[230] The vestigial arabisms and Islamic practices visible in late medieval Valencian irrigation form an ethnic mosaic corresponding to the various irrigated regions of the Islamic world which sent their sons to settle Al-Andalus. Two cultural types of water distribution systems can be broadly delineated: 1) a Syrian type, modeled after the Barada River of the Ghûta of Damascus (systems of Valencia, Castellón, and Gandia), characterized by proportional distribution of water; 2) a Yemenite type, typical of the small, oasislike huertas of the southern kingdom of Valencia (Alicante, Elche, Novelda), based on fixed time measurement units and associated with the sale of water. ⁽¹⁾

These types correspond as well to two rival systems of land tenure, one in which water rights are inseparable from the land, another in which the right to water may be sold separately from land. The second, which I call "Yemenite" on the basis of the irrigation vocabulary, has also been associated with the Saharan oases with which there is great institutional similarity. The evidence is suggestive not only of mixed settlement -- both Yemenite and Berber -- in eastern Al-Andalus but also of Yemenite influence upon Saharan irrigation practice.

Most administrative procedures and legal traditions are difficult to trace to precise localities in the Islamic world. The amîn was an official typical of the Saharan environment and was found in those areas of Spain where Yemenite measures were used; the sâhib al-sâqiya, on the other hand, may have been indigenous to Al-Andalus. Many practices, too, were widely diffused through [231] the homogenizing effect of Islamic Law, the Malikite school especially.

The processes of diffusion were varied. The transmission of certain terms and concepts - sâqiya, sudd, sâniya, and so on -- was accomplished before the reconquest of the kingdom by nonformal mechanisms (such as the movement of Mozarabs northward) by which Islamic irrigation techniques became known in the Christian kingdoms. After the conquests were completed, transmission was accomplished both nonformally, as a result of contact between Muslim and Christian groups, and, more significantly, by formal processes of directed culture change whereby Christian officials sought deliberately to record and emulate irrigation customs of the Muslims. By another formal process certain elements, such as summary procedure in local irrigation justice, were included in the fueros and by that means diffused throughout the entire kingdom. ⁽²⁾

The reconquest of the kingdom of Valencia was accomplished in the 1230's and early 1240's. James I, at the head of Aragonese and Catalan troops, captured Burriana in 1233, Valencia in 1238, and Alcira in 1242. At first, masses of Muslims remained in the subject territories. A series of revolts from around 1248, however, led to the expulsion of large numbers from the kingdom of Valencia and initiated a new phase of repopulation which, when terminated in 1270, resulted in the almost total demographic dominance of Christians in the major centers of the realm. ⁽³⁾ Of the large mass of Muslims who remained, most were now settled in the mountainous hinterland, most of which was unirrigated. In the huerta of Valencia no Muslims at all appear in the documentation from the mid-fourteenth century up to 1500. In Castellón, with one or two exceptions Muslim irrigators were limited to the village of Canet, on the southern limits of the huerta. Of the important towns, only Gandia, Játiva, and Elche ⁽⁴⁾ had significant numbers of Muslim irrigators who, in the latter two places, were largely restricted to discrete suburban settlements. Substantial numbers of Muslim irrigators remained in some secondary centers of regadíu, such as Benaguasil, Callosa d'En Sarriá, Chiva, Torres Torres, Vall de Segó, Vall de Uxó, ⁽⁵⁾ [232] and numerous smaller, relatively unimportant villages and hamlets. ⁽⁶⁾

With the exception of an occasional peculiarity (such as the use of an archaic measurement unit by the irrigators of the Moorish quarter of Elche), the documents do not reveal any striking differences in practice between Christian and Muslim irrigators in any given locale. The Christians seem to have absorbed local customs soon after settling the newly conquered territories and to have maintained them intact thereafter.
 
 

The Repartimiento of Valencia is relatively poor in specific data concerning irrigation. Of the donations in the huerta of Valencia, about two dozen parcels fronted on unnamed canals, and an occasional field is said to be irrigated (in regadivo). Of the major canals, only Favara and the Algirós branch of Mestalla are mentioned by name. ⁽⁷⁾ Throughout the kingdom the method of repartimiento was the same. Old landholding patterns were not broken up, but newcomers were gradually settled upon the homesteads and fields abandoned by fleeing Muslims. ⁽⁸⁾ Since not all the defeated fled at once (many remained throughout the Middle Ages), reasonable continuity in agricultural and irrigation regime was assured in most places.

