Convivencia and Medieval Spain

EDITED BY MARK T. ABATE CONVIVENCIA AND MEDIEVAL SPAIN

Essays in Honor of Thomas F. Glick Mediterranean Perspectives

Series Editors Brian Catlos University of Colorado-Boulder Boulder, CO, USA

Sharon Kinoshita University of California Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, CA, USA As a region whose history of connectivity can be documented over at least two and a half millennia, the Mediterranean has in recent years become the focus of innovative scholarship in a number of disciplines. In shifting focus away from histories of the origins and developments of phenomena predefined by national or religious borders, Mediterranean Studies opens vistas onto histories of contact, circulation and exchange in all their complexity while encouraging the reconceptualization of inter- and intra-disciplinary scholarship, making it one of the most exciting and dynamic fields in the humanities. Mediterranean Perspectives interprets the Mediterranean in the widest sense: the sea and the lands around it, as well as the European, Asian and African hinterlands connected to it by networks of culture, trade, politics, and religion. This series publishes monographs and edited collections that explore these new fields, from the span of Late Antiquity through Early Modernity to the contemporary.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15161 Mark T. Abate Editor Convivencia and Medieval Spain

Essays in Honor of Thomas F. Glick Editor Mark T. Abate Westfield State University Westfield, MA, USA

Mediterranean Perspectives ISBN 978-3-319-96480-5 ISBN 978-3-319-96481-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96481-2

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Fig. 1 Thomas F. Glick: Honorary Judge of the Tribunal of Waters, in Judicial Robes, Plaza de la Virgen, Valencia. Courtesy of Francesc Vera Casas

v Foreword: Thomas F. Glick and Convivencia

When Mark Abate approached me some time ago with his proposal to put together a volume in honor of Thomas Glick, I told him I would be delighted to collaborate. Tom has long been a mentor, colleague, and (I hope I am not presuming to say) a friend. My intention was at first to contribute a research article, of the excellent sort that the many scholars who have generously written chapters for this volume have produced— something that would reflect in some way the tremendous contribution Tom has made to the historiography of medieval Iberia and the incalculable impact he has had on my own development as a scholar. But it occurred to me, on reflection, that virtually everything I have written already bears the imprint of Thomas Glick’s thought and serves as a testament to his influence on my work, and given our already quite long and distinguished list of contributors, I might instead offer something of a more brief and personal reflection. Caveat lector. The name Thomas Glick is associated by many with convivencia and the history of the interaction of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in al-Andalus and the Christian Spains of the Middle Ages. The term was coined, of course, early in the twentieth century by the Spanish medievalist Ramón Menéndez Pidal and subsequently developed as a paradigm for describing the cultural/literary history of Spain by Américo Castro, who found refuge in the US following Franco’s fascist coup d’état in his homeland.1 His España en su historia. Cristianos, moros y judíos, which presented Spanish

1 After teaching at several US universities, Castro ended his career at the University of California (UC) San Diego, donating many of his books to the UC library system. I recall

vii viii FOREWORD: THOMAS F. GLICK AND CONVIVENCIA culture as an emerging product of the engagement of “the three cultures,” was first published in 1948 and almost immediately (eight years being “immediately” in the world of academic publishing) generated a fervent riposte in the form of España: un enigma histórico, a nationalist historical manifesto penned by his fellow exiliado, Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz.2 And so, the battle lines were drawn in the “convivencia wars”—with the Platonic, essentialized “Eternal Spaniard” of Sánchez-Albornoz championed by many nationalist Spanish historians of the Franco era, who found it could be made to fit their muscular, operatic, and Castilian-centric, hyper-Catholic view of their nation’s past, and Castro’s banner being taken up particularly among a newer generation of North American scholars, who saw it reflecting the cosmopolitan, lefty, agnostic, ethno-religious diversity of the world they saw themselves as living in or aspired to create.3 No need to name names. The death of the Spanish dictator in 1975 and the rapid disintegration of the authoritarian regime and democratization of Spain set the stage for a renaissance of Spanish medieval historiography—one in which the various nations and peoples who make up the modern state were able to give voice to their own roles in history and in which the ideological grip of the Church and State was loosened. The effect was particularly noticeable in regions like Catalonia and Valencia—the main non-Castilian-speaking peninsular components of what had been the Crown of Aragón—late medieval Castile’s great rival.4 The histories of these regions, long subsumed in the triumphalist, Providential grand narrative of Castile-cum-España , were now rehabilitated and recounted on their own terms and in their own languages; and here, as well as across the peninsula, Jews and Muslims, who previously had been treated as foils, bit-players, or low characters in the great drama of Spanish nation-building were now studied for their own my delight and sense of history, when as a faculty member at UC Santa Cruz, I first came upon books in our library that bore Castro’s ex libris. 2 See Américo Castro, España en su historia. Cristianos, Moros y Judíos (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1948), and Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, España: Un enigma histórico (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1956). 3 The metaphor is borrowed from Ryan Szpiech’s “The Convivencia Wars: Decoding Historiography’s Polemic With Philology,” in A Sea of Languages: Rethinking the Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History, edited by Suzanne Conklin Akbari, and Karla Mallette, 135–161 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013). 4 To be sure, Aragónese was spoken in Aragón, but Aragón has been for centuries anchored in the Castilian linguistic and cultural ambit. FOREWORD: THOMAS F. GLICK AND CONVIVENCIA ix sake and with a fresh, scientific indifference. This is not to say that the nationalist Castile-centric Christian-dominated counter-narrative disappeared, either in Spain or abroad. This was due in part to mere inertia, both institutional and intellectual, which favors the perpetuation of established narratives even once they have been shown to be obsolete. But historians of this persuasion also benefitted from the ideological glasnost of the Transition, and those who see larger cultural, ethnic, and religious enti- ties as fundamentally irreconcilable or oppositional brought greater nuance and complexity to their interpretations of the history of the Peninsula. Meanwhile, over the course of the last decades of the twentieth century, as the convivencia wars raged, both sides entrenched in what became a drawn out and ultimately inconclusive static intellectual war, occasionally sniping at each other, but neither capable of scoring what might be described as a signal victory. To stick one’s head up above the parapet was an invitation to be shot at. For its part, at least in the Anglo-American scholarly world, convivencia became something of a banner for a certain political and social orientation: one which saw an inherent value in ethno- religious diversity and a critique of the status of traditionally hegemonic groups. Its critics would accuse it of being a posture, of being aspirational, and of being divorced from the reality of the past—the same criticisms lev- eled by its advocates at those who subscribe to a “clash of civilizations” view of history and the present. Worse, it became nostalgic, coming to epitomize for some an imaginary innocent time of harmonious inter- communal coexistence or a vanished “golden age of enlightenment.”5 This has only provided further ammunition for critics, some of whom in their reactionary indignation have revealed their own positions to be no less polemical, ideologically-driven, and detached from historical reality than those they set out to attack.6

5 The work of non-academic or non-specialist authors—see, for example, Chris Lowney, A Vanished World: Medieval Spain’s Golden Age of Enlightenment (New York: Free Press, 2005); David Levering Lewis, God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 to 1215 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008), respectively—but scholars of medieval Spain are hardly immune from such nostalgizing. 6 The Cervantes specialist Fernandez-Morera’s monograph is only the most crude and misconceived recent entry into this genre. See Dario Fernandez-Morera, The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise Muslims, Christians, and Jews Under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain. (Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2014). For a somewhat more restrained but equally polemical work, see Sylvain Gouguenheim, Aristote au Mont-Saint- Michel: les racines grecques de l’Europe chrétienne (Paris: Seuil, 2008). x FOREWORD: THOMAS F. GLICK AND CONVIVENCIA

In Spain, itself (“the land of the three religions”) convivencia was sani- tized, commoditized, and commercialized—promoted alongside sangria, paella, and (until recently) toros, as a pillar of Spanish cultural identity and an obligatory experience for visiting tourists, who may have only the vagu- est notion of who the Moors were or what happened here before Columbus discovered America. In effect, like its opponents, the proponents of convivencia began to essentialize and romanticize their medieval Spain, until by the turn of the twenty-first century even scholars who sympathized with the historical perspective in which the notion of convivencia is anchored began to question its utility as a term and as a concept—one that, for all its attractiveness, has no clear meaning and offers no explanatory dimension.7 It became, in effect, a near synonym for “tolerance”—a troublesome, anachronistic concept which thankfully has also fallen out of fashion for describing pre-modern communal relations. Like the term Reconquest or Reconquista today, convivencia is encountered increasingly bracketed by scare quotes, as the recent generation of historians debate as to how we can move on from a term that, whatever, its original significance or sense, has become too burdened with historiographical baggage to be useful.8 Others simply avoid it altogether. And, in the meanwhile, the struggle to bring nuance and complexity to the history of ethno-religious relations in medieval Spain and to counteract the noxious politically driven distortion

7 In fact, both Castro and Sánchez Albornóz essentialized Spain. See my comments in Catlos, “Christian-Muslim-Jewish Relations, Medieval ‘Spain,’ and the Mediterranean: An Historiographical Op-Ed,” in In and of the Mediterranean: Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Studies, edited by Hamilton, Michelle, and Nuria. Silleras-Fernandez, 1–16 (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2014). 8 Recent critiques of the term can be found in Eduardo Manzano Moreno, “Qurtuba: Some Critical Considerations of the Caliphate of Cordoba and the Myth of Convivencia,” Reflections on Qurtuba in the 21st century, 111–132 (Madrid: Casa Árabe, 2013); Alex A. Novikoff, “Between Tolerance and Intolerance in Medieval Spain: An Historiographic Enigma,” Medieval Encounters 11 (2005): 7–7; Maya Soifer, “Beyond Convivencia: Critical Reflections on the Historiography of Interfaith Relations in Christian Spain,”Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 1 (2009): 19–35; Kenneth Baxter Wolf, “Convivencia in Medieval Spain: A Brief History of an Idea,” Religion Compass 3 (2008): 72–85. The author has pro- posed a new model for understanding ethno-religious relations in pre-modern Iberia and the Mediterranean: conveniencia, or “The Principle of Convenience,” first in Catlos, “Cristians, Musulmans i Jueus a la Corona d’Aragó medieval: un cas de ‘conveniéncia.’” L’Avenç 236 (2001): 8–16, and most recently in idem, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christedom, ca. 1050–1614 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 508–535. FOREWORD: THOMAS F. GLICK AND CONVIVENCIA xi of its history continues, particularly in Spain itself, where the discourse regarding the Middle Ages has very direct and profound implications for one’s idea of the modern Spanish state today.9 Where does Thomas Glick fit into all this? Certainly not as anapparat- chik of some historiographical orthodoxy, or as a purveyor of nostalgia, however well intentioned. Glick is a pivotal figure in the twentieth-century historiography of medieval Spain, whose work embodies the best aspects of the scholarly turn that led to the popularization of convivencia, but avoids the hazards that others fell victim to. Developing his historical vision on the very cusp of the post-Franco Transition, Glick trained not only in the languages and traditions of the historiography of the Christian Spains but also in those of the Muslims and Jews of al-Andalus. His studies in Barcelona and Valencia placed him in two regions that were naturally poised to challenge the dominant meta-narratives of medieval Spain. Three seminal, early career articles signaled him as an innovative thinker who would not be boxed in by established categories or conventions, whether historiographical or disciplinary, and pointed toward a novel approach to understanding Christian-Muslim-Jewish relations.10 In 1970 and 1979 two major books demonstrated his capacity not only for fine- grained technical research but for far-reaching and broad syntheses: Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia and Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages.11 Through these and his later publications, he presented a complex picture of the pre-Modern Iberian Peninsula in which members of the three major confessional groups interacted in both collaboration and conflict, both as communities and as individuals, exercising a profound influence on each other and their respective cultures, often in spite of themselves. As he rightly points out, acculturation and conflict are not mutually exclusive;

9 See, for example, the recent work of Alejandro García Sanjuán, particularly, La conquista islámica de la Península Ibérica y la tergiversación del pasado del catastrofismo al negacionismo (Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2013). 10 Thomas F. Glick and Oriol Pi-Sunyer, “Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 11 (1969): 136–154; Thomas F. Glick, “Muḥtasib and Mustasaf: A Case-Study of Institutional Diffusion.” Viator 2 (1971): 59–81; and idem, “The Ethnic Systems of Premodern Spain.” Comparative Studies in Sociology 1 (1978): 151–171. 11 Glick, Thomas F. Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valenica (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970); idem, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979). xii FOREWORD: THOMAS F. GLICK AND CONVIVENCIA in fact they seem to serve as catalysts. His medieval Spain is a rich and complex world shaped by causes as diverse as climate, geography, language, politics, scholarship, and religion—a world out of which his convivencia emerges naturally and organically as a consequence of the nature of very human interactions. In other words, in terms of convivencia, Glick deserves much of the credit for the good that has come of it and none of the blame for the bad. His work has moved us to reconsider what we think of medieval Spain and of the Middle Ages in general. And so it is that Glick has come to influence, both directly and indirectly, a whole generation of academics who followed—scholars working in a range of historical disciplines, particularly in North America and in Spain, where his work has been published in Castilian and Catalan, and where he has continued to collaborate and works to integrate innovations in Spanish scholarship into the Anglo-American tradition.12 If time is the test of great scholarship, his certainly passes—the most recent revision of Islamic and Christian Spain was published as late as 2005—26 years after the first edition.13 I would certainly count myself as one of those scholars who has developed a Glickian historiographical orientation, both through reading his work as a student and scholar, and by the role Tom has taken as a mentor and reader of my work. I had the great fortune to have him as the external reader of my doctoral dissertation in 2000 and then as the director of a two-year post-doc I held (officially) at Boston University (but actually, at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) in Barcelona).14 In my experience Tom was an ideal supervisor—offering frank and direct criticism and advice when it was called for and never one to push younger scholars to duplicate his own work or conclusions. His good humor and generosity is always evident, as is his circumspection and courtesy, even when it comes to scholars with whom he does not agree. If I could end with a further personal observation it would be a memory of some years past, when I happened to bump into Tom while I was in

12 See, for example, Thomas F. Glick, From Muslim Fortress to Christian Castle. Social and Cultural Change in Medieval Spain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995). 13 It should be noted, Glick generously made the original text available for free online via the LIBRO website, operated in conjunction with the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (see http://libro.uca.edu/ics/emspain.htm). 14 The dissertation was “The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of the Ebro Valley, ss. XI–XIII.” At the Instiució Milà i Fontanals in Barcelona, I had the great privilege of working for many years under the guidance of Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, now sadly missed. FOREWORD: THOMAS F. GLICK AND CONVIVENCIA xiii

Valencia on a trip to the archives. It so happened, he said, that he was being given a doctorate honoris causa from the Universitat that afternoon, and I’d be most welcome to attend the event. It was only over the course of the ceremony, in which a long series of his friends and colleagues from Valencia recounted their experiences that I learned that Glick is not only a leading historian of medieval Spain but also a prodigious historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century science (focusing on the reception of Darwin in the Hispanic world) and someone who has committed considerable time and energy to the cause of preserving the vestiges of the rural landscape of medieval Valencia—a unique patrimony long under threat from the unbridled and unscrupulous real estate speculation. I was embar- rassed not to have known this already, but in retrospect it was hardly surprising; Glick is not one to go out of the way to tout his own accomplishments, and this is one of the many characteristics that has made him a model for so many scholars, as can be seen from the lengthy and impressive roster of the present volume.

–– El Burgo de Osma, Soria

Boulder, CO, USA Brian Catlos Contents

1 “Ever Since Castro: Thomas F. Glick, Medieval Spain, and Convivencia” 1 Mark T. Abate

Part I Irrigation 63

2 Water Management and Irrigation in Medieval Mediterranean Societies: An Overview 65 Helena Kirchner

3 Irrigation and Political Power in the Medieval Kingdom of Valencia 99 Enric Guinot Rodríguez

Part II Contacts 129

4 Notes on the Methodology of Studying the History of the Dhimmis 131 Torki Fahad A. Al-Saud

5 Convivencia as Persecution in Ninth-Century Córdoba 145 Kenneth Baxter Wolf

xv xvi Contents

6 Ramon de Penyafort’s Responses to Questions Concerning Relations Between Christians and Saracens: Critical Edition and Translation 159 John Tolan

7 Al-Tābisı̄ and His Descendants: The Failed Integration of a Military Andalusi Family into the Christian Society of the Kingdom of Valencia (1238–1283) 193 Josep Torró

8 The Mustassaf of Castelló de la Plana 229 Doug Kierdorf

Part III Perceptions 251

9 The Battle of Zallaqa Between Mythos to Logos 253 William Granara

10 Narratives of Muslim Violence in Christian Courts in the Late Medieval Kingdom of Valencia 277 Mark D. Meyerson

11 Were Women Part of Convivencia? 297 Jessica Coope

12 Spain, Islam, and Thirteenth-Century Dominican Memory 311 Thomas E. Burman and Lydia M. Walker

13 “Although He Sinned”: Spanish Conversos Between Law, Theology, and Jewish Popular Perception 341 Jonathan Ray Contents xvii

Part IV Science 369

14 The Astronomical Background of Abraham Bar Ḥ iyya’s Astrological History 371 Julio Samsó

15 A Muslim’s Book and Its Christian and Jewish Readers: The Way al-Farabi’s Enumeration of the Sciences Came to Influence Western European Scholars 393 Michael C. Weber

16 Reading Averroes 409 Michael McVaugh

Part V Epilogue 423

17 Boston Through Arab Eyes: A Brief Memoir of Studying Under Ustaaz Thomas F. Glick 425 Abdalghafour Ismail al-Rozi

Index 435 Notes on Contributors

Mark T. Abate is Professor of History at Westfield State University in Massachusetts, USA. His research focuses on thirteenth-century intellectual history and the work of Roger Bacon in particular. He is working on a critical edition of the Epistola de secretis operibus artis et naturae et de nullitate magiae attributed to Roger Bacon. Abdalghafour Ismail al-Rozi is Professor of History at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His research focuses on the history of coffee and the coffee trade. He has two forthcoming works being published by Tarah International—Andalucian curves: l’archéologie du savoir and The Epic of Coffee: Stories of the (Bun) Coffee Trade. Torki Fahad A. Al-Saud is Professor of Islamic History at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His research focuses on the Mamluks, Ayyubids, Dhimma, and historiography. His publications include Nash’at dawlat al-Mamalı̄ k,̄ 648 H/1250 M-658 H/1260 M: iʻadat̄ qira’̄ ah lil-masạ dir̄ (2017); Dirasā t̄ tarı̄ khı̄ yah:̄ al-Yahud̄ f ı ̄ al-tarı̄ kh̄ al-Islamı̄ ̄ (2014); and editions of the Radd ʻalá ahl al-dhimmah wa-man tabaʻahum by Ghazı̄ ̄ ibn Ahmaḍ Ibn al-Wasit̄ ı̣ ̄and the anonymous Tadhkirat al-muluk̄ ilá ahsaṇ al-suluk̄ . Thomas E. Burman After 25 at the University of Tennessee, Burman is now Conway Director of the Medieval Institute and Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, USA. He is the author of Religious Polemic and the Intellectual History of the Mozarabs, c. 1050–1200 (1994), Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560 (2007), and is at work on Ramon Martí and the Trinity: Islam, Judaism, and the Scholastic Project.

xix xx NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Brian A. Catlos is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, research associate in Humanities at the University of California (UC) Santa Cruz, USA, and co-directs The Mediterranean Seminar (www.mediterraneanseminar.org), a major initiative and a forum for international and interdisciplinary collaboration in the emerging field of Mediterranean Studies. His work centers on Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations and the history of the pre-Modern Mediterranean. His books include The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon, 1050–1300 (2004), Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors: Faith, Power, and Violence in the Age of Crusade and Jihad (2014), and Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, ca. 1050–1615 (2014). Jessica Coope is Associate Professor of History at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA. Her main research field is the history of Islamic Spain, with an emphasis on relations among Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Her books include The Martyrs of Córdoba: Community and Family Conflict in an Age of Mass Conversion (1995) and The Most Noble of People: Religious, Ethnic, and Gender Identity in Muslim Spain (2017). Her projects include a study of how women were depicted in medieval Spanish religious polemic. William Granara is Gordon Gray Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, USA. His areas of teaching and research deal with the medieval and modern Arab Mediterranean, and he has written numerous articles on Muslim Sicily and modern Arabic fiction from Egypt and North Africa. He is currently the Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard and the founding director of Harvard Summer School’s Program on Arab-European Encounters in the Colonial and Postcolonial Mediterranean. He has translated and written three Arabic novels into English, and his Narrating Muslim Sicily: War and Peace in the Medieval Mediterranean World will be released in March 2019. Enric Guinot Rodríguez is Professor of History in the Department of Medieval History at the Universitat de València, Spain. His current research focuses on the processes of colonization in the medieval Crown of Aragón and its effects on rural landscapes and irrigation systems. He is the author of Los valencianos de tiempos de Jaime I (2011) and numerous articles on irrigation and feudalism in Valencia and Catalonia. Doug Kierdorf is Lecturer in History at Bentley University, USA. His research focuses on urban life and government in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Castellón de la Plana, a town in the post-Conquest NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxi

Kingdom of Valencia. He studies the economy and social structure of the period and the establishment of a municipal identity and interurban and economic relationships between towns of the Kingdom, the Crown, and the metropolis of Valencia. Helena Kirchner is Associate Professor of History at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. Her areas of specialization are medieval rural history and archeology and the archeology of al-Andalus. She is the Director of the Agrarian Medieval Archaeology Research Group (ARAEM) and the co–Principal Investigator of “Productions and Agrarian Spaces in Late Medieval Iberian Societies: Historical Archaeological Approaches (12th–16th Centuries)” research project, financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, and the Principal Investigator of “Al-Andalus Cities and the Effect of Feudal Conquest in Their Urban and Agrarian Landscape (Cases of Tortosa and Balaguer),” financed by the Catalonia Government. Michael McVaugh is William Smith Wells Professor of History (Emeritus) at the University of North Carolina, USA. He has written widely on the history of medicine in Catalunya and Languedoc (Montpellier) in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Mark D. Meyerson is Professor of History and Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, USA. Among his publications are The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel: Between Coexistence and Crusade (1991) and A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth-Century Spain (2004). He is completing Of Bloodshed and Baptism: Violence, Religion, and the Transformation of Spain, 1300–1614. Jonathan Ray is the Samuel Eig Associate Professor of Jewish Studies in the Theology Department at Georgetown University, USA. He is the author of The Sephardic Frontier: The “Reconquista” and the Jewish Community in Medieval Iberia (2006) and After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry (2013), as well as several articles on Jewish history and culture in the medieval and early modern world. Julio Samsó is Professor Emeritus of Arabic Studies at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. His research has always concentrated on the history of medieval astronomy and astrology, particularly in the Iberian Peninsula (al-Andalus and the Northern Christian kingdoms) and in the Maghrib. xxii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

John Tolan is Professor of History at the Université de Nantes, France, co-director of the Institut du Pluralisme Religieux et de l’Athéisme (IPRA), and member of the Academia Europaea. He is the author of numerous articles and books in medieval history and cultural studies, including Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers (1993), Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (2002), Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages (2008), Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter (2009), and Faces of Muhammad: A History of Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam (2018). Josep Torró is Associate Professor of Medieval History at the Universitat de València, Spain. His areas of specialization are conquest and settler colonization in the medieval Mediterranean, Muslim peasants under Latin Christian rule, and medieval coinage in the Crown of Aragón. He is the main researcher for the Landscapes of Conquest Medieval History Research Group (http://landscapesofconquest.org/). Lydia M. Walker is a Humanities Center Fellow at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, USA, where she recently completed her Ph.D. Her thesis, “Ad sanctos ultimi temporis: Lay Spirituality, Crusading, and Reform in the Sermons of Jacques de Vitry,” examines Latin Christian polemics and what they reveal about the formation of gender and religious identity in the context of thirteenth-century crusading movements. Her interests include religious identity, gender and crusade, and preaching in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Michael C. Weber After a career of teaching at Salem State University and Gettysburg College, USA, Weber retired in 2015 and lives in Virginia. His research focuses on the translation and transmission of Arabic science and philosophy to Latin Europe with a focus on the dissemination of al-Farabi. Kenneth Baxter Wolf is the John Sutton Miner Professor of History and Professor of Classics at Pomona College, USA, specializing in medieval Mediterranean history. He is the author of a number of books on Christian-Muslim interaction and Christian sanctity. List of Figures

Fig. 1 Thomas F. Glick: Honorary Judge of the Tribunal of Waters, in Judicial Robes, Plaza de la Virgen, Valencia. Courtesy of Francesc Vera Casas v Fig. 1.1 Glick teaching with Abdu Rozi in a course on Islamic Spain, King Saud University, Riyadh, November 1993. (Courtesy of Thomas Glick) 56 Fig. 1.2 Glick’s “castle” in Spain, his home in Gorga (Alicante), 1980–2010. (Courtesy of Thomas Glick) 56 Fig. 2.1 Sketch of an irrigated area located nearby a torrent with a watermill. (Courtesy of author) 68 Fig. 2.2 Puigcerdà (Catalonia, Spain): successive construction phases of hydraulic systems in the Aravó River valley. (Courtesy of author) 72 Fig. 2.3 Sketches of different types of Andalusi hydraulic systems. (Courtesy of author) 84 Fig. 7.1 The castles held by al-Tābisı̄ and his relatives (1258–1270). Partially based on Galiana (2011). (Courtesy of author) 197 Fig. 7.2 Genealogy: al-Tābisı̄ and his descendants (1238–1283), a hypothesis. (Courtesy of author) 221

xxiii List of Tables

Table 14.1 Planetary positions for the conjunction of 1326 385 Table 14.2 Bar Ḥ iyya’s conjunctions calculated with al-Battānī’s zīj 388 Table 14.3 Horoscope of the advent of Islam according to Bar H. iyya and early Islamic astrological sources 389

xxv CHAPTER 1

“Ever Since Castro: Thomas F. Glick, Medieval Spain, and Convivencia”

Mark T. Abate

For all of my scholarly career I have traveled the interface between two cultures, Islamic and Spanish, able to identify strongly with both, but still feeling not quite at home with either. I was trained as an Islamist; my research has largely fallen on the Spanish side. For these reasons, possibly, my notion about what is distinctive or even normative about medieval society may differ considerably from those of either the Islamist or the Hispanist. Only by identifying with both cultures, and with one no more than the other, can the historian entertain any reasonable hopes of filtering out some of the more flagrant biases that have so persistently plagued this area of investigation.1 (Thomas F. Glick)

1 Glick, Thomas F. Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages: Comparative Perspectives on Social and Cultural Formation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979, 4.

