Download PDF | Brian A. Catlos - The Victors and the Vanquished_ Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon, 1050-1300-Cambridge University Press 2004.
478 Pages
This is a revisionary study of Muslims living under Christian rule during the Spanish “reconquest.” It looks beyond the obvious religious distinction and delves into the subtleties of identity in the thirteenth-century Crown of Aragon, uncovering a social dynamic in which sectarian differences comprise only one of the many factors in the causal complex of political, economic, and cultural reactions. Beginning with the final stage of independent Muslim rule in the Ebro valley region, the book traces the transformation of Islamic society into mudejar ´ society under Christian domination. This was a case of social evolution, in which Muslims, far from being passive victims of foreign colonization, took an active part in shaping their institutions and experiences as subjects of the Infidel. Using a diverse range of methodological approaches, this book challenges widely held assumptions concerning Christian–Muslim relations in the Middle Ages, and minority–majority relations in general.
brian a. catlos is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz
INTRODUCTION
La tolerancia, la ocasional simbiosis de las creencias, cuadra bien con haber iniciado su vida el hispano-cristiano a caballo sobre su creencia, el caballo de Santiago. Americo Castro ´ 1 ¿Tolerancia hispano-cristiana medieval? S´ı; pero tolerancia de las minor´ıas, no del pueblo, sacudido por la pasion y enfervorizado por la guerra divinal. ´ Claudio Sanchez Albornoz ´ 2 In 711, when T. ariq ibn Ziy ¯ ad led his modest contingent of Berber and ¯ Arab forces across the Straits of Gibraltar, he could hardly have imagined that within a few years almost the whole of the Iberian peninsula would be drawn into the dar al-Isl ¯ am¯ (“the Islamic world”). Within the following two centuries al-Andalus – Islamic Iberia – was to become the western pole of the Muslim world, not only geographically, but also commercially and culturally. Rising from de facto to formal independence in 929 under Abd al-Rah.man III ( ¯ 912–961), its capital, Cordoba, was ´ among the most important urban centers west of the Indus, rivaled only by Cairo, Constantinople, and Baghdad. So it was to remain until 1031 when a series of civil wars and revolts concluded, heralding not only the Caliphate’s demise but the beginning of the end of Islamic domination of the peninsula. Almost immediately the muluk al-t ¯ .awa’if ¯ (or “Taifa Kingdoms”), a constellation of “sectarian” principalities dominated by local and Berber factions, sprang up to fill the power vacuum, vying with each other for a greater share of Andalusi territory. This period of Islamic political disunity coincided with an era in which the peninsula’s Christian powers, clinging tenuously to the mountainous fringes, entered a period of greater unity and determination and began expanding into Muslim territory. This Christian “Reconquest” soon picked up pace, leading in 1085 to the surrender of Toledo, the first major Andalusi city to fall into Christian hands.3 Compelled by their own inefficacy, the taifa rulers grudgingly called for aid to their Islamic neighbors to the south, the Almoravids. Help came in greater measure than either anticipated or desired, and the advent of these Berbers signaled the demise of the taifasand the beginning of a long century of Maghribi hegemony. Whether domination came at the hands of Iberian Christians or foreign Muslims, the independent history of al-Andalus had come to end. By the late thirteenth century the Almoravids’ successors, the Almohads, had been driven out of Iberia, and independent Islamic Spain4 had been reduced to the rump Kingdom of Granada, which lived out most of its history as a vassal state of Christian Castile. In 1492 the kingdom was deprived of even the illusion of autonomy when the “Catholic Monarchs,” Fernando of Aragon and Isabel of Castile, accepted its submission. Finally, in 1496, the last king, Abu¯ Abd Allah (“Boabdil” in Castilian), discontented with the small fief which ¯ his Spanish lords had left him, pulled up stakes and headed for Islamic shores.