An early entry in the Repartimiento of Valencia (August 1237) proves that irrigated fields in the huerta were still held by Muslims at the same time that grants were being made to new settlers:

To Bafiel, the king's physician, ⁽⁹⁾ some houses belonging to Abengeuir . . . and an estate ⁽¹⁰⁾ with its orchard contiguous to the same Saracen; and two large fields, with a road in between them, one of which is walled and bounded by three roads, and which fronts on the field of Abinanubil and that of Abdel Abenfulfel and that of his brothers and that of the sons of Abinbalapha, the smith; and another field which fronts on the road which goes to Rascayna [sic] ⁽¹¹⁾ and on a road next to the said walled field and on the field [233] of Jahie Elluri, Saracen, and on a certain large irrigation canal, ⁽¹²⁾ and on country houses ⁽¹³⁾ up to the road of the canal. ⁽¹⁴⁾

This is the division of the waters of the district of Gandia:

Anno domini 1244, 18 Kalends August

Because of disputes which the hundred settlers of Bayren ⁽¹⁵⁾ had with the settlers of the Benietos, ⁽¹⁶⁾ Don Peregrín de Otrosillo ⁽¹⁷⁾ ordered that the çauaçequias who used to apportion the water in the time of the Moors appear, and that the Moorish çequieros take an oath on pain of their persons and goods, and that they tell the truth about the waters, [that is], in what way they used to apportion them in the time of the Moors; and that those [çequieros] who apportioned [the water] in that way, according as the districts used to have the water in the time of the Moors, should in a like manner [continue to] give it to each district, in writing.

And the Moors gave us [an account of] the waters by of means of this [written instrument] just as it is here. And for this purpose, they went to the divisor ⁽¹⁸⁾ of Beniarjó and Benifla, ⁽¹⁹⁾ and they apportioned the waters for us in this manner, just as they had always been in the time of the Moors:

Between the two of them, Benifla and Beniarjó ought to irrigate thirteen days and thirteen nights. But while Benifla is irrigating, Beniarjó ought not to irrigate.

[An enumeration follows of extremely complex details for each divisor of the system. At the end of the inventory of divisors those who have participated in the inquest give witness:]

Monday, August 4, in the presence of Martin d'Oblites, [234] and Johan de Mora, ⁽²⁰⁾ and Boniface, and Justo, and P. Oliver, and Bn. Sanauga, and Guillem Durant, and Bn.de Lloses, and the Saracens Avengamer, the qadi, and Gomar Auengomar, and Mahomet Abengayep.

Witnesses: Juçeff Aucortinna, interpreter, ⁽²¹⁾ and the çequiero, Abrahim Arragueff, and Abrahim Almocant, and Mahomat Abencalima, and Mahomet Ahuor, and Hamet Abendarraix. For the Christians, Lorenç Ruffa. ⁽²²⁾

A leitmotiv of thirteenth-century irrigation grants is the stipulation that the custom continue to be just as it was in the time of the Moors. The document which convinced Borrull of the fact of institutional continuity (and that which is most often cited) is from the fuero of James I, rubric xvi, "De servitut d'aygua," paragraph 35, granting to the settlers of the city and kingdom of Valencia "each and all the canals, large, middling, and small, freely, with spring waters, excepting the Royal Canal which goes to Puzol, from which canals and springs you may have water, and conductions of water, at all times, continually, by day and by night, so that you might irrigate from them and take water without any obligation, due or tribute, and that you might take those waters just as of old it was established and accustomed in the time of the Saracens." ⁽²⁴⁾ The use of water was thus granted to a particular locality on the same basis as before the Reconquest. Similar provisions are to be found in privileges of James I to Morvedre, of Alfonso X of Castile to Alicante and Orihuela, and of Prince Manuel to Elche. ⁽²⁵⁾ Usually the stipulation was general, but in one case Alfonso X indicated that cequiers should follow Moorish procedure in directing the [235] flow of the water and in diverting it at the canal checks used by the Moors in their system of turns, "and in no other place." ⁽²⁶⁾ That is, the configurations of the system down to the very points of diversion were not to be changed.

James I was also insistent on forbidding innovations in the existing works and was careful to declare that all repairs must be executed in conformity with "ancient mode, form, and state." ⁽²⁷⁾ In ensuing years, repeated royal orders alluded to the provisions of the fuero, and frequent litigation was brought before the governor to denounce "innovations" (such as new canals or diversion dams) and have them destroyed. The "time of the Saracens," therefore, referred to a concrete moment in time -- a reference point both for rights and for the physical structure of the system.
 

Priority of use was the principle of customary law upon which irrigation disputes were litigated in medieval Valencia. Each disputant tried to show that his right was sanctioned either by royal or seigneurial privilege or by continued use dating from time beyond the memory of living man. The appeal to "time immemorial" was common enough in the law of other European societies, where it was the intent to show that the custom in question antedated all surviving records. ⁽²⁸⁾ The legal basis of the appeal was found in the Roman Law of Waters. Ulpian ruled: "Where a man has acquired a right of watercourse by lasting use and, so to speak, long possession, he is not required to bring evidence to show the legal title on which his right to the water was founded, such, for example, as a legacy or any other ground of title; he has a good right of action if he can show that he had the use of the watercourse, say for such and such a number of years, and that not by force or by stealth but by leave and license."⁽²⁹⁾ Proceedings were taken against anyone who "sought to disturb" (in Valencian legal parlance) the irrigator in his customary right to divert the water.