M. T. Abate (*) Westfield State University, Westfield, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected]

Father Burns once wrote that “If history is at bottom biographies, so also is historiography.”2 This point very much informs the following examination of two interrelated subjects: Thomas F. Glick’s development as a historian and his place in the “convivencia debate.” Sadly, though necessarily, both are treated here with much more brevity than they deserve. No chapter-length study could provide more than a basic sketch. Glick’s publications currently tally at 10 monographs, 319 edited volumes, 197 articles, 257 encyclopedia entries, and 187 book reviews. These are roughly distributed among the fields of medieval history and the history of modern science, and these could in turn be subdivided into works on technology, science, archeology, Spain, Latin America, and so on. He has held appointments as a Professor of History, in the History of Science, the History of Technology, Professor of Geography, and even as a Professor of Gastronomy. He is seen as an Arabist by some, a Hispanist by others, and a geographer by still others. A junior colleague that he met at a conference once thought that Thomas Glick, the author of Einstein in Spain, was the son of the medievalist Thomas Glick who wrote Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages. They were, of course, the same Thomas Glick though the initial confusion is perfectly understandable. Planning a collection of chapters in honor of such a scholar was difficult from the beginning. What would be the theme? Taking the easy way out, I kicked the can to Don Tomas himself and made him decide. The decision did not take long. It was medieval Spain, with an emphasis on cross-cultural contacts, what has been generally referred to, at least up until now, as convivencia. He has always self-identified as a medievalist, even during periods when he was working almost exclusively on modern subjects. Tough decisions had to be made regarding what to include and what to pass over in trying to summarize Glick’s career and work. After a lot of second-guessing, I decided to focus on Glick’s development as a historian up until about 1980 and to mention only a few examples of his works after that time. Much more was to come after 1980, of course, as at this point he had not even reached mid-career. His controversial work on archeology, for example, was still a long way off. Most but not all of his work on modern science, sadly, has been omitted. But his main interests

2 Burns, R.I. “Mudejar Parallel Societies: Anglophone Historiography and Spanish Context, 1975–2000.” In Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Interaction and Cultural Change, ed. Mark Meyerson and Edward English. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000, 92. “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 3 and distinctive methodological approach had already crystallized by 1980. Most of his work has pursued, through an ever-widening array of vistas over the years, a small set of interests that had already emerged by the time he received his doctorate. Most of them—possibly all of them— in one way or another are connected to the issue of diffusion. Methodologically, his approach to these interests gestated throughout his graduate career and reached maturity during his years at the University of Texas at Austin in the late 1960s and early 1970s (at least for his medieval interests). He continued experimenting with and revising models but the basic structure and rationale of his approach remained essentially the same. By 1980 he had already encountered, either personally or through their writings, most of the scholars who came to exert the greatest impact on his development and thought. It was also around 1980 that the majority of his attention became focused on the history of modern science and continued to be until the turn of the decade. The year 1980 was also a sabbatical year for Glick: his magnum opus in medieval history, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages: Comparative Perspectives on Social and Cultural Formation, had just been released and he left for Valencia to continue research on Freudian theory in Spain (but as it turned out, he began his Einstein project instead). For all these reasons 1980 seemed a logical, manageable, necessary if imperfect terminus. Despite the fact that medieval history is the subject of all the essays collected in this volume, and hence my focus here, something had to be said about his work in the history of modern science. I have discussed a few aspects of it—again with regretful brevity—which I think will be of interest to those who appreciate Glick’s unique approach to history even if it is outside the field.

Cleveland to Harvard: Sartonism Thomas F. Glick was born in Cleveland Heights Ohio and his early education was at the Hawken School and Western Reserve Academy. His interests both in history and in science emerged early: in grammar school he read, cover to cover, the World Book encyclopedia during leisure time and in high school his love of reptiles and amphibians led him to start a Herpetology Club. Studying Latin for six years, rare for students outside Catholic schools, was the most important part of his early education, an experience he credits not only with the obvious advantages for later learning Romance languages but with habituating logical thought through 4 M. T. ABATE its declensions and conjugations. Glick’s initial interest in Spain began with a love of the language itself, instilled in him by a gifted high school Spanish teacher. Two European tours with his parents in 1954 and 1956 clinched his fascination with Spain. The land itself, its landscapes and cityscapes, stood out in particular: the mixed urban architecture of the south, rural agrarian communities with the feel of a lost age, and of course the meseta. When in a humorous mood he might joke, tongue in cheek, that a crush on Sophia Loren in the film El Cid might have played some small role in the development of his love for all things Spanish. In 1956 Glick began the B.A. program at Harvard as a sophomore focusing on Medieval Europe. After an underwhelming experience in his medieval sophomore tutorial, he decided to explore biology, taking courses and spending his spare time in the basement of the Museum of Comparative Zoology identifying or “keying out” specimens from its uncatalogued collection of Cuban lizards. Harvard’s biology curriculum was not yet fully organized along the lines of evolutionary thinking; it was heavily descriptive in approach and insufficiently theorized for Glick’s lik- ing. If the department then was what it became a decade later, during the days of George Simpson and Stephen Jay Gould, he quite likely would have become a biologist rather than a historian. Interested in history and in biology, but not inclined to commit fully to either, Glick heard of the new “History and Science” program. Modeled partly on Harvard’s “History and Literature” concentration, its course credits were divided evenly between history and science, with students focusing on a particular field in history and a discipline in the sciences. As an honors program it required an undergraduate thesis and granted the widest of access to the stacks. Widest of access to the stacks was needed for the History and Science program: even George Sarton’s works back then were locked up in a remote cage in the bowels of the stacks and required special permission to use. The program was a perfect fit: it combined his main interests in a synergistic way and, in practical terms, all his course credits would transfer into the concentration seamlessly.3

3 For the “History and Science” program at Harvard University and I. Bernard Cohen, see Thackray, Arnold, and Robert K. Merton, “On Discipline Building: The Paradoxes of George Sarton.” Isis, Vol. 63, No. 4 (December 1972), 472–495; Harvey, Joy, “History of Science, History and Science, and Natural Sciences: Undergraduate Teaching of the History of Science at Harvard, 1938–1970.” Isis, Vol. 90, Supplement (1999), S270–S294; Dauben, Joseph W., Mary Gleason, and George E. Smith, “Seven Decades of History of Science: “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 5

Admission into the “History and Science” program required a prelimi- nary interview with its director I. Bernard Cohen. Cohen was a brilliant and colorful character. After briefly studying veterinary medicine and doing a short stint as a prohibition rum-runner, he enrolled at Harvard to study chemistry and then switched to a concentration in mathematics and physics. After a seminar with George Sarton in his senior year, he decided to pursue graduate work in the history of science and became Sarton’s chief disciple. After the war Cohen became the first American to receive a Ph.D. in the history of science and eventually Sarton’s successor at Harvard. Cohen was a Newton scholar who had a deep passion for Spanish culture that ranged from a love of flamenco to an affinity for its leftist revolutionary politics. Before Glick’s interview concluded, Cohen was excitedly pulling Spanish and Latin American science titles from his shelves and handing them to Glick. Hispanism at the time was not an overly appreciated field: their shared love for Spain created a bond and from then on Cohen always encouraged him to pursue subjects on the history of science in Spain. Glick recruited his roommate Michael McVaugh, who was studying chemistry, to join the program with him. Cohen was an energetic lecturer with a comical flair: he concluded lectures on Newton, for example, by deploying a fire extinguisher while standing on a red wagon to demonstrate Newton’s third law as he flew out of the classroom. Glick and McVaugh had never heard anything like the lectures in the history of science course and they discussed the material endlessly. Both became medievalists focusing on the history of science in Spain and lifelong friends. The “History and Science” program at Harvard was the first of its kind. It was founded by George Sarton, the “father” of the history of science, who more than anyone else transformed the history of science from the personal pursuits of a handful of interested scholars into a formal and institutionalized discipline. Sarton was a pioneer and, like most pioneers, spent much of his life on the margins looking for terra firma to call home. Born in Ghent in 1884, he loved the sciences, was devoted to the humanities, and was a committed liberal. He studied philosophy at the University of Ghent but dropped out “in disgust” to spend a year in private study. When he returned it was to study chemistry and mathematics. After receiving his doctorate in 1911, with a dissertation on Newtonian mechanics, he bought a home in Wondelgem outside Ghent where he began the process

I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003), Second Editor of Isis.” Isis, Vol. 100, No. 1 (March 2009), 4–35. 6 M. T. ABATE of promoting his vision of the history of science. Three years later the property was commandeered by German troops. Sarton buried his books and notes in the garden and fled Belgium. In the USA, Sarton initially got by on a patchwork of lectureships and temporary positions until he received a two-year appointment at Harvard lecturing on the history of science (though technically serving as a lecturer in philosophy) that eventually became permanent, if anomalous, through financial support from the Carnegie Institution.4 The Sartonian vision was foundational for Glick’s intellectual development. He was a Sartonian from the time he completed his B.A. and he still is today. He never met Sarton (who died the year before Glick arrived at Harvard) but he was thoroughly initiated into his views on science and culture through Cohen, through reading Sarton’s entire Introduction to the History of Science as an undergraduate (five massive tomes which stacked up stretch from the floor to the bottom of my knee), and then again through studying with José Millás Vallicrosa and Juan Vernet in Barcelona.5 Sarton’s approach, which he called the “New Humanism,” stressed the need to include the history of science among the traditionally studied “humanities” such as art, literature, philosophy, and music. Science was a crucial aspect of the human experience, the “human task par excellence” if measured objectively as it is the only human activity that is truly cumulative and has progressed over time. Historically the pursuit of science illus- trated, more than any other endeavor, the fundamental unity of humanity across cultural, civilizational, and even temporal lines. Despite the sometimes vast differences among peoples from various regions and periods, there have always been among them groups of scholars committed to studying the natural world. The regularities of natural phenomena provided a constant for scientists of all backgrounds: as they faced the same problems posed by nature they often formulated similar questions, devised comparable explanations, and made common discoveries—sometimes simultaneously—by methods that could be similar but were often quite

4 On George Sarton, see the George Sarton Memorial Issue of Isis, Vol. 48, No. 3 (September 1957), especially Cohen, Bernard I. “George Sarton,” 286–300; Thackray, Arnold and Robert K. Merton, “On Discipline Building: The Paradoxes of George Sarton.” Isis, Vol. 63, No. 4 (December 1972), 472–495; Glick, Thomas F. “George Sarton” in Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, ed. Kelly Boyd. London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999, 1052–1053. 5 Sarton, George. Introduction to the History of Science, 3 Vols. in 5 Parts. Baltimore: The Williams and Williams Company, 1927–1948. “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 7 different. Central to Sarton’s position was that the practice and development of science was ecumenical, interdependent, and driven by communication. Collaborative links were forged by scientists across civilizations and across time: scholars from one civilization took up the work of scholars from another civilization, added to it as they assimilated and attempted to complete it, and in turn passed it on to another civilization. “Almost every chapter of my work,” Sarton wrote, “will contain some illustration of this.” Science was this cumulative web of insights, articulations, and transmissions and by its very nature was trans-civilizational. The New Humanism, as conceptualized by Sarton, necessitated on one hand utilizing a multi-civilizational comparative approach to scientific development, culture, and practice; on the other hand it required constant investigations into transmissions of scientific ideas from one community to the next. Defining what was meant by “science” for such a comparative project was not just a question of sound terminology but the main organizing principle. He defined “science” as the “acquisition and systematiza- tion of positive knowledge” as perceived by the practitioners of the time (their view of positive knowledge, not ours). Sarton was very conscious of the fact that scholars in different regions and time periods had different views of what constituted knowledge or “sciences” worth pursuing: “systematized positive knowledge” was a definition soft enough to be molded into appropriate temporal and regional casts while remaining hard enough to preserve its integrity as a subject for analysis. This definition also permitted the full integration of religion into “science” as a subject, crucial for understanding its development and meaning in the premodern world. Disregarding scriptures or theological projects as having no place in science would distort proper understanding. “The center of gravity of [premodern] thought,” Sarton wrote, “was radically different from ours” and “until relatively modern times, theology was an intrinsic part of science … all other sciences were subordinated to it.”6 One could not correctly understand Indian science without an appreciation of the Vedas or Islamic science divorced from the Quran. Sarton constantly stressed two related points: the basic unity of Islamic and European civilizations and the central importance of the transmission of ideas. Western scholarship created an artificial bifurcation between West and East in which the former appeared progressive and the latter a stagnant

6 Sarton, George. Introduction to the History of Science, Vol. I, 5. 8 M. T. ABATE alien other. Sarton rejected firmly and frequently the tendency to essentialize either. From the perspective of the historian of science, there is no firm dividing line between the two civilizations as they were united as heirs to the Greek scientific legacy. Sarton became a medievalist, and then an Arabist, almost by accident. Personally his main interest was in the history of modern science, his secondary interest in classical Greek science because it was “closest” to modern science. Originally he had “no interest in the doings of mediaeval scholars” and saw the period as “dark” and as an age of “intellectual perversity.”7 His Introduction to the History of Science was originally planned as a one-volume primer which, in the shape of a “fish,” would have a narrow ancient and medieval tail, a thickening Renaissance body, and a burgeoning modern head. Two decades and five tomes later, he had only reached the fourteenth century. The complexities of the medieval period sparked his interest and he came to see its role in providing the connective tissue between the Greek and Renaissance periods as the central and essential story to tell. The epoch stretching from the eighth to the eleventh century was dominated by the activity of Arabic-writing scholars. Rejecting notions of Islamic civilization as being a mere “plagiarizing” civilization—one that had no knack for original scientific inquiry but passively received Greek science and handed it off to the West virtually unchanged—Sarton saw the transmission of science through Arabic translations (and then Hebrew and Latin translations) as a dynamic and creative process that advanced knowledge. So in the middle of his career he transformed himself into an Arabist and came to believe that medievalists, particularly those dealing with intellectual history, needed to include Arabic in their linguistic inventory if they wanted to be on the cutting edge of scholarship. Glick’s most influential undergraduate teacher was his Spanish literature professor Juan Marichal (1922–2010). Marichal was a Spanish exile and a direct disciple of Américo Castro. Born in the Canary Islands, he moved to Madrid in 1935, relocated to Valencia with the outbreak of the civil war, moved to Barcelona before being forced into exile in France, and then, as the Second World War arrived, fled to Casablanca before eventually board- ing a ship with fellow Republican exiles for Mexico—all before the ripe old age of 19.8 After studying literature and philosophy in Mexico City, he

7 Ibid. 15. 8 Coelho, Joaquim-Francisco, Luis Giron-Negron, Johanna Liander, and Francisco Marquez- Villanueva, “Juan Marichal: Memorial Minute.” The Harvard Gazette (October 9, 2012). “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 9 became a doctoral student at Princeton under Castro, completing his dissertation in 1949—the year after Castro first launched his concept of convivencia with the publication of España en su historia. Marichal was a staunch advocate of the emerging Castro School and it was in his survey of Spanish literature, nine years after Castro’s opening salvo and only one year after Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz’s riposte in España: Un enigma histórico, that Glick first became aware of the “Polemic of Spanish History.”9 “Aware” needs qualification here. Glick certainly got the gist of the debate but read no Castro that year; in fact he did not actually read Castro himself for another decade. Marichal’s lecture on Conversos—one of the two most influential lectures he ever heard over the course of his career—was a primer for Castro’s thought. Focusing on San Juan de la Cruz, Santa Teresa, and Fray Luis de León, Marichal teased out the Jewish influences in their work. This was the first time Glick started asking himself deep questions about identity and ethnic boundaries. At what point and how did a Jew cease being Jewish after conversion? How should “Jewish” itself be defined when dealing with a Converso author or, for that matter, how should Jewish be defined period? Glick was instantly fascinated with the correlations Marichal drew in that lecture between the autobiographical understandings of Conversos and the deep need for modern Spaniards, following the civil war, to find and reaffirm their self-worth. In the summer of 1958 Glick attended a program in Madrid that turned out to be a career-defining experience. Organized by the Spanish Foreign Ministry and taught at the Diplomatic School, it was his first real encounter with the culture, politics, and academic life of Spain. The funeral of José Ortega y Gasset three years earlier prompted waves of liberal criticism and student activism. Ortega’s spirit haunted many of the lectures held that summer as his name was invoked incessantly. In addition to local faculty, professors from throughout the country came to give lectures and short courses in an almost “teach-in” style. The Catalan contingent deeply affected Glick. Miquel Batllori gave a lecture on the “semitized” thought of Ramon Llull and Arnau de Vilanova that so impressed Glick that he wrote back home to Michael McVaugh about it (who eventually became a leading authority on Arnau’s medical pursuits

9 Castro, Américo. España en su historia: Cristianos, Moros y Judios. Buenos Aires: Losada, 1948. Sánchez Albornoz, Claudio. España: Un enigma histórico. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1956. 10 M. T. ABATE and editor of his opera medica). The lecture that had the greatest impact on him, though, was given by Millás on Arabic and Hebrew culture in Spain during the Middle Ages. Most of this lecture was on the diffusion of Greek sciences through Arabic and Hebrew (already of interest to Glick) but it was the prefatory points on the “orientalization” of the Spanish landscape that most affected him. Millás drew a vivid portrait of how cultures transform environments and leave imprints on landscapes that still remain visible centuries later. Islamic culture became infused into the environment of the peninsula and became a fundamental feature of its human landscape. His discussion on the deep history of the Spanish indoor patio revealed how it was introduced to the peninsula by Arabs, traced its diffusion back through North Africa to the Islamic Middle East, and finally all the way back to the typical sort of house that was inhabited by people living along the banks of the Euphrates in Sumeria. Glick was stunned. It cast his already existing love of Spanish landscapes and cityscapes in a new light. This lecture was his first experience in thinking about how interactions between peoples, cultures, and land created historical “inflections” in environments. It was also an example of diffusion (in this case the patio) on a grand scale spanning thousands of years and miles. That Millás used the land as his preface to a discussion on the diffusion of Greek science in the peninsula through Arabic and Hebrew surely underscored for Glick the broad applicability and importance for thinking about diffusion. After the lecture he introduced himself, asking if he could come to Barcelona to study after graduating from Harvard. This happened in 1960 but not without surprises. Two part-time jobs in 1959 influenced the direction of Glick’s future work. The first was a summer job at the Case Western Reserve University library in Cleveland reading through German technical journals and noting historical articles. This was for Melvin Kranzberg, the founder of the history of technology as a modern field. Glick remembers Kranzberg sit- ting at his desk that summer talking about how he could have continued working on subjects like the French Revolution or he could break out and do something “new and bold”—like founding an entirely new academic field—which is exactly what he did. Kranzberg had received his doctorate in 1942, specializing in French history, before enlisting in the military where he received intensive training in electrical engineering before becoming an intelligence field officer charged with interrogating German prisoners on the front lines. In 1952 he was recruited by Case Western University to create a program that would give engineering students a “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 11 thorough background in the humanities and social sciences. Kranzberg’s initial interest in the history of technology grew out of his efforts to fashion history courses for these engineering students. His approach was “contextual”: it tried to give equal weight to issues of technical design and to the historical-cultural matrices in which designs and their development were embedded. Like the pre-Sartonian history of science, the pre- Kranzberg period had some historians working on issues of technology though there were not yet really any historians “of” technology. Lynn White, Jr., whose work on the diffusion of technology later exerted great influence on Glick, is an excellent example. In 1957 Kranzberg and a group of like-minded scholars—all members of the History of Science Society involved in engineering education and interested in promoting the history of technology—met with the president of the History of Science Society to discuss the possibility of having sessions at annual meetings, and articles in Isis, focused on the history of technology. When this was refused they decided, reminiscent of a Groucho Marx joke, to create their own society and their own journal. The result was the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) and the journal Technology and Culture. The title of the journal reflected Kranzberg’s vision of the history of technology as an emergent field, one that would give equal weight to design and cultural context. The last of the “Kranzberg’s Laws” for the history of technology seems to capture this well: “Technology is a very human activity—and so is the history of technology.” Glick became a charter member of SHOT and its youngest member when he joined.10 Answering an ad in the Harvard Crimson in the Fall of 1959 landed Glick his second transformative “part-time” job that year. A professor was looking for a student to translate “Spanish” documents. The documents were ordinances for irrigation canals and were actually in Valencian. It took Glick a while to realize this: although he would later master Valencian and Catalan, in 1959 he did not yet know that these languages even existed. The professor was Arthur Maass, a political scientist who

10 On Melvin Kranzberg, see Staudenmaier, John M., Robert P. Multhauf, Carroll Pursell, R. Angus Buchanan, et al. “In Memoriam: Melvin Kranzberg (1917–1995).” Technology and Culture, Vol. 37, No. 3 (July 1996), 403–427; Layton, Edwin T. “Melvin Kranzberg, 22 November 1917–6 December 1995.” Isis, Vol. 87, No. 3 (September 1996), 501–503; Giebelhaus, August W. “Melvin Kranzberg (22 November 1917–6 December 1995).” Social Studies of Science, Vol. 26, No. 2 (May 1996), 469–472; Kranzberg, Melvin. “Technology and History: Kranzberg’s Laws.” Technology and Culture, Vol. 27, No. 3 (July 1986), 544–560. 12 M. T. ABATE

specialized in public administration, the legislative process, and issues regarding social justice. His true passions were for irrigation systems, institutions of water allocation, and modeling—passions which he infused into Glick and which they came to share through decades of intellectual friendship. Glick later credited Maass with teaching him “how to think” and providing him with his first experiences in creating models for comparing systems. Maass primarily focused on irrigation issues in the USA (his work Muddy Waters: The Army Engineers and the Nation’s Rivers is considered a classic of political science) but he did a great deal of comparative work involving other regions. The research on Valencian irrigation that initially connected the two was Maass’ comparative study on six irrigation communities, both past and present, in southeastern Spain and the southwest- ern US which was eventually published as … and the Desert Shall Rejoice: Conflict, Growth, and Justice in Arid Environments.11 Maass was a committed structural-functionalist who believed that social functions and communal values could be teased out of institutions by analyzing their operating procedures. For irrigation communities he believed that common values could be extrapolated from the rules regulating ordinances: equity, equality, efficiency, justice, and local control. Although these values were held by all irrigation communities, at local levels there were pragmatic trade-offs in emphasizing or prioritizing some over others (e.g., a community sacrificing “equality” to achieve greater “efficiency”). The following year, while Glick was studying Arabic and Hebrew in Barcelona, he received a telegram from Maass asking to meet in Valencia for some field visits to irrigation sites. Together they visited huertas and even attended a session of the Valencian Tribunal of Waters. Since Glick was studying Arabic, Maass asked him to look into Arab influences on Valencia’s irrigation institutions. The short-term result of this investigation was not much: Arabic sources were few and most of what was said in the secondary literature was highly conjectural. The long-term results were his deepening interest in the issue, his dissertation topic, the subject for his first book, and of course his lifelong interest in irrigation. Even when he later became fully engaged with the diffusion of modern science, and not spending much time

11 Maass, Arthur and Raymond L. Anderson. … and the Desert Shall Rejoice: Conflict, Growth and Justice in Arid Environments. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978. “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 13 on medieval topics, he always spent some time on medieval irrigation— mills and milling in particular.12 Glick’s senior thesis—a requirement as noted for the History and Science program—is a fitting conclusion for thinking about his undergraduate work and its relation to this transitional point in his career. His thesis was on Martín Martínez (1684–1734) and the Skeptical Medicine Controversy in eighteenth-century Spain. It grew out of a paper for Cohen’s History of Science 102 course. The conceptual approach and the questions he sought to answer are revealing. To what extent do values or social structures account for a particular society’s relative abilities to practice science? To what extent do they shape a society’s perceptions of positive knowledge? As Glick finished his undergraduate career he was already asking the types of questions he would spend the next half century trying to answer.13

