Cultural memories of the conquest of al-Andalus between the ninth and twelfth centuries, C.E.

This essay takes up the subject of the conquest of al-Andalus as a conceptually originative act in a discussion of group identity and memory. The focus is not on Umayyad rule and memory, except in so far as Umayyad rule structured the historical perspectives of Andalusi writers, but on Andalusi Mālikī jurists and their social memory. The way Andalusi Mālikī jurists represented their community, its origins, and their relation to the past changed and varied over the period of the rise and fall of Umayyad rule in Iberia and the establishment of Almoravid rule, as their own structures of power developed with the systematization of legal learning and practice. The essay demonstrates these developments through analysis of biographical texts written by jurists in the ninth, tenth, and twelfth centuries and suggests how the conquest of al-Andalus, real and imagined, fits into a history of Mālikī community, “textual polity,” and “empire.”