[260] In a modern frame of reference the over-all well-being or "status" of a minority group in relation to the larger society tends almost inevitably to be viewed in terms of those historical intangibles ambiguously known as "rights." Whether or not such a concept has much validity in the twentieth century, it certainly has little, if any, relevance to the fourteenth. Nonetheless, this chapter will attempt to deal with what will probably strike the contemporary reader as the "rights" of the Mudéjares under the Crown of Aragon.⁽¹⁾ In one sense, and one sense only, such a conceptualization is valuable: in other chapters taxes, duties, and problems particularly, if not exclusively, applicable to Muslims are discussed. If one groups these generically under the idea of Mudéjar "obligations" to the society, then the contents of the present chapter may be viewed as a discussion of Mudéjar "rights" in that society, in the sense of political benefits or promises of personal liberty. It is essential to bear in mind, in this context, that despite treaties of capitulation between Muslims and Christians, and despite numerous sections of various local and national law [261]codes, all of the Muslims living under the Crown of Aragon were directly or indirectly the personal dependents of the monarchs bearing that crown, and were neither subject to nor protected by any higher law. What this chapter really treats is "concessions": an unending series of royal grants designed to alleviate, foster, or control the condition of the Muslims and Jews of Aragón -- the "royal treasure." To the extent that each king respected the privileges granted by his predecessors (or by himself previously), these concessions constituted the "rights" of the Muslim communities, but as will become apparent, neither the recognition by each acceding ruler of the grants of his predecessor nor the most fervent royal oaths guaranteeing the perpetuity of a king's own grants sufficed to ensure the observance or protections of such "rights" as the Aragonese Mudéjares enjoyed.
 
 

Probably the most obvious -- though not necessarily the most pressing -- concern of the Muslims themselves was their right to practice their own religion. The tolerance -- or the canniness -- of the conquerors themselves in regard to this was extraordinary, and throughout the thirteenth century the Mudéjares, at least in the newly conquered realms, were able to preserve their mosques and cemeteries, their schools and religious customs, just as before the Reconquista. The rents of the mosques were used for the mosques themselves,⁽²⁾ and, [262] most important of all, Saracens were allowed to chant the çala publicly.⁽³⁾ The çala is one of the primary duties of Muslims, enjoined upon them by the Prophet himself: "O ye who believe! When the call is heard for the prayer of the day of congregation, haste unto the remembrance of Allah and leave your trading "(Koran LXII:9).

Many Christians, however, found the practice objectionable, among them the pope:

In 1311, Clement V, at the Council of Vienne, addressed himself to all the princes of Christendom, advising them that the freedom currently enjoyed by their Saracen subjects constituted an offense against the Christian faith; at the same time he forbade absolutely the public invoking of the name of Muhammad to call Muslims to prayer, as well as pilgrimages to visit the tombs of their saints.⁽⁴⁾

Nonetheless, it was not very practical to resist the popes in these matters, since the Spanish clergy and the king's Christian subjects were not nearly as concerned with religious toleration they were with the triumph of the Christian faith. In 1311 James II prohibited, under pain of death, the public crying of the name of Muhammad.⁽⁸⁾ Roca Traver, using the text of this prohibition to prove that the previous custom involved the invoking of Muhammad so loudly that even the Christians could hear it,⁽⁹⁾ tries to cite [264] this as proof of the "extreme tolerance" of the Christians, but overlooks the fact that the custom was being not merely checked, but outlawed under pain of death. Despite the wording of the privilege, moreover, it is certain that the call to prayer was chanted only in the morerías of Aragonese cities, and not in the Christian quarters.

This was not, however, the end of the issue, and the question of the çala provided the focal point of the whole controversy of Mudéjar religious liberties in succeeding decades. Displaying a cunning mixture of compassion and realism, Peter the Ceremonious had worked out by 1357 a completely unofficial compromise presumably satisfactory to all parties. Under this agreement the aljamas paid a certain sum of money each year into the royal treasury, in return for which they could chant the cala "in a low voice and in a low place":

...received, from the aljama of Saracens of the raval of the morería of the city of Játiva, 500 sueldos, by way of an agreement made with me, in regard to which the king issued the following command by word of mouth: to wit, that the çabicala or the faqi of the said aljama may in a low voice and in an inconspicuous place chant the çala, as is customarily done in the morerías of Valencia and in other royal places of the kingdom, and that this [agreement] should last until the king provide otherwise.⁽¹⁰⁾

In 1359 the Bishop of Tortosa held a synod to discuss, among other things, the "deplorable, detestable, and execrable calling and proclaiming of the name of Muhammad," the net result of which was an absolute prohibition of the practice. The bishop was apparently very aware of the reluctance of secular authorities to enforce such measures, and made provision to deal with any diffidence on their part in the enforcement of his edict:

And if any of the temporal lords exercising dominion over the Saracens within their parishes shall not forbid the said proclamation [of the name of Muhammad] to be made, as is specified in the said constitution, or shall not prohibit to Saracens living among Christians the public performance of manual or servile labor on Sundays and holydays, as is prescribed in the same constitution, they [the clergy] shall be responsible for notifying either us on our vicar or officialis within eight days....⁽¹¹⁾

It is possible that the smaller aljamas of the kingdom, not being able to raise sums of money comparable to those paid by Játiva and Valencia for çala privileges, did not therefore normally enjoy them. This could explain why some of those aljamas returning to the king's service demanded these rights and others did not. It seems slightly more probable, however, that Peter was willing to enter [267] into an informal financial agreement with any aljama, for whatever sum it could afford, and that these demands represent efforts by the Muslim communities, now temporarily in positions to dicker, to wrest from the king written guarantees that these agreements would not be abridged. The futility of their efforts is attested to by the fact that even in Játiva the privilege was short-lived: Ramos y Loscertales quotes a late fourteenth-century document concerning the imprisonment of a Saracen for invoking aloud the name of Muhammad "against the royal ordinances."⁽¹⁵⁾
 
 

    Lo! Those who give alms, both men and women, and lend unto Allah a goodly loan, it will be doubled for them, and theirs will be a rich reward.
    The alms are only for the poor and needy, and those who collect them, and those whose hearts are to be reconciled, and to free the captives and the debtors, and for the cause of Allah, and for the wayfarers; a duty imposed by Allah. Allah is Knower, Wise (Koran, LVII:l8 and IX:60. Cf. II:215, XXIV:56, and LVIII:12).

Alms were begged and gathered in a Muslim society, as seen on the preceding page, not only for the poor and the needy, but also for captives, debtors, and wayfarers. The right of captives to beg was particularly pertinent to fourteenth-century Mudéjares, many of whom were captives either as prisoners of war, through the commission of some crime, or as the booty of soma pirate enterprise.⁽¹⁶⁾ As early as 1333 Valencian Mudéjares were requesting -- and obtaining -- from the Aragonese monarchy guarantees of the right to seek alms for redemption from captivity.⁽¹⁷⁾ Prior to 1337, however, a Muslim was required to obtain from the General Bailiff of Valencia an albaranum, or certificate of poverty with license to beg: "...any Muslim, male or female, free or captive, may beg alms so long as he bears with him a letter testifying to his poverty...."⁽¹⁸⁾ In 1337, however, the Muslims of Valencia complained to the king that this ordinance worked undue hardship on those living far away from the city [269] of Valencia, where the bailiff lived, as it required them to make a long, expensive journey when they were obviously ill able to do so. In response, the king altered the ordinance, allowing henceforth the local bailiff or qadi to grant the albaranum to "the poor, the old, the weak, the ill, the wards and the orphans," all of whom might then beg alms in their own morerías.⁽¹⁹⁾ There is no doubt that the government actually attempted to prevent unlicenced mendicancy, at least outside the morería: in 1358, for instance, three Saracens were prosecuted by the general bailiff, because "they were wandering through the kingdom seeking alms to aid in their redemption, which was forbidden in the kingdom of Valencia."⁽²⁰⁾ Similar stipulations were in effect in Aragon as well, with the added difficulty that Muslims had to have their master's permission to beg.⁽²¹⁾

Despite the apparently frequent practice of imprisoning Mudéjares guilty of infractions of the alms regulations (see note 21), the only legal penalty for such violations was a fine (originally fairly high, but reduced in 1358 to 10 açeti).⁽²²⁾ Perhaps to avoid such extralegal incarcerations, the king removed any jurisdiction over mendicants from the hands of the General Bailiff of Valencia [270] altogether in 1357, decreeing that only those local officials mentioned in the edict of 1337 could issue the albaranum.⁽²³⁾ But within six years the Crown reversed itself, put the enforcement of such matters back into the hands of the general bailiff, and forbade even more stringently the practice of begging outside the morería. The suzerain did this, he said, because he had heard that a great many Muslims "who were poor or pretending to be so" were wandering throughout the kingdom begging, and experience had taught him that such activities were dangerous to the realm as being conducive to "the spreading of rumors and the making of conspiracies." The penalty for Saracens found seeking alms outside the locale they were supposed to be inhabiting during the war was to be confiscation to the Curia of their persons, and/or imprisonment by the general bailiff.⁽²⁴⁾ For obvious reasons, this ordinance was intensely unpopular with the Muslim population, in desperate financial straits due to the war and without other means to redeem the many members of their communities being held for ransom as prisoners of war by the Castilians (as well as royal officials: see Chapter VII.). The monarch was therefore constrained to alter his provisions three months later, ordering that only foreign ("extranei") Saracens be restrained from begging outside the morerías in which they were residing (under pain of imprisonment), since these were the ones, he wrote, who fomented conspiracy and spread "sinister [271] rumors."⁽²⁵⁾

In spite of the financial disasters of the war, a fair number of Muslims were wealthy enough to make sizeable gifts to such poor members of their community. In 1362, for example, a wealthy Valencian Muslim, Çaat Fuster, donated twenty-five sueldos to a captive sarracena for the redemption of her person and that of her daughter.⁽²⁶⁾
 
 

