Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022): 617-621

Book Review

Javier Albarrán Iruela’s new book, Ejércitos benditos: Yihad y memoria en al-Andalus (siglos X-XIII), is the 
most complete study of holy war ideology, 
ritual, and practice in al-Andalus yet 
written. Based on his doctoral disserta-
tion, “Los discursos de guerra santa y la 
memoria de las primeras batallas del Islam, 
al-Andalus, Siglos X-XIII” (Universidad 
Autónoma de Madrid, 2019), this book 
reflects the author’s broad familiarity with 
a wide range of Arabic, Latin, and Castilian 
sources on the concept and practice of 
holy war. 

A l b a r r á n ’ s  c l o s e  r e a d i n g  o f  t h e s e 
sources demonstrates the ways in which 
discourses of holy war emerged in the 
Islamic West in the context of the broader 
Islamic Middle Period, and also in contact 
a n d  c o m p e t i t i o n  w i t h  t h e  C h r i s t i a n 
kingdoms of Iberia. Rather than focusing 
exclusively on the legal formulations of 
jihad as elaborated by jurists, as many 

earlier scholars have done, Albarrán 
considers the ways in which broader ideas 
of holy war (including those called ghazwa, 
qitāl, ḥarb, fatḥ) were deployed and 
enacted from the Umayyads of Cordoba 
to the Almohads. Throughout, Albarrán’s 
book focuses on how rulers used the 
symbolic capital of holy war to legitimate 
themselves. By looking more broadly at the 
discourse, images and symbols of holy war 
and how it functioned as a tool of power 
in different contexts, Albarrán moves 
beyond legalistic frameworks toward an 
outline of the practice of holy war, and of 
Islamic rule more generally. Seen from this 
perspective, holy war is not a concrete act 
with well-established limits, but instead 
a flexible field of action that could be 
adapted by diverse actors to justify their 
behaviors.

The book follows a largely chronological 
organization, beginning with a chapter 
about the ideas of holy war and jihad and 

Javier Albarrán Iruela. Ejércitos benditos. Yihad y memoria 
en al-Andalus (siglos X-XIII). Colección Historia (Granada: 
Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2020). ISBN 9788433867537. 

538 pp. €35.00 paper.

Abigail Krasner Balbale 
New York University

(abigail.balbale@nyu.edu)

© 2022 Abigail Krasner Balbale. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 
License, which allows users to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and 
only so long as attribution is given to the original authors and source.



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022)

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the importance of the memory of the 
first battles of Islam. As part of this study, 
he outlines the early Islamic conquests 
as they are presented in the Quran and 
the biographies of the Prophet and his 
Companions, emphasizing the themes 
and concepts that would emerge again 
and again in later conceptions of holy 
war. Albarrán defines holy war as one in 
which God was seen as present and helpful 
to warriors, a war that had a missionary 
character and that was defined by the 
defense of the “true” religion against 
enemies of God, or a war that had a salvific 
element, often supported by the concept 
of martyrdom. Holy war was one of many 
discourses that could be used to augment 
power and, as Albarrán shows, one of 
the most potent tools a ruler had at his 
disposal.

Chapter 2 centers on the Umayyad 
caliphate of Cordoba, both the campaigns 
carried out at the behest of the caliph 
himself and the ascetic frontier warriors 
who operated outside the direct control 
of the caliphate. In Albarrán’s analysis, 
both the conduct of holy war and its 
representation served to legitimate the 
Umayyads as the rightful inheritors of 
a caliphal role. Although holy war was 
always theoretically aimed at “infidels,” 
the question of who belonged in this 
category was flexibly addressed according 
to the political climate of the moment. 
Holy war, especially along the frontier, 
also served as a powerful justification for 
the submission of expansive territories 
to the central authority defending those 
border zones. “Centralized” jihad, that is 
organized and managed by the state, was 
contested by “decentralized” holy war, 
enacted by individuals along frontiers, 
which could challenge the power of the 

state and augment the prestige of scholar-
warriors. 

