Christopher Rose has an intriguing essay about Alfonso X's style of kingship. Rose proposes that Alfonso aimed to imitate the Islamicate form of rule. He patronised a translation effort of Arabic to Latin (much of which Arabic literature was Syriac and Greek in origin) at home, and abroad made a stab at North Africa.
Patron of the arts and humanities, conqueror of Mediterranean lands, benign overseer of all God's Religions. This sounds to Rose like Harun al-Rashid. And when you consider the 'Iqd al-Farid selling our own merchandise back to us
, we can consider also the prime Umayyads in Qurtuba. Or Akbar the Great in India or, my word, Shah Yazdegird I.
If we must have a king, it certainly seems like Alfonso was sabio at it. Pity about his foreign megalomania and his oppression at home. Catholicism, it seems, has little room for a caliph.
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