[236] In Valencian documents the specific form taken by this procedure was the legal formula alleging possession of an irrigation right for "ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, one hundred years back and for so much time that the memory of men runneth not to the contrary." ⁽³⁰⁾ Yet in spite of the formula, "time immemorial" was not an open-ended concept stretching back indefinitely, but it had a definite point of departure in the conquest from the Muslims. The medieval man had difficulty conceptualizing the establishment of a right in some vague, distant past, and so he preferred to set a specific date which would take on the meaning of time without memory in the procedure of establishing proof. This was the case in England, where, in quo warranto cases in the reign of Edward I (1272-1307), it was necessary to establish continuous use since before the time of King Richard I. "This was construed as meaning a seisin extending back beyond September 3, 1189 when Richard I was crowned and began his reign." ⁽³¹⁾ The efficient process of law -- property law especially -- seemed to require that a specific chronological limit be included in the concept of legal memory.

The conquest of James I was a natural limit because it was at this time that a great portion of the land was divided and granted to settlers by written instruments. Beyond the memory of living man the legal memory reached back to the date of the Reconquest, whenever it may have been, and before it to an undefined, foreshortened "time of the Moors" (temps de moros, tempsde sarrahins).

Medieval Valencians were not interested in the specifics of the Islamic past of their realm. The only continuity felt with Al-Andalus, aside from traditions of Christian combat, was that perceived by the eye. The physical remains of Muslim settlement were at the core of what slight appreciation there was of an "Islamic heritage." Then, too, the terms of the original royal donations and charters granting the use of water for irrigation reinforced the disinclination to inquire too closely into the Islamic past. To prove that one's rights were among those covered generally in the fuero or specifically in a thirteenth-century charter or donation, all that was necessary was to adduce any proof of Islamic origin -- the specific date was not important -- or [237] show continuity back to the original grant by alleging continuous use beyond the memory of men. Thus throughout the Middle Ages a play can be described between the legal tradition, recalling the words of James I, and an oral tradition based on testimony in court regarding the physical remains of the Islamic past.

The most common approach was a simple mixing of the "time immemorial" and the "time of the Moors" formulas. In a dispute of 1431 over irrigating turns in Vinalesa (on the Moncada Canal, Valencia), one side alleged that in times of water abundance the practice had been to irrigate "according to ancient custom, which is since the kingdom has been in Christian hands, down to the present time, the memory of man running not to the contrary." ⁽³²⁾ The other side in the dispute (the syndic of the Moncada Canal) says that, for his part, it is the cequier who decides questions of division of water "according to ancient custom . . . just as it has been accustomed ever since the time of the Saracens." ⁽³³⁾

Similarly, the jurates of Quart heard that certain men irrigating from the Benacher Canal in 1421 wanted to change the old practice of dividing the water coming from the Canal of the Arches between the two canals of Benacher and Quart by raising the level of the divisor. This, and the closing of a certain fila were objectionable because the existing condition of these works was that which "they have been ever since the Canal of the Arches has existed, which is from the time of the Saracens and from the time much before this kingdom was conquered by the most excellent king, James the First, of glorious memory, continuously, down to the present." ⁽³⁴⁾ Several years before, the bailiff of the Albufera had reported that the canals and springs there had been made of old and existed "already in the time of the Saracens." ⁽³⁵⁾

The vagueness of this method of asserting priority of rights is all the more glaring in briefs in which the formulas were mixed in confusing anachronisms, as in a dispute involving various branch canals of the Mislata Canal in 1454. The right in question was claimed from fifty years before to the present, from time immemorial, and "from the time when Saracens possessed [238] the present city [of Valencia] and its district." ⁽³⁶⁾ One of the parties commenced his brief with a full citation of the original grant of James I in the fuero cited above.

These stock legal appeals to the time of the Reconquest and before did not convince everyone, however. At least one lawyer, Dionis Dolit, who often appeared before the governor's court in fifteenth-century water disputes, ⁽³⁷⁾ noted that there was a patent contradiction between the legal fiction that irrigation institutions and practices were fixed in a Moorish pattern and the everyday reality of irrigation practice. Representing the town of Burriana against Villarreal and Almassora in 1417, Dolit denied the pertinence of the Moorish past to present conflicts over the administration of water:

It is not to the point, nor does it harm our case, as the contrary party alleges, that the landholders can set fines regarding water and apportion them as they please, and that the water and the canals ought to continue, be, and flow according as they were in the time of the Saracens . . . because it is certain that the residents, together with the town, set the fines, and change, augment, limit, and reduce them as it seems best to them. The circumstances demand this. And they, with the said town, change the canals and make the water run where it seems to them that it will be most to the profit and utility of the landholders, and at the least cost. ⁽³⁸⁾

So it is that, for the purpose of establishing specific and valid links with the Islamic past, the historian cannot put too much faith (as Borrull did) in the legal tradition of the fuero alone. But alongside the often-cited formulas, documents recorded a strong oral tradition, drawing sustenance not from charters or royal privileges, but from the visible remains of Islamic settlement.

