This brilliant volume, which makes a significant contribution to the discourse of political legitimacy in the post-Caliphal Islamic world, draws on the expertise of several specialists to examine the methods and strategies that rulers in Iberia and the Maghrib, representing the modern states of Portugal, Spain, and Morocco, used to legitimize their rule. As Amira K. Bennison explicates in the introduction, the volume takes a unitary analysis of two regions that, until the early modern period, were viewed as historically and culturally independent zones. This approach transcends not only the constraints imposed by national histories or the binary interpretations of Muslim versus Christian in the region, but also critically interrogates the foundations of political theory and historical development that shaped how rulers articulated or legitimized their rule in in the Iberian and North African cultural spheres. To this end, the volume engages the premise that the ‘strategies of legitimation employed by rulers of Granada and the neighboring sultanate in the Maghrib in the period from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century were based on a shared political vocabulary and cultural heritage rooted in the region's Islamic past and its proximity to the Christian kingdoms to the north’ (p. 3).

The volume is carefully organized into four parts comprising an introduction and 11 chapters. The introduction provides a deep and complex historical context. It outlines and analyzes the rich intellectual discourse that runs through the main themes of the book. Of particular interest is the emphasis on the common political culture that stretched across Iberia and the Maghrib. Questioning the tendency to view these two interdependent regions as inherently different, Bennison strives to explain the development of the common political culture by showing how this shared culture was mediated by constant and continuous movement of people, ideas, and commodities across this geographic zone.

In Part One, ‘Laying the Groundwork’, the first two chapters expand on the main theme of the volume and analyze the economic and intellectual background to the discourse of legitimation. Maya Shatzmiller's chapter uses economic theory and empirical evidence to examine the neglected case of economic prosperity for the Marinid sultanates. Allen J. Fromherz's chapter on ‘Asabiyya and Legitimacy’, uses Ibn Khaldun's biography to revisit the political environments behind Ibn Khaldun's writing of the Muqaddima and the Kitab al-Ibar thus explaining the political motivation behind the Khaldunian concept of ‘asabiyya.

Part Two explores the strategies of legitimation and genealogical construction that the Maghrib regimes use to ascertain their noble and sharifian ancestry in order to legitimize their rights to rule. Here Barbara Baloix-Gallardo's chapter illustrates how the Nasrids use a supposed genealogical attachment to Sa`d b. Ubada, a companion of the prophet Mohammad, to legitimize their political claims over ibn Hud. Ibn Hud's own attempt to construct political legitimation through the same process is examined by Abigail Krasner Balale. As Stephen Cory's chapter shows, a comparison of the Marinid sultan Abu al-Hasan Ali and the famous Sa`dian sultan, Ahmad al-Mansur, illustrates the varied means and strategies that were at heart of this process.

Part Three, ‘Ceremonies and Ritual Performances’, looks at the politics of legitimation from a popular religious dimension: the royal patronage of the celebration of the Prophet's birthday (mawlid). While the chapter by James A. O. C. Brown discusses the origins of the mawlid as a state sponsored event in Ceuta under Azafid's rule, Cynthia Robinson and Amalia Zomeño demonstrate how the Nasrid sultans purposely patronized the mawlid festivities and lavish ceremonies in order to construct a favorable image of the state. The chapter by Mohammad El Mansur concludes that while such a religio-political partnership between rulers and Sufi shaykhs often worked to the political advantage of the former, at times this strategy produced a mixed outcome for rulers.

Part Four, ‘Legitimation Outside the City’, discusses rural dimension of political legitimation in the countryside. The chapter by Amira Bennison analyzes how the early Marinids exported the image of their rule through the display of material symbols, such as drums and flags to create an impression of military progress in the countryside. In his chapter on ransom and refuge, Camilo Gomez-Rivas examines how rulers used territorial disputes between Muslim and Christian not only as jihad but as a subtler way to pursue and legitimize political ends. In the final chapter, Russell Hopley discusses a complicated relationship between the rulers in the urban milieu and their nomadic subjects. According to Hopley, the challenge of governing nomads in the interior contributed to rulers’ legitimacy in urban and sedentary settings.

Thus, using Arabic legal and historical sources, this volume successfully provides a detailed examination of the process and the avenues through which rulers expressed or justify their noble ancestry and sharifian claims to exact political advantages during in the post-Caliphal Islamic context. At the theoretical level, this volume makes a significant contribution to Islamic political theory in the premodern Islamic world. Scholars of the history of the Maghrib and the Iberian Peninsula will profit from the original and serious research undertaken by the contributions in this volume.