It seems curious that a minority group called upon to perform military service with the general population could at the same time not enjoy the right to bear arms, but such was, in practice at least, the case under the Crown of Aragon in the mid-fourteenth century. As in many other cases, the Muslim populations had generally been granted this right under their original charters of capitulation,⁽²⁷⁾ but the privilege had been gradually eroded through succeeding centuries by wave after wave of local and royal oppression.⁽²⁸⁾ It is true that during various periods of the war Christians [272], at least in Valencia, were prohibited as well from bearing arms, but the fine for the same offense was at least six times higher for a Muslim,⁽²⁹⁾ and sometimes simply astronomical.⁽³⁰⁾ In Aragon, the zeal of officials in preventing Muslim armsbearing grew so excessive that the Mayor of Zaragoza had to be restrained by the king from confiscating weapons carried by the king's own Muslim troops going to and from the border near Mediani. In this case the king (reacting to the complaint against the mayor lodged by the Saracens' lord, the Count of Luna) ordained that these particular Muslims, while fighting for him against Castile, were not to be denied the right to bear their own weapons (n.b.), but he made no broader declaration of Muslim rights in this area.⁽³¹⁾ In Huesca, violating one of the oldest and most fundamental rights of the aljamas, officials illegally entered the morería to seize arms from the homes of Saracens. Again without in any way guaranteeing the right of Muslims to bear arms, the monarch severely forbade [273] such "excursions into the morería" under fine of 100 morabetíns for each offense, and sternly ordered the officials to observe to the letter the privileges of territorial inviolability granted the aljamas by James in 1273.⁽³²⁾
 
 

The official intention of the Crown at the time of the reconquest of Aragon-Catalonia was that Jews, Christians and Muslims should all be treated equally in regard to such basic rights as property and inheritance. Hence, Alfonso I promised the Saracens of Tudela in 1115, "And if anyone shall wish to sell or mortgage his property let no one oppose or gainsay this,"⁽³³⁾and those of Calatayud in 1131, "And Christians and Muslims and Jews may buy from each other wherever they may wish and are able."⁽³⁴⁾

The Crown, nevertheless, soon discovered unforeseen advantages to altering its po1icy. As things developed, the royal rights over property belonging to Muslims were somewhat more lucrative than the ordinary iura attendant on the property of Christians. For this reason, it was [274] obviously in any particular king's best interest to prevent the passing of property, real or movable from the hands of Mudéjar subjects to those of Christian ones. In the thirteenth-century Fueros of Aragon this right of free property transfer had already ceased to apply to transactions between Mudéjares and Christians, though such dealings between Jews and Muslims were free of royal control:

And if perchance they should be under royal or ecclesiastical jurisdiction, they may not alienate [their property] to a Christian in any way, although Jews may sell to Muslims their possessions without the consent of the king or his bailiff, so long as they do not hold such possessions under stipulations of tribute or a certain portion of their fruits.⁽³⁵⁾

Mudéjares under royal jurisdictions could sell their property to Christians with the king's permission, but a third of the sale price reverted to the royal treasury, presumably to offset the loss to the king by the transfer from one "law" to another (ibid., VII, 278).

In the fourteenth century, the rights of Mudéjares in this matter varied widely according to place. In Borja, although it was violated, a royal ordinance expressly forbade the selling of property [275] held by Mudéjares to Christians under any conditions:

... in accordance with and by virtue of royal privilege granted the said aljama for the preservation of our revenues, estates which belonged to Saracens may not be alienated or transferred to Christians through sale or any other means....⁽³⁶⁾

In Ariza, on the other hand, the thirteenth-century rule was observed, and property could pass from Jews or Muslims to Christians so long as the king received one-third the sale price.⁽³⁸⁾ In 1360 even this was relaxed, owing to the tremendous debts owed by the Muslims to the Jews and the generally abysmal state of the aljama's finances. Under the new dispositions, property of Muslims could be freely sold to any person of any faith, so long as the special tax for the upkeep of the castle (to which Mudéjar property was uniquely liable) was transferred with the property and paid by the [276] new owner. The king had been worried that it might be difficult to prove, after several transfers, which property was liable to this special tax and which was not, but when he ascertained that the Mudéjar property was all quite separate from the Jewish and Christian parts of the city he decided to relax the ordinance.⁽³⁹⁾

In Huesca the situation seems to have been somewhat different. It appears that the royal one-third was exacted from all sales of Saracen property, regardless of the buyer's faith. In 1363, at any rate, the queen granted a relaxation from such a rule, stipulating that henceforth the royal third would not be collected from sales to Muslims, as long as they were vassals of the Court:

Nor will you be required to pay us the royal third or any other royal portion of the price of such homes or properties, provided that you make such sales only to Saracen vassals of ours and to no one else....⁽⁴⁰⁾

[277] There is, unfortunately, insufficient evidence to draw inferences about the question in the most important city in Aragon, Zaragoza. A bill of sale of 1360 (reprinted in the Appendix, C 9014:73/85) involved the sale of property to a Muslim by a Christian; while this is not in itself indicative, the fact that the property was located in the morería might indicate that the Christian owners had previously purchased it from Mudéjares. It is clear that Jews could receive property from Muslims and vice versa (Appendix, C 903:290), though the circumstances of the grant cited are unlikely to be typical.

One of the demands made of the king by the returning Muslims of Valencia in 1365 was the right to sell their goods to anyone they chose: "Item, that any Saracen may sell his lands and goods to whomever he wishes, paying what is owed the Lord King." The king rejected this demand -- one of the very few he would not accept -- and granted instead that they could sell to any Muslim ("It pleases the king that they be able to sell to any Muslim...").⁽⁴¹⁾ Probably this is indicative of the law in Valencia in general, but it is impossible be sure of this on such scanty evidence.

Over the long run the thirteenth-century custom seems to have prevailed, at least in Aragon. Macho y Ortega quotes a fifteenth-century Fuero which is almost a verbatim repeat of the corresponding disposition of two centuries previously,⁽⁴²⁾

and the king himself was [278] of the opinion that all the Muslims dwelling in his lands could dispose of their property with complete freedom, or at least he did not hesitate to assure Muslim sovereigns of other nations that such was the case.⁽⁴³⁾
 
 

Obviously, the same concern which prompted the king's efforts to limit the sale or alienation of Muslim property would have considerable effect on legislation relating to wills and inheritance. Royal decrees on inheritance were, in fact, a clear case of the Crown's violating Koranic codes in decisions regarding the internal affairs of the aljamas. According to the Koran (and the almost universal practice of Islamic law), the property of a Muslim who died childless and intestate was divided among his near relatives, beginning with his siblings (Koran IV:7ss, 11ss, 177; cf. II:180ss, 240). These provisions notwithstanding, James the Conqueror established [279] in 1248 a law by which the property of Aragonese Mudéjares who died sine prole was divided equally between the aljama and the Crown, a practice which, though directly contrary to Islamic law, remained in effect till the mid-fourteenth century.⁽⁴⁴⁾ Peter the Ceremonious, at the time of the Black Death, added to this legislation an edict rendering null the wills of childless Muslims, claiming that "according to Islamic law neither males nor females dying without legitimate offspring may dispose of their goods by legacy, nor otherwise effect their wishes. . . ."⁽⁴⁵⁾

All of this changed abruptly, if temporarily, following the devastations wrought on the aljamas by the plague. In 1349 the king granted the aljama of Borja, at its request, the right to follow the usage prescribed by the Koran, though he did not identify it as such:

...we concede to the aforementioned aljama and to its residents present and to come that if it should chance hereafter that any Saracen, male or female, should die without legitimate offspring, he may make a will concerning his goods and arrange his wishes, any provision to the contrary hereby being voided. And if any should die without a legitimate heir or successor, we desire and direct that those most closely related to him may succeed to his goods freely and with impunity. And we wish and command this to have effect regarding all goods, past and present.⁽⁴⁶⁾

[280] Possibly this was an act of pure magnanimity on the part of the king, but it seems more likely  that it represented an effort to restore the finances of the badly depopulated aljama, and in this context constitutes a corollary to the remissions of the royal third granted Aragonese aljamas for the same reasons during the war with Castile (see above).⁽⁴⁷⁾

During the decade of the war entirely new distinctions were introduced into the legal niceties of Muslim inheritance. In 1356 the king confirmed to the Saracens of Ricla a sort of "bill of rights" issued eight years previously to most of the aljamas of northern Aragon, which included several provisions relating to inheritance rights, to wit: that the property of Muslims who died sine prole and intestate be given to their near relatives; that the wills of deceased members of the aljama be respected only if the designated heirs were royal vassals; that if a Muslim die without heirs or a will three men of the village should pay for his burial from his goods and distribute the rest to those who would make the same use of it as the deceased did while he lived.⁽⁴⁸⁾

[281] The question of royal vs. nobles' Muslims proved to be quite a thorny issue. The aljama of Huesca complained to the king in 1357 that non-royal Muslims were removing from the city property which they inherited from local Muslims:

...other Saracens who are not royal [vassals] are coming to the city and, as heirs of the deceased, are receiving and carrying away with them out of the city the property of the deceased, and -- it is claimed -- transporting it to places not under royal [jurisdiction].⁽⁴⁹⁾

In Zaragoza the older disposition whereby one-half the goods of intestate Muslims devolved to the Court and the other half reverted to the aljama was not abrogated until 1360, when the more generous Koranic provisions previously granted to Huesca were put into effect. Zaragoza was the last major Aragonese aljama to enjoy this [282] privilege, which applied to those living in the environs as well as the city itself.⁽⁵¹⁾ Three years later, with the devastation worsening under the strain of the war, the king declared all relatives eligible to inherit, apparently abandoning the distinction between royal and non-royal.⁽⁵²⁾ In the same year, moreover, the king ordered an immediate halt to an inquisition in progress against the Jews anci Saracens of Huesca, undertaken

... because of certain properties, goods, and rights which are now in their possession and formerly belonged to Jews and Saracens who died, without heirs within the diocese of Huesca from the year forty-four on... ⁽⁵³⁾