In medieval Valencia certain methods of construction were commonly identifiable as "Moorish," and works so identified [239] were assumed to have antedated the Reconquest. ⁽³⁹⁾ "Moorish" construction was recognizable both by the technique of building and by the material used. In a complaint brought by the city of Valencia against the lord of the Valley of Chelva in 1413, the latter sought to refute the charge that the canal of Facuquer was newly built and contrary to ancient custom by showing that the diversion dam and canal alike were of obvious Moorish construction. A visual inspection not only could reveal no sign of new construction, but it was clear that in many places the canal was "constructed and worked from very strong and ancient mortar, and in other parts . . . from right old rough-stone, which work is clearly seen to be completely Moorish and worked in the time of the Moors. And so the said canal from the said old dam up to an old and ruined mill near a depopulated place called Facuquer is made and constructed, as has been said, [in an] old and Moorish [fashion.]" ⁽⁴⁰⁾

Conversely, it was equally apparent when an old right was claimed for what was obviously a modern work. Two millers on the Algirós branch of the Mestalla Canal in 1452 demanded certain rights on the basis of ancient practice. The lawyer for the commons of the canal, Berenguer Cardona, argued that their plea was inadmissible because the mills in question clearly were not ancient. Let us suppose, he argued, that the mills in question

are very ancient mills from the time of the Moors, and re ipsa there are evident in each of them Moorish constructions which could be recognized as such by anyone seeing them, built in the time of the Moors before Valencia belonged to the Christians, and that the said constructions are held by those seeing them as Moorish, ancient, and built in the time that Valencia belonged to Moors.

But, continued Cardona, one of his opponents cannot possibly allege such rights for his mill because

[240] it is a new mill, and its millhouse and all its works are new, that is, they were clearly made one hundred years ago or less, and there is nothing ancient about it, nor does it have any construction from the time of the Moors, but rather anyone who understands building would hold, and does hold, the construction and building of the said fulling mill as the typical work of Christian times and from one hundred years ago and less, or a little more.⁽⁴¹⁾

As late as the seventeenth century, distinctive technology was still considered trustworthy historical evidence of the Islamic past. In 1609 the city of Orihuela mentioned in a letter to the King that "in the district of the city of Murcia . . . in our Segura River, there is built a diversion dam, made in the time of the Moors with such industry and art that with the water which passes over it this city and the villages and towns of the region are sustained, because it is made in the form of a spoon." ⁽⁴³⁾ This striking and totally unusual, nonindigenous method of construction was, as late as the seventeenth century, positive proof that the authors of the splendid sluice were the Moors of olden days.
 

Valencian tradition, reflected in the common law, regarded the huerta as fixed in the limits imposed upon it in the time of the Moors. In this concept the limits of Moorish cultivation [241] (well known from the donations of James I) were held as defining the optimum service area for the city's water resources. Strictures in the fueros against building new canals or introducing innovations in the irrigation network served to prevent any major alterations in the traditional balance between water supply and irrigated area. Thus the jurates of Valencia complained to Peter IV in 1342 that, according to the fueros, the water of a public river ought to be divided in relation to the size of the possession irrigated; but, subsequent to the enactment of that law, new lands had been brought under cultivation that were taking water from the Guadalaviar "to the prejudice of the lands of the huerta of Valencia which already in the time of the Saracens were cultivated and had sufficiency of water from the river to irrigate them." It was not just, the jurates argued, for lands which had not customarily been irrigated to have abundance of water while lands cultivated since olden times lost their crops. The jurates sought the right to divide the huerta's water as they saw fit -- in this case, favoring those irrigators with the most ancient rights. The King agreed with the jurates. ⁽⁴⁴⁾

In 1368, in order to preserve the customary limits of the huerta, Peter ordered compliance with a previous stricture against widening the Moncada Canal; ⁽⁴⁵⁾ and in 1413, as a further example, the city asked the governor to destroy all new works on the river. ⁽⁴⁶⁾ Nevertheless, in spite of the weight of tradition, the huerta did expand. In the first part of this study two cycles of expansion and contraction were described. The first, from 1238 to 1321, was characterized by 1) expansion of the huerta throughout the thirteenth and into the fourteenth century; 2) the halting of expansion by a catastrophic drought; 3) a legal solution, imposed by the King and entailing an accommodation with the Pueblos Castillos, to the problems arising from acute pressure for water; 4) enforced destruction of new works and a return to the "Islamic image" of the huerta. The second cycle, extending from 1321 to 1413, was also marked by several decades of expansion, capped by reclamation of the Marjals of Valencia at the end of the fourteenth century. In this case, too, expansion was terminated by a long drought, during the course of which renewed pressure from [242] the Pueblos Castillos was met by a political solution imposed by the city of Valencia.

Several interrelated factors -- climatic, demographic, and economic -- governed the expansion of irrigation cultivation. The water resources of the huerta varied so widely from year to year and from decade to decade that the potentialities for expansion must have appeared quite different to different generations. In drought-free years men would think about expansion; when the water level fell, contraction and restriction were inevitable. All these factors converged and were most graphically tested in the marginal areas of cultivation, areas which were fruitful in good years and perhaps not even worth holding in bad: the Marjals of Valencia were typical of such regions. In the 1380's and 1390's the Marjals seemed ripe for cultivation. The last quarter of the fourteenth century was nearly free from drought and was at the same time a period of rising population (the city had about four thousand seven hundred hearths in 1355 but eight thousand in 1418). ⁽⁴⁷⁾ If the settlement plans were successful -- as they seem to have been -- the added population would surely have contributed to huerta-wide pressure for water under the drought conditions of 1412-1415.

