Almohad religious pressure pushed Andalusians toward Maliki orthodoxy as identity

Evidence

In earlier times, other interpretations of the law were to be found as well, but when, in the Almohad period (eleventh to twelfth centuries) there had been an attempt by that North African dynasty to impose their form of the creed, the people of al-Andalus and, above all, their religious leaders, the ulama and the fuqaha, perhaps in a nationalist reaction (although one should be suspicious of such an anachronistic category), came to stress their adhesion to Malikism as the form of religion proper to their community. This may be the key to the predominance of this one school of law in the late medieval period. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 309

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the Madhhab system and why Malikism became dominant in al-Andalus.
• CANDY: A neat kernel: a North African dynasty’s creed-imposition backfired by hardening its opposite into a communal identity mark.