Barcelona and Columbia: Arabism In the Fall of 1960 Glick headed to Barcelona’s “Seminar of Semitic Philology” (the department created by Millás) to study the history of medieval science in Spain with Millás and Vernet, two of the greatest living experts on the subject. With him he carried a sealed envelope containing a letter of introduction from Cohen. Glick told Cohen that he did not need the letter: he and Millás discussed the possibility of him coming to study, personally, back in Madrid during the summer of 1958, they had corresponded about it since, and he was expected. Cohen gave him the “old school” pitch: “but this is how it’s done there.” When Glick arrived he presented the letter as ordered. Cracking it open Millás smiled and said: “Wonderful! Professor Cohen says that you are to learn Arabic.” Glick was shocked. He thought he was coming to Barcelona to study the history of science but unknowingly signed up for an intensive year-long regimen in Semitic languages. Cohen never mentioned studying Arabic in Barcelona or anyplace else. The history of science was not even being taught that

12 On Arthur Maass, see Glick, Thomas F. “Arthur Maass y el análisis institucional del regadío en España.” Arbor, 151 (1995), 13–33; Mansfield, Harvey C., Joseph Cooper, Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, and Samuel H. Beer, “Arthur Maass: Memorial Minute.” The Harvard Gazette (June 14, 2007). 13 Glick did eventually publish some of these findings. Glick, Thomas F. “El escepticismo en la ideología científica del Dr. Martín Martínez y del P. Feijóo.” Asclepio, 17 (1965), 255–261. 14 M. T. ABATE year. In one sense this was probably an example of Cohen’s quirky sense of humor. In a Sartonian sense, though, he was studying the history of medieval science in Spain by learning its most important language. Like Sarton had a generation earlier, Glick became an Arabist by surprise. Millás and Vernet were links in a chain of distinguished Spanish Arabist stretching through Miguel Asín and Julián Ribera, Eduardo Saavedra and Francisco Codera, and back to the beginning with Pascual de Gayangos. Ribera and Asín, the mentors of Millás, both spent their careers studying the diffusion of various concepts and institutions across cultural borders. Ribera was the first Spanish Arabist to turn his attention outside the peninsula and Eastward in tracing Islamic influences on Spain. Drawn to the diffusion and adaptation of a wide array of cultural phenomena (institutions, education, poetry, and music), Ribera constantly argued against “spontaneous generation” of Spanish Christian genius and in favor of cultural borrowing. The Islamic arrival connected the peninsula to routes of knowledge and “oriental” culture stretching back through North Africa and into the medieval Islamic heartland, back through Persian civilization and sometimes, such as his study of education and madrasas, back to Chinese influences. Ribera did not just assert influences but tried to demonstrate them through his “theory of imitation,” which posited a method to distinguish between genuine cultural influences through contact and general cultural analogies that had separate and coincidental origins. Asín, Ribera’s student, colleague, and co-mentor to Millás, was a Catholic priest whose deep spiritual sensibility drew him to religious influences across the cultural border. Sufism was an early attraction for him and his dissertation was on Ghazali and his influence on Marti and Llull. Scholasticism received a similar treatment with tracing Arab influences on Aquinas. His most famous work on the diffusion of Arab influences and their adaptation by the Latin West was probably his work on Dante and The Divine Comedy. For Asín, the diffusion of Arabic and Islamic influences was widespread not only in Spain but throughout the Latin Western world as a whole.14 Millás was a conservative Catholic, philosemite, and passionate— though eventually pragmatic—believer in the cultural values of the Catalan Renaixença. His greatest loves were medieval Hebrew poetry and the history of science. He juggled these two research interests throughout his career and his scholarly output was roughly divided between them. Having

14 Monroe, James T. Islam and the Arabs in Spanish Scholarship: Sixteenth Century to the Present. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970. “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 15 studied Hebrew and Arabic at the University of Barcelona, Millás went to Madrid (at the time the only institution in the country to award the Ph.D.) to study under Ribera and Asín. His dissertation, directed by Ribera, was on the influence of popular Hispano-Arabic poetry on Italian poetry. Remarkably it was during this stage of his life that he completed much of the research for his Assaig d’Història de les idées físques i matemàtiques a la Catalunya medieval which set the agenda for the work on the history of science that would occupy him for most of his career. In 1937 Millás vacated wartime Barcelona where his position was difficult since he was suspect by both sides: for the left he was a conservative Catholic and for the right a Catalan nationalist. Colleagues at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem arranged for him to be a guest lecturer on subjects relating to Jews and the history of science in medieval Spain. His two lectures (one on Petrus Alfonsi and the other on Abraham ibn Ezra) created a bit of a public sensation in Palestine as Millás was the first gentile to give lectures there in Modern Hebrew. The reprieve was short: his pregnant wife was dependent on his salary and the Education Ministry pressured him to return. Back in Barcelona he taught his classes, received the sacraments in secret, helped relatives flee as he could, and helped provide assistance to the families of men killed by the “Reds.” His postwar transition was slow but as smooth as could be expected for one held politically suspect. On February 20, 1939, within a month of Barcelona’s fall, the depuración “purification” proceedings for Millás began. He was not exonerated and restored to his chair until November 1940. By 1941, however, he was co- editor of the new journal Sefarad which signaled his approval by the regime. By 1942 he won the Francisco Franco Prize. Purification necessitated writing in Castilian rather than Catalan which Millás did to make his peace with the fascist state.15 Vernet was too young to be so directly affected professionally by the civil war and generally steered clear of politics. He certainly felt the heavy weight of life and scholarship in the fascist state, however, even if he carried it silently. Glick only saw Vernet angry once: when he mentioned his interest in exploring the fascist leanings of some Arabists such as Angel González Palencia. Vernet exploded and told Glick that he had no idea at all what pressures were applied to professors under Franco. Glick realized Vernet was right and dropped the subject completely.

15 Glick, Thomas F. “José María Millás Vallicrosa (1897–1970) and the Founding of the History of Science in Spain.” Isis, Vol. 68, No. 2 (June 1977), 276–283. 16 M. T. ABATE

Millás fully embraced Sarton’s “New Humanism” and considered him a valued friend. At the Seminar of Semitic Philology he mentioned Sarton constantly, even in classes on Biblical Hebrew. Glick was not even charged tuition for the year in Barcelona out of respect for Cohen and in memory of George Sarton. Sarton’s close relationship with the Spanish Arabists began about three decades earlier. Asín’s famous piece on Islam and Dante came to his attention in 1921 and, after a several year lag in which he “underestimated” its importance, Sarton reached out to the school of Spanish Arabists in 1927 and began a long-term collaboration with them. The beginning of their relationship at first seems odd: so far as Sarton knew, none of them were working on subjects in the natural sciences. Ribera and Asín were not, although the former’s work on music came close and the latter, after befriending Sarton, began exploring some scientific subjects. Millás was deep into his research on the diffusion of science in Catalonia but had not yet published any of it. Glick has pieced together much of the picture regarding Sarton’s “adoption” of the Spanish Arabists and their enthusiastic response. The relationship was founded on a few key interrelated interests and beliefs. By this time Sarton was immersed in Arabism, very much identified with Arabists, and saw Arabic culture as the most important driving force for progress in the early Middle Ages. Like the Spanish Arabists, Sarton deplored how medieval scholarship consistently ignored the crucial role Arabic culture had on Western development (of which contributions in mathematics and natural science were only a part). Diffusion was a central concern for both Sarton and the Spanish Arabists. The processes involved in diffusion, its mechanics so to speak, did not occur through separate transmissions of discrete, isolated aspects of culture but were in a sense “bundled,” with the transmission of scientific texts occurring simultaneously with or traveling in the wake of the diffusion of other cultural phenomena such as art and music. Understanding the routes and timing of the diffusion of one area of influence could help better understand the diffusion of others. Sarton’s definition of science as “systematized positive knowledge,” which considered religion as being integral to premodern science, was appealing to the conservative Catholic sensibilities of Spanish Arabism at the time. Liberals, in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, historically explained the “decadence” of science in Spain as resulting from the suffocating effects of Spanish Catholicism. The conservative Catholic rebuttal was to redefine “science” and to demonstrate its harmonious historical existence with religion in Iberia. This redefinition included theology and posed it as partner, rather “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 17 than opponent, to the rich intellectual tradition of medieval Iberia. Since Jewish and Muslim scholars studying the natural sciences in the peninsula also subscribed to a world view that synthesized reason and revelation— and were “Iberians” at heart—their intellectual output in the sciences were of value in both understanding the history of science and in defending the reputation of Spanish Catholicism from haughty liberal attacks.16 Sarton’s “New Humanism” and the views of the Spanish Arabists had much in common. Millás, however, had even more in common with Sarton as his work focused constantly and directly, rather than sporadically or obliquely, on the diffusion of Arabic science and mathematics in Spain. The two began corresponding in 1929. By the time Millás published his seminal Assaig in 1931, its introduction made clear his deep commitment to Sarton’s New Humanism. Millás reoriented the landscape of the translation movement in terms of both dates and locations. Previously believed to have begun in twelfth-century Toledo, his study of MS Ripoll 225, a mathematical and astronomical miscellany, pushed it back to the monastic scriptorium of Santa Maria de Ripoll at the foot of the Pyrenees in tenth- century Catalonia. The earliest phase of the translation movement, for which Ripoll was the opening salvo, occurred in multiple locations and coincided with the rise of science as a structured professional activity among Iberian Muslims themselves. The emergence of organized scientific activity in Islamic territory, and the translation activities in Christian territory, had no significant time lag between them; they were parallel movements, with the corollary that the diffusion of scientific and mathematical knowledge across the border began with surprising rapidity. Millás’ focus was, to a certain extent, on the historical sociology of medieval science, a precocious interest for scholars of his generation. Science for him was not an activity pursued by individuals but the product of groups or schools working through “articulated networks of scientific communication.” He focused not just on the spread of concepts but on the social matrices in which their diffusion was embedded, carefully demonstrating as best possible master-disciple-associate and patronage relationships. Science in al-Andalus began with astronomy and mathematics

16 On Sarton and the Spanish Arabists and Millás, see Glick, Thomas F. “George Sarton and the Spanish Arabists.” Isis, Vol. 76, No. 4 (December 1985), 487–499; Glick, Thomas F. “George Sarton i Josep M. Millàs Vallicrosa: Una amistat científica.”Cinquanta anys de ciència i tècnica a Catalunya. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1987, 213–217; Glick, Thomas F. George Sarton i la història de la ciència a Espanya. Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientiíficas, 1990. 18 M. T. ABATE through the school created by Maslama of Madrid (d. ca. 1007) and his disciples. Maslama created a research program and educational approach that focused on Ptolemy, al-Khwarizmi, astronomical tables, and the use of astrolabes. Members of this school came to radiate outward to all of the major Taifa capitals, creating dispersed “clusters” of scholars engaged in dialogue over great distances, culminating in the work of Azarquiel (1029–1087) and the Toletan Tables about a century later. Millás took a similar approach to the development of agronomy: it began as a school in Toledo with clear roots in Near Eastern, Greek, and Latin traditions; after the conquest of Toledo in 1085, it radiated out to, and initiated scientific dialogue between, scholars working in the botanical gardens of Taifa capitals. Arabic to Latin translations were generally conducted by groups or schools of scholars as well, such as that associated with Gerard of Cremona. Vernet was equally engaged in fleshing out the sociological context of science in medieval Spain. His interests covered a wide array of subjects, spanning over a millennium, ranging from the diffusion and assimilation of medicine and magic to navigation and automatons. He was fascinated with all aspects of cultural processes in Spain and made creative use of all available sources, whether they were medieval biographies of scholars in the Ebro Valley to determine when science in al-Andalus reached a level equal to that in the East (when young scholars stopped traveling abroad to study, equality was reached) or using surnames in telephone books to get an approximation of Moriscos remaining in Spain after 1610. Vernet was the first to break ground on Arabic science in eighth- and ninth-century Spain and revealed its early Latin and Visigothic influences. Astronomy was of particular interest to Vernet (as it was to medieval scholars themselves) and he demonstrated that much of the medieval and Renaissance research on it was driven by the interests of rulers and patrons, on both sides of the religious border, in political astrology and in increasing the accuracy of predictions.17 Glick’s work under Millás and Vernet that year in the Seminar of Semitic Philology was a formative influence on his scholarship and career.

17 On Juan Vernet see Anthropos, 117 (February 1991) which is an issue dedicated to him as well as Glick’s discussion of him being awarded the Sarton Medal in Glick, Thomas F. “Science, Discovery, and the Colonial World: Madrid, 25–28 June 1991.” Isis, Vol. 83, No. 2 (June 1992), 284–286; Glick, Thomas F. “On the Origins of the ‘School of Barcelona’, Joan Vernet (1923–2011): In Memoriam.” Medieval Encounters Vol. 17, Issue 4/5 (2011), 572–578; Glick, Thomas F. Joan Vernet Ginés, 1923–2011. Isis, Vol. 103, No. 2 (June 2012), 365–367. “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 19

They socialized him as a scholar—and as an Arabist in particular—at the crucial time when he was transitioning from an undergraduate to graduate student and making key decisions about what he wanted to work on and how to go about it. Although he did not technically study the history of science under them, he was initiated into their views and approaches by osmosis, through socializing, and in reading their works. In all classes they drilled into him the importance of context: cultural, sociological, historical, and historiographical. He certainly learned from them that the borders between the religious cultures of medieval Iberia were much more permeable, their interrelationships more complex than most historians realized, and that issues regarding diffusion and assimilation across cultural divides were central for understanding medieval Spain. He also came to appreciate the vast scope in which diffusion often worked: ideas or institutions originating in the ancient Near East and sometimes India, passed into the classical Greek and Roman periods, into the Persian and Byzantine and Islamic Near East, then through North Africa and finally into the peninsula. Millás and Vernet also showed Glick, by example, that scholars should follow their passions and can do cutting-edge work, simultaneously, in more than one traditionally defined “field” or “period.” Millás, as already mentioned, divided his time between Hebrew poetry and medieval science (two fields that seem to have little in common). Vernet was equally devoted to the history of science, the Quran, and Arabic literature. His interests in the history of science stretched from medieval to modern and he encouraged Glick to pursue the history of science in Spain in its totality. Finally there is the most obvious mark of influence from studying in the Seminar of Semitic Philology: Glick decided, while in Barcelona, to become an Arabist. In the Fall of 1961, Glick began the M.A. program in Arabic at Columbia University in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literature. Ironically it was at Columbia where Glick had his first substantive reading of Andalusian Arabic texts and his first formal class instruction in Arabic science. Seeger Bonebakker and D.M. Dunlop were both very willing to accommodate Glick’s interest in Islamic Spain. With Bonebakker he spent a year reading through The Travels of Ibn Jubayr and with Dunlop he read al-Shaqundi’s Risala, a medieval version of cultural geography. Glick liked Dunlop immensely and remembers him looking like a character from a Rudyard Kipling story: a red-cheeked Brit, always dressed in white linen suits, occasionally even sporting a pith helmet. He had an idiosyncratic lecture style in that he read not from notes but from his own 20 M. T. ABATE published works and, if questioned by a student, simply held up the page and said “But it says so right here.” Probably best known for his work on the Khazars and translations of al-Farabi, Dunlop wrote a little-known work, Arab Science in the West, which was a text for a seminar Glick took with him.18 Based on a series of lectures delivered at Cambridge University in 1953, Arab Science in the West was a study on early Arabic science and the mechanics of its transmission to the West (which duly noted work by Millás). The work has had a phantom-like existence as it was published in Karachi by the Pakistan Historical Society in 1958 and was not widely read. Dunlop brought copies into class for students. Glick also studied Islamic law with Joseph Schacht and became fascinated with isnads as a way of conceptualizing scholarly genealogies—eventually including his own. Glick’s M.A. thesis on the muhtasib—the city official charged with monitoring the marketplace, public health, and morality—was his first substantial work on diffusion and comparative history. His first experience with the subject happened by chance in a medieval history seminar with Emilio Saez, the only course outside of Arabic and Hebrew that he took while in Barcelona. Saez brought students to the municipal archive to transcribe town council records and Glick found himself reading regulations on the sale of intestines by butchers. Having become proficient in Catalan while in Barcelona and wanting to maintain it while at Columbia, he focused solely on Catalan texts in his medieval history seminar with John Hind Mundy. One of these was the Llibre del mustaçaf and the idea for his thesis topic soon began taking shape. Glick became fascinated with the position and with hisba itself. As a customary system of law adapted from pre-Islamic and non-Arabic institutions, and one existing largely outside sharia, hisba offered a wide variety of opportunities for those interested in diffusion, adaptation, and assimilation across broad cultural and temporal borders. The vast scope of the project appealed to Glick. Geographically it was a Mediterranean-wide phenomenon. Permutations existed from Toledo to Tyre. Temporally it was vast as well: originating in Classical Greek forms of municipal management, it spread in various itera- tions into late antiquity, the Persian period, Islamic civilization, and then into the Christian states. In some parts of the Maghreb it continued to exist, in a heavily eroded form due to its collision with French colonialism,

18 Dunlop, Derrick Melville. Arabic Science in the West. Karachi: Pakistan Historical Society, 1958. “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 21 in the 1960s. As a case study for institutional diffusion, the muhtasib was a great subject: it had plenty of moving parts (in terms of function and jurisdiction) that could be analyzed as it crossed cultural and chronological borders. In a diffusion analysis, the more components a subject has, the more nuances should appear in its adaptations which makes tracing it more demonstrable and more historically significant. Schacht directed the thesis but was fairly disengaged, surprisingly, as he was an expert in Islamic legal traditions, and played no real role in its development. Millás and Vernet liked the idea and were very supportive. Vernet insisted that Glick meet a still functioning muhtasib and arranged for him to interview one in Tetuan. Millás gave him contacts in case he ran into trouble, which he did, meeting some characters that might fit into a picaresque novel rather well.19 “The Muhtasib in Islam: A Tradition in Municipal Administration” already foreshadowed some of the traits that would become integral to his scholarship: mastery of the historiography of an issue; a knack for quickly identifying its blind spots; use of linguistic survivals to trace diffusion while maintaining a firm awareness that words, and what they relate to, can change dramatically over time and across cultures; a facility with comparative approaches. Methodologically one can sense in it a basic proto- type for the approach that he would use in his pioneering work on irrigation and diffusion later. Two aspects that immediately come to mind are the way in which he teases out of the record “transitional positions” (ones that have no specific documentary evidence proving their existence but by inference must have once existed) and recognition of the fact that diffusion was not always done in a homogenously directed way, that it could be taking place through more than one source, creating comparable but still distinct results that sometimes help in explaining regional variations. Regarding transitional positions, Glick’s approach to reconstructing proto-muhtasib offices such as the rab suq and sahib al-suq was very much

19 The most memorable characters include a gruff Venezuelan colonel, who Glick was stuck with in a taxi for hours, whose spleen was vented on all over his outrage that a man of his stature could not find hotel accommodations in Tangiers (while Millás’ connections got Glick shelter on a cot in the sewing room of a full hotel that previously turned him away before knowing he was one of the Beni Millás), a guide who told Glick it was forbidden to sell him a Quran but added that he “had a friend” and arranged the transaction in a way that felt like a drug deal, and a young kid in Tetuan who asked if Glick was Jewish and then gave him a tour of the city’s Jewish quarter and synagogues while talking on and on about his dream to go to the Holy Land. 22 M. T. ABATE the same as his later reconstruction of the lost irrigation office of the sahib al-saqiya. For regional differences based on particular routes of diffusion, his treatment of the differences between Christian adaptations of the muhtasib in Leon and Castile compared to Valencia is quite comparable to his analysis of the impact of Syrian and Yemenite settlement patterns for irrigation. Diffusionary influences can originate from multiple sources and experience parallel development. One of the most distinctive hallmarks of his scholarly approach—mastery and application of theory from the social sciences to producer deeper understanding of processes—is of course missing from the thesis as he had not yet made a study of it.20

Harvard and Valencia: Back to History While at Columbia, Glick decided to return to Harvard (and to history) to work under Maass on Valencian irrigation systems and their Islamic influences. Reuniting with Marichal at Harvard, Glick was finally persuaded to read Castro for himself in early March 1964. Later that month, while visiting his parents in Cleveland, he met Oriol Pi-Sunyer (son of the former Republican mayor of Barcelona Carles Pi-Sunyer), an anthropology professor at the Case Institute of Technology. Castro came up in conversation. Pi-Sunyer had not yet read Castro but, while listening to Glick’s impressions of him, suggested reading A.L. Kroeber’s work on acculturation. This was the first time Glick heard the word “acculturation,” which seemed similar to the processes Castro was trying to describe through the term convivencia. By the end of the month he acquired Kroeber’s An Anthropologist Looks at History and his Anthropology: Culture Patterns and Processes.21 Glick’s first reading of Castro was still fresh in his mind—raw and unassimilated—and became fused with Kroeber’s anthropology in a

20 Glick, Thomas Frederick. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Columbia University, 1963. The main findings were later published in Glick, Thomas F. “Muhtasib and Mustasaf: As Case Study in Institutional Diffusion.” Viator, 2 (1971), 59–81. The article brackets the points originally made in the thesis with the significance of Castro’s theory but unfortunately does not include much discussion about the modern muhtasib in Morocco described in the thesis’ “Postscript: The Muhtasib in Twentieth Century Morocco.” Vernet arranged for Glick to interview, in 1962, Muhammad Ben el-Amin, the Assistant Muhtasib of Tetuan (who did all the work as the actual muhtasib was at this point a ceremonial position). It is a fascinating example of modern culture contact eroding a traditional institution as the office collided with French colonial reorganization. 21 Kroeber, A.L. An Anthropologist Looks at History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963; Kroeber, A.L. Anthropology: Culture Patterns and Processes. New York: Harcourt, “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 23 way that made them difficult to separate ever since. Glick began immers- ing himself in relevant anthropological theory, and he and Pi-Sunyer eventually hatched a plan to co-author an article. The plan came to fruition in the seminal article “Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History.” This was the first time Glick’s model for cultural contact, borrowing, and exchange appeared in print, a preview of things to come, but that was five years after his first inspired meeting with Pi-Sunyer. In April 1965, after taking his qualifying exams, Glick was off to Valencia for a year to live in a small town in the huerta to conduct his doctoral research on irrigation systems. Fatigued from reading stacks of medieval documents day after day, he decided to break up the monotony by looking into another diffusion project that had been brewing in his mind: the reception of Darwin in Spain. He wrote to J.M. López Piñero asking for guidance on how to approach the subject. López Piñero was a historian of science (with a focus on the history of medicine) and a physician (specializing in psychiatry but not practicing) in the History of Medicine Department at the University of Valencia. His office was in the basement of the Faculty of Medicine. When Glick came to meet him for the first time he thought he was in the wrong building as patients were being wheeled about on gurneys. When López Piñero opened his office door he was wearing scrubs (an affectation in the department as none of its members were actually practicing physicians). He introduced himself as a democrat and mentioned what a pleasure it was to meet someone from a democracy. Their first meeting lasted about 30 minutes. Glick walked out with the sketch of a research project that could fill a career. López Piñero enumerated the fields that such a study should include—from the alpha to the omega, that is anatomy to zoology—and rattled off a roster of Spanish scientists that should be considered. Glick began juggling two very different research programs, just as had his mentors in Barcelona, and began a long-term collaborative relationship with López Piñero on the history of modern science in Spain.22 During his last year at Harvard Glick received two important offers. First, Archibald Lewis suggested that he take a post-doctoral fellowship at

1963; see also Kroeber, A.L. “Stimulus Diffusion.” American Anthropologist, 42 (1940), 1–20. 22 Glick, Thomas F. “López Piñero y Robert Merton: Ciencia, técnica, motivación, deca- dencia.” Arbor, 604–605 (April–May 1996), 57–67; Glick, Thomas F. “Mi colaboración con López Piñero.” Anthropos, 20 (December 1982), 16–17. 24 M. T. ABATE the University of Texas at Austin. His time at Austin was formative for his acquisition and use of theories from the social sciences and experimenting with models for historical interpretation. Second, J.H. Parry, the Spanish maritime historian, approached him with an offer to write a volume on early medieval Spain for a series he was organizing. Glick found it an appealing prospect as no work had yet been written providing equal treat- ments of Islamic and Christian Spain. As both Arabist and medievalist, he was in a great position to do so. The series was scuttled for financial reasons and Glick’s comparative study—fortunately in retrospect—was delayed for a decade. If Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages appeared a decade earlier, it would have been a very different book.

