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DTSTAMP:20260514T043724Z
DESCRIPTION:Abigail Krasner Balbale will speak in the Work-in-Progress Semi
 nar on Tuesday\, February 23 at noon. Her talk is entitled “Wolf King of G
 lorious Memory: Culture and Ideology in Twelfth-Century Spain and North Af
 rica.”Abigail Krasner Balbale is Assistant Professor at Bard Graduate Cent
 er. Her research focuses on the intersection of political power\, religiou
 s ideology\, and visual and material culture in the medieval Islamic world
 . She is particularly interested in how medieval Islamic rulers legitimate
 d their power through cultural production\, holy war\, and diplomacy. Her 
 book in progress\, tentatively entitled Wolf King of Glorious Memory: Alli
 ance\, Accommodation\, and Resistance in Ibn Mardanīsh’s al-Andalus\, cent
 ers on an enigmatic twelfth-century ruler who fought the Marrakech-based A
 lmohad dynasty through an alliance with his Christian neighbors\, and asse
 rted his authority with reference to the Abbasid caliphate in the east. He
 r research has been supported by Fulbright\, NEH\, ACLS\, and Mellon Fello
 wships. She serves as the secretary of the Historians of Islamic Art Assoc
 iation and is a founding board member of the Spain North Africa Project.Th
 is talk\, drawn from Balbale’s book in progress\, explores the complexitie
 s of political and personal relationships among competing rulers in the We
 stern Mediterranean in the twelfth century\, and examines how these relati
 onships were materialized in buildings and objects. Balbale focuses on the
  figure of Ibn Mardanish\, known in Latin sources as rex lupus\, who ruled
  eastern al-Andalus\, as well as his ally Alfonso VIII of Castile\, and hi
 s rivals\, the North African Almohad caliphs ‘Abd al-Mu’min and Yusuf I. T
 hese men engaged with each other through battles and diplomacy\, but also 
 through trade\, tribute\, and cultural production. Examining and comparing
  the cultures of these courts reveals how rulers projected their ambitions
  on an imperial scale\, and how they responded to others’ claims. Objects 
 and spaces were deployed alongside poetry and polemic to argue for a ruler
 ’s legitimacy\, and could express his allegiance or opposition to other po
 wers. Tracing the constellation of affiliations expressed in these forms r
 eveals how these medieval rulers constructed their authority in relation t
 o one another and to the most important powers of their day. By employing 
 a comparative approach across Spain and North Africa\, crossing religious 
 and ethnic lines\, Balbale will explore how ideology was expressed cultura
 lly in the imbricated world of the western Mediterranean.
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20160223T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20160223T133000
SUMMARY:Bard Graduate Center: Wolf King of Glorious Memory
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