This article explores how Ibn al-Khaṭīb’s historiographical perspective informed an Andalusī vision of the history of the western Mediterranean and how it articulated an Andalusī identity vis-à-vis the Maghrib, where it became deeply rooted. Through an examination of Ibn al-Khaṭīb’s historiographical and geographical work, and considering his own experience of exile and encounter in the Maghrib, I argue that Ibn al-Khaṭīb was both illustrative of a larger trend whereby Andalusīs argued for their cultural value as a displaced community in the Maghrib and a crucial actor in articulating and informing the long-term historiographical perspective on the history of the Islamic West and al-Andalus’s place in it.
This chapter argues for establishing a connection between the ransoming of captives and the hosting of refugees as a politically legitimising practice. It considers twelfthcentury military and demographic changes that led to an increase in capture and ransom, the legal framework and social response to the ransoming industry, and leaders’ involvement in the release of captives as a high concern of state. An example of large-scale conquest, enslavement, and ransom in the thirteenth century illustrates how ransom and refuge were causally related and predicated upon the reciprocal social expectations of frontier societies.
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