It has been observed above that drought brought a quickening of communal activities; the mechanisms of control were tightened in order to attain the maximum possible efficiency in distributing a contracting water supply. On the regional level drought forced reassessment and sometimes realignment of the balance of power among all the irrigators of the watershed. Drought also caused reassessment of public policy toward expansion of cultivation into marginal areas. It curtailed expansion and at the same time it awakened interest in water diversion plans.

In measuring conflicting pressures and objectives of its irrigation-based agricultural economy, Valencian society had always to account for its basic hydrological potentiality. The tradition of the Islamic bounds of the huerta, by providing both a reference to past experience and a legal mechanism to brake expansion whenever it was detrimental to the common good, served reality well.

1. My cultural typology corresponds to Brunhes' geographical typology based on the relative scarcity of water (L'Irrigation, pp. 59-93). Logically, different geographical situations require the selection of different organizational models. There is general correspondence, too, to a typology based on tenure, for water is attached to the land in areas where it is plentiful ("Syrian type") and alienable where water is scarce ("Saharan type"). Compare North African tenure typology in Despois, "Development of Land Use in Northern Africa," pp. 222-223. The Yemenite legacy has been noted by Bellver and Cacho, Influencia, pp. 38-39, Semple, Geography of the Mediterranean, p. 567, and Foster, Geographic Structure, p. 64. See also Stanislawski, Portugal's Other Kingdom, p 10.

2. On the distinction between formal anti-nonformal processes of diffusion, see Foster, Culture and Conquest, p. 12; Glick and Pi.Sunyer, "Acculturation," pp. 151-152.

3. José M. Font Rius, "La reconquista y repoblación de Levante y Murcia," in José M Lacarra et al, La reconquista española y la repoblación del país (Zaragoza, 1951), pp. 97-98; Burns, Crusader Kingdom, p. 7.

4. On Gandia see José Camarena Mahiques, Historia del distrito de Gandia (Gandia, 1965), p. 39, see also Camarena, Colección de documentos para la historia de Gandia y su comarca (Gandia, 1959-1961), doc. XXV (July 20, 1381), "Nombre deis focils dels moros de la orta e contribucio de la vila de Gandia."

For Játiva see privilege of James I, Jan 23, 1252, to the Moors of the arrabal of Játiva, in A Huici Miranda, Colección diplomática de Jaime I, el Conquistador, 3 vols. (Valencia, 1916), I, 550-553. These Moors were granted autonomy in the administration of irrigations: "mandantes quod aliquis cequiarius Xative non intret domos vel ravallos vestros por aqua petenda vel accipienda, nisi cum uno sarraceno Ravalli predicti" (p. 553).

Regarding tile arrabal of the Moors of Elche who irrigated from the Marchena Canal, see Ibarra y Ruiz, Riego de Elche, pp 227-246.

5. Benaguasil (Beniguazir in Medieval Valencian) was one of the Pueblos Castillos irrigated from the Guadalaviar and was, in the Middle Ages, a rice-growing center largely inhabited by Muslims, The documentation is copious. See AMV, Cartas Misivas, 22, n p. (May 17, 1454), a dispute raised by the alamí of the Moors of Benaguasil over the irrigation of vegetables. See ARV, Gobernación, 2377, 45th hand of 1485, fol. 44r, testimony of various moros vassals of the lord of Callosa concerning irrigation matters.

On Chiva see ARV, Gobernación, 2227, 16th hand, fol 27 (Nov. 12, 1421); the Moors of the morería, village, and barony of Chiva asserted that there was not water sufficient for irrigating in the spring from wilich they had been accustomed to draw water, because of drought (also, 2226, 2nd hand, fol, 40r, Feb. 27).

Torres Torres was irrigated in Muslim times (as indicated by tile Arabic document of 1223 in ARV, Procesos de Madrid, S 429). After the Reconquest it continued to be irrigated by Muslim cultivators; see ARV, Gobernación, 2241, 6th hand, fol. 39r, a description of fields owned by the sons of Ah Alhais -- Muslims residing in Torres Torres: "Item, un troç de vinya situat en lo dit terme sobre la cequia confronta ab la cequia e ab vinya de Alfaig moro. . . . Item, un troç de garoferal e figuerol situat en lo dit terme franch que te conffronta ab la cequia chiqua e ab vinya de Albalati."

For the Vall de Segó see ARV, Gobernación, 2210, 33rd hand, fol. 36r (1414), an enumeration of taxes owed on certain parcels, including some fronting on canals, owned by Muslims of Quart and Quartell.

James I granted the Moors of Vall de Uxó autonomy in irrigation affairs: "et que pusquen jutgar les aygues entre si, aixi com era acostumat en temps de moros, segons ques conte en los lurs privilegis antichs" (Huici Miranda, Colección diplomática, I, 513).

