The islamic statute of the Mudejars in the light of a new source

Abstract

The present article aims at analyzing and evaluating the data of a new source concerning the legal views of Muslim scholars about the Islamic statute of the Muslim communities living under Christian rule in the Iberian Peninsula from the 12th up till the early 16th centuries. We are dealing here with (1) and unpublished fatwā of the Andalusian scholar Ibn Rabī‛ (d. 719/1320) and (2) unpublished fatwās of the Chief Judges of the four Sunnite madhhabs in Cairo around the year 1510 A.D. In all probabiUty, the first fatwā was closely related to the events following the Mudejar revolt in Murcia in 1265 and the Christian reconquest of the city in 1266» This fatwā stresses that Muslims living under Christian rule are absolutely obliged to perform the duty of emigration (hijra) to Islamic territory. A much more pragmatic view was, however, defended by the Chief Judges of the four madhhabs in Cairo during the early 16th century. The questions to which these fatwās provide the answers, seem to have been posed by Muslims from Valencia, stopping over in Cairo, on their way to or from the hajj. In conclusion, the authors argue that from the early 12th century onwards two different types of legal views about the statute of Islam under Christian rule in the Iberian Peninsula coexisted, viz. (1) a pragmatic view, tantamount to a de facto recognition of Islam under Christian rule, and (2) a rejectionist view, stressing the duty to emigrate from Christian Spain to Dār al-Islām. The changing impact of these different lines of legal thought deserves to be studied more closely within the context of the complex and changeable political relations between Christendom and Islam during the period concerned.