The king also intervened in individual cases, again in violation of the çuna. In 1363 he granted to a Muslim bridge-worker of [283] Zaragoza with no male heirs the right to leave his property to his daughters, "and otherwise to dispose of [his] goods as he should wish, despite the fact that it was not allowed [him] by the çuna to leave more than a third of [his] goods to [his] daughters. . .⁽⁵⁵⁾

In Valencia there seems to have been wide variation in the regulation of this matter. The general rule for the kingdom is quoted during a dispute between the relatives of the Saracens of Algar and the monastery of Arguinis. When certain Muslims living in Algar and subject to the monastery died childless and intestate, the monastery appropriated their goods, asserting that

according to the general custom of the kingdom of Valencia the property of such Saracens belongs to the lord of the place, regardless of any blood relatives or relations of equivalent degree the deceased Saracens may have in other places within the kingdom aforesaid.⁽⁵⁶⁾

Within the city of Valencia itself the rule was that no one living outside the city, royal or not, could succeed to property left by Mudéjares living inside it. Just what percentage of property left without legitimate heirs reverted to the Crown, however, seems to have been highly flexible. Only one-twelfth of the goods of Maymo Xehep fell to the king, though he died sine prole,⁽⁵⁸⁾ but the same year Peter laid claim to two-thirds the estate of one Hamet, "sarrahi liyador," since he had bequeathed it to two nephews who lived outside the city.⁽⁵⁹⁾ When Neixma Fuster went to Bougie, the portions of her will respecting her two sisters and her niece were honored by the bailiff, and 1,040s was allotted to the sisters together and to the niece (i.e., one-third of the estate for the niece and one-third for the sisters, in accord with the çuna) but because they had moved to Játiva, the remaining one-third which was to have gone to her father and uncle was sold and remitted to the Court.⁽⁶⁰⁾ In the following year, when Abraham Abenxoa died leaving two wives, one in Onda and one in Valencia, only the Valencian wife was entitled to inherit, and the king succeeded to the other half of Abraham's [285] estate of 2,000 sueldos.⁽⁶¹⁾

In the final analysis the determining factor in the tension between the Crown and the aljamas on the subject of inheritance seems to have been the relative strength of either at any given moment, and the extent to which the Saracens involved were aware of alternative possibilities. Of the sets of demands made on the king as conditions for returning to his service, two mention inherence rights. The Muslims of Espada demanded in 1365 that relatives of deceased Saracens who did not live in the same jurisdiction allowed to inherit property so long as they resided within the señorío of the king, to which the king acceded "com se fa en la vall d'Uxo."⁽⁶²⁾ At almost the exact same time, however, the Muslims of Castro and Alfandequiella were demanding from the monarch that they be able to inherit property from Muslims anywhere in the "kingdom of Aragon," regardless of the issue of being royal vassals or not, and he granted this demand,⁽⁶³⁾ too, leaving the entire question of inheritance as vague and erratic as before the war, though [286] somewhat more favorable to the Muslims.
 
 

    Perform the pilgrimage and the visit to Mecca for Allah....
    And pilgrimage to the House is a duty unto Allah for mankind, for him who can find a way thither....
    And proclaim unto mankind the pilgrimage. They will come unto thee on foot and on every lean camel; they will come from every deep ravine (Koran II:196; III:97; XII:27).

...and whoever may wish to leave and pass from Tudela to Muslim lands or any others shall be given leave, and may go with impunity along with his wife and children and all his possessions, by land or sea, whenever he may wish, by day or night.⁽⁶⁴⁾

...Any man found transporting Muslims to Muslim domains without the consent of their lords shall be despoiled of all his goods, both the man transporting and the Muslim he transports, so that whoever encounters them is entitled to them. But their persons, that is, those of the transporter and of the Muslims, should be surrendered to the king or to the mayor of the place where this occurs.⁽⁶⁵⁾

It is scarcely [288] surprising that such paranoia should have particularly affected the Muslim community, already suspect for its obstinacy in refusing the Christian faith. In 1356 the king took steps for the first time to end an annual assembly of Valencian Mudéjares, which had taken on a sinister aspect in the eyes of the beleaguered monarch. Not anxious to offend his Muslim subjects by outright oppression, the king asked Garsia de Loriz to "devise a means whereby the meeting might be suppressed":

...as regards the assembly which the Saracens hold each year in the kingdom of Valencia, during which they discuss matters injurious to the kingdom, we desire that you devise a means whereby this sort of assembly may be done away with.⁽⁶⁸⁾

...by order of the community of Christians of the city... a public announcement was made through the city that no foreign-born Saracen might presume or dare to buy meat in the market of the morería, either to eat it within the city or transport it outside...

...by virtue of this edict [these Saracens] were constrained to fast, since according to their law they dared not eat any meat except that butchered and prepared at the hands of a Saracen butcher.⁽⁶⁹⁾

Each and every non-resident Saracen of the morería who presently or in the future comes to the city of Játiva to sell his merchandise or for whatever reason, should and must be allowed without incurring any penalty to buy meat in the morería.. . and to eat it there or export it to his own home town safely and securely, just as [such persons] used to purchase it and eat it and export it to their residences before this edict.⁽⁷⁰⁾

Although being enslaved probably represented the greatest single dissuading factor in the minds of Mudéjares contemplating a journey, it was not always legal confiscation they feared. The trade in Muslim slaves and captives was so brisk that the queen felt constrained in 1360 to issue a blanket guidaticum to all her Muslims in Huesca to protect them from such hazards on journeys.⁽⁷²⁾ And although the king made efforts to protect Mudéjares in general, it can scarcely be claimed that there was no conflict of interest in such matters. Muslim slaves, both native and foreign, made up a substantial body of the work force, and the Crown received a percentage of the purchase price of every new one sold. The king's ambivalence is typified in the case of some Aragonese Muslims illegally seized, along with their goods, by Aragonese pirates in 1357. Though Peter ordered their immediate release, and commanded the Bailiff of Aragon to make good all their losses out of his own [291] pocket if necessary, he enjoined no penalty whatever on the corsarii who committed the crime.⁽⁷³⁾ When a group of emissaries from Granada were attacked in Figueras returning from an audience with the king, Peter demanded in outrage that the guilty be severely punished: not only was a kinsman of the King of Granada "atrociously wounded" in the attack, but the group bore with it the king's own safe-conduct, making the assault especially heinous.⁽⁷⁴⁾ Nevertheless, only a month later the king surreptitiously absolved two men of Figueras for their part in the crime -- hardly the type of toughness apt to deter such events in the future.⁽⁷⁵⁾

Cautious Muslims would not, indeed, hazard a journey at all without some guarantee of royal protection. The aljama of Torrelles petitioned the king specifically to guarantee the personal safety of Mahoma Dayhu, whose testimony they needed regarding some ransom money, since he refused to travel the distance from Agrada to Torelles without such an assurance from the king himself:

Since we understand from supplication made to us on behalf of the aljama of Torrelles that they have need of your account regarding the case of the hostages which they placed in your care, under certain conditions, at the instigation of Gomeç Carriello, and since you do not dare come to the said accounting without assurance from us, we hereby guarantee your safety in coming, staying, and returning.⁽⁷⁶⁾

Inportant as the right to travel was to the Muslin communities under the Crown of Aragon, it was subsidiary both in operation and in importance to another, more basic right, one which probably constitutes the ultimate determinant of the well-being of any minority group or subject population in any age: the right to emigrate. The extent to which Aragonese Mudéjares enjoyed this right is not readily determinable, and will be considered here in some detail under two categories, the right to change places of residence within the kingdoms under the Crown of Aragon, and the right to leave for Muslim-controlled lands.

The Fuero conceded to Calatayud in 1131 provided that any Muslim who fled the jurisdiction of the city forfeited his property, which was to be given to a Christian.⁽⁸²⁾ This was, of course, during a period in the history of the area when very large numbers of Muslims would have been leaving the newly reconquered land and taking [294] refuge in the South, where Arab hegemony was still intact, if shaky. A century later the Fueros of Aragón dealt more specifically with the problem of Muslims changing residence within the kingdom, and attempted to provide a compromise between the competing desires of king and noble by allowing the lord of a Muslin who changed residence to confiscate his goods, real or movable, so long as he was still on his original lord's lands, but not after he had reached those of the new lord, be it king or noble.⁽⁸³⁾ No other penalty was prescribed, so that if a Muslim was dissatisfied and willing to risk the loss of his property, he could abandon his estate and freely move to someone else's lands.

There are abundant indications in the documents of the period. that the king's Muslim subjects exercised this liberty of movement to a considerable degree; e.g., Abderramin, the amin of Plasencia, was the son of Mahomet Amiadre of Coglor;⁽⁸⁴⁾ Juceffus Dalnura was described as "once of the village of Fraga, but now a resident of Alcolegia";⁽⁸⁵⁾ Mahomet de Bendeziembre, a prominent Muslim of Zaragoza, was the son of Muce Aben Dazieinbre of Borja;⁽⁸⁶⁾ En Juci, a Muslim of Castile, owned an oven in Lérida and paid taxes to the Crown of Aragon.⁽⁸⁷⁾ Moreover, as late as 1360, when this right [295] had already been considerably abridged, the Muslims of Teruel used abandonment of their homes as a threat against the king in response to what they considered an excessive military levy, and did so apparently to good effect, since the monarch capitulated.⁽⁸⁸⁾

A license was required for a transfer of domicile, and failure to obtain it rendered one liable to prosecution. Peter Jordan, the Governor of Aragon, was ordered by the king to investigate personally the accusations brought against Fatima of Aranda and her sons, against whom it was charged that "without obtaining permission from any of our officials, she left Aranda and travelled to the said place of Deça with the intention of changing her residence."⁽⁸⁹⁾ The king ordered the governor in his investigation to take into account both the motive for the move and the question of the license:

