The Politics of Sovereignty in the Medieval Islamic West

Lisan al-Din ibn al-Khatib, a scribe, physician and polymath, was born into a provincial family in the small town of Loja on the Muslim-Christian frontier in 1313 and rose through the Nasrid royal court to become the most powerful chancellor in the Islamic West before his controversial trial and assassination in Fez at the hands of his own students and former friends in 1374. Through a critical study of Ibn al-Khatib's rise and fall, The Politics of Sovereignty in the Medieval Islamic West offers a fresh interpretation of Nasrid Granada (1238-1492), the last surviving Muslim kingdom in medieval Iberia. Rather than treating Ibn al-Khatib as an exceptional figure, this book situates him within a network of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars extending from Iberia to North Africa and the Near East. Through this lens, it argues that the territorial fragmentation of Islamic Iberia and North Africa fostered the emergence of a distinctive class of "scholar-officials," whose intellectual production and administrative service were deeply intertwined. These figures linked courts, cities, and regions, embedding Nasrid Granada within a broader, shared culture of learning and governance in the Mediterranean world. Through a close reading of Ibn al-Khatib's oeuvre, and drawing on extensive manuscript and material evidence, the book demonstrates how scholar-officials shaped political culture, articulated social hierarchies, and reimagined sovereignty in a complex borderland environment. Their writings reveal how proximity to power generated both opportunity and risk, while debates over patronage, loyalty, and religious differences structured elite life and informed administrative practice. This book sheds new light on the social and political universe of scholar-officials by illustrating the central role that they played in governance and scholarly endeavors, even as they contended with crisis, exile, and the ravages of war and plague. By foregrounding the multiple roles of scholar-officials, it shows how their professional, social, and intellectual identities were mutually constitutive. Nasrid Granada is situated within wider late medieval transformations, marked by growing bureaucratization, evolving conceptions of governance, and the articulation of local and regional identities across the Islamic West.