The history of Islamic Spain (Al-Andalus) is not synonymous with the history of the Muslims in Spain, and the inhabitants of Iberia did not become an Islamic people with their conquest in the early eighth century. Rather, in the centuries that followed, as Christians emigrated, Muslims immigrated and, as the great majority of the native population (nominally Catholic with a sprinkling of Arians, pagans, and Jews) converted and adopted the outward manifestations of Arabic culture, the Visigothic Iberian society was gradually transformed into an Islamic one. Likewise, the later Christian conquest did not mark the immediate demise of Muslim society. Almost universally the conquering rulers endeavored to persuade Muslim inhabitants to stay on as subjects, tempting them with offers of self-administration and social and judicial autonomy. Many – in all likelihood the majority – accepted, and these people and their descendants became known as mudejares ´ . 5 Living on in their ancestral lands for centuries, most were eventually forced to convert to Christianity, after which they were designated as moriscos. 6 Maintaining their identity, they continued to live as a people apart until as late as 1613, when the last stragglers from the mass exile first proclaimed in 1610 were expelled from the realms of Aragon.7 The present study focuses on Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon living in the lands of the Ebro River watershed, a topographically varied expanse of more than 40,000 square kilometers (a little smaller than modern Denmark).8 Here, as the rivers and streams empty out of the high Pyrenean valleys, their beds open abruptly on to a broad arid plain, which in summer months recalls Africa more than Europe – the slow Ebro playing the part of the Nile.
The lands to the south of the river present a similar landscape, as the watercourse descends a series of broad plains marked by rugged sierras, occasionally opening into hollow cuencas ideal for cultivation and defense. Further south, past Teruel, the river-scarred hills undulate towards what was to become the Kingdom of Valencia.9 As the Ebro meanders towards Tortosa the land comes into higher relief, rising into uplands once rich in woodland resources, before emptying into the sea through its silty, ever-growing delta. The river course itself is remarkably level, descending little more than 500 meters along almost its entire length; from Tudela to Mequinenza, a stretch of some 250 kilometers, it descends only 200 meters.10 Navigable from Tortosa to the Mediterranean, it is the only major Iberian river which flows eastwards. This made it an ideal conduit for goods and ideas, connecting the north of the peninsula to the world beyond. The climate, typically Mediterranean, is dry and hot, well suited to dry farming, olive and viticulture, as well as highly productive irrigated farming on the alluvial plains. The range in altitude and attendant climatic variety also make transhumant husbandry viable.
The geographic unity of this territory has contributed to a historical coherence which justifies its consideration as a socio-geographic unit. In Roman times the zone comprised the heart of the Province (later, Archdiocese) of Tarraco, a region which was referred to through the fourteenth century as “Celtiberia.”11 When Muslim administration filled Visigothic vacuum, these territories, corresponding roughly with Arabic geographers’ sixth “climate” (iql¯ım) of “Hispania” (al-Asbaniyya ¯ )and with the Mozarabic metropolitan of Tarakuna, came to be known broadly as ¯ the Thaghr al-Aqs.a’¯ , the “Furthest March.”12 Whether ruled as a region or fragmented into smaller “city-states” or personal domains, the region maintained a coherence evidenced by its periodic reconsolidation. Most important from the point of view of the present study, however, is that these lands comprise the heart of what became the Crown of Aragon, the dynastic aggregate of Christian principalities which dominated the area for the five centuries after its conquest: territories conquered roughly between 1085 and 1160, the first great period of Catalan and Aragonese expansion.13 The common era of conquest justifies their treatment as a unity, since they were absorbed under quite similar circumstances by Christian powers with similar institutional and social configurations. The period treated by this study covers the middle of the nine-hundred-year Muslim presence in this area; it marks a transformational as well as a temporal mid-point, being the era in which the majority of the area’s Muslim population became Christian subjects. My intention here is to examine the effects of the Christian conquest on the indigenous Islamic population, which was defined at once by its military subjugation, its status as “infidel” and enemy, and its value as a base of settlement, taxation, trade, and industry. I am interested in exploring the nature of mudejar ´ society as it existed in the thirteenth century as an ethnic, cultural, and economic phenomenon. How did Islamic society react to the process of conquest? Did it remain stable and “healthy”?