If, indeed, you find this information concerning these previously mentioned matters [to be true], and that this Fatima went to the said place to recover her property rather [296] than to change her place of residence, and that [she did so] with the permission of the said [officials], then you are to release her from the custody in which you hold her and allow her to remain in Aranda and to move about freely there just as she could before the charge [was made].⁽⁹⁰⁾

any one of them who resides either in our jurisdiction or yours may, as often as he wishes, change his residence from one place to another, so long as he does not leave the lands of our kingdoms, and may no less [freely] sell his goods, movable and real, without any objection from anyone, provided he pays whatever [is owed] the lord and other residents of the place where he had been living, and provided he was not bound by some agreement to remain or to establish his residence in some one of these places.⁽⁹¹⁾

you or your men prevent such Saracens from departing places under your jurisdiction, and if they sell their goods you force them to sell them for much less money than they are worth, and, what is worse, under the guise of some inquiry you seize them and hold them either in captivity or under arrest until they redeem themselves from you, either yielding all their possessions to you or selling them to someone else for practically nothing.⁽⁹²⁾

Ironically, it was only a year later that the Crown specifically prohibited such movement for the duration of the war with Castile, at least in Valencia: see below. Whether or not this injunction applied to Aragon-Catalonia is not clear. A document of 1365 in which the queen grants a Muslim from Huesca permission to sell his Huescan property and move to Tortosa implies that this would not be allowed without special dispensation from the Crown, but it may be merely the formula for granting the license mentioned [298] above.⁽⁹³⁾

If the Valencian edict did apply to the northern kingdoms, it did so only temporarily: there is evidence that in the fifteenth century Aragonese Mudéjares enjoyed the full benefits of the laws quoted above ensuring their right to move freely from place to place within the kingdom.⁽⁹⁴⁾

Although Aragonese Mudéjares enjoyed extraordinary -- by medieval standards -- freedom of movement, it is difficult to agree with Roca Traver that the same was true of their Valencian brethren.⁽⁹⁵⁾ Officially the king upheld the right of Valencian Muslims to settle where they wished at least through February of 1356, when he ordered the release of a group of free Saracens who had been taken captive by Johannes Emmanuel when they tried to take up residence in [299] a place called Carcelen, under his jurisdiction. Such enslavement was, in the king's own words, "contrary to justice, law, and reason," and he therefore directed that they be permitted to settle wherever they wished.⁽⁹⁶⁾ Unofficially, however, the royal attitude must have been markedly different; three months later, in a letter to the same official, Garsia de Loriz, the king upheld the right of Sanctius Emmanuel to sell the captured Muslims -- who had never been released -- to Valencian Christians, despite the vehement protests of Peter de Exerica, their would-be señor and general champion of the Mudéjar cause.⁽⁹⁷⁾

It requires no special perspicacity to discern a pattern of royal behavior favorable to the ruling Christian class in Valencia, as opposed to the king's sincere efforts to protect the rights of Aragonese Mudéjares from the usurpations of their señores. Possible explanations of this are legion: the greater numbers of Valencian Mudéjares, and their more recent amalgamation into the Crown of Aragon, both of which might make the king apprehensive about [300] keeping them "under control"; the fact that much less of the royal income was derived from Muslims bound to the Court by direct feudal ties in Valencia than in Aragon, where a large percentage were serfs of the king; the fact that most of the land in Valencia held by Christians had been given to particular favorites of the royal family as rewards for services rendered in the reconquista (or elsewhere); the imagined threat of the proximity of Muslim-ruled Granada, etc.

Whatever the causes, the results were unmistakable. When the Muslims living on the lands of Arnald of Scriba, a domestic of the king, migrated en masse to Sirach, the king falsely asserted their action to be a violation both of the çuna and of Valencian law, and not only commanded that any Christians who found them detain them for prosecution, but also directed that they be severely punished, "so their action will not set a bad example."⁽⁹⁸⁾

Arnald's erstwhile serfs had not, in fact, violated any law in Valencia, the king's assertion to the contrary notwithstanding, but steps were promptly taken to remedy this situation. By 1362 it had been publicly announced in every city in Valencia that no Muslim might henceforth "move or transport either his dwelling or his goods to another locale under pain of confiscation."⁽⁹⁹⁾ In some places the [301] edict was promulgated as early as 1360, but there is reason to doubt its success under the general confusion induced by the war in Valencia during these years. Elche and Crevillente, for instance, received the new law in 1360,⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ but in 1362 the queen granted the Mudéjares living there a full remission of all sums -- including rent -- owed the Court through October 1, on condition that they remain in residence there for not less than six full years from the date of the grant.⁽¹⁰¹⁾ Anyone who violated this agreement, i.e., moved away before the six-year term ended, would be liable the full amount previously owed, executable on his goods and person. What makes this grant particularly significant is that the queen offered it, by her own admission, in imitation of other similar ones being made in the area by "gentlemen and knights to their Muslims," strongly implying that such measures were widely needed to stabilize the Muslim population in war-torn regions of Valencia despite the new laws and the elaborate measures taken to promulgate them.

[302] In marked contrast to any difficulty the Crown may have experienced in enforcing laws against migration within the peninsula, the only difficulty presented by the laws about leaving Spain lay in protecting the liberty of Mudéjares exercising their legal right to so emigrate. This right had been clearly enunciated by the monarch as late as 1357 in a letter to all the Muslims of his kingdom:⁽¹⁰²⁾

We concede to every and all Saracens of our dominion, and we grant them the absolute right, regardless of any contrary edict, provision, or prohibition of ours past or present, legally and with impunity, without any fear or incurring any penalty whatever, to leave for foreign lands whenever they wish with their wives, sons and daughters, providing they pay to our general bailiffs or others thereto appointed the tax which has been hitherto paid in such cases.⁽¹⁰³⁾

It would seem that a fair number of the king's Muslim subjects exercised this privilege, despite a great deal of bureaucratic intervention in the process. A set of documents of 1360 yields a [303] wealth of information about the details and complications of the arrangements made for the emigration of Mudéjares. A merchant from Lérida, Bernard Manresa, had in 1360 successfully petitioned the king for permission to transport forty Muslims to Muslim lands.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾

To do so he had first to collect the potential émigrés on the beach of Barcelona, where they were to be examined by both the General Bailiff of Catalonia (or his lieutenant) and the "comptroller of contraband." (The latter official's presence was probably occasioned by the fact of such transport's being regulated, not prohibited.) The bailiff was then to note by name each of the departing Muslims on the back of the privilege granted Bernard, which was to be returned to the king so inscribed. Bernard was himself required to obtain from each of his passengers fifteen sueldos -- the standard tax for Saracen emigration, see below -- in advance of this examination, and present it at this time to the bailiff, who returned it to the Court.

The red tape represented in this account apparently did eliminate a considerable percentage of those aspiring to depart. Whether it the name checking -- presumably to catch runaways or those still some indebtedness to a lord or the Crown -- or the fifteen sueldos, which must have been somewhat difficult to muster, since the Court pointedly makes the ship's owner responsible for the sum rather than the individual Muslims, only eighteen of the original forty Mudéjares are recorded in the port records as having actually [304] obtained license to leave the city for Alexandria in 1360.⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ Even this number represents only those who paid (270s in all), as opposed to those who actually left. A petition on the part of Bernard's widow (n.b.) to send on the remaining Muslims three years later reveals that only fourteen of those eighteen actually went, and that the ship itself did not depart until October of 1361.⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ The monarch granted the widow the right to send on the remaining Muslims, who actually did leave Barcelona, after a three-year wait, in 1363.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾

Although Muslin leaders of other lands seem to have concerned themselves fairly frequently with the well-being and right to emigrate of Valencian Muslims (see below), only twice during the decade 1355-1365 did a foreign ruler intervene on behalf of Catalan followers of the Prophet. It is likely that outside Spain few Muslims were aware of the Mudéjar populations north of Valencia, which certainly had, the largest concentration. This was due in part to increasing acculturation of the Aragonese Mudéjares, who probably did not even read Arabic in the fourteenth century (see concluding chapter). When King Bohanen protested the seizure of certain messengers [305] of his by Catalans in Majorca, the Aragonese king adopted a curiously literal attitude toward the guidaticum he had issued than, decreeing that his officials should determine whether each of the Muslim king's subjects in Majorca was there "of his own will, or force or chance," and in the case of the former to allow them to go, paying the port tax of 15s, but to confiscate for the Crown those there under duress, since the guarantee of safe conduct covered only messengers coming of their own free will.⁽¹⁰⁸⁾

In a somewhat more remarkable incident, the "Rey del Garp" interceded for a particular family of Muslims living in Tortosa, and Peter agreed to let Johia Abenaçen leave the kingdom free of all duties-- including the port tax -- with his sister, wife, and four children, specifically warning armatorii and corsarii not to cause them any harm.⁽¹⁰⁹⁾

Sometime around the year 1363-- presumably after the concession granted to Sibil Manresa -- the Crown prohibited absolutely the [306] emigration of Aragonese Saracens to Muslim lands. Although the exact date and text of this injunction do not appear in any extant charter, such a prohibition was clearly issued, probably consonant in details both of wording and publication with that issued in Valencia in 1361. In September of 1363 a group of Leridan merchants, claiming to derive the inspiration for their act from "concessions made by the king," agreed to allow the Muslims working for them to leave for partes ultramarinas, and asked the king to co-operate by releasing the Muslims from duties or processes pending against them. Peter reacted sharply, declaring that in spite of any "concessions" granted by him or others in his name, absolutely no Aragonese Mudéjares were to be allowed to emigrate from Lérida or any other city in the kingdom, and that any Saracens found leaving Aragon should be forcibly returned to their place of residence. Furthermore, all such "concessions" issued by the Court were immediately and summarily revoked.⁽¹¹⁰⁾

Dutifully obeying this edict, the qadi of the aljama of Lérida arrested in October of the same year a Saracen woman of Fraga and her husband, who were attempting to leave Lérida for partes ultramarinas. In an apparent reversal of the previous policy, the monarch ordered their release, stating that the prohibition issued against such emigration applied only to Mudéjares living under direct royal jurisdiction, and that since Roquea and her husband were serfs of [307] the Count of Luna they could not be prosecuted under its terms.⁽¹¹¹⁾ Despite this clarification, the entire issue, at least in Aragon, was and is somewhat confusing, since the port tax continued to be collected from departing Muslims in the years following the revocation of the right to leave, and some of those leaving came from royal aljamas. As a final, ambiguous comment on the emigration of Aragonese Mudéjares, the port records are summarized on the following page in a chart, based on the collection of the 15s all Muslims had to pay on leaving Barcelona, as noted in the books of the Real Patrimonio.
 

