The World of Medieval Islands project invites the questioning of the category of island from medieval evidence, and coincided with another project of the author s undertaking a similar exercise with medieval frontiers. Combining these two research areas, this article investigates two island, or island-like, zones that were situated at the edges of early medieval polities, primarily (though variably) of Umayyad al-Andalus, and compares their situation so as to elucidate what about their

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... cal situation made them island-like and how steady that likeness was. Working through the historiographies of the Balearic Islands, which shifted from Byzantine to Islamic control through a variably evaluated transition period, and of the Muslim settlement at la Garde-Freinet, Provence, from inception to extermination, the article concludes that what was island-like or indeed frontier-like about both areas was not continuous, and that the category island is historically contingent and subjective despite its apparent geographic concreteness.