That is to say, had it successfully adapted to the conditions of the conquest, or was it locked into a process of irretrievable and “inevitable” decline? What relationship did it have with its pre-conquest antecedents? I would like to determine also the degree to which mudejares ´ as individuals were discriminated against under Christian rule – and to consider to what extent they might have felt marginalized. Did opportunities for social and economic advancement cease to exist with the Christian conquest, or did the new set of circumstances merely mean that dynamic mudejares ´ were forced to adapt? Did mudejares ´ live as marginalized “foreigners,” or as integrated subjects? The strategies which mudejar ´ individuals and groups used to survive and prosper under Christian domination is key to understanding these issues, as are the links which individuals and groups had with adherents of the other two faiths which also existed in the Crown. This was the period in which mudejar ´ society was born and matured, and a closer analysis of this period is indispensable for understanding its later history. A study as broad as the present one must draw on a range of historiographic traditions. The general history of the Crown of Aragon and of Spain, more specific area and local studies, the history of Islamic Spain and North Africa, and the tradition of minority and mudejar ´ studies in Iberia and the Crown all converge in the study of the Muslims of the Ebro Valley. Neither Zurita (sixteenth century), the forbear of all historians of the Crown, nor his successors focused on the Muslims directly in formulating their histories of Catalonia, Aragon, and Valencia, although the Muslims’ protagonism, first as enemies and later as subject people, could not be all together ignored.14 It was in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that historians began to take an active interest in al-Andalus and in the minorities of medieval Iberia. Pioneers of the study of Islamic religion and society in the West and of the subject peoples of Christian Spain include de las Cagigas, Dozy, Simonet, Ribera, and Levi-Provenc ´ ¸al, each of whom made contributions to the historiography of the Ebro region through their studies of the whole peninsula.15
In their era a tradition of editing Latin and Romance documents also blossomed in the former Crown under archivists such as de Bofarull, and was carried on into the twentieth century by the likes of Ramos y Loscertales, Font i Rius, Lacarra, Canellas, and Ubieto Arteta. A parallel undertaking with Arabic and Hebrew texts also got under way under Dozy, Levi-Provenc ´ ¸al, and, later, Millas, Vernet, Bosch Vil ´ a, and Huici ´ Miranda: literary historians who were drawn primarily to intellectual, scientific, and cultural history. In the early decades of the twentieth century Spain’s terrible struggle to define itself as a modern nation was complemented by a polarisation of peninsular historiography, in particular regarding the role of minorities. The dominant intellectual camps were championed by two literary historians, each of whom ended his career in exile from Franco’s regime. Americo Castro saw Spanish history as process of synthesis in which ´ Christianity, Islam, and Judaism interacted in a relationship of convivencia, while Claudio Sanchez Albornoz perceived the driving force to be ´ the “Eternal Spaniard,” a historical presence discernible from Roman to modern times and realized through a series of confrontations with foreign invaders.16 Overburdened by ideological biases and undermined by methodological inadequacies, their works were more a gauge of the trends of modern Spanish cultural self-expression than medieval historical realities. In both cases the process of inter-religious interaction tended to be viewed as the meeting of monumental systems – Christianity, Islam, and Judaism – personified as characters in a grand historical drama.17
The intellectual log-jam which resulted from that polemic broke up in the 1970s, coinciding with the publication of two monumental English-language syntheses of medieval Iberian history, in one of which O’Callaghan focused on Castile as protagonist, while in the other Hillgarth emphasized the politico-cultural diversity of the peninsula. A decade later Bisson published his overview of the history of the medieval Crown of Aragon, while the study of Islamic Spain benefitted from the French historians associated with the Casa de Velazquez in ´ Madrid, notably Urvoy, Cressier, and Lagardere. In the late ` 1980s and 1990s Spaniards such as Mar´ın and Fierro took inspiration from Bulliet’s techniques and began to use Arabic biographical dictionaries as a source for Andalusi social history, while Afif and Viguera elaborated the basic history of the caliphal and taifa periods in the Ebro, building on the work of Bosch Vila´ and Lacarra. The sociological spirit of the Casa de Velazquez, so evident in Guichard’s work on Valencia, was complemented ´ by an interest in archeology, taken up also by Miquel Barcelo i ´ n Barcelona, who has concentrated on irrigation and agricultural systems. In North America anthropological and technological perspectives are most evident in the work of Glick, whose studies of acculturation and technological diffusion bridge al-Andalus and Christian Spain. As a sub-discipline, mudejar ´ studies can be traced back to Burns’s seminal works of the late 1960s, inspired by an American fascination with “frontier society,” translated to the Kingdom of Valencia. This perspective contrasted with Guichard’s, a disjunction which was to characterize the controversies between the “Continuists” and their opponents in the decades to follow. Close on Burns’s heels, Lourie began to produce a series of articles among which figure important works on mudejares ´ and Jews in the Catalano-Aragonese lands of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