 
 
 

Year	RP Number	Number	Provenance	Destination
1358	991:1	7	Zaragoza	Mecca
		1	?	Majorca*
		1 (female)	Barcelona**	"ubi voluerit"
1359	922:36	2 (couple)	?	Majorca
		4	Barcelona	Majorca
		2 (couple)	?	North Africa
1360	1002:40	1	Catalonia	North Africa
		18***	Catalonia	Alexandria
1361	933:41	1 (female)	Barcelona	Alexandria
		3	Barcelona	Majorca-North Africa
		9	Barcelona (?)	Granada
1362	no tax recorded
1363	994:42	2	?	Majorca
		4	Barcelona	North Africa
		1	Almunya	North Africa
		32***	Aragon	Alexandria
1364	no tax recorded
1365	996:42	3	Barcelona	Majorca
		3	?	Bogia
1366	997:68	1 (female)	?	North Africa
		3	Barcelona	?
		1	Barcelona	North Africa

*Majorca was listed in several places because it was the next port of call. It is clear from the documents that the final destination is some Muslim territory. Few if any of the Muslims actually were headed for Majorca.

** In view of the tiny Muslim population of Barcelona, it is almost certain that the Mudéjares listed as coming from Barcelona were only residing in the city long enough to obtain passage to their final destination. I have recorded it where given, nevertheless, since it is interesting to know which persons arrived in the city immediately before leaving and which ones stayed long enough to be counted as "living" there. As noted above, complications might keep prospective emigrants waiting up to three years for passage.

*** See above, pp. 303ss.

 
 

Year	RP Register	Number	Provenance	Destination
1362	1708:9	1	Fez	Fez
		1	Eslida	North Africa
1363	1709:10	2 (females)	Chiva	Bogia
1364	1719:13	1	Valencia	North Africa
		3	Sot	Granada
		1	?	?
		1	Fez	Fez

For 1365, see below, p. 318.

N.B. that Küchler ("Besteurerung," pp.246-7) mistakenly considered dret de passatge to be variable in Aragon, a conclusion to which he was falsely led by not separating fines for offenses from the drets themselves.
 

During this same year, because "he had heard that quite a few Saracens of the southern kingdom wished to pass to other lands," the king grandly declared that all who so wished might do so, so long as they paid the Court one-tenth the value of all their possessions -- including clothing worn on their person -- and "other rights customarily paid us on such occasions." To facilitate their rapid departure, the king even appointed two officials specifically to receive [311] the monies thus collected (Johann Dolit and Fferarius Gilbertus) and instructed all other Valencian officials to defer to their authority in this matter.⁽¹¹³⁾ Two facts are conspicuously wanting in the information provided by the original grant, facts which are supplied in secret letters of the king, and which make quite clear the real motives behind this seeming generosity. In the first place, Peter failed to mention that he was obliged to make this concession by diplomatic pressure from the King of Granada. In a letter to the King of France Peter confided that

... according to the treaty recently concluded between us and the King of Granada we are constrained to send the said Muslims with their belongings to the homeland of the said king, free of our suzerainty and without any objections from anyone.⁽¹¹⁴⁾

There is an implication in two letters written at about this same time that the king estimated about two months income from the money exacted from emigrating Muslims would suffice for the diplomatic mission of Peter Boyl.⁽¹¹⁶⁾ The estimate was surprisingly accurate: by December of that year (three months later) Boyl was in Granada, and the following May the king summarily revoked the general emigration license he had granted the Valencian Muslims, for a reason "consciously not mentioned."

Even though we have recently granted to all the Muslims resident in the kingdom [of Valencia] the right to leave this land and move to barbarian domains or to Granada, so long as they pay the tithe, nevertheless, since for a reason which we deliberately refrain from mentioning here, we wish you to yield [jurisdiction] over these matters until we shall be personally in the kingdom of Valencia, [and we forbid] all and every official, brigand, owner of a ship or of any marine vessel, and every one of our subjects to dare or presume to take out of the kingdom any one of these [Muslims] either by land or sea, or to transport [them] during the prescribed time [i.e., until the king should dispose otherwise] to the said lands, under the pretext of any license or privilege [313]  generally or specifically granted or conceded to the said Muslims, under pain of bodily and financial punishment.⁽¹¹⁷⁾

[314] Arnald himself did return to Barcelona with the victims, but a question then arose as to whether all of the Muslims had actually paid the tithe. While an investigation was still under way about this, someone (unidentified) transported them to Granada, and after considerable angry correspondence between the Court and Valencia it was finally determined that all the Muslims were, in fact, legitimately quit and "soluts," a fact which was then relayed to the King of Granada. It seems fair to infer from this incident that the king's heart was never in the protection of the Valencians' right to emigrate, despite diplomatic gestures: as soon as the correspondence with the irate Granadan monarch was concluded, he promptly ordered an end to all processes in progress against Arnald or his guarantors, and even issued him a guidaticum specifically mentioning his offenses against the Mudéjares and guaranteeing his safety in spite of them.⁽¹¹⁹⁾ Furthermore, once the right had been revoked, considerable vigilance was exercised in preventing illegal emigration. In August of 1361, twenty-seven Muslims were returned to their homes in the valley of Seta after an unsuccessful attempt to escape to Granada. (cited below).

That the king's interest, however, was directed merely toward maintaining a stable Muslim population, and not motivated by any authoritarian or vindictive concern, is patent from the handling of [315] such captured runaways, caught flagrante delicto: other than their forced return to Seta, no penalty of any kind was inflicted on the Muslims. The money they had contracted to pay the ships' captains (l2s 2d apiece) was disbursed to the owner of the two ships by the royal treasurer, and even the other Muslims who lent then money for food and their passage from Barcelona to Valencia were reimbursed 150s from the royal treasury.⁽¹²⁰⁾

The Christian population of Valencia seems not to have been quite so disinterested. At the meeting of the General Corts held in 1363, they complained bitterly about the frequent privileges granted by the king or his bailiffs in Valencia to leave for other lands, and pointed out that, especially during time of war, this was a dangerous practice,

since it often happens in the kingdom of Valencia that various and sundry Muslims of this kingdom either with our license or permission, or that of the general bailiff of the realm or his lieutenant, move with their belongings to North Africa, Granada, or some other foreign country in order to remain there and make it their residence, .. .and since such Muslims are able to explain and point out the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of our kingdoms....⁽¹²¹⁾

[316] That the Valencian aljamas bitterly resented this disposition is patent. Two of the four sets of demands presented the king in 1365 list as a major prerequisite to their allegiance to the Crown Aragon the granting of their right to emigrate to Muslim lands when they wished; in each of the other two the demand that the king "reconfirm all privileges previously granted the aljama" would probably entail the respecting of this right (granted in 1361, albeit briefly). The king acceded in all cases, stipulating only in the case of Castro-Alfandequiella that he receive the tithe of the emigrant's goods, as before, and in the case of the Serra d'Espada at real property sold by prospective emigrants be sold only to her Mudéjares.⁽¹²³⁾

Indeed, conscious of how prized this right was, the monarch granted it voluntarily as a reward to a number of prominent Mudéjares in 1365 in gratitude for their part in bringing recalcitrant aljamas back into his service. Thus the "teniente" of Atzuena, the amin of Eslida, and others were all granted the right to sell their goods and move to North Africa ("barberia"), without even paying the reemço usually required⁽¹²⁴⁾ and the faqi of Eslida (and others) received both the alcadia of the aljama and the right to emigrate with his family and retinue to Muslim lands whenever he might wish.⁽¹²⁵⁾

[318] What emerges most clearly from all this is that, in direct contrast to the case in Aragon-Catalonia, where the Muslim communities regularly enjoyed the right to emigrate but rarely exercised it, in Valencia a great many Mudéjares would have liked to leave but could not, because it was seldom allowed them under the law. In 1357 the tithe collected from departing Muslims was 3,789s 3d.⁽¹²⁶⁾ The number of persons departing is not given, but using an average figure derived from the statistics given for the period 1362-64, when the individual taxes are listed,⁽¹²⁷⁾ one could arrive at a conservative estimate of 250 Muslims leaving Valencia for Muslim lands. In the years 1358-59 no Muslims legally departed Valencia. In 1360, as noted above, two simultaneous relaxations were granted, and an estimated total of 105 Mudéjares exited, paying an aggregate tax of l,575s l0d.⁽¹²⁸⁾ (The minuscule, albeit well-documented totals from 1362 to 1364 are summarized in the chart on p.309.) In 1365 the floodgates opened again, due to individual grants from the Crown and the generic privileges conceded to returning aljamas at the close of the war, and the sum received from "various Muslim men and women who during the present year, wishing to pass to Muslim lands, tithed their goods.. .and paid the duties of the besant and mija dobla" amounted to 3,l80s, or about 212 persons.⁽¹²⁹⁾

[319] The reasons for this phenomenon should be obvious. The Muslim communities of Aragon-Catalonia, having been conquered as much as 250 years previously, and having enjoyed a more or less constant right to depart since that time, were already reduced to those Muslim families thoroughly acclimatized to Christian rule and an Iberian life-style, whereas the Valencian communities, more recently conquered and much nearer to the more Arabic culture of Granada and North Africa, still chafed, to a certain extent, under Christian domination and felt the pull of cultures more favorable to their religion. Perhaps even more important, all of the Mudéjar communities of the northern kingdoms, even those technically under the jurisdiction of nobles or ecclesiastics, were regarded by the king as his special concern, and as such received much more solicitous attention (particularly considering their small numbers) than the masses of Valencian Muslims, who often spoke no Romance, had few contacts with Christians, and felt little kinship to the Crown of Aragon. It was for the latter that the Crown's attitude toward the right to leave constituted the greatest hardship and for whom such trickery as that described above (p.311) was cruellest. In fairness to Peter, it deserves to be reiterated that his concern was almost always demonstrably directed toward the good of the kingdom of Valencia, and never exhibited racial or ethnic bias, and that he [320] resisted strongly the efforts of the Valencian Christians to end utterly the right of the Muslims to leave. That he was not above exploiting a subject minority thoroughly mistrusted and even execrated by popes and princes throughout Europe seams a small charge to lay against his character.

