Authorizing Islam and Christianity: Examining the Spiritual Authority Between Iberian Mudejares and Muslim Jurists, 9th–16th Centuries

Abstract:The following paper discusses the complex spiritual and legal authority of Iberian Muslims, especially Mudejares, between the ninth and sixteenth centuries within the context of the Islamic ummah (community) and Christian rule. This research examines how Muslim jurists contested the sovereignty of Iberian Mudejares through primary sources such as fatwas (Islamic legal opinions), Islamic travel literature, and Christian polemical texts by portraying them as religiously and socially deviant. It also examines the shifts in theological structures and intellectual borders between Islamic scholars of the Maghrib and Mashriq and the ways in which Christian rulers in Iberia utilized religious authority to legitimize their rule over Muslims. The paper incorporates Hussein Fancy's ideas about political theology and secularism in evaluating the contested spiritual authority of this period and brings into view the shifting relationships among Mudejares, the Islamic ummah, and Christian states.