Janina Safran is Associate Professor of History at The Pennsylvania State University. Her field is Islamic history (c. 600–1250), and her particular area of research is al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia) and the Maghrib (North Africa). Her work on the Umayyad period provides her with a particular orientation to the later Almoravid period (c. 1050–1150), when a Berber regime ruled over the far Maghrib and al-Andalus from Marrakech. Her current research on relationships between Almoravid amīrs and jurists and the politics of Mālikī legal scholars will challenge some of the conventional representations of Almoravid rule. Her first book, The Second Umayyad Caliphate: The Articulation of Caliphal Legitimacy in al-Andalus (Harvard University Press, 2001), grew out of an initial comparative interest in the expression and enactment of the right to rule among Islamic dynasties claiming caliphal authority. Her second book, Defining Boundaries in al-Andalus: Muslims, Christians and Jews in Islamic Iberia (Cornell University Press, 2013), brings the development of Islamic law—specifically, of the Maliki “school” of law—and legal sources into the political narrative and develops a particular focus on intercommunal relations. Treating law as a form of boundary-making in a specific historical context, the book demonstrates the flexibility of Islamic legal concepts and categories and shows how this flexibility accommodated intercommunal interaction and integration into the Muslim community.
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