Texas and the Sociologists Glick arrived at the University of Texas at Austin in 1967 and continued on as an Assistant and then Associate Professor until leaving for Boston University in 1972. At Austin, he met three kindred spirits interested in irrigation: the anthropologist Robert Fernea, the cultural geographer Paul English, and the archeologist Richard Schaedel. Fernea and English were both Islamists. Schaedel was a Latin Americanist working on Inca irrigation systems in Peru. English, in particular, was very influential as he was the first professional geographer Glick had met and could talk to about his interest in approaching medieval history from a geographical perspective. Beyond the work of Fernand Braudel and Jean Brunhes he had little previous experience with geographical literature. The two most important les- sons he learned from English were that human societies all develop in tandem with their flora, fauna, and landscape and that no two cultures ever perceive environment in the same way. The influence of Glick’s encounter with English and geography can be seen throughout much of his work, and in the fact that when he left Texas for Boston University it was to accept a joint position in the Department of History and the Department of Geography. Schaedel’s approach to irrigation was purely archeological, with barely any attention given to institutions of water management—which was what most interested Glick. Schaedel’s most important long-term influence on Glick was drawing him deeper into work being done on Latin America. Schaedel was the founding editor of the Latin American Research Review and made Glick assistant editor. Four years in this position gave Glick the full panoramic view on research being “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 25 done in the field, which served him well as his research expanded into the diffusion of science in Latin America. At Austin Glick immersed himself in the anthropological literature on acculturation. Several key concepts and terms helped him develop his own model for making sense out of the various dynamics involved in cross- cultural contacts in medieval Iberia: strategies for thinking comparatively about cultural systems; complications regarding their respective roles as donors or recipients of influence; the degrees and causes of “flexibility” and “rigidity” affecting encounters with external stimuli and their impact on “selectivity”; the relative strengths and weaknesses of “boundary- maintaining mechanisms” to block, filter, or reshape influences that might threaten core features of a recipient culture; the range of variables associated with different “contact situations” that often extend beyond “culture” per se and into issues such as ecology and demographics; that assimilation (a social process) is distinct from acculturation (a cultural process); the differences between and significance of “formal” (institutionalized, planned, even forced) as opposed to “non-formal” (decentralized, personal, choice driven) forms of acculturation; distinguishing between instances of “reactive adaptation” (when cultural traits are reinforced by external challenges) and bilateral or multilateral adjustments over time (which vary depending on the particular nature of the contact situation); and how to think about instances when contact cultures fail to lose their autonomy completely, drift toward symbiosis, and enter a state of “arrested fusion” or “incomplete assimilation” that often results in a form of “stabi- lized pluralism.” The works of A.L. Kroeber (particularly his piece on “stimulus diffusion”) and Kroeber’s student George Foster’s Culture and Conquest: America’s Spanish Heritage, which coined the concept of “cultural crystallization,” played crucial roles.23 Betty, Glick’s wife, enrolled as a graduate student in the sociology program at Austin, so he came to spend a lot of time with the University’s sociologists. He was eager to acquire theoretical perspectives to help him organize accumulating data for the multiple projects that he had on the burners: the Castro/Acculturation piece, the medieval Spains monograph,

23 Foster, George McClelland. Culture and Conquest: America’s Spanish Heritage. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1960. For an excellent overview of the types of anthropological issues Glick was absorbing in this period, see “Acculturation: An Explanatory Formulation: The Social Sciences Research Council Summer Seminar on Acculturation, 1953.” American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 56, No. 6, Part 1 (December 1954), 973–1000. 26 M. T. ABATE and the tentacles spreading all about from the Darwin diffusion study. Acculturation and diffusion, he learned from his colleagues in sociology, had fallen out of fashion. Structuralism and conflict theory were in the ascendant. Structuralism was of no interest to Glick. Although Levi- Strauss had a place in Glick’s “beach-reading” on weekends while studying in Barcelona, he found structuralism to be a hopelessly static approach to culture, which for him is always dynamic by nature. Conflict theory, however, seemed to have great promise. Diffusion and acculturation were only part of the cross-cultural equation in medieval Spain. Coexistence included conflict and a great deal of it. Glick polled the jury among his friends in the sociology department, asking them for suggestions on the best works to read and scoping out what titles were visible on their desks and shelves. Three works on ethnic conflict in particular worked their way into his thinking: Pierre van den Berghe’s Race and Racism, R.A. Schermerhorn’s Comparative Ethnic Relations, and Lewis Coser’s The Functions of Social Conflict. Van den Berghe, before he turned to sociobiology, had a relatively simple but effective bimodal theory of ethnic relations and stratification based on two ideal types, “paternalistic” versus “competitive” systems that Glick found very useful for conceptualizing ethnic dynamics in premodern Spain (Arab-Muslim, Berber-Muslim, Neo- Muslim, Mozarabic, Christian, Jewish, Converso, Mudéjar, Morisco, even Gypsy). Later, and after substantive modifications, it was also inspirational in his attempt to theorize differentials in the diffusion of modern scientific theories in terms of “active” versus “passive” receptions. Schermerhorn, like van den Berghe, was a great model for learning how to model, with his proffering of an “inductive typology” for ethnic relations, ideal types for evaluating data, and sets of variables for fleshing out nuances. Particularly useful for Glick was the concept of “degree of enclosure” (the extent of formal or institutionalized separation between groups) and its particular causes and effects. Coser’s work was very influential as it highlighted the constructive—or at least functional—roles that ethnic conflict could play, particularly regarding the formation and conceptualization of group identities. All societies had conflict within them and clashing groups, despite conflict, could have substantial and constructive influences on one another. Coser’s work was very useful for Glick in dealing with competition between tribal groups. All of these sources made significant contributions to Glick’s emerging theoretical model on intercultural relations for “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 27 medieval Iberia and for his approach in handling the Castro convivencia question.24 Two colleagues at Austin also contributed to Glick’s emerging views on the diffusion of modern science, which increasingly came to occupy his thoughts. The first was the historian of science George Basalla, whose office was right across the hall and who had been Glick’s senior year tutor in the history of science back in his undergraduate days at Harvard. Basalla was interested in the sociology and diffusion of modern science as well. In 1967, the year Glick arrived at Texas, Basalla’s famous and controversial article “The Spread of Western Science” appeared. In it, Basalla pointed out that a great deal of scholarly attention had focused on possible reasons why modern science emerged in Western Europe, but comparatively little attention had been given to how it diffused elsewhere. After repeatedly seeing patterns emerge regarding the spread of science from its points of origin outward, he decided to generalize from them to create a model to help explain the processes. His tripartite model posited three overlapping stages in the diffusion of Western science to non-Western areas (sometimes colonies but sometimes not as in the case of Meiji Japan). The first or “initial” phase was characterized by the non-European region being a source of information about the local environment for Western scientists to consume; the second phase, the “colonial science” period, was one of “dependent science,” that is, a period in which scientists residing within the region (whether of European, indigenous, or creole backgrounds) practiced science but were still dependent on European activity and support in multiple ways; the third phase, “independent science,” covered the struggle for and transformation of the local scientific communities into autonomous groups with their own resources and traditions. Glick made use of this model when applicable or appropriate. Glick’s approach to modeling, moreover, shares many similarities with Basalla’s view of modeling as expressed in the piece. Basalla pointed out that his model was pre- liminary and intended to be a heuristic device to give coherence to the data and prompt deeper consideration and more dialogue, which is precisely how Glick approaches modeling.25 The second Austin colleague to

24 van den Berghe, Pierre. Race and Racism: A Comparative Perspective. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1967; R.A. Schermerhorn. Comparative Ethnic Relations: A Framework for Theory and Research. New York: Random House, 1970; Coser, Lewis. The Functions of Social Conflict. New York: Macmillan, 1956. 25 Basalla, George. “The Spread of Western Science.” Science, 156, 611–622. Glick’s clear- est application of Basalla’s model, which then connects it to revolutionary politics and par- 28 M. T. ABATE influence Glick’s thinking about the diffusion of modern science was the sociologist John Higley. Much of Higley’s work has focused on comparative political sociology and elite theory. From Higley, Glick learned how “civil discourse” (its emergence, existence, and collapse) was predicated on relationships within the elite. When elites are deeply divided into bel- licose factions, then civil discourse becomes impossible and all ideas—scientific or otherwise—are weaponized for their ideological feuds. When they find common ground and put aside partisan disputes for mutually beneficial purposes, then ideas can become disconnected from ideological agendas and can be debated more dispassionately. The concept was a perfect fit and became central to Glick’s understanding of the diffusion and reception of Darwin, Freud, and Einstein in Spain and in Latin America. Higley and Glick discussed civil discourse constantly—even at a memorable jazz concert they attended together. The 1970s was a decade of great change for Glick. By and large he withdrew from Arabism as a field: partly because of the erosion of “civil discourse” within it over the Israeli-Palestinian issue, partly because it seemed generally resistant to the use of theory and modeling that he developed such a passion for. His research agenda moved decisively to the history of modern science, though the issues in this field which principally interested him were much the same as those he worked on in medieval history: diffusion across cultural boundaries; cultural and social matrices which shaped the reception of ideas; and communication and identity. Ideas not so different from those he began dealing with in his undergraduate senior thesis. His work on geography expanded. At the beginning of the decade he changed institutions, moving from the University of Texas to Boston University, to become a member of the “Best Geography Department in the World” which was being planned with Paul English in the lead. In the end it never came into existence although Glick had already committed to it; his appointment at Boston University became a joint one in the departments of geography and history. At the close of the ticipation of scientists in Latin American independence movements, is in Glick, Thomas F. “Science and Independence in Latin America (with Special Reference to New Granada)” Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 71, No. 2 (May 1991), 307–334. See also Glick’s “News of the Profession” report on “The Worldwide Diffusion of Science” session for the Quincentennial of the Discovery of the Americas conference in Madrid. Basalla presided over the panel and its heated debate over his model gives interesting perspectives on debates over the diffusion of science. Glick, Thomas F. “Science, Discovery, and the Colonial World: Madrid, 25–28 June 1991.” Isis, Vol. 83, No. 2 (June 1992), 282–286. “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 29 decade he and his wife Betty bought a town house, complete with medieval walls, in the small village of Gorga (pop. 300) in the Valencian- speaking part of the province of Alicante. It made research trips more affordable along with providing regular immersion in a Catalan-speaking environment. Betty and he came to love the village. Over his 30 years in Gorga, Glick wrote several works in that house and amassed a secondary library—of about 2000 books—which he donated to the Biblioteca Valenciana upon his retirement.

Theory and Sample Works One of the most distinctive aspects of Glick’s scholarship, medieval and modern, has been his use of theories from the social sciences to conceptu- alize complex historical phenomena. Communication across boundaries, for him, has not just been a historical interest but, through regularly crossing disciplinary boundaries, an approach to the past itself. Glick has always been an instrumentalist regarding the use of theory and models: he borrows and adapts what works for making sense out of the data and trims, modifies, or rejects what does not. Some historians, among them most of the contributors to this volume, have a great appreciation for his approach and readily make much use of it. Some, however, find the approach to be too abstract, or feel that substantial applications of theory transform history into something different. Teofilo Ruiz, for example, once remarked to Brian Catlos that “You’re just like Glick. You always need a theory,” to which Catlos responded “Guilty as charged.” After Glick presented a paper entitled “Culture Conflict in Islamic Spain: Arabs and Berbers” at an American Historical Association panel on “Group Conflict in the Middle Ages” in 1970, the panel moderator, Muhsin Mahdi, remarked that the paper belonged at a sociology meeting rather than one for historians. Ambivalence on blending theory and history could also come from social scientists. As a graduate student at Harvard, Glick intentionally and successfully pursued an appointment as a grader for a course on English Social History taught by George Homans. Homans was a brilliant sociologist with much more than a casual interest in medieval history. Glick greatly admired his English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century, a classic study in the application of sociological and anthropological methodologies to medieval social history. Surprisingly, when Glick asked him for guidance in acquiring sociological theory to apply to medieval history, Homans’ “advice” was to spend that time working on Latin 30 M. T. ABATE instead. Glick’s friend and roommate at Harvard, the anthropologist Paul Riesman, cautioned him with some friendly advice: be careful not to get so wrapped up in theory that the love for Spain gets lost in it all. Glick could never lose his love for Spain, though, or lose sight of history. As he once told me, his approach has always been to use theory to help understand complicated issues in history and never to use history as a justification for a theory. The difference is as obvious as it is important. Two early articles in particular really capture Glick’s use of theory in analyzing cultural contacts in medieval Spain: “Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History” (his 1969 article co-written with Oriol Pi-Sunyer) and “The Ethnic Systems of Premodern Spain” (published in 1978 but based on a paper presented at the American Sociological Association in 1975). The two fit together well and can be looked at as companion pieces: the former sought to bring anthropological insights to the attention of historians of Spain while the latter introduced sociologists to the value of premodern Spain as a historical case study for ethnic stratification and conflict. The pieces are also interesting, for comparative purposes, in thinking about the evolution of Glick’s approaches to cross-cultural relations in medieval Spain: the former focuses on cultural influences and although conflict is always lurking in the background it is not addressed head on; the latter, created after Glick’s period of self-study in conflict theory, focuses mostly on the organization of and competition among groups.26 “Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History” was a call to arms both for using anthropological theory to understand the central issue for medieval Spanish history (the three cultures) and for finding firm ground outside of polemics for posing the key questions and formu- lating answers. The article already contains most of the features that were to become the hallmarks of his approach. It begins with tackling historiographical weaknesses: in this case the effects of intentional or uninten- tional nationalistic slants that shape approaches to the subject, the deleterious effects of polemics and factionalism, and above all a lack of appreciation for or even knowledge of the social sciences and their “explanatory” utility. After diagnosing the historiographical ailments, it then

26 Glick, Thomas F. and Oriol Pi-Sunyer. “Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 11, No. 2 (April 1969), 136–154; Glick, Thomas F. “The Ethnic Systems of Premodern Spain.” In Comparative Studies in Sociology, Vol. 1, ed. Richard F. Tomasson, Greewich, CT: Jai Press, 157–171. “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 31

suggests the remedies: in this case pleas for self-reflection on prestructured biases and for more openness in approaching the issues; a presentation of relevant theory (here anthropology and acculturation in particular) to bring precision to what otherwise might appear to be confusing and inchoate data; framing the subject into well-defined periods for analysis (“Islamic Ascendency,” “Taifa,” “Christian Ascendency,” and that of “Expulsions”) as well as considering discrete typologies (different contact situations, formal and non-formal mechanisms, and manifestations of selectivity for influence) for bringing specificity to generalized types of “contact.” Glick applauded Castro for recognizing the interaction between Jews, Christians, and Muslims as a core feature in the development of Spain, his attempt to destroy any equating of culture and race, and as “the first to offer a holistic conception of Spanish culture posited on cultural interchange.” Castro’s The Structure of Spanish History was thus a “watershed work” and in his writings he “has shown the way.” There was, however, still a long way to go. Castro’s intuitions and assertions did not necessarily lead to cogent demonstrations. His ignorance of, and even hos- tility toward, the social sciences often gave his presentations the feeling of “disjointed analogies” instead of demonstrable points. His use of Wilhelm Dilthey as a model resulted in him trying to explain a plethora of social and cultural interactions—which would be very explicable in terms of the social sciences—through German idealism. Glick replaced Castro’s terms and concepts with their more precise equivalents in the social sciences (anthropology in particular) and broke down the term convivencia (for Castro an umbrella term used to describe any form of contact) into dif- ferentiated component types. “Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History” was Glick’s first attempt to reconfigure Castro’s insights into a form that would be more usable for historians. “The Ethnic Systems of Premodern Spain” was a broad comparative study on institutionalized systems of ethnic stratification from the arrival of Islam in the eighth century to the expulsion of the Moriscos in the seventeenth century. Castro, as noted earlier, was the first to attempt a “caste analysis” of Jews, Christians, and Muslims and their interactions, but his Dilthian conceptualization and approach did not allow for considerations of the historical and contextual nitty-gritty of their contacts with each other, the “social ligaments” so to speak that bound the populations together and shaped their interactions. Demographic weight and shifts, for example, were issues that were barely ever addressed by Castro but are crucial to Glick’s approach. The model Glick uses in this piece is that of 32 M. T. ABATE

Pierre van den Berghe in Race and Racism. An important modification made to the model was the relative importance of economics: for van den Berghe economics was foundational for stratification systems, but for Glick’s assessment of premodern Spain, economics could reinforce systems (and mark ceilings for groups) but could not explain either their creation or how they changed. Relative access to power and its regulation was the key issue. Otherwise van den Berghe’s model works extremely well for describing and explaining the emergence and transformations of ethnic stratification in the peninsula. Stratification structures were of two general types: paternalistic and competitive. In paternalistic systems there was very limited mobility between castes. Institutionalized horizontal bars divided ethnicities to maintain separation and preserve superior and inferior status. Any resistance from below took the form of revolts that met with repression from above. In competitive systems the institutionalized dividing bar begins tilting from horizontal to vertical, blurring to various extents the boundaries between ethnicities while increasing cleavages within them and prompting increasing amounts of aggression as more room is made for cross-caste competition. The interpretive value of the model can be seen clearly in two of Glick’s examples: the collapse of the caliphate for the Islamic period and anti-Jewish violence for the Christian period. The dhimma system was established as a paternalistic model with its horizontal bar ensuring the superiority of the Arab elite. In the tenth century the demographics changed: Neo-Muslims had become the majority, Berber immigration from North Africa increased dramatically, and the bar tilted vertically as non-Arab Muslims jockeyed for influence in an emergent competitive system that brought down the caliphate and became normative among the Taifa states. In the Christian period, Jews were enmeshed in a paternalistic system that began transitioning to a competitive one, with marked increases in aggression, at the end of the period. Among the causes of the 1391 pogroms was a “status panic” among the lower-class Christians against the advancement of middle class Jews in the system. In the following century Jewish advancement was problematized further with the prominence of Conversos, many of whom maintained ties with Jewish communities after their conversions, and their ambivalent position regarding competition. Conversos after 1492 were full-blown competitors in the system and the transition was complete: they were still distinct as a caste but could make equal claims to accessing power. The shift from paternalistic to competitive relations required new mechanisms for policing boundaries and among these was the Inquisition. “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 33

Between these pieces, Glick published two works on irrigation that were comparative in approach and focused on diffusion: Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia (1970) and The Old World Background of the Irrigation System of San Antonio, Texas (1972).27 Like most of Glick’s books, the titles are disarmingly unassuming and offer no hints regarding the complexity of the subjects or his approaches to them. Irrigation and Society was based on his doctoral dissertation under Maass. What most interested Glick, and proved most difficult to assess due to the paucity of sources, were the Islamic influences on irrigation institutions and practices. There were barely any surviving Arabic documents to work with. The historiographical literature was highly conjectural and inflected by the (predictable) partisan bias between those who saw complete and utter continuity stretching back to the Roman and Visigothic past and those who saw the arrival of Islam as a deeply transformative experience marking new beginnings. Glick’s approach was to begin with reconstructing irrigation and irrigation communities in the well-documented medieval Christian period and work backwards, taking full comparative note of irrigation practices from Syria and Yemen (prominent homelands of Muslim immigrants to the region) and geography, complimented with such important pieces of evidence as the survival of Arabic irrigation terms, to demonstrate how Christian conquerors absorbed and synthesized the systems of the conquered. The Old World Background of the Irrigation System of San Antonio extends the study of the transmission of irrigation practices to the later “conquest society” of the New World. It is a remarkable and concise exemplar of a diffusion study that is also offered as a method for considering the spread of other institutions to the region during the Spanish and Mexican periods. A characteristic problem for diffusion studies is that societies receiving influences from donor societies are often unaware, or imperfectly aware, of the provenance or sometimes even the fact of particular influences. After influences are absorbed they are assimilated, simplified, standardized, and normalized. In this case irrigation practice was simplified into generalized Spanish legal compilations that were not reflective of the important role of customary practice (which varied by location in Iberia). The documentary record for colonial San Antonio was sparse and offered only “hints.” The hints, however, only

27 Glick, Thomas F. Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970; Glick, Thomas F. The Old World Background of the Irrigation System of San Antonio, Texas. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1972. 34 M. T. ABATE made sense in terms of discrete irrigation practices in the Canary Islands which Glick uses to establish specific provenance rather than just being “Spanish.” Customary practices which would have come along with settlers from the Canary Islands, then, allow for a reconstruction of what actual practices, and negotiations between irrigators and authority, were mostly like in the colonial period. Glick’s expertise in such work was put to legal use in 1976 in New Mexico v. Aamodt, in which he related what he thought Native American irrigators’ rights would have been under the Spanish if written grants had survived. Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages: Comparative Perspectives on Social and Cultural Formation, Glick’s most ambitious and arguably most important work on medieval history, was published in 1979.28 It took the model articulated in “Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History,” augmented by his further studies in sociological theory and geography and applied it holistically to the history of Spain from the collapse of the Visigothic state, through the rise and collapse of the caliphate, and into the crystallization of a new culture among the emergent Christian states as they headed toward hegemony. The project was Castroist in inspiration but not in execution. Castro’s “obscuran- tist” or “tortured” terms and categories such as morada vital (culture) and vividura (experience), borrowed from Dilthy and adapted to explicate his intuitive insights into Spanish history, were replaced by Glick with better articulated terms and categories from anthropology and sociology. Castro’s convivencia is very much in evidence throughout the work but recast into specific forms of contact situations rather than a single generic sense that can come to mean any and all forms of contact. Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages rooted some of Castro’s best intuitive insights in the very social sciences that he so despised. Demographics is an excellent case in point and Glick’s use of Richard Bulliet’s work on comparative conversion curves in medieval Islamic societies went a long way in laying foundations for new culture formation. Most facets of communal life were given due treatment: from urbanism to herding, from commerce to farming, from kinship ties to ethnic clashes, from technology to ecological interactions. The section on the diffusion of science was the first English presentation of the work by the “School of Barcelona” on the history of science in medieval Spain. Diffusion in its

28 Glick, Thomas F. Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages: Comparative Perspectives on Social and Cultural Formation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 35 many manifestations was of course a central theme as well as the mechanisms by which different cultures clashed with and accommodated one another (however imperfectly). The picture that emerged was not that of two civilizations (involuntarily squashed together as they might have been) locked in some sort of cosmic existential conflict. Conflict was there, of course, but it was no barrier to substantive interactions and influences. Clash and communication were not mutually exclusive. Coexistence was not a zero-sum game but one based on shifting and pragmatic balances between gains, needs, and circumstance. Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages was by no means Glick’s final word onconvivencia . But it was in a sense his definitive statement about it. Glick reprised Castro and the “big picture” in abbrevi- ated form in some later pieces—“Américo Castro: La historia como antro- pología cultural” and “Convivencia: An Introductory Note” being the best examples—and prefaced or ended several articles with noting the significance of and problems with the Castro question. There was little new to add to what he already said, however, about Castro’s thesis and its meanings for Spanish history writ large. Like most specialists in the field, Glick’s subsequent contributions on cross-cultural interactions in medieval Spain were through more narrowly focused studies. They dealt with many of the dynamics that the word convivencia covers but through focusing on discrete manifestations of them.29 One work that immediately comes to mind here is “My Master, the Jew: Observations on Interfaith Scholarly Interactions in the Middle Ages.”30 It begins, as do most of Glick’s articles, with identifying and explaining a prevalent blind spot in the historiographical tradition: in this case the assumption that religious ideology has always been the primary or sole referent for cross-confessional scholarly interaction; that it led all parties to assume chronically hostile stances toward one another; and that examples of positive or even friendly interactions across the religious divide were anomalies. The cause for these misperceptions was the excessive

29 Glick, Thomas F. “Américo Castro: La historia como antropologıā cultural.” Anthropos, 21–22 (January–February 1983), 84–91; Glick, Thomas F. “Convivencia: An Introductory Note.” In Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Spain, ed. Mann, Vivian B., Thomas F. Glick, Jerrilynn D. Dodds. New York: George Braziller, 1992, 1–9. 30 Glick, Thomas F. “‘My Master, the Jew’: Observations on Interfaith Scholarly Interactions in the Middle Ages.” In Jews, Muslims, and Christians in and around the Crown of Aragon: Essays in honour of Professor Elena Lourie, ed. Hames, Harvey J. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2004, 157–182. 36 M. T. ABATE focus on polemical literature by the previous generation of historians, which led them to believe “polemic” was the only mode through which scholars tended to view and interact with their counterparts from other faiths. Glick points out that polemic was only one of the ways in which the parties viewed one another (and a highly structured, scripted, and somewhat artificial one), that identity is both “multileveled and multifo- cal” and is frequently modulated for interacting with different people and situations, and that cordial intellectual contacts were not anomalous but in fact quite common. To better identify and understand the nuances of interfaith scholarly interactions, he offers a model for articulating the social psychology upon which they rested. It utilizes Goffman’s theory of the “presentation” of self, the concept of “neutral space” in which issues of common interest could be discussed outside of competing theological biases, and the emergence of an “epistemological modesty” (entertaining the potential validity of another’s epistemology) from interactions. The backdrop is not some sort of “benign convivencia” but one of perceived mutual benefit; the parties have expectations of gain whether financial, in terms of social status, through the acquisition of knowledge, or by some combination of these and are willing to engage one another for profit. In a Goffmanian sense they assume and adjust their “performances” or presentations of self, relative to the rules governing their social roles, for the particular audience they are interacting with. Interaction within neutral spaces, which are like spandrels created by respective self-interests, involves expectations of rewards that result in a contextualized suspension of major differences that are not germane to the intellectual transaction. The scholarly elite of all three faiths had comparable concerns and commonly held traditions such as the basics of Abrahamic faith, the Aristotelian tradition, and the tensions produced in reconciling them. When trading in the currency of common traditions and objectives in neutral spaces, scholars of the three faiths could temporarily and contex- tually address each other as Aristotelians and, under such circumstances, a Christian scholar and canon could address a Jew as his “master.” Outside of this context, however, prevailing power relations and religiously based stratification were in full effect and dictated different rules and performances for the actors. Many medievalists might be only dimly aware (or maybe not aware at all) of Glick’s work on and importance to the history of modern science. Comparative receptions of Darwin, Freud, and Einstein in the “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 37

Spanish-speaking world, the emergence of endocrinology as a field in Spain, or the diffusion of science and its relationship to revolutionary politics and struggles for independence in Latin America might seem as far removed from medieval cross-confessional relations or irrigation as subjects could be. Medievalists picking up works by Glick on modern science, however, would find in them much that is familiar. As a historian of modern science, Glick is an “externalist,” that is, his work focuses on the social and cultural contexts in which scientific theories develop and spread rather than on the theories themselves. One need not have a substantive grounding in biology, psychology, or physics to approach and appreciate his work on Darwin, Freud, or Einstein. Almost all of his studies on modern science, as with medieval history, can be categorized as diffusion studies. The broad concerns are the same: how do ideas spread across cultural borders, what social and cultural factors shape their reception, and how and why are they appropriated, modified, or rejected? Methodologically they have similarities as well, particularly in the use of modeling to bring precision to complexity, though the sets of social, cultural, and political variables at work in the diffusion of medieval and modern ideas were often radically different. The titles of his studies on modern science, much like those for many of his medieval works, are often unassumingly concise or simple in a way that pulls readers into much more than they probably anticipated. For example, as a title Einstein in Spain: Relativity and the Recovery of Science, prepares the reader for what is to come about as much as does Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia. Einstein in Spain is of course about “Einstein in Spain” but it is also, at least equally, about how periods of “civil discourse” emerge and collapse in societies that are ideologically divided, how ideas diffuse across cultural borders and throughout class structures, and how theories become disarticulated from their scientific context as they seep into popular culture. Better yet regarding my point about titles is What about Darwin?: ALL Species of OPINION from Scientists, Sages, FRIENDS, and ENEMIES Who Met, Read, and Discussed the NATURALIST Who CHANGED the World. Just eyeball- ing the title could lead one to guess that it might be a coffee-table quote book. In fact it is an exploration of the diffusion and impact of Darwin on an exceptionally wide array of people (e.g., scientists, poets, politicians, clerics) in the form of a sourcebook that is alphabetically arranged by author and furnished with asterisks, when appropriate, 38 M. T. ABATE indicating the “affinity groups” or intellectual networks he or she belonged to in the chains of transmission and the discussions that grew around them.31 The concept of “civil discourse” has played an important role in Glick’s work on the diffusion and reception of modern science. Societies in which the elite is sharply divided along ideological grounds, as was Spain for most of the nineteenth century, all ideas whether they have political con- notations or not become weapons used by factions. Discussion and dissemination of ideas in such an environment is hampered as supporters or opponents are marked as members of one ideological group or another through their decisions to invest or divest in a theory, and the theories themselves for reasons having little or nothing to do with science itself merge with the identity of factions such as political liberals or the extreme religious right. When conditions emerge leading most factions to believe that it is in their interest to open up dialogue on the ideas to achieve benefits transcending ideological differences, then “civil discourse” can emerge. Somewhat like the “neutral space” that emerged in medieval cross-confessional scholarly relations, the motor here is perception of gains significant enough to prompt the parties to suspend normative stances for mutual profit. The conditions leading to the emergence of civil discourse in Spain for the first three decades of the twentieth century was the fall-out from 1898. After Spain’s disastrous defeat in the Spanish- American War, a broad consensus emerged across most of the political spectrum that the main cause was Spanish backwardness in science and technology. Ideological opponents now had a shared interest in modern- ization and realized that academic freedom and a less fettered exchange of scientific theories was essential for the process. This created a window for civil discourse, in which concepts such as psychoanalysis or relativity could be freely debated in a way that Darwinism could not decades earlier, that lasted from 1900 to the civil war. Civil discourse, ironically perhaps, was robust under the monarchy and dictatorship of Primo de Rivera but began crumbling during the Second Republic as polarization reasserted itself. The civil war finally brought to power the faction most antithetical to civil discourse and thus brought closure to the experiment.

