in the region, though the history of Muhammad ibn Idhari, written around 1295, reveals the groups and their ideologies to be far more complicated than simply meets the eye.
Recommended Citation
Gutierrez, Rolando J., "Pieces of a Mosaic: Revised Identities of the Almoravid Dynasty and Almohad Caliphate and al-Bayan al-mugrib" (2014). CMC Senior Theses. 844.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/844
Included in
African History Commons, Islamic World and Near East History Commons, Medieval History Commons, Medieval Studies Commons