6. For example, a dispute between Beniarbeg and Beniazmut, two villages near Ondara, in which figures the testimony of the "oldest Moors" (ARV, Gobernación, 2270, 8th hand, fol. 43).

7. Repartimiento de Valencia, pp. 269 (Favara), 276 (Algirós). The canal system associated with the mills of Berenguer and Michael Revell, in Boatehla, is probably that of Rovella (ibid., pp. 271, 277; see Nicolau Primitiu, "Molinería valenciana," pp. 700-702).

8. Font Rius, "Reconquista y repoblación," p. 100.

9. "Alfaquimus domini regi" (alfaquim, from the Arabic alhakîm, wise man, pilysician; Neuvonen, Arabismos, p 151. Bafiel (also Bahiel, Bahihel) was a Jew of Zaragoza who knew Arabic and served James I as interpreter (James I, Crònica, chaps. lxxiv, cxviii).

10. "Reallum" is possibly derived from the Arabic rahal, garden. See Houston, "Land Use and Society in the Plain of Valencia," p. 175.

11. For this spelling and tile etymology of the toponym see Chap. XII, n. 60.

12. "In quadam magna cequia." Since this entry follows a list of donations in Campanar, the canal could be either Rascanya or Mestalla (La Petra branch), on the left bank of the river.

13. "In casalibus."

14. Repartimiento de Valencia, pp. 153-154.

15. Ibid., pp. 364-366, lists donations in Bayren in the years 1240, 1242, and 1244.

16. That is, Upper and Lower Benieto (Benieto Sobirá and Benieto Jusá), Camarena, Historia del distrito de Gandia, p. 38. See map (ibid., facing p. 38) for location of these settlements.

17. Peregrín de Otrosillo (or Atrosillo) was one of the knights of James I who played a prominent role in the siege of the Castle of Bayren; see the Crònica of James I, chaps. xv, lxvii; and Camarena, Historia del distrito de Gandia, p. 26. He was granted a castle and several villages in Aragon in 1252 (Huici Miranda, Colección diplomática, I, 559-560).

18. "Almatzem;" see Chap. XII, n. 28.

19. Two settlements on the Acequia Comùn of Gandia, see Fontavella, Huerta de Gandia, p 82.

20. Martin d'Oblites was granted 7 1/2 jovates of land in Bayren (Dec. 7, 1242); Repartimiento de Valencia, p. 365. J. de Mora was granted the alqueria of Benampiscar (i.e., Benipeixcar), across the Serpis from Benieto (Sept. 20, 1240); Repartimiento de Valencia, p 365. Benipeixcar is irrigated from tile Vernisa Canal (Fontavella, Huerta de Gandia, fig. 12).

21. "Trugaman" (from the Arabic turjamân, interpreter, translator); see Neuvonen, Arabismos, p. 175.

22. The document quoted is the Distribucion de las aguas en 1244, pp. 3-6, preserved in the Municipal Archives of Gandia (Privilegis de Gandia, fol. 73). Apparently Aragonese rather than Catalan was used in this document because Otrosillo was Aragonese.

Lorenç Ruffa (or Rufa) held land in Beniopa ("Repartimiento de Valencia," pp 349. 468. 513), which is in the Vernisa service area, and 4 jovates in Alharrazin (Alfarrasí), one of the places that figured in the inventory of divisors; he may have been a specialist in land division if he is the same Lorenz Ruffa mentioned in the Repartimiento de Murcia, p. 160.

23. For example, in Granada on Mar 2, 1498, information was taken from Mahomad ben Juncairi and Mahomad Haxu "sobre la costumbre del regar el acequia de Ynadamar". (Garrido Atienza, Los alquezares de Santafe, p 7 n. 1). See also the indirect reference to an inquest for the Irués Canal in the Ebro Valley: the irrigation system was to continue "como andavan en tiempo de moros . . que trovó verdat en antigos moros como devia andar el agua" (J. M. Lacarra, "La repoblación del valle del Ebro," in Lacarra et al., La reconquista española, p. 70).

24. Branchat, Tratado de derechos, III, 276--277:

Per nos e per los nostres donam e atorgam per tots temps a vos ensemps e sengles habitators e pobladors de la ciutat e del regne de Valencia, e de tot lo terme de aquell regne, totes e cascunes cequies franques e liures, majors, e mijanes e menors, ab aygues e ab manaments, e ab duhiments daygues, e encara aygues de fonts, exceptat la cequia Real qui va a Puçol, de les quals cequies e fonts hajats aygua, e enduhiments e manaments daygues tots temps continuament de dia e de nit: en axí que puscats daquelles regar, e pendre aygues sen [sic] alcuna servitut e servici e tribut, e que prenats aquelles aygues segons que antiguament es e fo stabhit e acostumat en temps de Sarrahins.