31 Glick, Thomas F. Einstein in Spain: Relativity and the Recovery of Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988; Glick, Thomas F. What about Darwin?: ALL Species of OPINION from Scientists, Sages, FRIENDS, and ENEMIES Who Met, Read, and Discussed the NATURALIST Who CHANGED the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 39

Glick has experimented with several models for approaching the diffusion of scientific theories in the modern Spanish-speaking world. Here I focus on one, written with his student Mark Henderson: “The Scientific and Popular Receptions of Darwin, Freud, and Einstein: Toward an Analytical History of the Diffusion of Scientific Ideas.”32 The model con- ceptualizes the diffusion and reception of a scientific idea in terms of an “economy of loss or gain” in which individuals, groups, disciplines, professions, parties, movements, or even generations might resist or appropriate a theory depending on their perception of loss or gain. Scientific ideas in reception are cultural capital and their value is not always or even primarily about scientific truth for all consumers. For reception within scientific communities the issue of “truth” is the central question but answers can be embedded in a web of meta-scientific concerns over how it affects individuals themselves professionally or personally. Navigation through these concerns works by means of “intentionality” or “psychological deliberation” that determines whether the idea would be detrimental or beneficial to the consumer, whether and to what extent the idea should be resisted or appropriated. Glick’s model posits four ratios or modes of reception: thetic, antithetical, corrective, and extensional (ideal types which do not preclude overlapping hybrid categories). Thetic takes place within the receiving scientific discipline: it engages the theory scientifically and assesses its content in the terms intended by its originator. Younger scientists perhaps have the most to gain and the least to lose in the thetic mode as they are not as invested in the previous paradigm as the older generation. Antithetic is characterized by resistance to the new theory due to benefits in maintaining the status quo and anxiety over perceived losses through disruption. Antithetic resistance can occur within the scientific community among those who have a strong investment in a prevailing theory or feel the new theory offers a substantial challenge to their discipline or in more personal terms their sense of self. Antithetical resistance occurs at the broader cultural or political levels as well where, for example, Darwin could have serious religious implications (decentering the human image) or political ones (such as suspecting a latent anti-authoritarianism

32 Glick, Thomas F. and Mark G. Henderson. “The Scientific and Popular Receptions of Darwin, Freud, and Einstein: Toward an Analytical History of the Diffusion of Scientific Ideas.” In The Reception of Darwinism in the Iberian World: Spain, Spanish America and Brazil, ed. Glick, Thomas F., Miguel Angel Puig-Samper, Rosaura Ruiz. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001, 229–238. 40 M. T. ABATE in the concept of natural selection). In the antithetical mode resistance, at both the scientific and popular levels, is hard. The corrective ratio generally occurs within scientific disciplines outside of the country where the theory originated. It is a revision of the thetic content that combines resistance and appropriation. Transmission becomes transformation as the corrective mode adapts the thetic content, as scientists work through the paradigms, to achieve congruency within the disciplinary or cultural contexts in the receiving country. The extensional ratio treats the diffusion of the theory into the popular and political realms and its appropriation to support non-scientific issues. Here it can be used to legitimize or delegiti- mize ideological, political, or artistic conventions. For example, after dis- articulating relativity into relativism, “relativity” could be used to support fascist or anarchist challenges to tradition or connect scientific originality with artistic creativity through a Joyce or Dali. All modes except for the thetic involve some degree of “misreading” of the original theory as it is adapted or rejected. All ratios or modes, however, are part of the delibera- tive process working within the economy of loss and gain.

The Last Diffusionist What unifies almost all of the works by Thomas F. Glick is their focus on diffusion. This is what the Hispanist, Arabist, medievalist, historian of modern science, historian of technology, geographer, and even gastrono- mist all have in common. Despite the bewildering array of specific subjects he has published on, most of his work is best seen as diffusion studies. How he came to be a diffusionist was largely through a series of what medieval astrologers would call “conjunctures.” Harvard’s curriculum in the late 1950s, its strengths and weaknesses, led Glick to the History and Science program which in turn led him to the work of George Sarton. Sarton’s vision was diffusionist by nature and the “New Humanism” became the bedrock for Glick’s intellectual development. The conjuncture between Sartonism and the Spanish Arabists, which began long before Glick was born, created the conditions that would amplify and expand his interest in diffusion. The Millás lecture in the 1958 Madrid program changed the course of his career and, though there was no indication at that time, would lead to him becoming an Arabist. The Madrid lecture was without doubt the most significant “one hour” period in his intellectual life. The subject, though nominally about Arabic and Hebrew culture in medieval Spain, was really about diffusion. That Millás began his “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 41

discussion on the transmission of Greek science with an analysis of origin of the Spanish patio was not lost on Glick. Conjunctures continued. Through two part-time jobs in 1959 he was introduced to the history of technology by its founder Melvin Kranzberg and to Arthur Maass who launched his adventure into the complexities of irrigation communities in a comparative and diffusionist way. Conjunctures continued on. In Barcelona he was socialized into an approach to the history of science that had obvious affinities with Sarton’s New Humanism but also went beyond it. Millás and Vernet pushed past the “history of ideas” approach to the diffusion of science and stressed the social and cultural matrices through which the ideas traveled. Glick’s sense of diffusion, here, thickened as he was exposed to Barcelona’s historical sociology of science and its receptions. The greatest conjuncture of all came when he returned to Harvard. Marichal got Glick to read Castro and this coincided with him meeting the anthropologist Oriol Pi-Sunyer while visiting his parents back in Cleveland. Sarton, Millás and Vernet, Castro, and the perceived potential of the social sciences for understanding the medieval past all came into alignment. Castro’s convivencia thesis had the potential to explore the historical issue of diffusion in Spanish history on the grandest scale imaginable. Glick approached it as a Sartonian and as a Spanish Arabist in the Barcelona mold. Then he decided, with much self-study, to approach it from the theoretical perspective of the social sciences as well. Castro’s greatest influence on Glick—and it was great—was to present the issue of cross-cultural diffusion on a civilizational scale in an intuitive, insightful, but poorly articulated way. Solving Castro’s jigsaw puzzle of “tortured neologisms” and “disjointed analogies” led Glick to create and refine his own theories of cultural change in which diffusion was the centerpiece. Ironically, when Glick arrived in Texas, he found that diffusion as an analytical concept was falling out of fashion among sociologists and anthropologists. Undeterred, he began to conceive himself as the “last diffusionist.”33 Out of all the intellectual and disciplinary identities he has taken on over the years, this identity—the last diffusionist—is probably the one that best describes him and the one which he most deeply self-identifies with.

33 Glick, Thomas F. “El ultimo difusionista.” Scripta Nova, Revista Electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales, VII, No. 170 (August 2004). http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/sn/sn-170- 78.htm 42 M. T. ABATE

Glick, Castro, and Convivencia The “Convivencia Wars” is now entering its seventh decade. Like all wars it has had twists and turns along with advances, retreats, and reversals. What began as a heated polemic over the nature of Spanish modal identity in the 1950s and 1960s became, over time, a series of clashes—sometimes as metaphysical as they are historical—over the nature of tolerance and persecution. Like most large-scale conflicts it came to be waged in multiple theaters, with victory on one front not precluding defeat on another. Among professional academics specializing in the subject, the final fall of convivencia as a term seems imminent: fused as it now is with modern notions of tolerance and multiculturalism, convivencia has come to be seen as amorphous, simplistic, anachronistic, or more bluntly as a myth that replaced a myth. Spanish scholarship often sees the “new” view of convivencia (the cross-confessional multicultural utopia brand) as having more to do with current North American values and views of identity than Spanish ones (medieval or modern). It is not surprising to find many Spanish scholars resistant to the idea of using their past to carry water for modern North American ideology or romanticism, particularly when they believe there is little documentary evidence to support such notions. Anglophone scholarship, which had always been the main base for advanc- ing convivencia, has grown increasingly critical of the term and its associa- tions: scholars have in recent years “interrogated” it, “revisited” it, “reassessed” it, urged us to go “beyond” it, and have offered potential substitute terms.34 While support for the “new” convivencia is collapsing in the ivory tower—at least among historians—its blitz into the wider public at large, on both sides of the Atlantic, has been wildly successful since the turn of the millennium. In Spain the tourism industry is thriving on it. In the Anglophone world popular histories and documentaries have embraced it. Barak Obama referenced it. Even a stand-up comedian,

34 Feliciano, Maria Judith and Leyla Rouhi. “Introduction: Interrogating Iberian Frontiers.” Medieval Encounters Vol. 12, Issue 3 (2006), 317–328; Scarborough, Connie L., ed. Revisiting Convivencia in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia. Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta-Hispanic Monographs, 2014; Soifer, Maya. “Beyond Convivencia: critical reflections on the historiography of interfaith relations in Christian Spain.” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (January 2009), 19–35; Ray, Jonathan. “Beyond Tolerance and Persecution: Reassessing Our Approach to Medieval Convivencia.” Jewish Social Studies 11, No. 2 (Winter 2005), 1–18; Catlos, Brian. “Contexto y conveniencia en la corona de Aragon: propuesta de un modelo de interacción entre grupos etno-religiosos minoritarios y mayori- tarios.” Revista d’Història Medieval, 12 (2001–2002), 259–268. “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 43

Azhar Usman, joked about it when he quipped that his tour guide in Spain, who talked about the “unique” interfaith harmony of the country’s past, should come see Brooklyn where “you can probably find a halal hot- dog on a kosher bun.”35 None of this is really surprising. Convivencia, like most ideas and theories, went through modifications, losing old meanings and accruing new ones, as it diffused as a concept. One could just as easily speak of the “Darwin Wars” or the “Freud Wars” (as Glick has shown in his modern studies) as “Convivencia Wars.” Diffusion is always a highly selective if not always completely conscious process. Discourse in the beginning decades, during the days of Don Américo and Don Claudio, was anything but “civil.” Their competing theories were culturally weaponized from the start and they themselves represented an intellectual elite divided. Glick’s model for the diffusion of ideas mentioned earlier, with its “four ratios” of reception taking place in a conceptual economy of loss and gain, might prove useful to anyone interested in further theorizing the “Polemic of Spanish History” and how it eventually became the “Convivencia Wars”: thetic explorations, antithetical resistance, corrective adaptations, extensional appropriations into consumer products for culture writ large, and of course the long roster of variables (e.g., nationality, discipline, generation) that shaped investment and divestment in convivencia. The three examples Glick used for his model on the diffusion of ideas in professional and popular circles—Darwin’s evolution, Freud’s psychoanalysis, and Einstein’s relativity—were all “big ticket” items in that they challenged core aspects of the Western sense of self: the origins of our bodies, the nature of our minds, and even our understanding of the time and space we inhabit. They were perfect choices for such a project as, by their very nature, they were guaranteed to produce waves throughout culture rather than rip- ples within disciplines. Convivencia has always been a big ticket item in its own right since it also questions and challenges core issues regarding identity and sense of self. It hits cultural nerves. Receptions of ideas outside the thetic realm almost inevitably involve “misreadings” and disar- ticulations of some sort. As the concept diffused across borders and disciplines, and particularly across generational lines and the turn of the millennium, it is not surprising that convivencia became “disarticulated,”

35 For President Barak Obama’s Cairo University Speech see http://www.nytimes. com/2009/06/04/us/politics/04obama.text.html; for comedian Azhar Usman see “Allah Made Me Funny—Live in Concert.” Dir. Andrea Kalin, 2009. 44 M. T. ABATE that the search for homo hispanus eventually became, for some, a search for homo tolerantia. “Américo Castro’s Convivencia” focused on culture formation and was only tangentially about tolerance. As the convivencia debate transitioned from the quest for homo hispanus to a referendum on homo tolerantia, it arguably left Castro far behind. Are the latter stages of the convivencia debate or “wars” really about Castro’s construct? What I remember most about reading Castro, other than his delightful chapter on “The Archpriest of Hita and His Libro de Buen Amor,” is a series of stunning statements about convivencia that seem more competitive and antagonistic than peaceful or tolerant. Spanish Catholicism was more militant and theocratic than the Catholicism of other nations because of “living together.” Santiago and Compostela were Christian imitations of Muhammad and Mecca. Facing a Muslim enemy that galvanized itself by calling out to Muhammad in battle was absorbed and refashioned in Christian terms, creating the Moor-Slaying warrior saint who served as a counter- Muhammad and a pilgrimage route that served as a counter-hajj.36 The aggressive and expansionist nature of Spanish Catholicism—the sort that would one day be felt a hemisphere away—was generated by Christians whose communal identity came into existence by fighting Muslims while simultaneously absorbing and internalizing the Islamic concept of holy war and its fusion of conquest and conversion.37 Also absorbed into Spanish Catholicism was the Semitic “totalitarianism of belief,” which recognized no separation between religious and secular spheres of existence, giving Spain its distinctive theocratic flavor compared to Catholicism outside the peninsula. Jewish obsessiveness with bloodlines was transmitted into Spanish Catholicism through increasing numbers of converts and generated Spain’s distinctive fixation with “purity of blood” and the Inquisition.38 The crucial role of Jews in scientific activity and commerce led to an intimate association between them in the emergent Spanish consciousness, leading to a general cultural suspicion that intellectual pursuits and economic industriousness were somehow tainted and unbefitting to a proper Christian. For similar reasons a dim view of manual labor emerged

36 Castro, Américo. The Spaniards: An Introduction to Their History. Trans. Willard F. King. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971, 380–419. 37 Ibid. 487–498. 38 Ibid. 52, 69–80. “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 45 from its association with the Moor.39 All these characteristics making Spain “different” were the long-term consequences of convivencia and its final shift from three castes living together out of necessity to the dominant choosing to live and “be more” without the others—who were expunged and partially erased from cultural memory—once the process was complete. Compared to the pride of place given to “tolerance” in the current convivencia debate, it played a relatively modest role in Castro’s convivencia—both conceptually and in how much space he devoted to it in his major works. Castro certainly believed that “tolerance” in Iberia was of Islamic origin. His view on Islamic tolerance was shaped by his view of the Quran, which he considered a “monument” to religious tolerance primarily because of its syncretistic origins that integrated aspects of Judaism and Christianity with emergent Islam, his understanding of Sufi literature, and his view that tolerance was a pragmatic approach to handling tax collection from a subordinate but numerically superior people.40 Tolerance, however, was a perquisite for convivencia, in that it made cross-caste interaction and interpenetration possible, but it was never an aim. It was passed on to Christians in the peninsula, as were so many things, until it was eventually discarded by Christians as Muslims no longer seemed to be a significant threat and the gestation of the Spaniard neared completion. His most sustained discussion of tolerance occurs as one of three examples, combined with the military orders and the idea of holy war no less, for how aspects of Islamic culture were transmitted to Christians. As Castro put it: “each of the three peoples of the Peninsula (Christians, Moors, Jews) saw itself forced to live for eight centuries together with the other two at the same time it passionately desired their extermination.”41 Whatever its origin, this is an old rather than modern notion of “tolerance,” the sort connected to the word’s original meaning of bearing out of necessity a heavy burden that one would rather be without.42 Glick was never a participant in the tolerance/intolerance twist to the convivencia debate. Such a dichotomy made little sense to him as a historian or as a social scientist. Phases of cultural flexibility and rigidity, boundary maintenance mechanism, stimulus diffusion, acculturation, bilateral

39 Ibid. 80–87. 40 Ibid. 498–508. 41 Ibid. 133. 42 Bejczy, Istvan. “Tolerantia: A Medieval Concept.” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 58, No. 3 (1997), 365–384; Novikoff, Alex A. “Between Tolerance and Intolerance in Medieval Spain: An Historiographic Enigma.” Medieval Encounters 11 (2005), 7–36. 46 M. T. ABATE adjustment, and the pursuit of self-interest through individuals or aggre- gated at cultural levels were what made sense to him. In “Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History,” for example, the term tolerance is used twice and the word intolerance is used four times. In each case the word is used in describing the nature of flexibility and rigidity in cultural systems rather than binary values. The word convivencia, for that matter, is used only four times, surprising for what he and Pi-Sunyer originally conceived as a “Castro Project,” and in each case the issue at hand was its deficiency as an analytical term. Works such as “My Master, the Jew” have explored cross-confessional neutral spaces that can emerge between parties seeking benefits from one another in a common pursuit, but this is far from entertaining the idea that tolerance was a cultural value in Islamic or Christian Iberia in the Middle Ages. As Glick put it in another essay, “The Transmission of Arabic Science in Latin and Hebrew in Medieval Spain and the Invention of Hebrew Science,” which won him the Webb Prize, “It is important to understand that the recognition that one scholar’s mathematics is as good as another’s is not the same as tolerance. The best that one can say is that it represented a kind of epistemological modesty.” In Glick’s 2005 revised edition of Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages, the “Convivencia Wars” and its focus on tolerance is not even mentioned in his discussion of changes in medieval Spanish historiography since 1979. Revision of his views on the “Polemic of Spanish History” was restricted to a fascinating and quite convincing reconceptualization of Castro as a Neo-Lamarckian that places the origins of the polemic even deeper into debates about evolution in Spain at the time. On the recent Convivencia Wars he has remained silent. What are Glick’s views on Castro and his theory? He certainly sees Castro as the most important figure in twentieth-century Spanish historiography, regardless of the fact that he was not himself a historian. Castro’s work came to break the spine of the “Eternal Spaniard” myth, introduced the idea of culture formation in Spain as a dynamic and diachronic process rooted in borrowing and change, and focused attention on the central role of inter-religious (or cross-caste) interactions and influences—ones that were substantive and deep rather than cosmetic and superficial—in the historical creation of Spanish culture. Convivencia, in a word, was about ethno-genesis. Américo Castro was 63 years old when he fired the opening salvo of the convivencia debate. He drew upon what was already a career’s worth of knowledge, thought, and insight to explain what was of the greatest interest to him and arguably to his entire generation in “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 47

Spain: the mystery of homo hispanus (different, insecure, and struggling to transition into modernity). Castro’s theory of cultural change was filled with intuitive insights and, in Glick’s estimation, was essentially correct in its main features. Yet it was one in which the “bricks are provided, but the mortar and the plans are missing.”43 As discussed earlier, the greatest problem Glick found with Castro was his adoption and use of Dilthy as a model and his consequent attempts to describe culture formation with no social mechanisms to describe and explain interactions. The term convivencia was used to explain all contact situations with no attempt to distinguish between different types and contexts. Castro’s proposal about cultural changes through cross-caste contacts float as disembodied ideas that are not anchored in the realities on the ground as historians would reckon them. Real “history,” for Castro, was that which unfolded in literature (as it was for both Dilthey and Hegel) as a people became self-aware of their “being” and desired to become even more. Combining these two concepts, he rejected the perspective of positivist historians and promoted a form of “Social Lamarckism.” Glick’s reconstruction used Castro’s “bricks.” The mortar and plans were drawn from the social sciences. Gone were two central aspects of convivencia as originally conceived by Castro: the uniqueness of Spain and the overwhelming sense of consciousness in the process. Spain was not unique in being the only place where convivencia could or did happen. Similar dynamics emerge in similar contact situations (hence its susceptibility to analysis through the social sciences). Consciousness of the processes, a core feature of Castro’s thesis, is gone as well. Much of it was actually unconscious. What was conscious was mostly forgotten over generations as the new culture crystallized—much like the deep but forgotten history of the Spanish patio that Millás discussed in his Madrid lecture in 1958. Over 30 years ago, J.N. Hillgarth noted that “it would be absurd to deny that Castro wrought a Copernican revolution in Spanish historiography, a revolution which may be refined but cannot be reversed.”44 If Castro’s central thesis was Copernican in nature, it needed a Kepler, that is, it needed better data tied to new laws to make a more accurate and usable model. This was the role played by Thomas Glick. So long as the

43 Glick, Thomas F. and Oriol Pi-Sunyer. “Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History,” 147. 44 Hillgarth, J.N. “Spanish Historiography and Iberia Reality.” History and Theory, Vol. 24, No. 1 (February 1985), 33. 48 M. T. ABATE debate was rooted in arguments over modal identity between dueling dons, the mechanics of cross-confessional exchange and cultural transformation were bound to be ignored or obfuscated. By pushing the debate out of its original polemical grooves and applying badly needed theoriza- tion rooted in the social sciences, Glick paved the way for a whole new phase for convivencia, for those who wanted to move on, a post-Castro and post-Sánchez-Albornoz age for discussing cross-confessional interactions in medieval Iberia. That discussion somehow drifted into a new polemic for a new age—the history of homo tolerantia—is only one part of the story. The other part of the story is how the best aspects of Castro’s concept of convivencia have diffused through historical scholarship. The multiple meanings of the term, as Castro used it, have hardened into the language of the social sciences. Acculturation, assimilation, diffusion— such terms and concepts have become almost normative in the field. This has much to do with the work of Thomas F. Glick.

The Essays The chapters collected in this volume offer a multifaceted view of medieval Spain that reflects the breadth and depth of key research interests of Thomas F. Glick. “Medieval Spain” and “Glick’s interests” are both subjects so vast in scope that they can only be sampled within a single volume. Given his oeuvre, three broad categories were obvious choices for organizing such a sampling: irrigation, convivencia, and science. Other than framing these categories and bringing together scholars whose perspectives or specialties were ideal matches, I kept editorial intrusiveness as minimal as possible. With only a few exceptions, the authors were given no guidelines or even requests regarding specific subjects or approaches for their contributions. They knew, far better than any editor could, the best way to use their current research and specializations to illuminate discrete aspects of Glick’s vision of medieval Spain and what would make an appropriate contribution to celebrate his career. Contributions on aspects of convivencia constituted the largest cluster of pieces so I divided them into two categories: “Contacts” and “Perceptions.” Although many of the pieces deal with both contacts and perceptions, most of them seemed to focus on one more than the other. Dividing them along these lines seemed to make the most organizational sense. Communication among scholars—medieval and modern, among disciplines, and across cultures—has been a central concern for Glick “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 49

throughout his career. Diversity of subjects, disciplines, and approaches, was therefore essential for this volume. Glick’s interests and work have cut across several subfields or scholarly “affinity circles” which, although nominally unified under the umbrella of “medieval Spain,” often function as discrete avenues of inquiry that interconnect tangentially (when they do so at all) and are rarely brought together in one place. Specialists studying water management and specialists studying poetry, for example, might have only a foggy notion of what is cutting edge in each other’s field or have much understanding of one another’s methodologies. Chances are good that in turn neither might be aware of the computational complexities involved in casting a horoscope, just as a historian of astronomy or medicine might not be overly familiar with, say, water catchment systems. All were vital and at the civilizational heart of medieval Spain even if scholarly discourses about them tend to be compartmentalized. If this problem is unavoidable in the world of modern scholarship, it can be occasionally ameliorated with Festschriften honoring polymaths like Glick. Glick’s oeuvre has been about crossing borders and bridging gaps of all sorts and, in the end, this more than anything else is what really unifies all chapters in this volume.