On balance, the rights of the Mudéjares seem to be like other human phenomena: complex, equivocal, relative. A certain degree of' freedom was allowed in the practice of their religion, but this freedom was circumscribed by various factors such as fear of the fanaticism of the lower classes of Christians, intervention by the popes, etc. When possible the king protected the aljamas, for a price, and when it no longer seemed practical he desisted. The right to beg alms was regulated, sometimes in ways offensive or harmful to poor Muslims, but never terminated. Muslims could bear arms when in the service of the king, and possibly otherwise, depending on local authority. The right to inherit property freely within and without the aljama and the royal señorío was not widely or freely enjoyed, but there was considerable latitude in the application and enforcement of the royal edicts on the matter, and the position of the Crown was clearly flexible. In this case, indeed, the exigencies of the war seem to have worked in favor of the Muslims, allowing them enough political leverage to wrest favorable concessions from the king.

Likewise, the night to sell property varied within the kingdom but was never wholly abridged, despite the advantage that would have accrued to the monarchy under such a disposition. And though [321] the freedom of the Mudéjares to move about within the kingdom or to exit from it altogether was strictly regulated, and sometimes -- as in Valencia -- absolutely proscribed, most areas under the Crown allowed them as much freedom, if not more, as was enjoyed by the average Christian serf in France. There was, moreover, extensive mobility both in and out of the realm throughout the period, in spite of legislation or in accord with it, depending on the time and place. Withal, the Muslims were not, as regards "rights," very such worse off than the Christian peasantry of any European country of the time, including Spain.⁽¹³⁰⁾ The most justifiable criticism of the Aragonese Crown could be that those elements of the Mudéjar population who might have lived better than the ordinary peasant were "kept down" solely because of their religion. That such was the case, however, is not certain: Muslim nobles, if there were any under the Crown of Aragon in the fourteenth century, may indeed have enjoyed special privileges which simply do not survive in the royal records. Further, and finally, it is questionable whether such rights as can be sketched in studies of this nature are true indications of the quality of life. The following chapter on "oppression" is probably a much better index of the real status of the Muslims of Aragon in the fourteenth century.

1. It should not be necessary to point out that all those liberties one could call "rights" neither have been nor could be discussed in this chapter. In general the aim has been to clarify areas of confusion or uncertainty in the literature existing on the subject, or to raise questions which might readily occur to historians. Certain human prerogatives which have at one time or another been denied oppressed groups -- such as the right to marry legally -- but which were never a source of controversy in the case of the Mudéjares, either in their own or in subsequent literature, have been consciously omitted. Others, such as the right to play certain games denied to Christians (above, Chapter II),the right to regulate their own sexual mores (see Chapter VII), the right to defend their homes and neighborhoods against unlawful search (above, p.66), their special rights in trials (Chapter III), etc., are discussed elsewhere in this study.

2. "E que sien les rendes de les mezquites a ops de les dites mezquites axi com era antigament" ARV, Enjenaciones, 1:229, quoted in Roca Traver, "Un Siglo," p.10, n.15. Cf. ibid.,p.18, n29: "Concedentes vobis quod habeatis mezquitas vestras et cimiteria... et çabaçallanos qui doceant filios et pueros vestros et possint preconizare in mezquitis vestris prout est consuetum inter sarracenos " (ARV, Real, 658:15).

3. The çala is the public prayer ritual of Muslims. The word çala derived from the Arabit salât, is used in contemporary documents to refer both to congregational worship and the public call to prayer which preceded it. It is unlikely that the worship itself was ever prohibited under the Crown of Aragon, but, as will be seen, strenuous efforts, bitterly resisted by the Muslims, were made to prevent the public call to prayer.

4. Roca Traver, "Un Siglo," p.27. See the Corpus Iuris Canonici, Clementinarum, V, I.1.26.

5. This document, dated 1337, is published in the Appendix: C 862:121.

6. C 905:62, text in Appendix.

7. Document from Alfajarín, dated 1446, and published by Macho y Ortega, "Condición," p.246.

8. Roca Traver, "Un Siglo," p.27. This action, or a similar contemporary one, evoked a protest from at least one foreign Muslim sovereign: see M. Alarcón Santón, Los documentos árabes diplomáticos de la Corona de Aragón (Madrid-Granada, 1940), p. 150.

9. "Un Siglo," p.27.

10. "...reebi de la aljama dels sarrahins de raval de la moreria de la ciutat de Xativa per avinença que feren ab mi al qual per lo senyor [Rey] de peraule fou comanat lo negoti deus scrit, ço es qu'el çabaçala [sic] o alfaqui de la dita aljama, submissa voçe en loch baix, pogues cridar la çela [sic] segons que's fa e es acostumat fer en les mories [sic] de Valencia e altres dels lochs reyals del regne, e que aço duras tro qu'el senyor Rey en altre manera hi pro vehis, 500 sol..." RP l704:23 (1357). The "me" is the bailiff.

11. "Et si quis dominorum temporalium sarracenorum dominiuni obtinentium, infra ipsorum parrochiam constitutus dictam proclamationem fieri non prohibuerit, ut in dicta constitutione continetur, aut non prohibuerit dictos sarracenos simul cum christianis degentibus in diebus dominicis, et festivis servilia, se mecanica opera coram christianis publice operari, ut in eadem constitutione expressatur, nobis aut vicario nostro, vel officiali infra octo dies notificare teneatur...." Villanueva, Viage literario, pp.351-2.

12. Atzuezia, Castro and Alfandequiella, and Eslida, in C 1209:55, l204:63, and 1205:45, respectively. For complete summaries of these demands see Chapter VII. Only Espada did not mention the çala.

13. Appendix, C 913:91.

14. ". . .prout sarraceni civitatum Valentie et Xative cantare dictam çala [sic] et sonare dictum nafil utuntur in mezquitam eorundem" (ibid.). Note that there is no mention of money.

15. Cautiverio, p.142, n. 5: "Abdala Abenxando...captus detinetur in Xativa pro eo quia contra [sic] inhibitionem et ordinationem nostram alta voce nomen Maffometi clamavit quod ipse confessus fuit" ( C 247:139).

16. On the question of captives, see Chapter I.

17. See the document of Feb.10, 1333, granting this right to six Muslims, in Ramos y Loscertales, Cautiverio, p.148, n.1.

18. "...quicumque sarraceni et sarracene tam liberi quam captivi, dum temen secum ferent [sic] litteras testimoniales de eorum paupertate possint elemosinas querere" C 694:30 (Sept.10, 1347), cf.n.23.

19. C 862:l24 (Jan.28, 1337).

20. C 901:276 (Feb.11, 1358). The sentence against them was commuted by the king on condition that they pay court expenses.

21. The king released from a Zaragoza prison in 1356 three Muslims who were being held on charges of begging unlawfully when he determined that the men (one free Muslim and two slaves) did have their master's permission to seek elemosinas (C 688:97 [Dec.17, 1356]).

22. C 694:30 (Feb. l, 1358).

23. C 692:154 (July 21, 1357).

24. C 1075:71 (Jan.28, 1363).

25. C 1075:111 (Apt.3, 1363).

26. RP 1708:18ss (1362). If Küchler ("Besteuerung," p.246) is correct, it was much more expensive to obtain an albaranum (which he oddly calls a "carta de acaptar de moros') in the fifteenth century: the initial fee was 110s, with a 10s supplement for renewal.

27. Viz., that of Tudela (1115): "Et non devetet nullus homo ad illos moros lures armas" (Muñoz y Romero, Colección, p.417).

28. The Usatges of Barcelona had forbidden selling arms to Muslims, without the express consent of the prince, or of divulging to them any military plans of the señor, as early as the twelfth century (Usatges de Barcelona i Commemoracions de Pere Albert, ed. Josep Rovira i Ermengo [Barcelona, 1933], Appendix [= "Official text"], s.123, "Christiani..."). Cf. the letter from Bishop William of Moncada (1257-82) condemning Christians who sell arms to Muslims (Villanueva, Viage, XVI, p.314). In both these cases the aim was clearly to prevent arms falling into the hands of enemy Muslims, but such proscriptions could, according to their literal tenor, be applied to any Muslims, and apparently were (see below).

29. RP 2911:1 (1355). Christians paid 10s; Muslims 60s.

30. RP 1706:18 (1360). In this document a Mudéjar is fined 800s for the combined crimes of theft and taking arms out of the city. Even if the penalty for illegal possession of arms is a small percentage of this total it is a staggering figure. It is more likely, in view of the legitimate purview of Christian justice over Mudéjar crimes, that the 800s represents the fine for the arms violation alone, since crimes of theft were ordinarily handled by the aljama, even if they involved Christians.

31. C 695:140 (June 15, 1359).

32. C 1570:23 (June 22, 1360). Christian officials could enter the morería only if accompanied by both the amin and the adelantati of the aljama, and then only under certain conditions, rigorously controlled. This was one of the best preserved "rights" of the aljamas until the pogroms of the late fourteenth century.

33. "Et qui voluerit vendere de sua hereditate aut impignorare, quod nullus homo non contrastet, nec contradicat" Muñoz y Romero, p. 416.

34. "Et christianos et mauros et iudeos comprent unus de alio ubi voluerint et potuerint" Ramos y Loscertales, "Fuero concedido," p. 412. Cf. the Costums of Tortosa, where Jews and Muslims were guaranteed equal property rights with Christians, to own, buy, and sell immovable property to or from whomever they wish (I.1a.l9-20). Cf. also José Ma. Ramos y Loscertales, "Recopilación de fueros de Aragon," AHDE, II (1925), pp. 24lss, sections 150 ("Moro potest ven dere...") and 153 ("Infançon non debet comprare..."). This "Recopilación" dates from the first third of the thirteenth century, and is based on the Fueros of Jaca, but represents an older text than the extant lemosin text of the latter.