The religious minorities also attracted the interest of Riera y Sans, who has unearthed a number of spectacular documents. A major study by Boswell, who examined the Muslims of the mid-fourteenthcentury Crown, was produced in the 1980s, a decade which coincided with a blossoming of interest in mudejares ´ among Catalan and Aragonese historians.18 Following the path of Ledesma, Ferrer i Mallol began to work extensively on mudejares ´ in Catalonia and Valencia. More Catalan historians followed, producing a series of local studies by Mutge, Bas ´ a´nez ˜ and others. In Aragon itself, an emphasis on administrative and economic history led researchers there to approach the mudejares ´ primarily by way of broader analyses of the whole kingdom, a trend reflected in the work of Sarasa and Laliena. Concurrently, the Jewish communities of Catalonia and Aragon became the subject of intensive study by Romano, Blasco and Assis. In North America, interest in mudejares ´ and minorities grew steadily in the 1990s, reflected in the work of Burns’s disciples and in Meyerson’s study of the Muslims of late medieval Valencia. Most recently Nirenberg’s work on early fourteenth-century communal violence has been among the first to resist the tendency to present Islamic society strictly in terms of an “Other,” a perspective which has dominated mudejar ´ studies as a consequence not only of the nature of Christian documentation but also of the prismatic effect of the “Orientalist” attitudes of Western scholarship. New works by emerging historians, such as Hames, Miller, Klein, and Blumenthal, continue to explore promising new methodological perspectives regarding minorities in the Crown of Aragon.19 Nevertheless, Aragonese and Catalan mudejares ´ of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries remain an under-analyzed and misunderstood social group. My own efforts, as represented here, belong firmly to the socio-anthropological tradition, and it is my aim to take the comparative and interdisciplinary approach further in an attempt to shake off (as much as my own subjectivity permits) the shackles of Orientalism, to de-reify the Islamic society of the Crown and to analyze it as one mode of social identity within the complex whole of medieval Catalano-Aragonese society. The sources upon which this study is based are primarily archival, apart from the earliest period. Whatever Islamic archives may have existed have not survived, and sources for the shape of the Muslim society of northern Spain in this era are limited for the most part to the Islamic histories of alAndalus (which emphasize Cordoba) and works of geography. Relevant ´ Christian documents for this period are rare.
With the conquest, however, the documentary picture brightens: the twelfth century yields parchments and letters of the Kings of Aragon and the Counts of Barcelona as well as copious records of ecclesiastical foundations, particularly monasteries and Military Orders. Numerous though these documents are, they are largely limited to records of property transfers. The quantity and range of documentation increases spectacularly from the mid-thirteenth century when, under Jaume I (1213–1276), the Royal Chancery of the Crown was reorganized, and detailed records of outgoing correspondence were kept. This collection, housed at the Arxiu de la Corona d’Arago, together ´ with parchments, royal letters, court proceedings, and financial accounts, is almost without parallel in richness and variety for the study of medieval Europe; many decades will pass before historians have “exhausted” it in any sense. Spain’s municipal, ecclesiastical, national, and royal archives also continue to yield “new” treasures, and in any event familiar sources are in need of constant reappraisal and reinterpretation as new historiographical perspectives and methodologies develop. But royal chancery documents and land transfer charters are not the only records at our disposal. The Christian expansion acted as a catalyst for Christian legal development: the administration of new lands entailed the articulation of new laws. Thus, the local cartas-pueblas (population charters) and fueros (Lat. fora, Cat. furs, “laws”) which appear at this time constitute a valuable source for the history of mudejares ´ , particularly the handful of Muslim surrender agreements which survive. Finally, Christian literary sources – official and unofficial chronicles and memoirs – furnish anecdotal evidence which adds color to the canvas of the period. Apart from these various written records, archeological remains and material culture, representative arts, and toponymy (addressed here through secondary studies) are also valuable sources.20 The bulk of the research on which this study is based was undertaken in 1996–1997, primarily in Barcelona at the Arxiu de la Corona d’Arago; ´ the Archivo Historico Nacional in Madrid was valuable primarily for the ´ 1100s as well as the Military Orders and ecclesiastical organizations in later centuries. Smaller local archives and cathedral collections helped to fill in gaps, and the numerous published documentary collections were also extremely useful. Initial investigations yielded my doctoral dissertation, “The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of the Ebro Valley, ss. xi–xiii,” (Toronto: 2000), which is the foundation of this book; over the last two years I have revised the text and carried out supplementary research.21 The studies of the aljamas of the Ebro region and the work of Boswell and Ferrer provide us with the basics of mudejar ´ administrative organization (at least in the towns), but the approach generally taken