Part I: Irrigation This volume begins with water management for two very good reasons. First, Glick’s published work began with irrigation and this remained the one subject that he was constantly engaged with at all stages in his career. Even when Darwin, Freud, and Einstein occupied most of his thoughts, he was always still thinking about water. Second, none of the interactions and events related in the subsequent essays would have taken place without first ensuring and maintaining the water supply. Water management is a crucial and exceedingly complex issue: it is where the dynamism of group cooperation and conflict, social contexts for the selection of technologies, enforcement of customs and legal codes, and geography and the effects of ecological diversity all converge in the acquisition and allocation of society’s most important resource. Irrigation and water management also provide a valuable window through which to view the processes of migration, diffusion, conquest, and colonization. Irrigation scholars in Spain have been leaders in pushing research forward regarding the study of water management in the Medieval Mediterranean world, being particularly active and methodologically innovative. Chapter 2 by Helena Kirchner, 50 M. T. ABATE

“Water Management and Irrigation in Medieval Mediterranean Societies: An Overview,” provides a panoramic presentation of key issues concerning the study of water management in the Medieval Mediterranean world in general and Iberia in particular. The diversity regarding the subject is daunting: ecological fragmentation, socio-political differences across cultures and time periods, and the differing interests and approaches of irrigation scholars make synthesizing results for the field a particularly difficult task. Such a synthesis, however, is exactly what Kirchner offers as she explains various hydraulic techniques, their differing social and ecological contexts, the main historical models and transitional points regarding irrigation and water management, as well as the direction in which current research needs to head. Moving from the macro- to the regional level, Enric Guinot’s “Irrigation and Political Power in the Medieval Kingdom of Valencia” (Chap. 3) is a penetrating study of the transformation of irrigation practices in a conquest society, the Kingdom of Valencia, as it was carved out of al-Andalus, feudalized, and as it evolved through increasing colonization by Christian settlers and expansions of irrigated land. Guinot demonstrates that even at the regional level water management varied widely, “almost system to system,” at least before the predominance of the municipal model by the fifteenth century. He guides the reader through the main models for water management from the initial conquest to the fifteenth century and the jurisdictional layers of authority that presided over allocation and conflict resolution. Kirchner and Guinot both demonstrate how diverse the approaches were to water management and stress the need to understand differing contexts—political, social, and environ- mental—for navigating through the nuances of “irrigation and society.”

Part II: Contacts Contact situations, cultural boundaries, and the wide array of variables affecting them have always been a major concern for Glick. These interests are well represented with the five chapters in Part II, which all deal with contacts and boundaries in differing ways. Law, which defined and structured contacts, is a core feature of the first three chapters. In Chap. 4 “Notes on the Methodology of Studying the History of the Dhimmis,” Torki Fahad Al-Saud provides an incisive critique of current approaches to the history of dhimmi and offers important correctives that can be used to create a more accurate and nuanced methodology. Arguing against any ahistorical one-size-fits-all approach to dhimma studies, he systematically “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 51 lays out six key issues that must be kept in mind for understanding the contextual diversity and complexity of the subject. The dhimma itself has been the subject of considerable debate in the “tolerance” dimensions of convivencia, and Prince Torki’s correctives will be essential for future discussions. Kenneth Wolf’s “Convivencia as Persecution in Ninth-Century Cordoba” (Chap. 5) explores the dhimma from the perspective of Christian dhimmis themselves. Using the writings of Eulogius concerning the “martyrs” of Cordoba, and the exegetical shell game he played with the notion of “persecution,” Wolf teases out of the rhetoric the status and concerns of a divided Christian community. The majority had long since adapted to Islamic political hegemony and the dhimma; the minority report, however, as presented by Eulogius, was that the existence of dhimma itself was a genuine form persecution. Taken together, the chapters by Al-Saud and Wolf show that the dhimma was not seen in a homogenous way by either Muslims or dhimmis themselves. Canon law and its application to a diverse Christian community living under Islamic rule is the subject of John Tolan’s (Chap. 6) “Ramon de Penyafort’s Responses to Questions Concerning Relations Between Christians and Saracens: Critical Edition and Translation.” The text, written by one of the leading canon lawyers of his age, recorded a series of questions and answers exchanged between Franciscan and Dominican leaders in Tunis and Gregory IX on how to minister to Catholics in such a complex and heterogeneous environment. A roster of thorny contact situations emerges: from commercial activity and conversions, to mixed marriages and mixed extended families, to crypto-Christian predawn services and Christian servants in Muslim households secretly baptizing infants in their care. Tolan’s introduction to his critical edition stresses the pragmatism, flexibility, even creativity demonstrated in the “responses” to the “questions” as attempts to make the law fit the tangled social realities on the ground, much as amufti might do for his community through ijtihad. While these first three pieces largely deal with attempts to maintain cultural boundaries, the following two chapters explore two very different examples of crossing them. Josep Torró’s (Chap. 7) “Al-Tābisī and His Descendants: The Failed Integration of a Military Andalusi Family into the Christian Society of the Kingdom of Valencia (1238–1283)” has the feel of a tragic family saga as it illuminates, through a fascinating case study, the complexities and potential pitfalls of assimilation and acculturation. Beginning with an Andalusi aristocrat collaborating with James I at the siege of Valencia, Torró reconstructs a cross-generational family strategy for maintaining its status and power in 52 M. T. ABATE the conquest and post-conquest period: one that began with loyal service to a Christian king, segued to conversion when its service was no longer as valuable as it once was, and ended with the disappearance of the line as it descended into the anonymous lower rungs of Christian society. From the failure of al-Tābisī and his descendants to integrate successfully into Christian Valencia we turn to the extremely successful integration of an institution across the cultural border with Chap. 8, “The Mustassaf of Castelló de la Plana” by Doug Kierdorf. Thomas Glick’s vision of convivencia is not just about the cross-confessional interactions of individuals and groups. It is also (maybe primarily) about the diffusion of ideas, technologies, and institutions across cultural divides and the role this played in “culture creation.” His first major exploration of institutional diffusion was the origins and fate of the muhtasib. Kierdorf’s chapter takes this subject up with the mustassaf of the town of Castelló de la Plana in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Appropriated by James I following the conquest of Valencia, this Islamic office had been thoroughly and eventually seamlessly integrated into regional government by the fifteenth century. In terms of power in the towns, the mustassaf was second only to the justiciar (also originally of Islamic provenance), regulated most aspects of municipal economic activity, and played an important role in the consolidation of royal power. Assimilation always involves selectivity; while Muslim families such as al-Tābisī’s were ultimately rejected, institutions such as the muhtasib/mustassaf were eagerly accepted and thoroughly integrated as the new post-conquest society crystallized.

Part III: Perceptions This section’s first foray into issues of perception is William Granara’s “The Battle of Zallaqa between Mythos to Logos,” (Chap. 9) which reveals a blurring of boundaries between Arabic poetry and prose as forms of narration. The Battle of Zallaqa—rooted in a missed tribute payment and resulting in the Almoravid arrival in the peninsula—was an event of enormous importance that was memorialized in the immediate wake of the battle by the court poet Ibn Hamdis and four centuries later by the historian-encyclopedist al-Himyari. Through a close comparative reading of the sources, Granara reveals a coexistence and mingling of conventions as the poet and encyclopedist addressed transcendent and timeless values as well as particular historical facts of Zallaqa in their own ways. Taken together and juxtaposed, these “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 53 poetic and prose accounts underscore an important transformation in historical consciousness that was taking place over time among Arabic authors. “Poetics” might not be something one would expect to find in court proceedings but a “poetics of manhood,” embedded in interfam- ily Muslim feuding, is precisely what Mark Meyerson tackles in Chap. 10 “Narratives of Muslim Violence in Christian Courts in the Late Medieval Kingdom of Valencia.” Feuding played an important role in maintaining honor and negotiating status within Valencia’s Mudéjar population but virtually everything that can be learned about it comes from Christian sources. Meyerson peels back the discursive layers of two court cases involving Muslim feuds: from the hands of court scribes, to the Christian legal representatives of the parties, to the testimonies and counter-testimonies of plaintiffs and defendants, and finally to a reconstruction of the presentation, publicizing, and social meaning of feuding within the Muslim community itself. Shifting from a “poetics of manhood” in Muslim feuding to what might be described as a textual “anti-poetics of womanhood” shared by authors from all three faiths. Jessica Coope’s (Chap. 11) “Were Women Part of Convivencia?” provides two answers to the titular question: “yes” in that women undoubtedly participated in the real quotidian dimensions of convivencia and “no” in terms of their general depictions in a largely androcentric textual world. Drawing upon legal, literary, and religious writings, Coope shows how women were seen—when they were seen—as propri- etary to, and incomplete members of, their religious communities. Frequently considered passive, soft, and malleable regarding religious conviction, many of the sources saw women as particularly vulnerable to corruption and conversion and as a focal point in maintaining (or undermining when it came to proselytizing) the boundaries between the faiths. “Spain, Islam, and Thirteenth-Century Dominican Memory” (Chap. 12) by Thomas Burman and Lydia Walker is a study in what can be considered a sort of institutional amnesia in the Dominican Order regarding Spain and Islam. Spain and Islam, one might think, would loom large in thirteenth-century Dominican histories of their Order: its founder was from Spain, it was dedicated to spreading the Gospel, it created language schools in the peninsula for missionaries, had members who directly engaged Islam as a subject (e.g., Ramon Penyafort, Ramon Marti, William of Tripoli, Humbert of Romans, Riccoldo da Monte di Croce), and its intellectual pursuits were heavily influenced by Arabic science and philosophy that mostly emanated from Spain. 54 M. T. ABATE

Yet, one would never really know this by reading thirteenth-century Dominican histories about their Order. Burman and Walker explain this blind spot in Dominican institutional memory and in so doing place it within the broader context of scholastic culture. The final chapter in this section addresses perceptions of Converso identity. This subject itself was of enormous importance to Glick’s early intellectual development: it sparked his initial interest in the nature of cultural identity and in how—as well as when—it changes by crossing the cultural boundary through conversion. Jonathan Ray’s (Chap. 13) “‘Although He Sinned’: Spanish Conversos Between Law, Theology, and Jewish Popular Perception” provides intriguing answers to questions that Glick has been asking himself since his undergraduate days. While much attention has often been focused on whether Conversos were “true” Jews from theological and legal perspectives, Ray delves beneath such authoritative judgments to consider the views of “average” Jews in the community and the social factors that shaped their perceptions. His study uncovers a partial disconnect between the rabbinical opinion that Conversos “sinned” but were still Jews and community concerns about what constituted being “Jewish enough” for their integration. Were Conversos “Jewish enough” to handle kosher wine or give testimony in court? Were they “Jewish enough” to marry? The opinion on the street was not always consistent with that of religious leadership.

Part IV: Science José Millás Vallicrosa and Juan Vernet were seminal influences on Glick’s development as a historian of science and both saw astronomy and astrology as central to science in medieval Iberia. It is, therefore, particularly appropriate for this section to begin with a chapter (Chap. 14) on astronomy and astrology by Julio Samsó, Vernet’s leading disciple and successor as the head of the “School of Barcelona.” In “The Astronomical Background of Abraham Bar Ḥ iyya’s Astrological History,” Samsó blends technical analysis with cultural context in approaching the curious horoscopes in bar Ḥ iyya’s astrological history (of humanity in general and Israel in particular). In historical astrology, important events (e.g., the birth of Christ, the rise of Islam, the coming of the Messiah) were connected to conjunctions between Jupiter and Saturn though the strength of significance of the event varied with the magnitude of the conjunction. Samsó tackles the issue of sources, methods, and objectives in the casting “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 55 of bar Ḥ iyya’s horoscopes. After pointing out to readers that “historical astrology is never innocent,” Samsó reveals some computational manipulation that affected the astrological importance of a particularly significant event: the rise of Islam. Astronomy and astrology were what first drew Latin scholars to Spain and initiated the translation movement that eventually diffused the broader doctrina Arabum to Latin Europe. Chapter 15 “A Muslim’s Book and Its Christian and Jewish Readers: The Way al- Farabi’s Enumeration of the Sciences came to Influence Western European Scholars” by Michael Weber examines the diffusion of Greco-Arabic science from the “Toledo School of Translators” to the new university curricula of the thirteenth century. Al-Farabi’s primer played a pivotal role in this process. Originally written in tenth-century Baghdad to facilitate the Arabic assimilation of Greek science and philosophy, al-Farabi’s Enumeration was a sort of syllabus cum “how-to guide” for readers aspir- ing to fluency in the sciences. Al-Farabi’s “syllabus,” once known to Latin translators, provided a programmatic strategy for navigating an intellectual terrain that went far beyond their understanding of the traditional trivium and quadrivium, and provided a template for textual choices in future translating activity. Choices and selectivity were central to the diffusion and assimilation of scientific texts. The third and final chapter in this section shifts from the sort of large-scale programmatic choices made by translators following al-Farabi’s “syllabus” to the selectiveness of a single reader in Montpellier, a young master in medicine making use of a single text for his own personal purposes. Chapter 16 “Reading Averroes” by Michael McVaugh analyzes notes taken by a Montpellier master, most likely for creating his own lectiones and questiones, while reading Averroes’ Colliget. The Colliget was a massive 7 tome/130,000 word survey on medicine that had only reached Montpellier within the previous two decades and was not required reading for medical students. It was new, big, not required, a target of opportunity really for those who thought it might be useful and had the time to inspect it. How did the master approach and absorb it? Selectively and pragmatically. Although such a source is virtually unique, it gives great insight into how numerous unknown scholars might have handled or “read” a new text in that crucial, yet poorly understood, stage between translation/reception and becoming an authority to be cited. McVaugh provides, in an appendix, the master’s notes in parallel with the corresponding portions of the Colliget, giving readers the opportunity to see for themselves the young master “reading” Averroes. Fig. 1.1 Glick teaching with Abdu Rozi in a course on Islamic Spain, King Saud University, Riyadh, November 1993. (Courtesy of Thomas Glick)

Fig. 1.2 Glick’s “castle” in Spain, his home in Gorga (Alicante), 1980–2010. (Courtesy of Thomas Glick) “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 57

Epilogue All scholars have some degree of interest in their own intellectual genealogy. Glick’s interest, however, is particularly pronounced. It is difficult to imagine anyone who has taken it so seriously or has felt so embedded within it. He has published a good deal on his own isnad—the chain of authorities who, having transmitted their knowledge and approaches through the past few generations, make up his scholarly ancestry. He is still exploring and theorizing his isnad today. Links in chains move forward as well as stretch backward and there is no better way to conclude this volume than with a personal reflection by a new “link” Glick helped forge, that is, a short student memoir about studying with him. The final chapter (Chap. 17) in this volume is Abdalghafour al-Rozi’s “Boston Through Arab Eyes: A Brief Memoir of Studying Under Ustaaz Thomas F. Glick.” In addition to giving a great feel for Glick as a mentor through a series of illuminating and sometimes amusing anecdotes, it relates several examples of “perceptions” and “contacts” involved in crossing the modern cultural border: a tearful mother concerned about her son going to the US, a land she only knew from “Bonanza” and other American gun- slinger programs available on Saudi TV; wrestling with the language divide and adapting to differences in cultural etiquette; adjusting to new technology like the emergent “computer” and the difficulty in accessing one in the late 1970s; what a man does when his wife gives birth in a foreign land hours before his dissertation defense; and of course where an Arab can comfortably enjoy a great cup of tea in Boston (Figs. 1.1 and 1.2).

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———. “George Sarton and the Spanish Arabists.” Isis 76, no. 4 (December 1985): 487–99. ———. “George Sarton i Josep M. Millàs Vallicrosa: Una amistat científica.” Cinquanta anys de ciència i tècnica a Catalunya. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1987, 213–17. ———. Einstein in Spain: Relativity and the Recovery of Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. ———. George Sarton i la història de la ciència a Espanya. Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientiíficas, 1990. ———. “Science and Independence in Latin America (with Special Reference to New Granada)” Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 71, No. 2 (May 1991), 307–34. ———. “Science, Discovery, and the Colonial World: Madrid, 25–28 June 1991.” Isis, Vol. 83, No. 2 (June 1992), 282–286. ———. “Convivencia: An Introductory Note.” In Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Spain, edited by Vivian B. Mann, Thomas F. Glick, and Jerrilynn D. Dodds, 1–9. New York: George Braziller, 1992. ———. “Arthur Maass y el análisis institucional del regadío en España.” Arbor 151 (1995): 13–33. ———. “López Piñero y Robert Merton: Ciencia, técnica, motivación, decaden- cia.” Arbor 604–605 (April–May 1996): 57–67. ———. “George Sarton.” In Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, edited by Kelly Boyd, 1052–53. London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999. ———. “‘My Master, the Jew’: Observations on Interfaith Scholarly Interactions in the Middle Ages.” In Jews, Muslims, and Christians in and around the Crown of Aragon: Essays in honour of Professor Elena Lourie, edited by Harvey J. Hames, 157–82. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2004. ———. “El ultimo difusionista.” Scripta Nova, Revista Electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales VII, no. 170 (August 2004). http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/ sn/sn-170-78.htm ———. What about Darwin?: ALL Species of OPINION from Scientists, Sages, FRIENDS, and ENEMIES Who Met, Read, and Discussed the NATURALIST Who CHANGED the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. ———. “On the Origins of the ‘School of Barcelona’, Joan Vernet (1923–2011): In Memoriam.” Medieval Encounters 17, issue 4/5 (2011): 572–78. Joan Vernet. “Joan Vernet Ginés, 1923–2011.” Isis 103, no. 2 (June 2012): 365–67. Glick, Thomas F. and Mark G. Henderson. “The Scientific and Popular Receptions of Darwin, Freud, and Einstein: Toward an Analytical History of the Diffusion of Scientific Ideas.” In The Reception of Darwinism in the Iberian World: Spain, Spanish America and Brazil, edited by Thomas F. Glick, Miguel Angel Puig- Samper, and Rosaura Ruiz, 229–38. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001. 60 M. T. ABATE

Glick, Thomas F. and Oriol Pi-Sunyer. “Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 11, no. 2 (April 1969). Harvey, Joy. “History of Science, History and Science, and Natural Sciences: Undergraduate Teaching of the History of Science at Harvard, 1938–1970.” Isis 90, Supplement (1999): S270-S294. Hillgarth, J.N. “Spanish Historiography and Iberia Reality.” History and Theory 24, No. 1 (February 1985): 33. Kranzberg, Melvin. “Technology and History: Kranzberg’s Laws.” Technology and Culture 27, no. 3 (July 1986): 544–560. Kroeber, A.L. “Stimulus Diffusion.” American Anthropologist 42 (1940): 1–20. ———. An Anthropologist Looks at History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963. ———. Anthropology: Culture Patterns and Processes. New York: Harcourt, 1963. Layton, Edwin T. “Melvin Kranzberg, 22 November 1917–6 December 1995.” Isis 87, no. 3 (September 1996): 501–503. Maass, Arthur and Raymond L. Anderson. … and the Desert Shall Rejoice: Conflict, Growth and Justice in Arid Environments. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978. Mansfield, Harvey C., Joseph Cooper, Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, and Samuel H. Beer. “Arthur Maass: Memorial Minute.” The Harvard Gazette (14 June 2007). Monroe, James T. Islam and the Arabs in Spanish Scholarship: Sixteenth Century to the Present. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970. Novikoff, Alex A. “Between Tolerance and Intolerance in Medieval Spain: An Historiographic Enigma.” Medieval Encounters 11 (2005): 7–36. Obama, Barak. Cairo University Speech. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/ 04/us/politics/04obama.text.html Ray, Jonathan. “Beyond Tolerance and Persecution: Reassessing Our Approach to Medieval Convivencia.” Jewish Social Studies 11, no. 2 (Winter 2005): 1–18. Sánchez Albornoz, Claudio. España: Un enigma histórico. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1956. Sarton, George. Introduction to the History of Science, 3 vols. in 5 parts. Baltimore: The Williams and Williams Company, 1927–1948. Scarborough, Connie L. ed. Revisiting Convivencia in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia. Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta-Hispanic Monographs, 2014. Schermerhorn, R.A. Comparative Ethnic Relations: A Framework for Theory and Research. New York: Random House, 1970. Soifer, Maya. “Beyond Convivencia: critical reflections on the historiography of interfaith relations in Christian Spain.” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 1, no. 1 (January 2009): 19–35. “EVER SINCE CASTRO: THOMAS F. GLICK, MEDIEVAL SPAIN… 61

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Irrigation CHAPTER 2

Water Management and Irrigation in Medieval Mediterranean Societies: An Overview

Helena Kirchner

I like to look at big landscapes through small windows. Thomas F. Glick

Water management in medieval societies and, more specifically, in the Mediterranean, has been approached from different perspectives and with varying attention to archeological and textual resources. Furthermore, several issues are recurrently discussed by researchers and often overlap,

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Research Group 2014 SGR 741 Agrarian Archaeology of the Middle Ages (ARAEM: http://grupsderecerca.uab. cat/araem/); Research Project: Agricultural organizations and Iberian conquests (12th–16th centuries). Studies of historical archaeology (HAR2017-82157-P), funded by the Spanish Government’s Plan Nacional de I-D-i (helena.kirchner@ uab.cat).

H. Kirchner (*) Departament de Ciències de l’Antiguitat i de l’Edat Mitjana, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2019 65 M. T. Abate (ed.), Convivencia and Medieval Spain, Mediterranean Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96481-2_2 66 H. KIRCHNER for example, the origins of specific techniques; dissemination processes; the contraposition between feudal lord-promoted and the, allegedly less efficient, peasant-promoted irrigation systems; the technical revolution of the Late Middle Ages; the irrigation-related Islamic agricultural revolution; the feudal conquests and the occupation of Islamic irrigated spaces; and the debate around Wittfogel’s thesis can be found in most works on medieval hydraulic systems. In addition, from a geographical point of view our knowledge is very uneven. Studies carried out in different parts of the Mediterranean have followed different methodologies and have pursued diverse targets, and the results are sometimes difficult to synthesize. This chapter focuses on the technical and historical features of water management in Medieval Mediterranean societies with the aim of identifying some general trends in irrigation techniques. My perspective is based on a long research tradition, of the development of which I have played a humble role, on irrigated spaces in al-Andalus which owes so much to Professor Thomas F. Glick, in whose tribute I have the privilege to take part. First, research on ancient and medieval hydraulics must consider the ecological fragmentation of the Mediterranean region, as defined by Horden and Purcell.1 Additionally, technical selection processes in Mediterranean societies are not homogeneous, but pursue different targets in ways that affect the organization of production as a whole. Indeed, these societies present equally varying features. In this sense, feudal and Islamic societies approached the construction of irrigation systems differently, despite sharing some specific techniques. A good deal of the Byzantine world, the East, northern Africa and the Visigoth Kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula were overrun by the Islamic conquest, causing the substitution of pre-existing political structures and the development of swift migration processes. Later on, however, al-Andalus was to become subject to conquest and colonization by the Christian kingdoms of the northern Iberian Peninsula up to the eventual extinction in an unprecedented way. The impact of these relevant historical processes on the construction and management of irrigation systems cannot be fully grasped in the limited space available. It must however be stressed that technical choices and forms of management are closely determined by social factors.

1 Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea. A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd., 2000), 175. WATER MANAGEMENT AND IRRIGATION IN MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN… 67

From Roman to Early Medieval Irrigation Systems From the eighth century, there emerged a new type of water system, which differed from the Roman tradition. Roman water-carrying systems were designed to serve urban (baths, fountains or houses) or rural infrastructures (villae, watermills). Channeling systems connected the source with a predetermined point. This often involved long distances and the need to implement technical solutions to overcome the difficulties posed by ravines, hills, or other orographic features and to prevent evaporation (through the construction of archways, tunnels or siphons, etc.). Irrigation may have been one of the functions of aqueducts,2 but always as a secondary role not to compromise the overall efficiency of the structure. The most common type of irrigation system in the Early Middle Ages, at least in several regions of Mediterranean France, Italy, and Catalonia, merely consisted of the diversion of water from a watercourse into a channel by means of simple structures. The channels remained within the limits of the alluvial lands across valley floors. Watermills could be built along the channel or at its end. As a result, irrigated lands and watermills necessarily remained close to the water catchment area. In short, the system was not devised to transport water to where it was needed across long distances but was always built near the water source and consequently near potentially irrigable areas (Fig. 2.1).3 The technical requirements behind the construction of these irrigation systems implied the abandonment of previously common devices: henceforth there was no need for arched bridges, tunnels, siphons, waterwheels, or dams. Due to the short distances involved, no overhead structures were necessary to prevent evaporation, and the use of durable materials such as stone or plaster on catchment contrivances was also redundant. Dug out channels and timber and earth diversion devices would suffice.

