The Wolf King: Ibn Mardanīsh and the construction of power in al-Andalus

Abstract

and culture across the northern and southern shore, in some cases determining the postcolonial destiny of entire communities: think of the Jews of Algeria and their resettlement in France in the early 1960s, after the Algerian War. That said, this collection opens important research paths, thanks to a careful blending of more theoretical contributions with others that instead take their cue from specific case studies and on a close reading of archival sources. Jews and the Mediterranean ultimately helps us reflect in original ways on the relation between Mediterranean history, its most renowned contributors – from Braudel to Abulafia – and the field of Jewish history. By doing so, it underlines the importance of rethinking Jewish history through categories that do not, or at least not exclusively, refer to imperial or national boundaries, but are centred around a Mediterranean continent – as the French writer Gabriel Audisio wrote in 1935 – which includes the sea, its coasts, and the internal areas interconnected to it, whose investigation appear nowadays more relevant than ever.