by both local and broad studies has tended to treat the Muslims of Christian Aragon and Catalonia in isolation, a perspective which runs the risk of failing to situate their collectives within the larger context of the Crown and of treating the community as if it were in stasis, unaffected by the currents of the larger society around it. Readers may yield to a essentialist temptation to idealize Islamic society and imagine that each mudejar ´ community reflected such a form. The tendency to study mudejares ´ in isolation has been aggravated by an apparent reluctance of historians to draw comparisons from other minority situations, both medieval and modern.22 Indeed, the very designation “mudejar ´ studies” suggests the adoption of a dangerously blinkered perspective. Although one may set out to study this society and the individuals who comprised it on the basis of their religious affiliation, it would be imprudent to assume that that is how they saw themselves in any given situation. In the medieval Crown of Aragon religious identity may have been the single most important defining characteristic, but it was not the only one. If we are to understand the workings of medieval society we must endeavor to look beyond the strict bounds of religious affiliation; we must avoid letting the parameters which we have chosen to characterize this people restrict the range of data we examine or determine the conclusions that we draw from it. It is the aim of the present work not only to study mudejar ´ society and Christian–Muslim interaction in the period in question, but also to contribute to a methodology which broadens the context of mudejar ´ studies, calling into question some truisms and exploring new avenues of comparison and analogy. All of this I hope will not only lead to a more sophisticated and accurate picture of twelfth and thirteenth-century mudejar ´ life, but also contribute to the general study of minority–majority interaction. The field of ethno-religious social and institutional history in Iberia continues to evolve, with advances in archeology, the discovery and utilization of new sources (fatwa¯ and Muslim sermon literature, for example) and the application of non-traditional methodologies and perspectives (economic models such as “game theory” and paradigms of biological evolution).23 It is my own ambition – and the reader will be left to decide whether I have achieved it – that the present work contribute to our understanding of mudejares ´ not only in a descriptive sense but also on a conceptual level, to push a little farther down the trails scouted out by pioneers like John Boswell.24 The approach taken here is three-pronged, and a distinct methodology is adopted in each section of this book. The first part, “Muslim Domination of the Ebro and its Demise (700–1200),” comprises a description of the pre-Conquest society, building on the work of modern historians and archeologists and drawing primarily on published contemporary documents and literature. It moves through a wide range of topics, taking a thematic approach which deviates from a strictly chronological structure. The evidence cited is taken primarily from the Ebro region, but analogous material from elsewhere in the peninsula is used where appropriate.
By surveying issues of language, social and family structure, culture, government, and economy in the Thaghr al-Aqs.a’¯ , astatus ante quem of mudejar ´ society is tentatively established. Next, cross-frontier relations are discussed, on both the practical and ideological levels, along with the origins of the institutions of Christian Aragon and Catalonia. Finally, the immediate impact of Christian domination in terms of settlement and emigration is assessed, as are the effects of the imposition of new administrative and social institution. The second part, “Muslims Under Christian Rule,” is an exhaustive archival study of the last quarter of the thirteenth century, and comprises the main body of this work. The first of its four chapters, “The financial and judicial administration of mudejar ´ society,” examines the institutional basis of mudejar ´ society and the formal interplay of the religious communities of the Crown according to fiscal, legal, and administrative jurisdictions. The corporate manifestation of mudejar ´ society, the aljama, is examined in detail. Next, “Muslims in the economy of the Christian Ebro” investigates changes in demography and market conditions as forces which contributed to the transformation of the pre-conquest society. The importance of mudejares ´ as agricultural producers is reflected in the Christian adaptation of the institution of shirka, while credit is revealed as a catalyst both for Muslim integration and community solidarity. Thirdly, “Mudejar ´ ethnicity and Christian society” investigates the roles which two social groups (the upper class and the slaves) played in shaping mudejar ´ ethnicity. A discussion of the role of language and religion as conduits of integration and consolidation follows. Finally, “Muslims and Christian society” examines coexistence at the “macro” level – a dynamic which resulted from the intrinsic characteristics of each society, spontaneous responses, and deliberate policies and strategies. After a discussion of the protocol of community relations through official legislation and popular attitudes, a study of communal violence in the Crown forms the basis for a reappraisal of mudejar ´ “vulnerability.” Together, the four chapters of Part Two cover the most important modes of interaction of Christian and Muslim societies on the institutional level. No such study of a minority community can be complete, however, without endeavoring to understand how individuals were affected by constraints on interaction. Organizations