25. James I (July 29, 1248) conceded to the inhabitants of Morvedre all the water flowing in the Riu de Sogorb and the canal of Torres Torres for irrigation, "just as was the custom in the time of the Saracens" ("secundum pro tempore sarracenorum fuerat consuetum"), Chabret, Sagunto, II, 405. Alfonso X (Aug. 29, 1252) granted to Alicante certain villages with their water, "just as never they had it better in the time of the Moorsö ("asi como nunca mejor las hubieron en tiempo de Moros"); Branchat, Tratado de derechos, III, 505. Alfonso X (July 15, 1266) granted several places to Orihuela with barren hands, springs, and rivers, "and with as many appurtenances as they ought to have, just as they had in the time of the Moors" ("e con todas sus pertenencias quantas han de hauer assi como las ouieron en tiempo de moros"), Martnez Morellá, Cartas de los reyes de Castilla a Oriheula, p. 23. Privilege of Alfonso X to Orihuela (May 14, 1275) by which the cequiers were to clean the canals yearly and perform their customary duties, "and let them do this each year as they deem necessary and guide the waters in such a way that they irrigate just as was accustomed in the time of the Moors . . . and that they guide [the water] through those places where they used to go in the time of the Moors; that they make all the lands irrigate at the canal checks where they used to take their turn in the time of the Moors, and at no other placeö ("e esto fagan cada año en como vieren que es menester e guien las aguas en tal manera que rieguen e ryegue tanto como solia en tiempo de moros . . . e que las guien por aquellos lugares que solian yr en tiempo de moros; que fagan que todas las tierras se rieguen por las paradas do solian tomar su tanda en tiempo de moros y no por otro lugarö), ibid., pp. 58-59. Don Manuel, re. the partition of property in Elche (June 20, 1268): "Furthermore, I authorize that they ought to have the water with which were irrigated the alquerias of these estates just as the Moors used to have it in their time" ("Otrosi les otorgo que el agua con que se regauan las acarias do son destas heredidades que la ayan como la solien auer los moros en el so tiempoö); Ibarra y Ruiz, Riego de Elche, pp. 88-89.

26. See above note, privilege of Alfonso X to Orihuela, May 14, 1275

27. "De cequiis et cequiariis" (Jan. 19, 1250), in Aureum opus, chap xxxiv, fol. 11.

28. The same phenomenon is also true in the Islamic world, Compare Thoumin, Geographie humaine, p. 106, the stability of irrigation custom in Syria is based on an appeal to time immemorial (qadim).

29. Digest, 8.5.10; the translation is that of Charles Henry Monro, The Digest of Justinian, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Eng., 1909), II, 103. James I initiated a renaissance of Roman law in the lands of his crown in which many Bologna-trained jurisprudents (including Ramon de Penyafort) participated. The influence of Roman law was especially marked in Valencia; see Ferran Soldevila, Jaume I, Pere el Gran (Barcelona: Teide, 1955), pp. 68-69. However, it should be noted (as Robert I.. Burns has pointed out to me) that Roman law was also strongly resisted, and the struggle between Roman and customary law may have given Islamic custom great impact in the thirteenth century especially.

30. ARV, Gobernación, 2253, 9th hand, fol, 24r (June 20, 1435).

31. T. F. T. Plucknett, Legislation of Edward I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), p. 46 n. 2: "The same date had been made the limit of writs of right by the statute of Westminster I, c. 39 (1275), i.e., a demandant cannot recover by a writ of right (or any other writ)." A statute of quo warranto of 1290 (ibid., pp. 49-50) is similar in tone to the requirements for proof in the court of the governor of Valencia: "As for the writ called quo warranto, our lord the king established in Whitsunday in [1290] . . . that all those who claim to have quiet possession of franchises before the time of King Richard, and can show this by a good inquest, may properly enjoy that possession." Setting limits to legal memory produced strange results in England, namely, that "an admittedly genuine deed cannot be pleaded if it was made before 1189." This did not happen in Valencia, where Arabic legal documents preceding the Reconquest could be pleaded, and were, even as late as the sixteenth century.

32. ARV, Gobernación, 2244, 15th hand, fol. 5r (Oct. 13, 1431): "segons costum antich la qual cosa es despuys que lo regne es de cristians ença que memoria de homens no es en contrai."

33. Ibid., 16th hand, fol. 37v. "segons la costum antigua ... axi corn es acostumat de temps de serahins ença."

34. ARV, Gobernación, 2226, 3rd hand, fol. 26r (Mar. 29, 1421): "la manera stat e forma en que huy son los dits partidors e fila haien stat e acostumat de star per tots temps desque es la dita cequia dels archs que es dels temps de serahins e del temps molt enans ques conquistas aquest regne de Valencia per molt excellent rey en Jacme lo primer de memoria gloriosa ança continuament."

35. ARV, Real Patrimonio, Bailía, 1430, 3rd hand of 1416, fol, 22r (Aug. 5, 1416).

36. ARV, Gobernación, 2285, 14th hand, fol 2r.

37. See Glick, "Abogados de aguas."

38. ARV, Gobernación, 2219, 4th hand, fol. 34r (Feb. 13, 1417):

No fa res al proposit ni contra aquesta part com diu la part contraria que los hereters poden posar penes per les aygues e partir aquelles axi com los plaura, et les aygues e cequies deuen anar, star e discorrer segons foyen en temps de sarrahins . . . car cert es que los hereters ensemps ab la vila meten les penes, muden, augmenten, limiten e minuen aquelles segons los es hen vist. Et los fets ho requiren. Et aquelles ab la dita vila muden les cequíes e fan discorrer les aygues per lla on los appar que stiguen e discorren mils a profit e utilitat e menys messio dels hereters.

