Hussein Fancy

I am trained as historian of medieval Europe and the Islamic world.  My research and writing focus on the social, cultural, and intellectual history of religious interaction in the medieval Mediterranean.  In particular, I am interested in projects that combine the use of Latin, Arabic, and Romance archival sources.  I have lived and worked extensively in Spain, Italy, France, and across North Africa.  In 2009, I was named a Carnegie Scholar as part of the Carnegie Corporation's effort to promote original scholarship on Muslim societies.  

My first book, The Mercenary Mediterranean, examined the service of Muslim soldiers from North Africa to the Christian kings of the Crown of Aragon in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.  Far from marking the triumph of toleration, I argued, the alliance of Christian kings and Muslim soldiers depended on and reproduced ideas of religious difference.  The Mercenary Mediterranean received the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize from the American Historical Association for the best first book in European history, the L. Carl Brown Prize from the American Institute of Maghreb Studies for the best book in North African studies, and the Jans F. Verbruggen Prize from De Re Militari for the best book in medieval military history.

I am currently working on two projects.  The first, entitled The Impostor Sea: The Making of the Medieval Mediterranean, follows the activities of criminal merchants—pirates and smugglers—in order to rethink the relationship between religion and trade.  Rather than “enemies of all,” this book argues that these figures were central to the making of new legal, religious, and racial boundaries in the late medieval Mediterranean.  The second, entitled The Eastern Question, examines western views of Islam from the seventh century to the present, arguing that both positive and negative images of Islam across history share the same polemical genealogy.

I am a Councillor of the Medieval Academy of America as well as board member of the American Institute of Maghrib Studies and the Spain and North Africa Project.

I sit on the advisory board of the Cornell Press series Medieval Societies, Religions, and Cultures (MSRC) and the editorial board of Brill's Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions.

[Please note that Fall 2021 will be my last semester at the University of Michigan.]

Selected Publications:

The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (University of Chicago Press, 2016; paperback with revisions 2018) *Winner of the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize, the L. Carl Brown Prize, and the Jans F. Verbruggen Prize.*

What was the Islamic Conquest of Iberia? Understanding the Debate, ed. with Alejandro García Sanjuán (New York: Routledge, 2021) [reprint of "What was the Islamic Conquest of Iberia?" special issue, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 11, no. 3 (2019)].

"The New Convivencia," Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 11, no. 3 (2019): 295-305.

“Muslim Crusaders: Guzmán el Bueno and the Limits of Secular History,” in “Voices of Conflict and Cultural Difference in the Medieval Mediterranean,” ed. Michael Lower and Uri Shachar, a themed issue of al-Masaq 30, no. 3 (2018): 248-265.

"Captivity, Ransom, and Manumission” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery, ed. David Richardson, Stanley Engerman, David Eltis and Craig Perry, vol. 2 of 3 (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)

"Of Sovereigns, Sacred Kings, and Polemics," History and Theory 36, no. 1 (2017): 61-70.

"Monarchs and Minorities: ‘Infidel’ Soldiers in Mediterranean Courts," in The Globalization of Knowledge in the Post-Antique Mediterranean, ed. Jürgen Renn and Sonja Brentjes (Routledge, 2016)

“Theologies of Violence: The Recruitment of Muslim Soldiers by the Crown of Aragon,” in Past & Present 221, no. 1 (Nov. 2013) *Winner of the Bishko Prize for best article published in the field of medieval Iberian history.*

“The Last Almohads: Universal Sovereignty between North Africa and the Crown of Aragon,” in Medieval Encounters 19:1-2 (2013). Reprinted in Spanning the Strait: Studies in Unity in the Western Mediterranean, ed. Yuen-Gen Liang, Abigail Krasner Balbale, Andrew Devereux, and Camillo Gómez-Rivas (Brill, 2013).

“The Intimacy of Exception: The Diagnosis of Samuel Abenmenassé,” in Center and Periphery: Studies on Power in the Medieval World in Honor of William Chester Jordan, ed. Katherine L. Jansen, G. Geltner, and Anne E. Lester (Brill, 2013).

“Tolerance is Not a Value,” in Building a Shared Future: Islam, Knowledge, and Innovation (Center of Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge, 2012).

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