may take on a life of their own, but they are always affected by the will of their constituents. The existence of overlapping social sub-groups must be accounted for, and these very often cross the obvious religious divide. Part Three, “Individual and Community in the Christian Ebro,” takes a “microhistorical” or prosopographical approach, and consists of a series of case studies of individual Muslims and Christians of the thirteenth century. These are not the major personalities normally associated with biographical historical narrative but fairly insignificant figures, who by their very banality reveal the quotidian reality of this multi-ethnic medieval society. The experiences of Muslim and Christian officials, litigants, opportunists, and adventurers serve to illustrate the complexity of social and economic relations in the Crown, and an interdependency among members of the different faiths which defies simple analysis in terms of any single criterion of identity.25 Having analyzed Muslim–Christian interaction and the mudejar ´ social experience from the various perspectives outlined above, this book closes with “Conclusions” which draw together and reconcile the various approaches taken. It is here that the larger questions mentioned above are addressed directly and the net effect of the Christian conquest over a two-hundred-year period is assessed. A broad temporal perspective is crucial to appreciating the process of change, and because of the scarcity of sources for some periods, progress must be apprehended by examination of prior and posterior forms. As with Hume’s billiard balls, the nature of the force of change can be apprehended only in terms of the resultant movement. In other words, as students of biological evolution understand, intermediate forms or “missing links” are rarely observed, but must be inferred. In order, then, to provide a yet broader context, I close with some brief comparisons between the mudejar ´ experience and the situation of minority groups in general. This may at once shed light on the transformation of mudejar ´ society and suggest the degree to which the process in which the Muslims of thirteenth-century Aragon were involved may be considered typical for groups in analogous circumstances.
the ebro reg ion, 1000–1300: an historical overview As this work does not follow a strictly chronological order a brief synopsis of the major events of the period will provide a broad historical framework for the material addressed in the chapters to follow. With the implosion of the Caliphate of Cordoba in the early tenth cen- ´ tury, the frontier march of the Thaghr al-Aqs.a’¯ took the opportunity to express overtly what had up to then been a disguised independence. The governing family, the Tuj¯ıbids, became the area’s first autonomous taifa rulers, to be quickly succeeded by another local family of Arabic origin, the Banu H¯ ud. This clan, which came to power under Sulaym ¯ an¯ ibn Hud in ¯ 1039/40, remained in control of the region until the eve of the Christian conquest. With their wealthy lands, the Banu H¯ ud soon ¯ found themselves under the hungry gaze of the neighboring Christian principalities: Castile, Navarre, Aragon, and the Catalan counties. Following the lead of other taifa rulers, they engaged in a dangerous policy of playing their enemies off against each other, buying protection by paying tribute. The practice of dividing the family lands at the death of each ruler ensured a state of more or less continuous conflict within the clan, a situation which the Christian powers endeavored to exploit, resulting in a web of criss-crossing alliances between the Christian kingdoms and rival Hudid factions. In ¯ 1086 Muslim Zaragoza was saved from the armies of Alfonso VI of Castile (1065–1109) only by the sudden arrival in the peninsula of the Moroccan Almoravids. These self-proclaimed saviors of Islamic Iberia promptly gobbled up the very taifa kingdoms which had summoned them – with the exception of the Hudid lands, which ¯ were left as a buffer zone against the Christian states. They did not take Zaragoza until 1110, just eight years before it fell to Aragon. The complicated and ever-shifting alliances among Muslim and Christian powers of the area defies the myth of a coherent and unified programme of Christian “reconquest,” despite the papal indulgences with which these adventures were often bolstered. The first shock came in 1064 when, in what has been described as the “first Crusade,” a Norman-led force took the town of Barbastro and, violating a truce, massacred or carried off the majority of the inhabitants. But success was short-lived and the Banu H¯ ud, aided by Christian and Muslim allies, returned to ¯ visit swift justice on the town’s erstwhile conquerors. Nevertheless, such reversals were destined to be temporary, as forces of demography, economy and military capability conspired against Muslim domination in the region. In short order the recently formed Kingdom of Aragon rose from its humble beginnings around the town of Jaca to become the greatest threat to Muslim power north of the Ebro. Under Sancho Ram´ırez (1063–1094) and Pedro I (1094–1104), important gains were made in the Pyrenean foothills, leading to the conquest of Huesca (1096) and the definitive seizure of Barbastro (1100). Finally, Pedro’s half-brother, Alfonso I (1104– 1134), who earned the epithet “the Battler,” overran almost the entire territory over some thirty years of campaigning. Alfonso encountered a population disenchanted with its present leaders, ill-equipped to defend itself, and vulnerable to banditry and insecurity; by offering guarantees of judicial and administrative autonomy and wide freedoms, he persuaded many of the native Muslims to remain under his dominion.
