Maribel Fierro is a Research Professor at the Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterráneo y Oriente Próximo in Madrid, Spain. She earned her Ph.D. working on Semitic Philology in 1985 at Universidad Compultense, Madrid, after which she hold different academic positions, including Directeur d’études associé at the Centre de Recherches Historiques, Paris and Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as part of the Research Group Law and State in Classical Islam. Furthermore, she directed several Research Projects, including Knowledge, heresy and political culture in the Islamic West (eighth-fifteenth centuries) and Violencia y casting en sociedades islámicas pre-modernas (al-Andalus y el Magreb). Among her latest publications are „The Almohad revolution“, „Politics and religion in the Islamic West during the twelfth-thirteenth centuries“, „Abdarramán III y el califato omega de Córdoba“ and „Sabios y santos musulmanes de Algeciras“.

Curriculum Vitae

The politics of knowledge in the Medieval Islamic West

The aim of this course is to analyze the interplay between politics and religion in the history of al-Andalus in three different levels:

• The formation of an Islamic society in the Iberian Peninsula (Arabization, Islamization).
• The construction of identity (genealogies, boundaries).
• Debates about beliefs and norms inside the Muslim community and with other communities.