The Wolf King

The Wolf King explores how political power was conceptualized, constructed, and wielded in twelfth-century al-Andalus, focusing on the eventful reign of Muhammad ibn Sad ibn Ahmad ibn Mardanish (r. 1147-1172). Celebrated in Castilian and Latin sources as el rey lobo/rex lupus and denigrated by Almohad and later Arabic sources as irreligious and disloyal to fellow Muslims because he fought the Almohads and served as vassal to the Castilians, Ibn Mardanish ruled a kingdom that at its peak constituted nearly half of al-Andalus and served as an important buffer between the Almohads and the Christian kingdoms of Castile and Aragon.
Through a close examination of contemporary sources across the region, Abigail Krasner Balbale shows that Ibn Mardanish's short-lived dynasty was actually an attempt to integrate al-Andalus more closely with the Islamic East-particularly the Abbasid caliphate. At stake in his battles against the Almohads was the very idea of the caliphate in this period, as well as who could define righteous religious authority. The Wolf King makes effective use of chronicles, chancery documents, poetry, architecture, coinage, and artifacts to uncover how Ibn Mardanish adapted language and cultural forms from around the Islamic world to assert and consolidate power-and then tracks how these strategies, and the memory of Ibn Mardanish more generally, influenced expressions of kingship in subsequent periods.

Abigail Krasner Balbale is Associate Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University and the coauthor of The Arts of Intimacy. Follow her on X @abigail_balbale.