The “Battler” ruled a kingdom with a crude central administrative structure, and was led to grant extensive territories to monastic houses and to nobles as honores in order to govern, thus laying the foundation for a class of magnates – the proudly independent Aragonese nobility. Further on, in the vast stretches of rocky hills and plateaux of the Aragonese “Extremadura,” geographic and demographic conditions encouraged the development of strong town councils.26 Here social classes were permeable, and ordinary subjects were obliged to take on military roles. Through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries theirs was a life punctuated by raids and attacks, lucrative opportunities counter-balanced by fatal uncertainties in this “society organized for war.”27 The early twelfth century, however, was not quite ripe for Christian domination of the Ebro, and Alfonso’s death outside the walls of Muslim Fraga in 1134 led to an Islamic resurgence which was to last some forty years. Nor were Muslims Aragon’s only foes:, the Navarrese Kingdom of Pamplona, which been under Alfonso’s suzerainty, broke away under Garc´ıa Ram´ırez (1134–1150), and Castile took control of Zaragoza. In Aragon itself monarchy was saved from the power-hungry nobility only by the childless Alfonso’s enigmatic testament, which bequeathed the kingdom to the Military Orders and placed it under the aegis of the Pope. After a period of confusion, Alfonso’s brother, the monk-bishop Ramiro II (1134–1137), was crowned long enough to produce a child, Petronila. During the three years of his rule, Ramiro was forced to consolidate against Muslim aggression, forge a compromise with Alfonso VII of Castile (1126–1157), and dominate his own nobility. Petronila’s betrothal to Ramon Berenguer IV (1137–1162) brought Aragon under the rule of the Count of Barcelona, precipitating the dynastic union of the two realms in 1150 which, with the accession of their son as Alfonso II (1162–1196) of Aragon (Alfons I in Barcelona), gave birth to the “Crown of Aragon.” In the aftermath of the Muslim conquest, the Catalan counties had originated as appendages of the Carolingian empire, which had brought the territory between the Aude and the Pyrenees under nominal Frankish power. Guifre´ “the Hairy” (870–897) Count of Urgell and Cerdanya, became the first Count of Barcelona, and progenitor of the royal line. Germanic disdain for primogeniture and central rule ensured, however, that Catalonia would remain a patchwork quilt of independent counties until the eleventh century, when Barcelona began an ultimately successful drive to dominate the lesser principalities. Along with their embroilment in Provenc¸al politics, this policy of consolidation distracted the counts from any organized program of expansion into Muslim lands. Demographic pressure, however, was doing its own work as people were pushed out of the valleys of the Pyrenees or fled repressive seigniorial conditions to take their chances discreetly assarting pieces of the “no-man’s land” around Tarragona. Having established his position at home, Ramon Berenguer IV set about recouping much of the loss suffered after the death of Alfonso I, and conquered new territories, including Fraga, Lleida, and Tortosa. With Catalonia and Aragon united, both Alfons I “the Chaste” (1162– 1196) and his son Pere I “The Catholic” (1196–1213) continued pushing the Crown’s borders southwards until the whole of the Ebro, Jalon, and ´ Jiloca had been taken.28 The eighty-year period initiated by Ramon Berenguer IV was one of institutional entrenchment, endowing the Crown with administrative structures durable enough to survive the crises which would follow.29 His grandson, Pere I, was one of the heroes of the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) where, forsaken by Latin Christendom, peninsular forces dealt the Almohads a crushing defeat – one which signaled the end of any real Islamic threat to Iberia. Yet only a year later he found himself facing the Crusader Simon de Montfort at Muret when, involuntarily enmeshed in the Albigensian controversy, he was forced to defend his heretical vassals of Languedoc against predatory Northern French knights. He died in that battle, leaving an infant successor and a nobility determined to assert their independence from royal control. The struggle between the nobility and the count-kings was to be a constant feature of the thirteenth century, which closed with the triumph of the magnates, who managed to extract extensive