35. "E si por auentura fuessen del rey o de sennor dios cuyo sennorio son, no las pueden allenar a cristiano en nenguna manera, mas los iudios bien pueden uender a moros lures possessiones sin consentimiento del rey o de so bayle, maguer que non tiengan aquellas possessiones por nenguna conuenienga a treudo o a cierta part de fruitos" Fueros de Aragón, VII: 274, ("Maguer = liceet; "treudo"= tributum.)

36. ". . . iuxta et per priuilegium regium dicte aljame concessum pro conservatione peytarum nostrarum hered.itates que fuerint sarracenorum non possunt in christianos causa venditionis vel aliter a1ienari vel etiam transportari...." C 6814:196 (Apr.2, 1356).

37. ". . . providerimus ne aliqua bona immobilium que aliqui sarraceni ville Tutele habebant in dicta villa Burgie aliis preterque sarracenis eiusdem ville vendantur..." C 712:117 (Feb.18, 1363).

38. C 700:238-9 (Apr.28, 1360).

39. C 700:238, ut supra (Chapter II). This relaxation, though no mention of time was made in it, must have been temporary, since in the following year the monarch granted the same relaxation for different reasons. This time it was due to the extreme reduction of the population of the aljama that the king relaxed the requirement of the royal third. If the Muslims had continued having to sell only to other Muslims, the king observed, it would be the same ten people continually buying and. selling the same property, and the debts of the aljama could not be paid off; hence the royal third was not to be exacted as "long as the king should wish," subject to the same limitations as before (C 702:91, text in Appendix).

40. "Et de pretio dictarum domorum vel possessionum tertium aut aliud quodlibet jus regale nobis exsolvere minime teneamini dum de predictis possessionibus sarracenis vassallis nostris et non aliis personis venditiones ipsas feceritis... " C 1571:159 (Sept. l, 1363).

41. "Item que cascun sarrahi puxe vendre ses terres e ses bens a qui's volia, donant son dret al senyor Rey.... Plau al senyor Rey qu'els pusque[n) vendre a moro" C 1209:44(Mar.14, 1365).

42. "Nullus judaeus, aut sarracenus haereditatem potest vendere christiano nisi Baiulo regis assensum praestante, et instrumentum etiam confirmante. Si vero judaei, aut sarraceni venditiones inter se fecerint, Baiulus domini regis non debet se intromittere.... Baiulus regis debet recipere pretii tertiam partem cum fit venditio christiano" Macho y Ortega, "Condición," p.177, n.7.
 

43. See C 985:152 (Dec.26, 1363)4 addressed to the "Sultan of Babylon," where the king requests that Christian clerics residing in the Sultan's lands be accorded the same treatment: "...[ut] possint de bonis suis libere disponere sicut faciunt omnes sarraceni in nostro dominio commorantes." Naturally, Muslims could purchase property from whomever they wished, since this would not in any way effect a diminution of the royal income. Nevertheless, some doubt about this must have arisen in the fifteenth century, since in 1414 the queen issued a document affirming this right: ". . .dando eis [= sarracenis] licentiam posse emere a quibuslibet xnianis [sic], campos, vineas, domos, ortos, et alias quamlibet possessiones" Macho y Ortega, "Documentos," p.146 ( = C 3138:107).

44. C 908:233 (Sept. l, 1363); C 903:252 (Jan.30, 1360).

45. ". . . iuxta çunyam sarracenorum, sarraceni et sarracene absque filiis legitimis decedentes, de bonis eorum nequeunt testare seu aliiter eorum voluntates omnimodas ordinare." C 888:154 (1349), published in Lopez de Meneses, Documentos, p.51. Note that this edict is falsely attributed to Islamic law.

46. ". . . concedimus memorate aljama et singularibus eiusdem presentibus pariter et futuris quod si forte de cetero aliquis sarracenus uel sarracena obierat absque filiis legitimis, de bonis eoruin omnibus testari [sic] valeant et eorum voluntates omnimodas ordinare, impedimento quocumque cessante. Et siqui eorum absque herede seu successore legitimo decesserit, volumus et decernimus sic quod in ipsorum bonis propinquiores sui succedere possint libere atque tute. Et hoc locum habere volumus et jubemus in bonis omnibus tam temporis quam futuri" C 888:154, quoted ut supra.

47. Only eight days later, for example, to alleviate the poverty into which the aljama had fallen, the king granted the Muslims of Huesca 500s worth of goods "de bonis vaccatibus.. . que fuerunt illorum sarracenorum que decesserunt sine prole legitima carnali et naturali," and stipulated that such goods could not be sold to Jews or Christians, but must be used solely for the good of Muslim members of the community.(C l3l5:225 [1349], in Lopez de Meneses, Documentos, p.57).

48. C 898:222, in Appendix. Note that the property of a Muslim who left the aljama was to be treated the same way as that of the dead. The last clause of the edict presumably represented an attempt to encourage continuity in the use of land and buildings, thereby fomenting prosperity in the aljama.
 

49. ". . .veniunt ad dictam civitatem alii sarraceni qui non sunt de realencho et ut heredes illius sarraceni defuncti recipiunt et secum deferunt et extrahunt a civitate predicta bona defuncti ipsius, ea ad loca non regia ut asseritur transportando..." C 688:122 (Jan. 14, 1357).

50. Ibid.

51. C 903:252, ut supra.

52. C 908:233 (Sept. l, 1363). Note the reasons given: "Quia tamen fidedignorum relatu comperimus aljamam sarracenorum predictam tam temporum sterelitatibus quam mortalitatum cladibus et aliis fortunis plurimis et diversis quasi ad desolationis interitum [sic] devenisse. . ." This letter is addressed to Huesca.

53. ". . .ratione quorumvis bonorum, rerum et jurium que existent in posse eorum que fuerunt judeorum et sarracenorun defunctorum filios non habentium ab anno xliiii citra intra diocesan Oscensam degentium..." C 712:164 (Apr. 9, 1363). The year must be 1344.

54. "...vobis dicimus et mandamus quatenus contra judeos vel sarracenos quoscumque dicte civitatis Osce minime procedatis occasione contentarum in vostra commissione predicta donec omnino processeritis in omnibus aliis epsicopaliensibus civitatibus et villis Aragonie predictis" C 712:164, ut supra (addressed to a Christian jurist of Huesca).

55. C 908:140 (Mar.15, 1363). Cf. Koran IV:11.

56. ". . . secundum consu[et]udinem genera[lem] Reg[ni] Valentie talium sarracenorum bona ad dominum pertinent dicti loci [non] obsta[nte] quod in aliis locis Reg[ni] predicti sarraceni mortui jam[dicti] parentes seu in gradu parentele habeant [pro]ximiores" C 713: 182 (Mar.6, 1363). The text is very badly damaged.

57. C 713:182, ut supra. He ordered Garsia de Loriz to deal with the comendator as he ordinarily handled such disputes in cases involving prelates, richshomes, and knights and their vassals.

58. RP 1708:18 (1362).

59. Ibid.

60. RP 1708:19 (1362).

61. RP 1719:25 (1363). It must be observed in fairness that in general the king and his officials observed scrupulously the bequests of Valencian Muslims, so long as they conformed to the law of the kingdom. The bailiff of the city of Valencia, for instance, very conscientiously carried out the provisions of the will of Çaat Fuster stipulating that 25s of his estate be used to free two sarracenas from captivity. (RP 1708:19 [1362]).

62. C 1209:1414, ut supra.

63. C 1204:63 (Apr.8, 1365). For fifteenth-century inheritance practice, see Piles Ros, Estudio, p.211, n.378, and p.218, n.411. In some areas Muslims could pay a duty and then legally designate a "stranger" as heir (Küchler, "Besteuerung," p.245). Küchler considers "stranger" to apply to foreigners, but it seems more likely, in view of the controversies described, above, that it simply refers to Muslims who were not royal vassals or natives of the testator's town or village.

64. "...et qul voluerit exire, vel ire de Tudela ad terram de moros vel ad aliam terram, quod sit solto, et vadat securamente cum mulieribus et cum filiis et cum toto suo aver per aquam et per terram qua hora voluerit, die ac nocte" (from the agreement with Tudela, in Mujoz y Romero, Colección, p.4l6). This also applies to the right to emigrate, discussed below, pp.289ss.

65. "Tot omne qui fore trobado leuando moros a tierra de moros sin uoluntat de lures sennores, deue seer espullado de todos sos bienes, tan bien el qui los lieua como el moro a qui lieua, d'aquel qui los trueba qui quier sea, sea deue seer suyo. Enpero los cuerpos d'ellos, ço es del qui los lieua e de los moros, deuen seer rendidos al rey o al merino del logar o aqueste achaeciere" Fueros de Aragon, VII:276.

66. E.g., "Preterea quicumque sarracenus vel sarracena ad terram sarracenorum, causa mercandi aut romerie, tempore pacis, pergene voluerit, possit ire salve pariter et secure," quoted in Roca Traver, "Un Siglo," p.55, n.148.

67. C 887:142, published in Lopez de Meneses, Documentos, pp.11-12.

68. "Quo ad congregationem quam sarraceni faciunt annis singulis in certo loco regni Valentie super quo tractant aliqua contraria dicto regno, volumus quod vos cogitetis modum per quem talis congregatio tolli possit" C 1068:134 (June 16, 1356). I have no other references to this meeting or to its intended suppression.

69. ". . .per universitatem christianorum dicte civitatis. . . facta fuit preconizatio in dicta civitate quod nullus sarracenus alienigenus audeat seu presumat emere carnes in macello morarie ipsius nec ipsas in dicta civitate comedere seu extra aliunde deportare....vigore preconizationis iamdicte oportet eos jejunare, cum secundum eorum legem non audeant comedere carnes nisi per menus carnificis sarraceni fuerint parate et excoriate" C 683:181 (Apr.19, 1356).

