Al-Qānūn al-Muqaddas (‘The Holy Canon’), preserved solely in MS árabe 1623 of the Royal Library in El Escorial, is the only extant corpus of Christian-Arabic canon law surviving from al-Andalus. Copied in 1050, it is a translation and unique variant of the Iberian compilation of conciliar acts and papal decretals known as the Collectio Hispana. The Arabic canons of al-Qānūn al-Muqaddas, revised and paraphrased during its translation, are an invaluable source for the internal governance, legal affairs, and theopolitical beliefs of Andalusi Christians. Recent reassessments have tied the collection to the wider history of canon-legal translations taking place across the Islamicate world, positing shared influences and preoccupations. In turn, this source has opened new avenues to assess the impact of Islamic institutions on the evolution of the Andalusi church.

In this vein, this paper examines the Arabic terminology that Andalusi Christians employed to define clerical authority in al-Qānūn al-Muqaddas. Though rooted in the Latin source and culture at its base, the collection evinces the profound penetration of Islamic political and religious ideas into the governance of the church in al-Andalus. While the use of words such as sulṭān and mulk to define a bishop’s potestas suggests a familiarity with a common cache of Arabic terms for worldly authority shared with Eastern coreligionists, the rendition of Latin ordinatio as tawliya (the bestowal of wilāya) reveals a deeper engagement with Islamic notions of theopolitical leadership. Each is tightly imbricated within an internal discourse on the character of clerical authority in al-Qānūn al-Muqaddas. The centrality of wilāya (and its verbal root w-l-y) in this discourse, I argue, is the result of a careful negotiation between the joint religious and political associations inherent to both Latin ordinatio and Arabic wilāya.

Crucially, Muslim thinkers of distinct traditions (Sunni, Shi‘a, Ismaili, Sufi, etc.) cultivated the Qur’anic concept of wilāya over the course of the 7th-11th centuries. Intimately tied to notions of legitimate political rulership and the social institution of patronage (walā’), the theological doctrine of wilāya became firmly attached to Islamic beliefs surrounding sainthood, the imamate, and proximity to God. Distinct categories (walāyat Allah) and hierarchies (awliyā’ Allah) of spiritual leadership developed at the same time as Islamic political theory itself developed. Consequently, in al-Qānūn al-Muqaddas, the canons on clerical ordination provided a space to ponder the nature of the authority conferred onto clerics in the process. The terminology of wilāya created a new conception of the clerical hierarchy as bishops were labeled walī-s (awliyā’) and the ordained mawlā.As this paper argues, the Qānūn’s translators employed the Islamic concept of wilāya (and its Qur’anic, theological, and political associations) to redefine the priesthood and Christian leadership under Muslim rule. In so doing, Andalusi Christians partook in a Mediterranean-wide discourse on the nature of holy authority that served to fortify their own ecclesiastical institutions against the challenge of Islam