Author Description

This book presents a cohesive and integrated study of the artistic and cultural patronage of the mirid dynasty, regents of Hisham II (r. 976-c.1010), the last Umayyad caliph of al-Andalus (Islamic Spain), who inherited the throne as a minor. Its particular focus is the dynasty's founder, al-Mansur, who was Hishams hajib-his chamberlain and lieutenant-and ruled de facto between 976 and 1002. Not only did al-Mansur patronize a flourishing court as which new literary forms developed, he constructed a palace-city, and commissioned the largest extension to the Great Mosque of Cordoba. Moreover, al-Mansur and his sons sponsored a luxury arts industry which produced some of the largest and most spectacular works to survive from medieval Iberia. Drawing together history, poetry, archaeology, epigraphy, architecture, and objects in different media from diverse international collections, Cultural Patronage and Political Legitimacy in al-Andalus identifies a corpus of objects that should be considered as mirid and discusses their imagery in reference to the messages these regents intended to convey. As the first book-length scholarly examination of the full range of mirid cultural patronage, Cultural Patronage and Political Legitimacy in al-Andalus elucidates the ways in which the mirids used cultural patronage as an expression of their political legitimacy.