In Chapter 3, Albarrán conducts careful 
analysis of how the memory of the early 
battles of Islam as sites of sacred memory 
was activated in a series of campaigns 
i n  t h e  U m a y y a d  p e r i o d ,  w h i c h  t h e n 
legitimated Umayyad power in al-Andalus 
and presented its leaders as following the 
model of the Prophet. The scholarship of 
the period served to reinforce the image 
of the Andalusī Umayyads as continuing 
the expansion of early Islam and also 
as rightfully inheriting the Umayyad 
caliphate in the east, with one battle 
p r e s e n t e d  a s  e c h o i n g  t h e  U m a y y a d 
victory over the forces of Ibn al-Zubayr 
at Marj Rāhiṭ, for example. The scholarly 
production of Umayyad Cordoba then 
affected the development of the idea of 
jihad and how the Umayyads of Damascus 
were remembered as well. 

In the years that followed the fall of 
the Umayyad caliphate of Cordoba, holy 
war continued to carry this important 
ideological and practical weight. Chapter 
4 follows how holy war was understood 
and deployed in the Taifa and Almoravid 
periods, and Chapter 5 addresses how 
the memory of the earliest battles was 
elaborated and transmitted in a time of 
multiple competing rulers. As Albarrán 
indicates throughout, holy war was the tool 
perhaps best able to support claimants to 
power, since it allowed them to eliminate 
enemies and to present themselves as 
defenders of the community while aligning 
themselves with sacred history. Thus, in 
the Taifa period, as al-Andalus fragmented 
into competing city-states, the idea of the 
ghāzī-king was particularly useful and was 
deployed regularly by claimants to power.



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Javier Albarrán Iruela’s Ejércitos benditos  •  619

Albarrán’s extensive examination of the 
ways in which holy war was understood 
and used in the Umayyad period helps 
highlight the continuities and disjunctures 
with the periods that followed. The idea 
that the Almoravid period was defined 
b y  a  n e w  f o c u s  o n  h o l y  w a r  a g a i n s t 
the Christians is here complicated by 
Albarrán’s close reading of Almoravid 
sources, which shows that they ritualized 
their holy war less than the Umayyads 
had done before them and that their 
vision of holy war brought together the 
centralized impulse of the jihad state 
with the decentralized asceticism of 
frontier warriors. Nevertheless, like their 
Umayyad predecessors, the Almoravids 
used holy war to justify their expansion, 
relying particularly on the famous fatwa 
of al-Ghazālī, which made their conquest 
of the Andalusī kingdoms a sacred project. 

The Almohads, on the other hand, 
ritualized and sacralized holy war even 
m o r e  t h a n  t h e  U m a y y a d s  h a d  d o n e . 
Chapters 6 and 7 focus on, respectively, the 
practice of holy war under the Almohads 
and the memory of early Islamic battles 
developed in their period. As Albarrán 
demonstrates, Almohad processes of ḥisba 
(commanding the good and forbidding 
the wrong), takfīr (proclaiming Muslims 
to be infidels), and jihad constituted a 
single important trajectory, allowing them 
to present themselves as the sole real 
Muslims and to validate holy war against 
all of their rivals. It is in the discussion 
of the development of Almohad holy war 
culture that Albarrán’s work reaches its 
highest levels of analysis. Using published 
chronicles, legal texts, and works of 
futūḥ, as well as an unpublished maghāzī 
manuscript by Ibn al-Qaṭṭān from the 
Q a r a w i y y ī n  L i b r a r y  i n  F e z ,  A l b a r r á n 

considers the justification, rhetoric, and 
ritual of Almohad holy war. His analysis 
of the increasingly elaborate rituals of 
holy war developed by the Almohads 
demonstrates the importance of such 
traditions as processions, banners, drums, 
and the presentation of sacred objects 
in the performance and legitimation of 
power. He examines the direct involvement 
of Almohad caliphs in leadership of holy 
wars and in the development of holy 
war id eology ,  inc lud ing t hrough t he 
commissioning of works of maghāzī and 
futūḥ (including those of Ibn Ḥubaysh and 
Ibn al-Qaṭṭān). Albarrán also considers the 
objects, architecture, and inscriptions that 
reflected this vision of holy war, and the 
destruction of objects and symbols of the 
enemy that accompanied war. Finally, he 
considers how memory functioned in the 
construction of holy war ideology—both 
the memory of the conquests of early 
Islam and the ritualized commemorations 
o f  s i t e s  o f  m e m o r y  ( l o c a  m e m o r i a e ) 
associated with battles in al-Andalus. 

