Nests of Pirates? “Islandness” in the Balearic Islands and La Garde-Freinet
Jonathan Jarrett
The “World of Medieval Islands” project invites the questioning category island from medieval evidence, and coincided with another author’s that was undertaking a similar exercise frontiers. Combining these two research areas, this article investigates island, or island-like, zones were situated at edges early polities, primarily (though variably) Umayyad al-Andalus, compares their situation so as to elucidate what about geopolitical made them island-like how steady likeness was. Working through historiographies Balearic Islands, which shifted Byzantine Islamic control variably evaluated transition period, Muslim settlement La Garde-Freinet, Provence, inception extermination, concludes indeed frontier-like both areas not continuous, “island” is historically contingent subjective, despite its apparent geographic concreteness.
Al-Masaq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean|White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York)