2 Andrew Wilson, “Deliveries extra urbem: Aqueducts and the Countryside,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 12 (1999): 314–331; “Villas, Horticulture and Irrigation Infrastructure in the Tiber Valley,” in Mercator Placidissimus. The Tiber Valley in Antiquity. New research in the Upper and Middle River Valley, ed. Filippo Coarelli and Helen Patterson (Rome, 2009): 731–768; Robert Thomas, Andrew Wilson, “Water Supply for Roman Farms in Latium and South Etruria,” Papers of the British School at Rome 64 (1994): 139–196; Philippe Leveau, “Aménagements hydrauliques et utilisation de l’eau dans l’agriculture autour de Caesarea de Mautétanie (Cherchel, Algérie),” in L’homme et l’eau IV. L’eau dans l’agriculture (Lyon, 1987): 45–56. 3 Helena Kirchner, “Hidráulica campesina anterior a la generalización del dominio feudal. Casos en Cataluña,” in Hidráulica agraria y sociedad feudal. Técnicas, prácticas, espacios, ed. Josep Torró and Enric Guinot (València, 2012): 21–50. 68 H. KIRCHNER

Fig. 2.1 Sketch of an irrigated area located nearby a torrent with a watermill. (Courtesy of author)

With the exception of some areas in Northern Italy and France, horizontal water wheels were predominant in the Mediterranean. Although vertical water wheels did not disappear completely, early medieval peasant communities certainly favored the horizontal wheel, better adapted to limited water flows and valley floors, because it required softer slopes than overshot vertical wheels and narrower channels than undershot vertical wheels. It is thus clear that the lack of political authorities to invest in their maintenance was not the only cause behind the fall of aqueducts and other urban running water facilities into disrepair. It was also the result of a new overall approach to hydraulic infrastructures. The colonization of valley floors responded to this new logic. The process, begun by peasant groups, soon fell under the tutelage of those lords capable of seizing rights over water access; this trend can be detected in Italy from the eighth century4 and in Catalonia from the tenth century.5

4 Sante Bortolami, “Acque, mulini e folloni nella formazione del paesaggio urbano medievale (secoli XI–XIV),” in Paesaggi urbani dell’Italia padana nei secoli VIII–XIV (Bologna, 1988): 277–330; Maria Elena Cortese, L’acqua, il grano, il ferro. Opifici idraulici medievali nel bacino Farma-Merse (Firenze 1997); Paolo Squatriti, Water and Society in Early Medieval Italy. AD.400–1000. (Cambridge 1998), 142–145. 5 Helena Kirchner, “Hidráulica campesina anterior.” WATER MANAGEMENT AND IRRIGATION IN MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN… 69

The records left by monasteries, bishoprics, counties, and other sources— mostly ecclesiastical in nature—have fully certified the process of appropriation of these rights and the reduction of the previous holders to rent payers. We know little about how these systems were managed before the manorial take-over. In Catalonia, donations and transference of watermills by groups and of shares by individuals suggest collective management regimes. The possession of a share—a vices, in Castile—in a watermill indicated proportional rights over use and usufruct.6 It was also common for watermills to be transferred along with the entire infrastructure (catchment, channels, and nearby irrigated fields). This also seems to point toward comprehensive, collective management regimes, including watermill, irrigation, and rights to water access. Therefore, we cannot fully support the idea of continuity between Roman and medieval water systems, despite the maintenance or repair of some Roman infrastructures. Moreover, these occasional episodes of continuity are rarely found after the seventh century, and beyond the ninth century they become truly exceptional. Repairs were carried out by ecclesiastical institutions with the partial aim of putting the affected waterworks to their original use. In fact, the location of episcopal sees was often chosen with reference to the point of delivery of Roman water infrastructures.7 For example, in order to maintain the supply to baths,8 the popes in Rome had little choice but to assume the guidelines followed by Roman waterworks.

Feudal Hydraulics Between the tenth and the eleventh centuries water courses of Western Europe were apparently furnished with large numbers of watermills, and there were few free stretches left for building new ones.9 Some permits for the construction of watermills have been found in Catalonia and Roussillon (France), along with lawsuits caused by the damage that said construction

6 Pierre Bonnassie, La Catalogne du milieu du Xe à la fin du XIe siècle. Croissance et mutations d’une société. 2 Vols. (Toulouse, 1975), esp. vol.1, p.461; Jean Gautier-Dalché, “Moulin à eau, seigneurie, communauté rurale dans le nord de l’Espagne (IXe–XIIe siècles),” Études de Civilisation Médiévale. Mélanges en l’honneur de E. R. Labande. (Poitiers, 1974), 337–348. 7 Javier Martínez Jiménez, “The Continuity of Roman Water Supply Systems in Post-Roman Spain: The Case of Valentia, a Reliable Example?” Revista Arkeogzate 1 (2011): 125–144. 8 Squatriti, Water and Society, 16–18, 45–48. 9 Mathieu Arnoux, “Les moulins à eau en Europe occidentale (IXe–XIIe siècle). Aux origines d’une économie institutionnelle de l’énergie hydraulique,” Atti delle settimane LV, L’acqua nei secoli altomedievali 1 (Spoleto, 2009): 693–747, esp. 715–716. 70 H. KIRCHNER was causing to the lands of a neighboring lord. It was, however, rare for feudal lords—either ecclesiastical or lay—to undertake the construction of irrigation systems before the twelfth century.10 The construction of major irrigation systems, under the patronage of lords, kings, or citizen governments, became increasingly common in Italy from the eleventh century and in Roussillon and Catalonia from the late twelfth and, fundamentally, the thirteenth centuries.11 Raising revenue was the target pursued by kings, lords, and ecclesiastical institutions, so that flour and cloth milling facilities took a central role in these new systems. Permits for the construction of channels were given to peasant groups, villages, or towns in exchange for dues generally paid in coin. In areas opened to feudalism through military expansion, such as Valencia and Aragón, new irrigation systems were built while pre-existing Andalusi ones were expanded.12 From the fourteenth century onward most works were promoted by monarchs and city councils. Old layouts were modified and new channels built with the main aim of irrigating large agricultural areas and not only of gearing watermills.13

10 Kirchner, “Hidráulica campesina anterior.” 11 Ducio Balestracci, “La politica delle acque urbane nell’Italia comunale,” Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome, Moyen âge-Temps Modernes 104, no. 2, (1992): 21–42; Sylvie Caucanas, Moulins et irrigation en Roussillon du IXe au XVe siècle (Paris, 2002): 45–47; Kirchner, “Hidráulica campesina anterior”; Jean-Pierre Cuvillier, “L’irrigation dans la Catalogne médi- evale et moderne,” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 20 (1984): 145–187, esp. 153. 12 Antoni Furió and Luís P. Martínez, “De la hidràulica andalusina a la feudal: continuïtat i ruptura. L’Horta del Cent a l’Alzira medieval,” in L’espai de l’aigua. Xarxes i sistemes d’irrigació a la Ribera del Xúquer en la perspectiva històrica, Alzira, ed. Antoni Furió and Aureliano Lairón (Alzira: Universitat de València, 2000), 19–73; Josep Torró, “Arqueologia de la conquesta. Registre material, substitució de poblacions i transformació de l’espai rural valencià (segles XIII–XIV),” in El feudalisme comptat i debatut. Formació i expansió del feudalisme català, ed. M. Barceló et al. (València, 2003), 153–200; Josep Torró, “Field and Canal-building after the Conquest: Modifications to the Cultivated Ecosystem in the Kingdom of Valencia, ca. 1250–ca. 1350,” in A World of Economics and History: Essays in Honor of Prof. Andrew M. Watson, ed. Brian A. Catlos (València, 2009), 77–108; Enric Guinot, “L’horta de València a la baixa Edat Mitjana. De sistema hidràulic andalusí a feudal,” Afers 51, pp. 271–300; Ferran Esquilache, Història de l’horta d’Aldaia. Construcció i evolu- ció d’un paisatge social. Aldaia, 2007; Carlos Laliena, “Agua y progreso social en Aragón,” in Agua pasada. Regadíos en el Archivo Histórico Provincial de Zaragoza, ed. Julián Ortega (Zaragoza, 2008), 53–84; Carlos Laliena & Julián Ortega, “Formas feudales de especulación agraria: villas, viñas y acequias en el sur de Aragón (ca. 1170–1240),” in Hidráulica agraria, pp. 79–102; Alan J. Forey, “Notes on Irrigation in North-Eastern Spain During the 12th and 13th Centuries,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 17 (1987): 119–132. 13 Caucanas, Moulins et irrigation, 48–49, 50–53, 56–58. Two examples of urban hydraulic systems promoted by a monarch or a city council are those of Puigcerdà and Manresa, in WATER MANAGEMENT AND IRRIGATION IN MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN… 71

These new systems were at an altogether different scale and presented specific technical difficulties. For example, longer channels, artificial lakes, and watermills were merely designed not for the processing of grain but also to serve other industrial needs, mainly in the textile industry. The systems dating back to the Early Middle Ages, running along valley floors, left no available space for growth or for the construction of wholly new systems. Such attempts as were made often ended in conflicts and lawsuits. Hence, hydraulic systems built from the twelfth century onward had no option but to abandon the valley floors, already crowded and in the hands of feudal lords. Building hydraulic systems outside valley floors meant a different way of designing their plan and new selection criteria of techniques and areas, because it required the construction of major infrastructures capable of delivering the water to a hitherto marginal faraway location. For example, the slope needed for assuring an appropriate water flow in Puigcerdà and Manresa could only be achieved by building two channels 9 and 24 kilometers long, respectively. Indeed, these two works were commissioned to specialized professionals (Fig. 2.2). The works promoted by monasteries followed similar guidelines. In order to keep the main monastery building and the industrial and milling facilities sufficiently provisioned, an abundant water supply was often required.14 In most cases, however, rather than building on their own, monasteries acquired and occasionally repaired existing infrastructures. This is particularly easy to encounter in areas taken from al-Andalus, where monasteries were often built at the heart of Andalusi irrigation systems that were subsequently modified for the supply of the ecclesiastical establishment. Well-known examples of this can be found in Veruela (Aragón) and Santa Maria la Real (Mallorca).15 Although peasants were working in the irrigated areas, these royal, manorial, and monastic irrigation systems were no longer built to support a peasant economy.

Catalonia: Helena Kirchner, Jaume Oliver, Susanna Vela, Aigua prohibida. Arqueologia hidràulica del feudalisme a la Cerdanya. El Canal Reial de Puigcerdà, Bellaterra, 2002; Jordi Piñero, “La sèquia de Manresa: un canal d’irrigació construït al segle XIV per iniciativa del consell de la ciutat,” Arqueologia Medieval. La ciutat, ed. Flocel Sabaté and Jesús Brufal (Lleida, 2014), 443–468. 14 Cortese, L’acqua, il grano, 101–113. 15 Simone Teixeira, “O sistema hidraulico do Vale do Huecha sob o domínio do Mosteiro de Veruela (Aragao),” I Congresso de Arqueologia Peninsular 6 (Porto, 1995): 383–402; Carolina Batet, L’aigua conquerida. Hidraulisme feudal en terres de conquesta (València, 2006). 72 H. KIRCHNER

Fig. 2.2 Puigcerdà (Catalonia, Spain): successive construction phases of hydraulic systems in the Aravó River valley. (Courtesy of author)

This novel turn permitted the introduction of new infrastructures without increasing competition over the limited alluvial space. The diversifica- tion and the increasing applications of waterpower, especially regarding the transference of rotational motion into alternate motion—of particular relevance for the textile and metal industries—are connected with this change in strategy. Only with a vertical wheel and specially adapted gear is it possible to drive a set of alternating cams. Although some known Italian examples date as far back as the tenth century, most of these facilities were WATER MANAGEMENT AND IRRIGATION IN MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN… 73 built from the thirteenth century onward, either replacing old flourmills or, more frequently, standing along new systems outside valley floors.16 The criteria behind this late medieval approach to hydraulics also facili- tated the emergence of the earliest market-oriented garden areas nearby the cities and the possibility of implementing forms of urban water supply (fountains, troughs, and industrial supply systems) which occasionally even reached private dwellings. The new uses and facilities promoted the restoration of water-lifting and transporting devices already known to the Romans: siphons, aqueducts with arcades, and so on. Older hydraulic systems were not abandoned, and they remained in use for agricultural purposes.

Islamic Hydraulics It is probably incorrect to refer to a uniform “Islamic hydraulics” encompassing the whole of the southern Mediterranean shore. In line with the typical ecological fragmentation of the region, each area presents a very specific case.17 This is also affected by the characteristics of pre-existing water management systems, regardless of their scale—from major alluvial systems such as those found along the rivers Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates to local irrigation systems. Some common features may however be found. There are two major categories: state-promoted and peasant-built systems. The former, better represented in the written record, have been subject to more intensive scholarly attention, which may be behind the misapprehension that medieval Islamic hydraulic projects were mostly state-driven enterprises. Within those projects promoted by the state, we may distinguish between those aimed at the supply of the palatial facilities, the urban supply, and the promotion of agriculture by the construction of major canals.18

16 Paolo Malanima, I piedi di legno. Una macchina alle origini dell’industria medievale, (Milano, 1988). 17 Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 175. 18 The existence of state-driven initiatives does not give universal confirmation to Karl A. Wittfogel’s thesis. The fact that the state is an active promoter of hydraulic infrastructures does not make it, necessarily and always, “the founder of agricultural life.”The bibliography generated by Wittfogel’s hydraulic hypothesis is enormous. For al-Andalus see Fèlix Retamero, “La sombra alargada de Wittfogel. Irrigación y poder en al-Andalus,” in Al-Andalus/España. Historiografías en contraste. Siglos XVII–XXI, ed. Manuela Marín (Madrid, 2009), 263–293, esp. 277. 74 H. KIRCHNER

In the Near East, abundant references can be found to the construction of dams, large waterways, systems for the supply of fortified palaces, and major urban reservoirs under the patronage of the Caliph or some other politically relevant individual. The most significant cases can be dated to between the second half of the seventh and the first half of the eighth centuries, that is, during the Umayyad and Abbasid periods.19 The hydraulic systems designed for the supply of palaces and their associated agricultural lands were as spectacular and as ephemeral as the states that promoted them. Good examples of this are the supply systems attached to a number of palace-fortifications built in Syria, Jordan, Palestine, and Iraq, which included long channels for the irrigation of extensive cultivation areas; in some cases these fields extended over several square kilometers.20 The Almohad state, on the other hand, diverted part of the water supplied by the wadi Ourika toward the palace of Buhayra— current Agdal, Marrakesh—through a 30-kilometers-long canal which was not used for irrigation. The only difference with Near Eastern examples is that this case is built inside a pre-existing system of channels. The citadel of Qal‘at al-Jabal, built in Cairo in 1183, was furnished with a full water supply system,21 while the country villas (al-munya) owned by the high officials under the Caliph in Cordoba were equipped with water distribution systems for the irrigation of gardens and big water reservoirs.22 The palace complex of Alhambra, the construction of which began in the thirteenth century, needed a water distribution system which, initially, had been used to irrigate a small extension of gardens.23

19 Denis Genequand, “Économie de production, affirmation du pouvoir et dolce vita: aspects de la polique de l’eau sous les Omeyyades au Bilad al-Sham,” in Stratégies d’acquisition de l’eau et société au Moyen-Orient depuis l’antiquité, ed. Mohamed Al-Dbiyat, Michel Mouton (dir.) (Beyrouth, 2009), 157–177. 20 Genequand, “Économie de production,” 160–174; Jacques Bujard, Denis Genequand: “Umm al-Walid et Khan az-Zabib, deux établissements omeyyades en limite du désert jordanien,” in Conquête de la steppe et appropiation des terres sur les marges arides du Croissant fertile, ed. Bernard Geyer (Lyon 2001), 189–218. 21 Amalia Levanoni: “Water Supply in Medieval Middle Eastern Cities: The Case of Cairo,” Al-Masaq, 20, no. 2 (2008): 179–205. 22 Miquel Barceló, “De la congruencia y la homogeneidad de los espacios hidráulicos en Al-Andalus,” in El agua en la agricultura de al-Andalus, ed. Antonio Malpica Cuello (Granada, 1995), 25–39. 23 Antonio Malpica, “Un complejo hidráulico de época medieval: la Alhambra,” in El agua: mitos, ritos y realidades, ed. José A. González Alcantud and Antonio Malpica (Granada 1995), 215–239. WATER MANAGEMENT AND IRRIGATION IN MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN… 75

The need to guarantee urban supply to mosques, baths, and official buildings also prompted the state to undertake the construction of channels, pools, and distribution networks in cities such as Ramla (Palestine), founded in the early eighth century,24 Kairouan,25 Fes, founded in the eighth century,26 Nakûr, which was the seat of an emirate, and Aghmāt, which preceded Marrakesh as the regional capital.27 The water distribution systems in these settlements also included provision for irrigation. At any rate, it appears that the management of these irrigated areas was not the responsibility of the state. In al-Andalus, Roman hydraulic infrastructures were seldom repaired and reused.28 In Cordoba three Roman channel systems were repaired, and one of them supplied the Umayyad Caliph’s newly founded settlement of Madînat al-Zahrâ’.29 In Valencia, a Roman aqueduct remained partially active. In both cases, the aqueduct was used for the supply of urban citadels, state residences, and major mosques. In Madîna Mayûrqa (Palma de Mallorca), by contrast, a brand new conduit, joining the city and a qanât located 15 kilometers away, was built in the early tenth century. This conduit ran across the city sprouting channels for the supply of bath houses, mosques, houses, and gardens, ultimately reaching the citadel.30

24 Genequand, “Économie de production,” 160. 25 Marcel Solignac, “Recherches sur les installations hydrauliques de Kairouan et des steppes tunisiennes, du VIe au XI e siècle (J.-C.),” Annales de l’Institut d’Études Orientales de l’Université d’Alger 10 (I952): 5-273. 26 Tariq Madani, “Le réseaux hydraulique de la ville de Fès,” Archéologie islamique 8–9 (1999), 119–142; “Évolution urbaine et réseau hydraulique de la ville de Fès,” in Ciudad y territorio en al-Andalus, ed. Lorenzo Cara Barrionuevo (Granada, 2000), 436–470. 27 Ricardo González Villaescusa, Las formas de los paisajes mediterráneos (Jaén: Universidad de Jaén, 2002), 353–371; Patrice Cressier, “Géométrie des reseaux et marqueurs des terri- toires. L’image du partage de l’eau dans le paysage médiévale (Espagne et Maroc),” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 36-2 (2006): 39–59, esp. 46–48; Paul Pascon, Le haouz de Marrakech. 2 vols, (Paris-Rabat, 1977). 28 Javier Martínez Jiménez, “The Continuity of Roman.” 29 Ventura, Á. 2002: “Los acueductos romanos de Córdoba y su rehabilitación omeya,” Empúries 53, pp. 113–130; Ángel Ventura and Guadalupe Pizarro, “El Aqua Augusta (acueducto de Valdepuentes) y el abastecimiento de agua a la Colonia Patricia Corduba: investigaciones recientes (2000–2010),” Las técnicas y las construcciones de la ingeniería romana (Madrid, 2010): 175–204. 30 Miquel Barceló et al., Les aigües cercades. Qanât(s) a les Illes Orientals d’-Andalus, (Palma de Mallorca, 1986); M. Magdalena Riera Frau, Evolució urbana i topografia de Madîna Mayûrqa (Palma de Mallorca, 1993). See also in Jaén: María del Consuelo Díez-Bedmar, “A Medieval Case Study: the Qanât of “La Magdalena” and Its Influence on the Current 76 H. KIRCHNER

The systems constructed for the supply of cities and palaces were based on long transportation systems reminiscent of Roman hydraulics, in the sense that they were designed to deliver the water to a predetermined location. It is therefore not strange that many Roman waterworks, especially aqueducts, were reused after being partially modified. On the other hand, the subject of fluvial canals presents some difficult issues. The controversy surrounding the chronology of the canals built around the Euphrates and its tributaries—whether they were built in the 2000 BC, during the Assyrian period or, even later, after the emergence of Islam—remains open; even the date of their abandonment is difficult to ascertain.31 It seems at any rate certain that some of them were active during the Middle Ages, and successive uses of the same layouts have been verified. Additionally, both Umayyads and Abbasids are known to have promoted agricultural expansion by providing the irrigation infrastructure. 32 Most of the currently preserved waterwheels date to the seventeenth century and only in isolated cases to the fourteenth or fifteenth century, although earlier references to their existence are known.33 Hydraulic systems around the Nile focused on the management of flooding taking place between July and September, immediately before sowing, and also involved the application of some water elevation techniques which have remained in use until recently (shaduf, saqiya, and the Archimedes’ screw). Specifically, thesaqiya , already well implanted in

Hydraulic System of the City of Jaén (Spain),” in Internationales Frontinus-Symposium. Wasserversorgung aus Qanaten—Qanate als Vorbilder im Tunnelbau (Luxemburg, 2003), 235–248. The underground galleries of Madrid, known as “viajes de agua,” have often been considered as Muslim qanât(s) because of the etymology of the place name Madrid established by J. Oliver Asín (J. Oliver Asín, Historia del nombre de Madrid (Madrid, 1958)). In fact, these underground channels were built since the seventeenth century: Eduardo Jiménez Rayado, El agua en el origen y desarrollo de Madrid en la Edad Media (Madrid 2011). 31 Bertrand Lafont, “Eau, pouvoir et société dans l’Orient ancien: approches théoriques, travaux de terrain et documentation écrite,” in Stratégies d’acquisition, 11–24. 32 Genequand, “Économie de production,” 159. Marie-Odile Rousset, “La moyenne val- lée de l’Euphrate d’après les sources arabes,” in Peuplement rural et aménagements hydroagricoles dans la moyenne vallée de l’Euphrate, fin VIIe–XIXe siècle: Région de Deir ez Zōr-Abu Kemāl, Syrie: Mission Mésopotamie syrienne, archéologie islamique, 1986–1989, ed. Sophie Berthier (Damas, 2001), 555–571, esp. 566; Berthier “Peuplement rural et les aménage- ments hydroagricoles dans la moyenne vallée de l’Euphrate entre la fin du VIIe siècle et le XIV’siècle,” in Peuplement rural et aménagements, 86–149. 33 Abdul Razzak Zaqzouq: “Les norias. Anciens moyens d’irrigation les plus importants dans la région de Hama,” in Techniques et pratiques hydro-agricoles traditionelles en domaine irrigué. Approche pluridisciplinaire des modes de culture avant la modernisation en Syrie, vol. 2, ed. Bernard Geyer (Paris, 1990), 338–365. WATER MANAGEMENT AND IRRIGATION IN MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN… 77

Egypt by the fourth century AD, was brought to the West by the Islamic expansion. The introduction of water-lifting devices during the Ptolemaic period considerably increased the cultivated area.34 However, as late as the nineteenth century, most lands still depended on the flood for irrigation, since the construction of river canals from which the water could be lifted was a later phenomenon.35 It thus seems that technical procedures did not change throughout the Byzantine and later the Islamic periods, although some public initiatives for the construction of new channels have been ascertained.36 We remain, however, ignorant regarding the specific forms of social management of irrigated agriculture, the extension of irrigation, and its relationship with settlement patterns. The use of the Nilometer was essential to forecast the annual flood and thus guarantee the crop. This device was already in use in the Hellenistic period, and references to the construction of further Nilometers by the Caliphs during the Middle Ages are not hard to find.37 The hydraulics of the major eastern rivers must be considered as a special case, not only because of their peculiar flood regimes but also because of their long pre-Islamic hydraulic traditions. Regarding small rural hydraulic systems, the long continuity shown by some regions in the Near East should be highlighted. This is, for example, the case of Hauran, Southern Syria, and Northern Jordan, where water was diverted from wadis or other sources for the supply of one or several settlements, generally located within valleys.38 The earliest of these

34 Dorothy J. Thompson, “Irrigation and Drainage in the Early Ptolemaic Fayyum” and “New and Old in the Ptolemaic Fayyum,” in Agriculture in Egypt from Pharaonic to Modern Times, ed. Alan K. Bowman & Eugene Rogan (Oxford, 1999), 107–122 and 123–138. 35 Thierry Ruf, “L’histoire de la maîtrise de l’eau en Egypte,” in Aménagements hydroagricoles et systèmes de production, Montpellier (1987): 361–374. 36 Levanoni, “Water Supply.” Furthermore, a huge dam on the Nile was conceived but never built: Mohammed El Faïz, Les maîtres de l’eau. Histoire de l’hydraulique arabe (Arles: Actes Sud, 2005), 129–130. 37 Alan K. Bowman and Eugene Rogan, “Agriculture in Egypt from Pharaonic to Modern times,” in Agriculture in Egypt, 1–32; Donald R. Hill, “The Nilometer. Mikyas,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam 7, Leiden (1990): 960–962; Tsugitaka Sato, “Irrigation in Rural Egypt from the 12th to the 14th Centuries –Especially in the Case of the Irrigation in Fayyûm Province,” Orient 8 (1972): 81–92. 38 Frank Braemer, Gourgen Davtian: “L’eau du Hauran: captages et gestion depuis le Bronze ancien,” in Stratégies d’acquisition, 45–68; Frank Braemer, Denis Genequand, Cécile Dumond Maridat, Pierre-M. Blanc, Jean-M. Dentzer, Damien Gazagne and Pierre Wech, “Long-term Management of Water in the Central Levant: the Hawran Case (Syria),” World Archaeology 41, no.1 (2009): 36–57. David Kennedy, “Water Supply and Use in the Southern Hauran, Jordan,” Journal of Field Archaeology 22, no. 3 (1995): 275–290. 78 H. KIRCHNER hydraulic systems have been dated to between the second and the fourth centuries AD, although most correspond to the period between the fifth and seventh centuries AD. These systems remained in place after the Islamic conquest, undergoing successive periods of abandonment and repair.39 The introduction of the horizontal watermill took place after the Byzantine and the Umayyad periods. The earliest used inclined penstocks, but the late medieval examples were equipped with vertical penstocks (arubah).40 The small irrigated systems found in the mountains of Judea, which have been dated to the first century AD (and even earlier by Z. Ron), could in fact be later in date, as suggested by their association not only with Roman but also with Islamic sites.41 In other areas, however, the introduction of irrigation systems seems to be Islamic in date, for example, those based on the canals built around the river Balikh, a tributary of the Euphrates in northern Syria42; the canals constructed on the river Barada, which permitted the development of Damascus’ Ghouta and the wells north of the city (Dmeir) from which water was lifted by means of different devices; and the qanâts in the mountain of Qalamoun,43 or in the arid region southwest of Aleppo (Syria), which could also be Byzantine.44 A more systematic research approach is necessary at the regional scale in order to determine whether there was any significant difference between the peasant strategies followed in the Byzantine and Islamic periods.

