The thirteenth century in Maghrebi thought

ISIS were hardly the first muwahhidûn. Javier Albarrán submits "The Almohads and the "Qur'anization" of War Narrative and Ritual". When I think "Quran" and "Maghreb" in these decades, I naturally must think of Qurtubi - so, let's introduce that topic.

These Andalusi Muwahhids came from a classic Moroccan Berber family, of one Muhammad bin Tumart. They proposed a Jihad State. They would be like Umayyads but better. Albarrán (certainly of Moorish ancestry himself) notes the "Almohad" propaganda, set down in caliphal epistles and in poetry just like in the Good Ol' Days of the Salaf. They took over Spain's crumbling taifas in our AD 1130. They did less well against the local Christians. They certainly started badly: in AD 1147 they lost Lisbon. In AD 1236 they lost Cordoba; in AD 1269 they officially failed.

Meanwhile a Quranic student of Imam Malik's party skipped out of beleaguered Cordoba to settle in Cairo. This Qurtubi over the middle 1200s composed a tafsir. It is considered the tafsir for those Malikites left in Africa and Granada; Aisha Bewley has translated juz' 1-4 and 7 to English covering suwar 1-3, 6, 7 and bits of 4 (Bewley never does anything in sequence).

Albarrán in the Appendix compares Almohad output with Qurtubi's interpretations. I think this Appendix belongs to the wrong paper.

Qurtubi postdated Zamakhshari and Razi but I doubt Qurtubi would have cared for either. Baydawi should have been aware of Qurtubi's tafsir but apparently bypassed it; Abu Hayyan as a Zamakhsharist absolutely would not have loved it. In between Qurtubi and Ibn Kathir would have considered each other as rivals. I am unfamiliar with Qurtubi's sources if not from the Mutazila. The tafsir might look something like Baghawi's even Tha'labi's, as a throwback to the age of Tabari.

I get the impression that the Almohad relationship with Malik is about that of ISIS' to Ibn Hanbal. Albarrán notes of Q. 3:195 that Qurtubi didn't want to relate it to the Jihad. So I don't know that Qurtubi was nearly as extreme in his approach.

So I suggest to read Albarrán's Appendix so to consider Qurtubi's commentary in part as a commentary on the Almohads. Qurtubi is asked how Malikis should read the bellicose verses of the Quran; which so many, West and East, have been using as prooftexts. Qurtubi could read Ibn Kathir and Ibn Taymiya, and respond to them - we know what you're doing, we've been trying it, look where I have to live now, it's not working.

For Albarrán's purpose, he must treat this Appendix as a brevarium on Maliki juristic ijma' on Quranic usage during the Almohad century.