Abstract
Inspired by central ideas of Mediterranean studies, the chapter attempts a comparative examination of typical motifs and patterns as identifiable in royal politics aspiring to organize the multiethnic societies of medieval Sicily and Castile. Far from being conceived as a conclusive study, the text is intended as a first meta-methodological exploration of the possibilities, strengths, and limitations of comparisons between separate Mediterranean cultures within the transcultural framework. At the same time, it gathers historic details under the rubrics of tropes found in historic narratives that are suggestive for comparisons between the situations in Sicily and Castile, in particular during the reigns of Roger II and Alfonso X, who both share astonishingly similar traits, including royal patronage, political pragmatism, the organization of multiculturality through legalism, and the legitimization of royal power based on historicistic myths.
TopIntroduction
For quite some time now, researchers invested in the medieval history of the different regions of the Mediterranean Sea have dedicated themselves to a comprehensive framework that sets the different local and regional cultures along its shores into the broader picture as a place of globalized cultural exchange, resulting, amongst other things, in an own branch of academic activity known as Mediterranean studies. Among the most illustrious scholars to have promoted and spearheaded this development, one certainly must make mention of Fernand Braudel, one of the most famous representatives of the Annales school, as well as David Abulafia.
One of the first und most fundamental reasons Braudel (2013) mentioned in his seminal La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen à lʼEpoque de Philippe II for conceiving the Mediterranean as a common cultural space is the climate, a special climate, he says, that is almost similar all around the coastline, welding together landscapes and lifestyles. It is this a climate that is almost fully independent from local conditions and the natural corollary of the constant exchange between the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean in the West and the hot, arid air streams from the Sahara Desert in the South (Braudel, 2013, p. 19). These climatic conditions have an immediate impact on the crops cultivated and, subsequently, on local diets. Indeed, it is quite striking to realize how common the “trinity” of olive trees, wine and corn is for Mediterranean cuisines till this very day—crops that have also been important goods of trade at least since early antiquity. The mere existence of cross-regional trade bridging the Mediterranean shores since prehistoric times directly ties into more recent academic approaches, such as transculturality, that aspire to surpass traditional borders between disciplines and geographic regions and instead strive for analyzing cultural phenomena in broader, macrostructural contexts (Welsch, 2017).
However, there are a few pitfalls that always come with the broadening of perspectives, as this usually entails some or other mode of ‘zooming out’ of the subject matter in order to highlight and thus, at least to some extent, construct similarities between different people, objects, mentalities etc. that overlook what sets a given phenomenon apart from others. What is more: methods aspiring for contextualizing phenomena in larger macrostructural entities are often identified as progressive, but that is not necessarily the case. While searching for commonness and connection can be important to overcome problematic constructions of national identity and to highlight the connectedness and connectivity of the conditio humana, the same approach can be used for establishing new identities that propagate problematic political agendas that tie into recent forms of renationalization by stressing cultural difference, as is the case for Samuel P. Huntington’s (1996)The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order with its oversimplification of greater homogenous cultural areas, such as his assumption of a generalized Islamic World without any consideration of localized differences or cultural tensions within—a notion that verges on orientalism, albeit of quite a negative brand.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Annales School: A historiographic movement that mostly focusses on long-standing developments in social history; it was initiated by 20 th -century French historians who proposed the intensified use of social scientific methods in historiography.
Basilian Monks: A term for monks who follow Greek liturgy but live in territories dominated by the Catholic church; the term is derived from Basil the Great.
Muqarnas: A stalactite-like decoration typical for Islamic architecture, based on a complex network of prismatic single elements and usually found in wooden ceilings or ceiling zones.
Convivencia: A theoretical, today largely controversial, term coined by Spanish philologist Américo Castro to describe periods of peaceful coexistence among Christians, Muslims, and Jews in medieval Iberia, especially in its Islamic territories.
Transculturality: A concept that describes how different cultures blend, often with a strong emphasis on (geographical) contact zones of intercultural encounters. Blends resulting from such encounters are often characterized by cultural hybridity, wherein elements of different cultural provenance form new inseparable unities.
Mudejarismo: An architectural style typical for medieval Iberia that consists of combinations of Christian and Islamic elements. It is named after the mudéjares , the group of Muslims that remained in the Christian kingdoms of Iberia after the conquest of former Islamic territories.
Almohads: The al-muwa??idun originally were members of a religious movement founded by Ibn Tumart among North-African Berber tribes, who would later form a Caliphate that stretched over Andalusia and Maghrib and that would last from the 12 th century until the mid-13 th -century.
Orientalism: Defined by Edward Said in his book Orientalims (1978) AU34: The in-text citation "Orientalims (1978)" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the reference to the list, or delete the citation. , the term refers to patronizing interpretations of the Middle East cultivated in the West, which may not only include portrayals of the East as underdeveloped and inferior, but also Romanticizing tendencies of the Orient as an imaginary space.
Norman Kings of Sicily: Originally, the Normans had been the descendants of Norse Viking settlers in today’s Normandy region of France. Normans first made their appearance in southern Italy as mercenaries in the service of local rulers, but would, from there, manage to conquer and unify southern Italy and Sicily—a process that eventually led to the foundation of the Kingdom of Sicily by Roger II in 1139.
Almoravids: Named after the Arabic term al-murabi?un , the Almoravids were a Berber Muslim dynasty that ruled over great parts of the Maghreb and Andalusia from the 11 th century until being defeated and replaced by the Almohads in 1147.