One major contribution of this book is 
in the systematic refutation of the long-
standing argument that al-Andalus fell 
because of a lack of jihad ideology. Albarrán 
demonstrates that several of the pieces 
of evidence of this “lack” put forward by 
earlier scholars are untrue. He establishes, 
first, that there was in fact a lively group 
of ʿulamāʾ-warriors in al-Andalus, with 
considerable social prestige; second, that 
Andalusī ʿulamāʾ developed new concepts 
of jihad designed to face the threat of 
the Christians, as is visible in their legal 
w o r k s  a n d  i n  b o o k s  o f  m a g h ā z ī  a n d 
futūḥ; and third, that the perception of a 
greater spirit of holy war in the Islamic 
east than in al-Andalus is illusory. The 
earlier analyses that present Andalusīs as 



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620  •  AbigAil KrAsner bAlbAle

lacking in the necessary piety or martial 
fervor are therefore based on incomplete 
evidence and do not stand up to closer 
examination. Albarrán does not seek to 
explain the failure of the Umayyads or 
Almohads to hold onto power, but rather 
to demonstrate the continued value of 
holy war for rulers, warriors, and scholars 
throughout this period. Indeed, as the 
whole book shows, holy war ideology was 
central to the legitimation and practice of 
power of every dynasty he considers.

Albarrán concludes that holy war was 
not simply a rhetorical tool for those 
in power, but functioned in addition as 
a source of legitimacy and authority, 
carrying considerable weight for rulers’ 
subjects. As such, between the tenth 
and thirteenth centuries in al-Andalus, 
discourses around holy war developed into 
complex systems of rituals and symbols, 
many of which continued in various forms 
in subsequent centuries. By examining 
the whole period from the rise of Islam to 
the end of the Almohad period, Albarrán’s 
book highlights the important continuities 
across this period and the recursive ways 
in which subsequent dynasties returned 
to earlier moments to demonstrate the 
holiness of their own mission. Indeed, 
using the lens of memory demonstrates 
the powerful pull early Islamic history 
had on the dynasts of the Islamic Middle 
Period, who by echoing the tropes of 
earlier battles could present themselves 
as embodiments of holy figures. Scholars 
could also use an imagined memory of 
a unified umma dedicated to the fight 
against infidel armies to chastise their 
compatriots for their lack of unity and, as 
Ibn Ḥazm did, call for a new jihad to unite 
the community once more.  

Another major contribution of this 
book is its familiarity with the literature 
on Christian holy war, and particularly on 
the development of the idea of holy war 
on the Iberian Peninsula more generally. 
By looking at representations of holy 
war and its uses for political legitimation 
i n  a l - A n d a l u s  w i t h  r e f e r e n c e  t o  t h e 
simultaneous appeals to holy war in the 
Christian kingdoms of Iberia, Albarrán 
demonstrates the transcultural nature 
of ideas about holy war. The discourse 
of holy war, as well as its symbols and 
ritualization, are marked by significant 
parallels in Islamic and Christian contexts, 
especially in the twelfth century. Albarrán 
notes fascinating evidence of medieval 
scholars’ awareness of such parallels, such 
as when Ibn ʿIdhārī describes the order of 
Calatrava as conceiving the fight against 
the Muslims as their ḥajj and jihad. 

The book forms part of a new flurry of 
interest in jihad in Spanish scholarship, 
with two other books on the topic coming 
out in 2020. Alejandro García-Sanjuán’s 
Yihad: La regulación de la guerra en la 
doctrina islámica clásica (Madrid: Marcial 
Pons, 2020) focuses on legal questions 
relating to the practice of jihad in the 
I s l a m i c  w o r l d  m o r e  g e n e r a l l y ,  w h i l e 
Josep Suñé’s Guerra, ejército y fiscalidad 
en al-Andalus, ss. VIII–XII (Madrid: La 
Ergástula, 2020) considers why Andalusī 
a r m i e s  b e c a m e  u n a b l e  t o  d e f e n d 
themselves against their Christian rivals. 
Albarrán’s work differentiates itself by 
its simultaneous attention to the practice 
of jihad by rulers aspiring to power in 
al-Andalus from the tenth through the 
thirteenth centuries and how scholars 
i n  t h e i r  e m p l o y  c o n n e c t e d  m i l i t a r y 
campaigns to the memory of early Islam. 
 



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Javier Albarrán Iruela’s Ejércitos benditos  •  621

Overall, this book constitutes a major 
contribution to the fields of the history of 
al-Andalus and of holy war more generally. 
Scholars working on the ideology of holy 

war in Christian contexts as well as those 
interested in the practice of power in the 
broader Islamic world will learn much 
from it.