39. Certain minor hydraulic toponyms found in medieval documentation might also have had the connotation of Islamic origin: e.g., the cequia morisca in the Marjals of Valencia (ARV, Gobernación, 2307, 32nd hand, fol. 18r), the almenara morisca of the Favara system (ARV, Gobernación, 2257, 4th hand, fol. 11r), the azud de los moros on the Vinalapó (Ibarra y Ruiz, Riego de Elche, p. 259); an azud de los moros also in Caspe (photo in Andrés Giménez Soler, La edad media en la Corona de Aragón [Barcelona, l930], p. 334).

40. ARV, Gobernación, 2203, 28th hand, fol. 16r (May, 30, 1413): "nos demostra res picat ne obrat de nou e en altres molts e diverses locils on es construhida e obrada dargamassa molt fort e antigua e en altres parts on es feta de pedra mamposta fort antiga e la qual obra se mostra esser tota morisqua e obrada de temps de moros e la qual dita cequia del dit açut vell tro a hun moli destrohit que es prop de hun loch despoblat appellat facuquer es feta e construida segons dit es antiga e morisqua."

41. ARV, Gobernacion, 2282, 12th hand, fol. 12v (Apr. 21, 1452):

E sis volia dir als en contrari ço que nos creu diu . . . que los molins dels dits mossen pere dodena e en marti scola son molins molt antichs de temps de moros e re ipsa se mostren en cascu de aquells edifficis morischs los quals per qualsevol vehent aquells seran haguts per hedificis morischs e construhits en temps de moros ans que Valencia fos de cristians e per hedificacio morischs e entichs e fets en temps que Valencia era de moros los dits hedifficis son hauts per los vehents aquells.

Resulta donchs ut conciudit necessarie que sils dits molins son a temps de moros ans que Valencia los de cristians que en aquell temps que foren construhits los fon donada laygua e es propria llur e son en possessio pacifica vel quasi de haure e usar de les dites parts de la aygua de la dita cequir de algiroç. . . . diu . . . que lo moli pilater del qual la part altra fa gran festa appellat den ferrada es moli nou e lo casal de aquell e totes les obres de aquell son noues ço es ques mostren fetes de cent anys ença e noy ha res de antiguor ne hedifici algu de temps de moros ans cascun entenent de obres haura e ha la construcio e fabrica del dit moli pilater per obra e fabrica costumada de temps de cristians e de cent anys ença e menys o poch mes.

42. AHN, Ordenes Militares, Orden de Montesa (documentos particulares), pergamino no. 653 (Sept. 27, 1310): "ells justament ab raho tenen dins los dits azuts antichs de temps de sarayns pertayens a la dita vila de Tales iaygua que passa lo terme de Tales e discorrent en los dits açuts."

43. AMV, Cartas Reales, 8, fol. 181v (July 30, 1609): "En lo terme de la ciutat de Murcia ques en Castella en ho nostre riu de Segura y a edificat un açut en dit riu fet de temps de moros ab tal industria y art que ab laygua quey de damunt de aquell pasa se sustenta esta ciutat y totes les viles y pobles desa contribucio esta fet a modo de cuchara." It is not clear why this document, pointed out to me by L. P. Harvey, should have been written in Catalan and included in the papers of the city of Valencia.

44. Fori regni valentiae, fols. 90v-91r (1342):

Item com segons fur de Valencia posat en rubrica de servitut de aygua, e de altres coses, lo capitol qui comença, l'aygua del flum publich [i.e., no. 38, fol. 90v] etc. deu esser partida segons la manera, e la granea de les possessions a regar, e que aço sia feyt sens injuria del altre. E senyor apres la confeccio del dit fur alcuns hajen staliades, e fetes staliar moltes terres, e diverses: e les quals a regar prenen, e reben del dit flum gran partida de l'aygua en gran dan, injuria, e perjudici de les terres de la orta de Valencia: les quals ja en temps de Sarrahins eren laurades, e hauien compliment d'aygua del dit flum a regar aquelles ço que alcunes de vegades entre l'any n'an gran minua e fretura per rabo de les aygues que alcuns prenen a ops de regar les terres que apres son staliades. E com no sia cosa justa ne consonant a raho que les terres que no hauien acostumat de regar bajen gran abundancia d'aygues, axi que quasi neguen que les terres antigament laurades en la dita orta n'ajen gran minua, e fretura per la qual los splets se perden.

45. Branchat, Tratado de derechos, III, 303-306 (Oct. 5, 1368).

46. See Chap. VII, n. 25

47. J.C. Russell, "The Medieval Monedatge of Aragon and Valencia," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 106 (1962), 496. In 1361 there were in addition some 2,000 hearths in the huerta; no figures were given for 1418.