of Ḥafṣid dynastic rule. Doing so does not preclude historians from finding other ways of employing them. For instance, Maya Shatzmiller made a compelling case for thinking of Ibn Khaldūn in relation to Marīnid historiography. Describing him as a Ḥafṣid ideologue here does not contradict that argument. But it does open up new interpretative possibilities, including a rethinking of differences between dynasties in the Maghrib and al-Andalus.53 In any case, the use made of his text is self-consciously partial: to the extent that the arguments are about Ibn Khaldūn and his work, they situate both in relation to a specific politics.
Organization
This book’s organization supports its dual goal of ascertaining the extent of regional political and economic integration in Ifrīqiyā and linking it to the victory of the regional emirate at the end of the fourteenth century. Together, these two aspects account for the making of a Mediterranean emirate.
The book begins with a political narrative that focuses on the emergence of two political visions of Ifrīqiyā in the fourteenth century: one “local,” which emphasized the autonomy of the emir and thus supported an independent emirate, the other “regional,” which supported the unification of Ifrīqiyā under the ruler of Tunis. The first chapter shows that the immigration of elite Andalusis precipitated the reorganization of Ḥafṣid domination and led to the emergence of independent emirates in cities such as Bijāya. By the end of the fourteenth century, the regional configuration became a possibility, then a reality under the rule of Abū Fāris.
The following two chapters evaluate the notion that Ifrīqiyā was an economic region. Chapter 2 analyzes the transformation of land tenure and agricultural production beginning with the Almohads and continuing with the Ḥafṣids. Utilizing collections of legal opinions, chronicles, and travelogues, the chapter examines the fiscal system put in place by these two dynasties and the extent to which it fostered the homogenization of practices and conditions in Ifrīqiyā. Chapter 3 examines the organization and evolution of manufacturing, commerce, and piracy in Bijāya. It builds on studies such as those of Dominique Valérian and María Dolores López Pérez, which draw upon European commercial sources, and uses them to test whether Ifrīqiyā can be meaningfully understood as a region. The chapter identifies the main commodities traded in the city’s markets, and evaluates the importance of piracy in order to assess the degree of economic integration.
The next three chapters analyze the making of Ifrīqiyā by intellectuals. They pay special attention to judges and chroniclers whose writings form the bulk of the evidence supporting the arguments of this book. Chapter 4 argues that the defeat of autonomous emirates was supported by a specific political ideology I call “Emirism.” Examining how this ideology became dominant after the accession of Abū Fāris to the throne in 1394, the chapter discusses its impact on the ways contemporary historians came to conceive of the entire fourteenth century. The writings of intellectuals at the Ḥafṣid court will be the particular focus of this chapter. Chapter 5 argues that the Ḥafṣid dynasty was able to exert a remarkable degree of control over what intellectuals said and wrote. Through an analysis of institutions of learning, it explains the cultural effects of the politics of regionalization and, most importantly, the influence of Andalusi intellectuals on consolidating Ḥafṣid power. Paying special attention to judges and Sufis, the chapter utilizes biographical dictionaries and other literary sources to establish the dynasty’s involvement in favoring particular intellectual expressions. Since biographical dictionaries focus primarily on the urban elite, their utilization for this purpose can be particularly useful. Chapter 6 analyzes the work of Ḥafṣid historians who framed the political history of Ifrīqiyā in terms of Emirist ideology. These three chapters use the career and oeuvre of Ibn Khaldūn to illustrate the relationship between the politics of regionalization, official ideology, and historical writing. The book concludes with a discussion of the impact of this fourteenth-century ideology on our understanding of the medieval Maghrib, and explores the possibility that the entire medieval period has been seen through the prism of the fourteenth century.
PART I
The Limits of Regional Integration
CHAPTER 1
The Politics of the Emirate
When the Ḥafṣid ruler Abū Zakariyā Yaḥyā (r. 1229–49) died, his son Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad al-Mustanṣir (r. 1249–77) became ruler of Ifrīqiyā. Acceding to the throne in Tunis, al-Mustanṣir took control of a large kingdom that stretched from Ṭarāblus (Tripoli) in the east to Bijāya in the west. During his long reign, Bedouins, powerful Almohad sheikhs, and urban elites continuously challenged his authority. In 1270, the integrity of his kingdom miraculously survived a Crusade against Tunis led by Louis IX.1 Saved by Louis’ death, al-Mustanṣir still had to pay a great sum of money to end the siege of his capital. Old, politically weakened, and seriously impoverished, he battled ceaselessly to maintain his power. After his death, the unity of the Ḥafṣid kingdom crumbled. A number of Ḥafṣid emirs based in large cities such as Bijāya, Qasanṭīna (Constantine), and Tarablus declared independence from Tunis. Supported by urban elites and powerful Bedouin armies, these emirs fought each other to maintain or expand their holdings in Ifrīqiyā. For almost a century, they challenged the preeminence of the ruler of Tunis until Abū al-Abbās Aḥmad II (r. 1370–94) led a political realignment that put an end to independent Ḥafṣid emirates. The process of reunification reached its culmination under his son Abū Fāris ‘Abd al-‘Azīz.
Some modern scholars, the historian Robert Brunschvig foremost among them, understood the period of the multiplication of emirates in Ifrīqiyā as one of the weakness of the Ḥafṣid state.2 He and others described the endemic warfare between Ḥafṣid emirs and celebrated those rare occasions when a maverick Ḥafṣid was able to impose his will on all the others. In so doing, they replicated the perspective of contemporaries such as Ibn Khaldūn, who saw the rule of autonomous emirs as the result of the weakness of the Ḥafṣid dynasty, its fragmentation, poor health, and old age. Ibn Khaldūn wrote:
It should be known that the first (perceptible) consequence of a dynasty’s senility is that it splits…. The same was the case with the Almohad dynasty. When the shadow it cast began to shrink, the Ḥafṣids revolted in Ifrīqiyā. They made themselves independent there and founded their own realm for their descendants in that region. Their power flourished and reached its limit, but then, one of their descendants, the emir Abū Zakariyā Yaḥyā, the son of Sultan Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm, the fourth Ḥafṣid caliph, seceded in the western provinces and founded a new realm in Bijāya and Qasanṭīna and environs.3
By framing the political history in relation to an ebb and flow of the power of a centralizing state, historians set up a particular outcome, the centralization of power in Tunis, as an ideal political situation and, by the same token, independent emirates as anomalies. While this approach is helpful in organizing the complicated and often contradictory historical record, it is irremediably attached to the dynastic perspective of the sources.4 As an alternative, I argue that the period between 1200 and 1400 is better understood in relation to two distinct but related processes. The first was characterized by the oscillation between two modes of Ḥafṣid political domination: the “regional” mode, in which the Ḥafṣid ruler of Tunis
