Communal Boundaries and Mystical Violence in the Western Mediterranean Open Access
Ceballos, Manuela (2016)
Published
Abstract
Communal Boundaries and Mystical Violence in the Western Mediterranean, focuses on the role of violence in the formation of religious and political communities in sixteen-century North Africa and Iberia as represented in Islamic and Christian mystical texts. Scholars of Medieval and Early Modern Iberia have argued that Christian mystics and Sufis embodied the concept of convivencia (coexistence between Muslims, Jews, and Christians) because they prioritized inner belief over religious practice and law. Based on the works of members of the Discalced Carmelites and the Jazuliyya Sufi Way, the most important mystical organizations in sixteenth century Iberia and Morocco, it shows that, in fact, Christian and Muslim mystics in the Western Mediterranean channeled historical memories of interreligious conflict and used literal and symbolic violence as an ethical tool to shape individual and collective bodies and transform society as a whole. Moreover, it argues that the historiographic concept of convivencia, because it is grounded in the philosophy of liberalism, serves to reinforce the idea of the secular state as the only space in which people can peacefully coexist.
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
NOTES ON TRANSLITERATION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION. FRONTIERS, METHOD, AND THE AFTERLIVES OF AL-ANDALUS 1
Changing Boundaries: 'Abd al-Karim al-Qaysi and End of Islamic Spain 12
Overview 19
CHAPTER ONE. THEORIZING BOUNDARIES: RETHINKING THE NARRATIVE OF CONVIVENCIA
Setting: The "Cordoba House" Controversy 23
A Disciplinary History of Convivencia 29
The Spanish Context: A Historical Background 48
-Making the enemy Moor: The Reconquista and the Colonial and Civil Wars 50
Américo Castro and the Origins of Convivencia 58
Conclusions 74
CHAPTER TWO. COLLAPSING BOUNDARIES: SUFISM, JIHAD, AND REFORM IN EARLY MODERN MOROCCO
Introduction: Sufism, Violence and a Moroccan performance of
convivencia 77
The Rhetoric of Muhammad ibn Yaggabsh al-Tazi 86
The Book of Jihad: Historical Background 89
Jesus and Christianity in Kitab al-Jihad 100
Jihad and Social Reform 104
Love, Authority, and Violence 109
Conclusion: Performing Divine Scripts 119
CHAPTER THREE. TRANSGRESSING BOUNDARIES: SIDI RIDWAN AL-JANUWI AND HIS COMMUNITY OF OUTSIDERS
Introduction 123
A Family of Converts and Refugees 127
Embracing Marginality 140
The Violence of Words 142
Embracing the Outsider 150
Theories of Power and Vulnerability 156
Translation and Transgression 165
Conclusion: Lineage and Power in the Early Modern Maghrib 167
CHAPTER FOUR. RE-INSCRIBING BOUNDARIES: VIOLENCE, THE OTHER, AND THE COMMUNAL BODY IN THE WRITINGS OF TERESA DE JESÚS
Setting: The Boundaries of "Spanishness": The Spanish Civil War and the Relics of Teresa de Jesús 169
Martyrdom and the "Land of the Moors" 179
Christian Peace, Crusade, and Mission: Expanding the Christian Body 188
Teresa and the Inquisition 198
Warrior Nuns 205
Violent Love: Enclosure and Subjectivity 212
Building an Enclosure and Remaking the Christian Experience 217
Conclusion 231
CONCLUSION. CONVIVENCIA AND THE BOUNDARIES OF METHOD 234
Violence, Identity, and Other Conceptual Borders 239
Further Considerations on Violence 242
Rethinking Boundaries 246
BIBLIOGRAPHY 248
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