"And God Dispersed Their Unity": Historiographical Patterns in Recounting the End of Muslim Rule in Sicily and al-Andalus

Abstract

This article focuses on the different strategies adopted by Muslim historians to cope with the crises that struck the western Islamic Mediterranean between the eleventh and the twelfth centuries, focusing especially on narratives of defeat related to Sicily and al-Andalus. It examines the extent to which these narratives evoke the battle of Uḥud, taken as the archetypal narrative of defeat, and how they feature, in a reversed fashion, motifs peculiar to the narratives of futūḥāt (early Islamic conquests). Finally, the article considers some historical anecdotes that attribute a key role in accounts of discord—and the subsequent defeat—to the abuse of a female power: a topos well-attested across many cultures.