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Violence and Warfare in Medieval Western IslamStudies bearing on the relationship between religion and violence in Islam are numerous. So are those on Ibn Khaldūn's theory of the State, which bases the latter's emergence on the 'natural' violence of peripheral tribes. This contribution aims to put the general theory that can be drawn from these studies into perspective by confronting it with some local examples: the Andalusian Taifas, the Almoravid emirate and the Almohad caliphate. These case studies highlight the diversity of forms taken by state violence and warfare in Islamic contexts. The integration of secular or profane patterns in the killing of enemies or in warfare, and the justification of violence sometimes by religion, sometimes by popular wisdom or common sense, contradict the fairly widespread essentialist discourses on the congenital relationship that Islam and violence maintained from the beginning. On the contrary, these processes highlight the complexity and diversity of the discursive justification of physical violence.

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From Tenth to Thirteenth century, the relations between Christians and Muslims around the Mediterranean Sea multiplied, competition was on the increase and confrontations became more and more regular and violent. This growing militarization of the contact included the beginnings of professionalisation and, on the Christian side, formalisation and institutionalisation. The capture of the enemy and the System of ransom were included in this process : at the beginning of the 13th century, the first specialised instances of redemption appeared in the Iberian Peninsula (Trinitarian and Mercederian). These did not appear like a boit from the blue : it had been in the Iberian background, in the dividing line between Christendom and Islam. These specialised institutions took root at the crossroad of the municipal law (conceived to ensure the extension and the survey of the frontier concejos), and at the crossroad of the economie, commercial and religious preoccupations of the different protagonists of this frontier : the Church, military orders (secular or eccle- siastical), the monarchy and the inhabitants of the towns themselves.

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