privileges from the chronically impecunious monarchs. In the meantime, however, the Military Orders assured the continuity of the Catalan-Aragonese Crown. Young Jaume I became a ward of the Templars at Monzon, where he ´ remained until he took the field to subdue his unruly vassals at the age of eleven. Next, the king turned his energies on his Muslim neighbours; his successful campaigns in the Balearics, which were officially cast as Crusades and which served to embroil the Italian trader states in the affairs of the Crown, contributed greatly to the wealth of his Catalan provinces and set the Crown of Aragon’s course as a Mediterranean power.30 Jaume followed up with the rapid conquest of Valencia in 1238, but the subjugation of its hinterlands proved no easy task. The rebellions and revolts would outlive the king himself, and his eldest son Pere II (1276–1285) would inherit them as part and parcel of the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona. Nevertheless, Jaume pushed on, conquering Islamic Murcia, which he ceded to Castile under the Treaty of Almizra (1244).31 The conquest of the Kingdom of Valencia and Murcia moved the border between Christian and Islamic Spain away from the Ebro, converting the Aragonese Extremadura into part of the Christian heartland, and although many Muslims continued to live in the region, they were gradually converted into a numerical minority. With the region now firmly under Christian control, Catalano-Aragonese mudejarismo entered a phase of normalization: administrative institutions coalesced and the substantial Muslim population took on a regular and defined role in the society and economy of the Crown of Aragon. In the closing decades of the thirteenth century under Pere II and his sons, Alfons II (1285–1291) and Jaume II (1291–1327), the Crown looked towards the Mediterranean. Diplomatic relations were established with H. afs.id Tunisia and Marinid Morocco and traders ranged as far afield as Mameluke Alexandria and Constantinople. Pere engaged in an abortive invasion of his troublesome protectorate of Tunisia, and Catalan freebooters came to control an independent principality around Athens. Unfortunately, Jaume I’s decision to split his realms between his heirs led to diplomatic and military conflict over control of the Balearics, a struggle which led Alfons II to invade the island in 1285 and annex complicitous Islamic Minorca in 1287.
Despite these successes, however, conflict with the rival dynasty would continue to plague the Crown through the first half of the following century. In the meanwhile, Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily were also acquired, the latter precipitating the wrath of the Papacy and the Angevins and provoking their unsuccessful invasion of Catalonia in 1285. In the same period, the Aragonese nobility continued to chafe at royal domination, the ferment of their discontent giving rise to open revolt in the form of the Uniones. Asaresult of this episode, the monarchy was driven to grant extensive rights to this class, including a “Magna Carta,” the Privilegium generale, in 1287. 32 Nor were the southern and western frontiers secure, and wars with Castile and Navarre flared up periodically through the second half of the thirteenth century. For the most part these struggles were indecisive, although the northern part of the Kingdom of Murcia was acquired from Castile. In the last decade of the century Jaume II’s reign brought peace with the Papacy, France, and Castile, but only at the cost of territories which had been gained in Mallorca and Sicily. On the other hand, the Crown’s relationships with its Muslim neighbours in the peninsula were not always bellicose.
Despite the involvement of Granada in the guerra Sarracenorum, the revolt which shook the Kingdom of Valencia during Pere II’s reign, the Muslim kingdom proved to be a convenient trading partner and an occasional ally against the Crown’s principal rival, Castile. Notwithstanding the various alarums and excursions, the thirteenth century was one of relative stability in the Ebro region. It would be in the next century that the effects of the nobles’ victory would come to be felt, when the Templars would be disbanded and the cataclysms of crop failure, plague, and war would be visited on the peoples of the Ebro basin – factors which together contributed to the development of a Christian-Muslim dynamic distinct from that of our period of study.
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