70. "Omnes et singuli sarraceni alienigeni dicte mararie qui veniunt seu venient ad dictam civitatem Xative causa vendendi eorum mercimonia seu alia de causa possint et debeant absque alicuius pene incursu emere carnes in morarie.. .et ea ibi comedere seu portare extra ad eorum loca salve pariter et secure quemadmodum emebant et comedebant et deportabant ad. eorum loca ante preconisationem iamdictam" ibid.

71. An investigation revealed that the Saracens of Bétera had been granted the privilege, in return for serving under their lord (Pedro de Exerica) in the king's forces against the Union, of paying the same Pedro 20 deners and subsequently being liable only to a fine of one gold duplum if caught without the garceta by royal officials, rather than being sold into slavery, which was the prescribed penalty for such an offense. Peter therefore dictated that if it could be established that the said Mudéjar was actually comprised under the privilege and had, in fact, paid the 20 deners, he should not be sold into slavery (". . .vobis dicimus et expresse mandamus quatenus constituto vobis dictum suplicantem viginti diners soluisse nobili jamdicto et dictam gratiam ipsum comprendisse, eo casu ad. confiscationem et venditionem dicti suplicantis non procedatis...'.') C 703:55 (June 20, 1360).

72. C 1567:173 (Feb.10, 1360).

73. C 901:1314 (Aug.10, 1357).

74. C 688:18 (Aug.2, 1356).

75. C 1149:8 (Sept.30, 1356).

76. "Como nos hayamos entendido por supplicacio a nos feta por part de la aljama de Torrelles que haurian menester de vuestra faula sobre'l. feyto de las rehenas que ellos a instancia de Gomeç Carriello vos comendaron con ciertas condiciones, e que menos de nuestra segurança non osavades venir a la dita faula, por aquesto vos seguramos de venida, estada, e tornada" C 1170:62 (Mar.11, 1360). A similar safe-conduct had to be issued to two Muslims on royal business in 1365: C 1211:44 (Apr.6). Cf., on the subject of freedom to travel, the king's prohibition to certain Saracen knights, under Chapter IV.

77. C 688:160 (Feb.16, 1357).

78. C 901:113 (July 18, 1357).

79. C 905:220 (June 26, 1361).

80. C 908:70 (Jan.12, 1363). As is well known, sailing to Muslim-controlled lands was prohibited by the papacy, and special dispensation had to be obtained to avoid the risk of excommunication for the ship's owner, captain, crew, and passengers.

81. "...sobre ço que's deya aquells por temor de la guerra de Castella sans licencia esser anats a part de sarrahins e tornats sans licencia a les parts de regne de Valencia" RP 1709:19. In the fifteenth century Valencian Mudéjares enjoyed the right of travelling freely within the country, but could leave for Castile or Muslim lands only with the express permission of the king or the general bailiff: see Piles Ros, Estudio, p.225 (#1441), and pp.149 (#120), 257 (#580bis), 259 (#586).

82. "Et toto mauro qui est in termino de Calataiub, et fugerit ad escuso, donet concilio sua hereditate ad christiano, at de judeo similiter fiat" Ramos y Loscertales, "Fuero concedido," p.412.

83. VII, 277 (in Tilander's edition, pp. l64-5).

84. C 858:57 (May 10, 1336).

85. C 1379:93 (Dec.24, 1356).

86. C 699:131 (Jan.13, 1360).

87. RP 994:40 (1363). This is one of the rare instances of the application of the honorific "En" to the name of a Muslim: "Item lo dit dia [Dec.6] reebe lo dit Batle General d'En Juci, sarrahi castella, a qui havien enderrocat un forn per lo mur de la ciutat de Leyda. ..."

88. ". . . si eadem super ea servaretur predictis gravati opporteret eosdem eorum lares desere at aliunde eorum domicilia transportare" C 701:140 (Sept.20).

89. "...non obtenta licentia ab aliquo nostro officiali dictum locum d'Aranda exiebat at ad dictum locum de Deça se transferebat causa mutandi inibi suum domicilium" C 691:95 (Sept.7, 1357). Fatima herself had appealed to the king, claiming that the charges against her arose "more from malice than love for the king's laws," and that she had only returned to Deça temporarily after the truce of 1357 (Deça is in Castile) so that she could sell the property her husband had held there before he was killed in the war and get money for herself and her two sons. She had, furthermore, obtained license from the bailiff and qadi of Aranda to return to Castile on the errand, she asserted, and could not therefore be prosecuted for failure to obtain a license.

90. "Si vero predictam informationem ipsam de predictis inserentem reperritis et causa recuperandi suum ad dictum locum iret, et non causa transferandi domicilium suum, et obtenta licencia a predictis, Ffatimam ipsam a captione qua detinetis liberetis, et ipsam stare in dicto loco d'Aranda at per ipsum libere ire permittatis sicut poterat ante diffamationem predictam" C 691:95, ut supra.

91. ". . . quod quilibet ipsorum sive in locis nostris sive in locis vestris predictis populatus existat potest de uno loco ad alium totiens quotiens voluerit suum mutare domicilium, dumtamen non exeat a terra regnorum nostrorum potest, nec minus vendare bona sua mobilia et immobilia absque impedimento cuiusque [sic], ipso tamen solvente quidquid domino et vicinis loci in quo fuerat populatus, nisi tamen fuerit per pactum astrictus de stando vel suum domicilium in aliquo ex dictis locis fovendi" C 700:106 (Dec.9, 1359).

92. ". . .vos seu vestrum aliqui impeditis tales sarracenos ne a vestris locis exeant, et si eorum bona vendunt facitis quod pro multo minori peccunie quam valeant ea vendant, et quod deterius est, aliqua questio [ ? ] ipsos capitis at captos val sub manuleutis detinetis quousque a vobis se redimunt aut vobis dimittunt vel vobis aut aliis quasi pro nichilo vendunt omnia bona sua... ." C 700:106, ut supra.

93. "...pensantes quod in translatione sui domicilii nullum nostrum cernitur interesse nam et dictam civtatem Dertuse sicuti civitatam Osca tenemus jure nostre Camera assignata, et nichilominus hostendente [sic] coram vobis litteram bajuli dicte civitatis Dertuse per quam appareat quod ipse Abrayme mutavit in ipsa civitate domicilium suum, queque paytat cum aljama sarracenorum eiusdem civitatis, permittatis ipsum vendere dictas possessiones quas in dicta civita-te Osce et eius terminis possidet" C l573:165 (Oct.4, 1365).

94. According to Macho y Ortega ("Condición," p.194), Muslims could even demand repayment in cash from their señor for lands thus abandoned. The process was called desvallamiento. This seems to me dubious, but there was enormous freedom of movement throughout the century, apparently actively encouraged by the monarchy; cf. "Condición," p.171; "Documentos," pp.150 (C 2336:1214), 157 (C 2340:76), and 448 (doc. of 1458). cf. also Tilander, Los Fueros, p.197, note on additional fifteenth-century rubric for section 277 ("Moros o moras que's camian d'un sennorio a otro").

95. "Los mudéjares valencianos disfrutaron en todo momento de una libertad de movimiento que difícilmente encontrara en ninguna comarca de la península," "Un Siglo," p.25.

96. C 683:114 (Feb.214, 1356).

97. C 1154:56 (Apr.16, 1356). The pretext for this enslavement was that the Muslims in question had sheltered in their homes runaways and kidnappers from Granada: ". . .reperimus manifeste et satis clare ipsos sarracenos et sarracenas esse veros captivos et captivas eo quia quare? recollegerant in eorum dommibus [sic] acolleratos at alios sarracenos regni Granate, qui regnum jamdictun intraverant pro capiendo et captivando christianos et alios subditos nostros et regis Castelle illustris." That this is a bogus charge is patent, since the Muslims never even had homes in the jurisdiction where the charges were brought. What remains uncertain is whether the king supported this travesty of justice in an effort to discourage relocation by Valencian Mudéjares or from some other motive, as friendship with the seller (on purchaser) of the enslaved. On Peter de Exerica's being a champion of the Muslims, cf. above, p.173.

98. What made this behavior particularly annoying, apparently, was that the Mudéjares had clandestinely returned and carried off their movable goods and even harvested their crops. The king's suggestion that the Muslims were "persuaded" to do so by "enviers and enemies" of Arnald is more than a little suspect. Arnald was an absentee landlord, living in Borja and receiving the rents from his benefice in Valencia. The episode occurs in C 693:140.(Oct. l8, 1357).

99. ". . .un manament feyt de part del dit Senyor Rey ab crida feta en Valencia que algun sserahi o sserahina del raual de la moreria de la dita ciutat de Valencia no mudats ne transportats sa habitacio ne sos bens a altre loch sots pena de cours...: RP 1708:20. While the phrase "sots pena de cors" (i.e., enslavement), in practice the penalty seems to have been merely confiscation of the goods left behind, as in the case of Çaat Fuster: RP 1708:18 (1362).

100. C 1569:40 (Jan. 18, 1360).

101. "Axi empero que vos tots e sengles moros habitants en la dita aljama siats tnguts e forçats necessariament de estar e haitar continuament e fer residencia personal ab vostres mulleres e infants segons tro ara hauets acostumat en lo dit loch de Eltxe e son terme, e non mudar en altre loch o lochs vostre domicili," C 1569:134-5 (Mar. 28, 1362).

102. "Concedimus omnibus at quibusvis sarracenis dominationis nostre at eis plenaniam facultatem etiam [imperium] quia non obstante ordinatione, provisione ac inhibitione nostris in contrarium factis vel fiendis possint et valeant licite et impune absque metu et alicuius pene incursu quandocumque voluerint ad partes barbarie cum eorum uxoribus, filiis at filiabus se transferare [sic], ipsis tamen exsolventibus nostris baiulis generalibus vel illis quorum interest ius [per ipsos] in causa simili exsolvi hactenus assuerunt" C 901:127 (Aug.7, 1357).

103. The words "by them" (per ipsos) have been scratched out with a thin line in the text, and I have not translated them. They do, however, seem to belong in the sentence where they occur, and I have accordingly placed the