I would like to thank the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain for their generous support of my research through the 2017 Junior Scholar Travel Grant. This award facilitated my participation in the bi-annual conference of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean at the University of Ghent in July 2017. For this conference, I organized a panel with other junior scholars with the title “Political Ideology and the Search for Legitimacy in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century al-Andalus.” The panel explored the exercise and expression of power in different Muslim kingdoms and taifastates, and examined how leaders projected their authority through a range of materials and forums to their subjects with varying degrees of success. The fruit of this research bridges a gap in the narrative of medieval Spanish history about Andalusi politics after the collapse of the taifa states and the rise of Magrebi regimes on the peninsula. 

I also provided a paper for the panel, “A Taifa in Exile: The Survival of the Banu Hud in the Twelfth Century and Beyond,” which represents the first chapter of a new book. The project traces the history of the Banu Hud over the course of two centuries, examining how the exiled Zaragozan dynasty participated in Andalusi political affairs and exercised power in the face of Magrebi and Christian overlordship and conquest. This particular chapter establishes trends in the Banu Hud’s political platform after their exit from Zaragoza, showing how one Hudid leader used Islamic political traditions, coinage, and a network of fellow exiles to become a symbol of resistance and solidarity.

The panel’s focus on the fashioning of legitimacy fit well within the conference’s theme of “Communities, Imaginations and Emotions in the Medieval Mediterranean” and generated a productive discussion after the panel about future directions for research. I am particularly grateful for the support of the AARHMS through this grant as it allowed me to present a new project to a diverse body of distinguished scholars from around the world. With the feedback that I received during and after the panel, I look forward to incorporating my notes from the conference into the project as I go forward with the monograph. Many thanks again to the grants committee and fellow members of the AARHMS.