Ibn Mardanish, The Wolf King Who Established His Own Kingdom After the Fall of Almoravid Empire in Iberian Peninsula
Ibn Mardanish, also known as the Wolf King, was a powerful Muslim king in the Iberian Peninsula in the 12th century. He established his own dominion over the cities of Murcia, Valencia, and Dénia after the decline of the Almoravids. Like the Iberian Christian kings, he opposed the spread of the Almohad caliphate, and his reign shows that the "Reconquista" was not a conflict between two clearly divided factions of Christians and Muslims, but of rival kingdoms of both religions that sometimes faced each other in combat or joined in alliances against each other in various contexts. Ibn Mardanish came from a family originally descended from Visigoths who had converted to Islam. He hired Christian mercenaries from Barcelona, Castile, and Aragon to help him preserve the lands of his kingdom, and signed treaties with the republics of Pisa and Genoa, which had strong bases and commercial relations with his kingdom. His reign was marked by conquests and territorial expansions, and h...