39 Frank Braemer, Gourguen Davtian and Pascale Clauss-Balty, “L’habitat rurale en Syrie du Sud: quels contextes territoriaux?” in Hauran III. L’habitat dans les campagnes de Syrie du Sud aux époques classiques et médiévale, ed. Pascale Clauss-Balty (Beyrouth 2008), 7–18, esp. 10. 40 Jean-Marie Dentzer, Jacques Leblanc, Arnaud Chevalier, “Techniques et systèmes d’acquisition de l’eau à Bosra: iniciatives de groupes et pouvoirs politiques,” in Stratégies d’acquisition de l’eau, 106–132. 41 Zvi Ron, “Agricultural Terraces in the Judean Mountains,” Israel Exploration Journal 16 (1966): 33–49, 111–112. 42 Tony J. Wilkinson, “Water and Human Settlement in the Balikh Valley, Syria: Investigations From 1992–1995,” Journal of Field Archaeology 25 (1996): 63–87. 43 Braemer & Davtian, “L’eau du Hauran”: 66. 44 Bernard Geyer, “Pratiques d’acquisition de l’eau et modalités de peuplement dans les Marges arides de la Syrie du Nord,” in Stratégies d’acquisition, 25–43; Chafic Safadi, “La foggara, système hydraulique antique, serait-elle toujours concevable dans la mise en valeur des eaux souterraines en Syrie?” in Techniques et pratiques, vol 2, 285–292; Marie-Odile Rousset, “Qanâts de la steppe syrienne,” in Entre nomades et sédentaires. Prospections en Syrie su Nord et en Jordanie du Sud, ed. Pierre-Louis Gatier, Bernard Geyer, Marie-Odile Rousset (Yon 2010), 241–270; Bernard Geyer, Marie-Odile Rousset, “Les steppes arides de la Syrie du Nord à l’époque byzantine ou la ruée vers l’est.,” in Conquête de la steppe et appropiation des terres sur les marges arides du Croissant fertile, ed. Bernard Geyer (Lyon, 2011), 111–121. WATER MANAGEMENT AND IRRIGATION IN MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN… 79

V. Lagardère carried out a complete survey of all Islamic textual references to irrigation in the Maghreb. Within these, the frequent mention of the coastal region between Fes and Kairouan—which is described as a succession of villages surrounded by irrigated agricultural lands—needs to be stressed. In contrast, mentions of Saharan oases are scarce.45 The number of archeological studies dedicated to medieval irrigation systems is, however, small. As a rule, these are case studies examined in isolation from their regional environment, which prevents the incorporation of settlement patterns and the organization of agricultural production into the analysis.46 The variety of traditional agricultural landscapes described by J. Despois in the Maghreb still lacks clear chronological markers.47 With regard to pre- Saharan oases and their qanât(s), our knowledge is to date limited to eth- nographic descriptions written in the colonial period. Exceptionally, some studies carried out in the region of Fezzan have confirmed the close relationship between Garamante settlements and the local foggaras already in the 2nd century BC. The abandonment of the foggaras and the fields they served seems already to have begun by fourth century AD. By the Islamic period, irrigation was based on wells and the extraction of water by means of shaduf.48 This remains the only attempt at revising Capitaine Lô’s chronological proposal for the foggaras in Tidikelt (and by extension for those in the Algerian Sahara) as dating to between the tenth and the eleventh centuries.49 The relative chronology established by R. Capot-Rey and Lt. W. Damade for the foggaras in Tamentit and the analysis of the associated

45 Vincent Lagardère, “Droit des eaux et des installations hydrauliques au Maghreb et en Andalus au XIe et XIIème siècles dans le Mi’yar d’Al-Wansarîsi,” Les Cahiers de Tunisie 37 (1988): 83–122, esp. 93–95. 46 Maria Antonia Carbonero, Patrice Cressier, Larbi Erbati, “Exemple de transformation radicale et planifiée du paysage agraire au Moyen-Age: Taghssa (province de Chefchaouen, Maroc),” Bulletin d’archéologie marocaine 19 (2002): 219–256. 47 Jean Despois, “Les paysages agraires traditionnels du Maghreb et du Sahara septentri- onal,” Annales de Géographie 73, no. 396 (1964): 129–171, esp. 168–171. 48 Andrew I. Wilson, David. J. Mattingly, “Irrigation Technologies: Foggaras, Wells and Field Systems,” in The archaeology of Fazzan, 1. Synthesis, ed. D. J. Mattingly (London 2003): 235–278; Andrew Wilson, “Foggaras in Ancient North Africa. Or How to Marry a Berber Princess,” in Contrôle et distribution de l’eau dans le Maghreb antique et médiéval, ed. V. Bridoux (Rome 2009, 18–39). 49 Capitaine Lô, “Les foggaras du Tidikelt,” Travaux de l’Institut de Recherches Sahariennes 10 (1953–1954): 139–179, esp. 142–144. 80 H. KIRCHNER agricultural lands did not offer sufficient evidence to go beyond Capitaine Lô’s proposal.50 Another type of rural hydraulic system was based on the management of runoff surface water, which basically consisted of diverting rainwater and sediments down mountain slopes onto valley floors, plains, and ter- raced slopes. These systems predate the Roman period.51 One way to exploit runoff water is by building walls across minor wadi-s and thus aid- ing the accumulation of moisture and sediment. This form of terracing is known in northern Africa as jessour,52 and parallels can be found in the Negev.53 Such an approach to the catchment of resources responded to highly irregular and torrential precipitation regimes. The dry stone walls and the derivation dams, built with local and non-permanent materials, in combination with earth dikes designed to keep the water from escaping the agricultural fields, allowed the peasant groups in question to utilize the torrential rains and the associated erosion processes.54 Research carried out in the region of Sfeggin and Zem (Tripolitania) permitted a detailed account of the features and chronology of this floodwater farming system, which was securely dated between the first and the seventh centuries.55

50 R. Capot-Rey, Lt. W. Damade, “Irrigation et structure agraire à Tamentit (Touat),” Travaux de l’Institut de Recherches Sahariennes 21 (1962): 99–118, esp. 113. 51 Brent D. Shaw, “Water and Society in the Ancient Mahgrib: Technology, Property and Development,” Antiquités Africaines 20 (1984): 121–173, esp. 164, suggest a Neolithic or Bronze Age origin for these techniques. 52 Shaw, “Water and society”; Jean Despois, “La culture en terrasses dans l’Afrique du Nord.” Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 11 no.1 (1956): 42–50; David Gilbertson and Chris O. Hunt: “Romano-Libyan Agriculture: Walls and Floodwater Farming,” in Farming the Desert: The UNESCO Libyan Valleys Archaeological Survey, vol.1, ed. G.W.W. Barker (Paris, Tripoli & London 1996), 191–225, esp. 217–222; Hédi ben Ouezdou and Pol Trousset, “Aménagements hydrauliques dans le sud-est tunisien,” in Contrôle et distribution de l’eau dans le Maghreb antique et médiéval, ed. V. Bridoux (Rome 2009), 1–18. 53 Michael Evenari, Leslie Shanan, Naptali Tadmor, The Negev. The Challenge of a Desert (Cambridge, MA, 1982); Y. Kedar, “Ancient Agriculture at Shivtah in the Negev,” Israel Exploration Journal 7 (1957): 178–189; Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert: the Exploration of the Negev, and Adventure in Archaeology (London, 1959), 90–92. 54 Shaw, “Water and Society,” 151–155. In the same way, Hitchner makes the difference in Tunisia between the indigenous areas in the mountains and the Roman ones on the plain (R. Bruce Hitchner, “Irrigation, Terrasses, Dams, and Aqueducts in the Region of Cilium (mod. Kasserine),” in Productions et exportations africaines. Actualités archéologiques en Afrique du Nord antique et médiévale, ed. Pol Trousset (Paris, 1995): 143–156). 55 Gilbertson and Hunt: “Romano-Libyan Agriculture.” See also, Michel Reddé, “Occupation humaine et mise en valeur économique dans les vallées du nord de la Libye: WATER MANAGEMENT AND IRRIGATION IN MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN… 81

The continuity of this system thereafter remains uncertain and was not considered within the framework of this research program.56 To date, this continuity only seems to be supported by a document setting forth the rules for water distribution—including runoff water—in a jessour-s system located between Matmata and Dehiba (southeast Tunisia) in the eleventh century.57 In al-Andalus, the migration of Berber and Arab tribes was responsible for the dissemination of hydraulic techniques and oriental plant species and determined the central role of irrigation for the peasant groups that settled after the conquest.58 The dissemination of certain plant species, especially those from Monsoon climatic zones (the adaptation of which to the Mediterranean demands artificial irrigation) as identified by Watson and the notion of “green revolution” have been subject to recent revision.59 Even if Islamic agency in the Near East or Egypt can in this regard be disputed for some of the plants listed by A. Watson, the case of the Iberian Peninsula needs specific analysis.60 The new water management techniques involved were fundamentally concerned with water catchment (saqiya, waterwheels, and qanât)61 and the distribution of the water among l’exemple du Wadi Tlal,” L’Afrique aux époques vandale et byzantine et le passage à l’Islam. Bulletin Archéologique du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques 19 (1983): 173–182. 56 David Mattingly “Explanations: People as Agency,” in Farming the Desert, 319–342; Graham Barker, David D. Gilbertson, “Farming the Desert: Retrospect and Prospect,” in Farming the Desert, 342–363, esp. 352–355. 57 Ouezdou, Trousset: “Aménagements hydrauliques,” 8. 58 Miquel Barceló, “Immigration berbère et établissements paysans à Ibiza (902–1235). À la recherche de la logique de la construction d’une nouvelle société,” in Castrum 7. Zones côtières littorales dans le monde méditerranéen au Moyen âge: défense, peuplement, mise en valeur, ed. Jean-Marie Martin (Roma-Madrid, 2001), 291–321. 59 Andrew M. Watson, Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World: the Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques 700–1100, (Cambridge, 1983). 60 M. Decker gives evidences for the ancient cultivation of durum wheat, cotton, rice, and artichokes. His ideas on the dissemination of some of these cultivars in al-Andalus in the Roman period are based on the work of Karl Butzer, who suggests a Roman origin for the major huertas in the east of the Iberian Peninsula without offering solid evidence for it. Michael Decker, “Plants and Progress: Rethinking the Islamic Agricultural Revolution,” Journal of World History 20, no. 2 (2009): 187–206; Karl W. Butzer, J. F.Mateu, E. K. Butzer, P. Kraus, “Irrigation Agro-systems in Eastern Spain: Roman or Islamic origins?” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 75, no. 4 (2010): 479–509. 61 Barceló et al., Les aigües cercades; Patrice Cressier, “Archéologie des structures hydrauliques en Al-Andalus.” El agua en las zonas áridas: arqueología e historia. I Coloquio de historia y medio físico 1 (Almería, 1989): 51–92; Thomas F. Glick, Helena Kirchner, “Hydraulic 82 H. KIRCHNER the users of the irrigation system.62 The evidence offered by descriptions in Arabic—and sometimes Christian—geographical texts and chronicles adds to a significantcorpus of Andalusi agronomic and agricultural hand- books and calendars, especially common from the eleventh century onward. These texts form the basis of the hypothesis of Andalusi “agricultural revolution” in the eleventh century.63 But this agronomic literature constitutes the codification of previous peasant knowledge, rather than reflecting an independent process of innovation or intensification.64 There are some written references to the adaptation process that followed the arrival of new species in al-Andalus, but we have nothing concerning the pace and rhythm of their dissemination and how local conditions determined possible combinations and specific solutions. A good example of these dissemination mechanisms can be found in the acclimatization of a species of Syrian pomegranate, which took place in an irrigated area associated to a hamlet named qaryat Bunîla (modern Casarabonela, Malaga, in southern Spain). In AD 780, an ambassador returned from Syria brought ‘Abd al-Raḥmân I a variety of pomegranate and its seeds were planted by Safar in the hamlet of Bunîla.65 Some of the fruits where taken to the emir, who ordered the tree planted in his garden of al-Rusâfa, whence it disseminated throughout al-Andalus and the Maghreb. As noted by Virgilio Martínez Enamorado, the episode indicates not only the participation of individual people, the interest of the emir, and the function that could be associated to a state-owned garden but also the necessary involvement of a “peasant laboratory,” the garden

Systems and Technologies of Islamic Spain: History and Archaeology” in Working With Water in Medieval Europe. Technology and Resource-Use, ed. P. Squatriti (Leiden-London- Köln, 2000), 267–329. 62 Thomas F. Glick, Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia (Cambridge, MA, 1970); “Medieval Irrigation Clocks,” Technology and Culture 10 (1969): 424–428; “Hydraulic Technology in al-Andalus,” in The legacy of Muslim Spain, ed. T.F. Glick (Leiden, 1992), 974–986; “El sentido arqueológico de las instituciones hidráulicas. Regadío bereber y regadío español,” in II Jornadas de Cultura islámica: Aragón vive su historia (Madrid, 1992), 165–171. 63 Lucie Bolens, Agronomes andalous du Moyen-Age (Genève, 1981). 64 Fèlix Retamero, “‘Un conjunto de reglas sabias y ordenadas’. La disciplina agraria del sultan,” in De Toledo a Huesca. Sociedades medievales en transición a finales del siglo XI (1080–1100), ed. Carlos Laliena and Juan F. Utrilla (Zaragoza, 1998), 75–91; Retamero, “La sombra alargada,” 275–278. 65 Julio Samsó, “Ibn Hišâm al-Lajmî y el primer jardín botánico de al-Andalus,” Revista del Instituto Egipcio 21 (1991–1992): 134–145. WATER MANAGEMENT AND IRRIGATION IN MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN… 83 in Casarabonela; in addition, it is understood that for the final process of dissemination in al-Andalus and the Maghreb to take place, irrigation systems must be fully developed in both regions beforehand.66 In any case, the archeological dimension of this dissemination is difficult to evaluate, because most of the plants were so disseminated as to leave no trace.67 In his study of the Valencian huerta (urban irrigated area), T.F. Glick stressed two major arguments: the existence of non-state-based, local, collective management systems and the fundamentally Eastern and Maghrebian nature of the water distribution systems in use. For T.F. Glick, hydraulic technology was not limited to the catchment and transportation of water but also extended to the forms—or in his own words, the “techniques”— of its social distribution. P. Guichard and A. Bazzana, meanwhile, also linked rural Andalusi hydraulics with the Berber and Arab tribal settlements identified by the former.68 These conclusions challenged another research tradition—partially set forth by geographers—which interpreted the huertas in the peninsular east and their irrigation systems as having a Roman origin. In the early 1980s M. Barceló criticized these supposed Roman origins while underlining the futility of a discussion not based on empirical knowledge, which was yet to be gained.69 This was the inaugural step for the institution of a research avenue willing to fill this void. This research avenue has already accumulated evidence for over 200 irrigation systems, mostly located in the Balearic Islands and the east of the Iberian Peninsula.70 It has been shown that the hydraulic systems agree with the distribution of peasant settlements and with their size. A typology of irrigation systems has been developed, distinguishing between those systems located on valley floors and those higher on the valley’s slopes,

66 Virgilio Martínez Enamorado, Al-Andalus desde la periferia. La formación de una sociedad musulmana en tierras malagueñas (siglos VIII–X). (Málaga, 2003), 114–116. 67 Natàlia Alonso, Ferran Antolín, Helena Kirchner, “Novelties and Legacies in Crops and Agricultural Practices of the Islamic Period in the North-East of the Iberian Peninsula: the Archaeobotanical Evidence,” in Madîna Balagî, Madîna Lârida and Madîna Turtûšạ , Quaternary International 346 (2014): 149–161. 68 André Bazzana and Pierre Guichard, “Irrigation et société dans l’Espagne orientale au Moyen Âge,” in L’homme et l’eau en Méditerranée et au Proche Orient 2 (Lyon, 1981), 115–140; Pierre Guichard, “L’eau dans le monde musulman medieval, ”L’homme et l’eau en Méditerranée et au Proche Orient 2 (Lyon, 1982): 117–124. 69 Barceló, “La qüestió de l’hidraulisme andalusí,” in Les aigües cercades, 9–36. 70 In 2005, the number of cases was 160: Eugènia Sitjes, “Inventario y tipología de sistemas hidráulicos de Al-Andalus.” Arqueología Espacial 26 (2006): 263–291. 84 H. KIRCHNER and also depending on the location of the water catchment area (Fig. 2.3).71 It has also been found that most irrigation systems serve very modest agricultural extensions. The average is barely 1.2 ha in size. Irrigated areas in connection with small settlements have thus been divided into small, with less than 1 ha (56.6%); medium, between 1.1 ha and 2 ha (18%); and large systems, between 2 ha and 15 ha (21%).72 The preference for small-scale systems thus seems to be beyond doubt and probably responds to risk-minimizing peasant strategies73 and to

Fig. 2.3 Sketches of different types of Andalusi hydraulic systems. (Courtesy of author)

71 Thomas F. Glick, Helena Kirchner, “Hydraulic Systems and Technologies.” 72 Eugènia Sitjes, “Inventario y tipología.” The difference between macro-, meso-, and micro-hydraulic systems makes no sense in historical perspective; it only shows current conditions: Karl W. Butzer, J. F. Mateu, E. K. Butzer, P. Kraus, “Irrigation Agro-systems in Eastern Spain,” 479–509. 73 Fèlix Retamero, “Lo que el tamaño importa. Cuándo y por qué se modificaron los antiguos sistemas hidráulicos andalusíes.” Arqueología Espacial 26 (2006): 293–310. WATER MANAGEMENT AND IRRIGATION IN MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN… 85

processes of demographic segmentation and growth.74 At the same time, this scale leaves little room for an individual allotment regime. Along these lines, cooperative systems for the construction and management of the agricultural areas and the tribal territory have been identified. Those systems over 2 ha were often shared by several clans.75 Conversely, systems under 2 ha were never managed by more than one peasant group.76 Watermills, often equipped with arubah, appear clustered around the main watercourses. This position along the main acequias ensured the compatibility of irrigation and milling practices, which could be carried out in several watermills, depending of the demands of irrigation at any given moment.77 Urban huertas have been less intensively studied. In madîna Yabîsa (Ibiza), the huerta was the result of the partial draining of a fringe of coastal marshland. According to the written records, the draining process involved the introduction of saqiyas, which have been identified by archeological excavation.78 In madîna Manûrqa (Ciutadella, Menorca), irrigated areas were watered by means of saqiyas.79 The irrigation of the

74 Helena Kirchner, “Original Design, Tribal Management and Modifications in Medieval Hydraulic Systems in the Balearic Islands (Spain),” World Archaeology 41, no. 1(2009): 148–165. 75 Helena Kirchner, La construcció de l’espai pagès a Mayûrqa: les valls de Bunyola, Orient, Coanegra i Alaró (Palma de Mallorca, 1997); “Redes de asentamientos andalusíes y espacios irrigados a partir de qanât(s) en la sierra de Tramuntana de Mallorca: una reconsideración de la construcción del espacio campesino en Mayûrqa,” in Por una arqueología agraria: perspectivas de investigación sobre espacios de cultivo en las sociedades medievales hispánicas, ed. H. Kirchner (Oxford, 2010), 79–94; Mercè Argemí, Miquel Barceló, Helena Kirchner, Carmen Navarro,“ Buscatell: un sistema hidràulic compartit per diversos assentaments” in El curs de les aigües. Treballs sobre els pagesos de Yabîsa, ed. Helena Kirchner and Miquel Barceló (Formentera: Consell Insular d’Eivissa i Formentera, 1997), 36–51; Barceló, Retamero eds. Els barrancs tancats; Eugènia Sitjes, “Espacios agrarios y redes de asentamientos andalusíes en Manacor (Mallorca),” in Por una arqueología agraria, 61–78. 76 Kirchner, “Original design”; La construcció de l’espai; “Redes de asentamientos”; Eugènia Sitjes, “Espacios agrarios”; Glick & Kirchner, “Hydraulic Systems.” 77 Helena Kirchner, “Watermills in the Balearic Islands During the Muslim Period,” in Processing, Storage, Distribution of Food. Food in the Medieval Rural Environment. Ruralia, ed. J. Klápste and P. Sommer (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 45–55. 78 Miquel Barceló, Ricardo González Villaescusa, Helena Kirchner, “La construction d’un espace agraire drainé au hawz de la Madîna de Yâbisa (Ibiza, Baléares),” in La dynamique des paysages protohistoriques, antiques, médiévaux et modernes. XVIIe Rencontres Internationales d’Archéologie et d’Histoire d’Antibes, ed. Joëlle Burnouf, Jean-Paul Bravard, Gérard Chouquer (Sophia Antipolis, 1997), 113–125. 79 Fèlix Retamero and Bernat Moll, “Los espacios agrícolas de Madîna Manûrqa (Ciutadella de Menorca). Siglos X-XIII,” in Por una arqueología agraria, 95–106. 86 H. KIRCHNER

Huerta of madîna Turtûsa (Tortosa), located on the Ebro’s Western bank, near the current delta, was not based on dams or water diversions from the river but on saqiyas and other drainage systems.80 Recent studies on the Huerta of Valencia have revealed that the space currently embraced by the acequias branching off the Turia was not exhaustively irrigated in Andalusi times. Indeed, irrigation was limited to disperse field clusters connected with rural settlements distributed throughout the alluvial plain.81 In Ibiza as in Valencia the existence of a high number of rural settlements around the huertas suggests their mixed urban-rural nature. Also, in Granada, the urban agricultural area is related to peasant settlements.82 They thus stand in sharp contrast with the Christian late medieval huertas built and managed by city councils and oriented toward the production of market crops. Other urban huertas have also been studied, but too frequently the areas currently in cultivation or those documented from the fifteenth century onward are unduly extrapolated to the foundational design.83

80 Helena Kirchner, Antoni Virgili, Ferran Antolín, Un espacio de cultivo urbano en al- Andalus: Madîna Turtûšạ (Tortosa) antes de 1148, Historia Agraria 62 (2014): 11–45; Helena Kirchner, Antoni Virgili, Arnald Puy, Drainage and Irrigation Systems in madîna Turtûšạ (Tortosa, Spain) (eighth to twelfth centuries), International Medieval Meeting Lleida, 28 (2011), forthcoming. 81 Esquilache, Història de l’horta d’Aldaia; “L’evolució del paisatge agrari andalusí i feudal de les grans hortes fluvials. Les sèquies de Quart i del Comuner d’Aldaia a l’horta de València,” Recerques 62 (2011): 5–36; Ferran Esquilache has done a thorough documentary analysis and detailed survey work in the Huerta of Valencia that lead to a description of several phases of creation of this irrigated area. See his recently defended PhD thesis: Ferran Esquilache, Els espais agraris I l’estructura social d’una gran horta fluvial andalusina. La construcció I evolució de l’Horta de València entre els segles VIII I XIII. PhD Thesis, Universitat de València (2016), http://roderic.uv.es/ 82 The written evidence recording the layout of the acequias and the procedures for water distribution in the city of Granada has been examined in detail by an excellent work, but we still lack a precise plan of these water systems. Carmen Trillo, Agua, tierra y hombres en al- Andalus. La dimensión agrícola del mundo nazarí. Granada, 2004. Significant archeological work has been done in Madînat Ilbîra (Granada), the urban precedent of Garnâtạ (Granada), where several rural settlements with small irrigated areas supplied by qanât(s) have been located. Antonio Malpica, “El paisaje rural medieval en la Vega de Granada y la ciudad de Ilbîra,” Arqueología Espacial 26 (2006): 227–242. 83 José M. Martín Civantos, Poblamiento y territorio medieval en el Zenete (Granada) (Granada, 2007); Miguel Jiménez Puertas, El poblamiento del territorio de Loja en la Edad Media (Granada, 2002); André Bazzana, John De Meulemeester, “Irrigation Systems of Islamic Origin in the Valle de Ricote (Murcia, Spain),” in Ruralia II. Památky archeologické, ed. Jan Fridrich (Praga, 1998), 152–160; Marielle Bertrand, Patrice Cressier, “Irrigation et WATER MANAGEMENT AND IRRIGATION IN MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN… 87

Finally, it has also been possible to analyze the transformations introduced in Andalusi hydraulic systems after the feudal conquest of the twelfth (Catalonia and Aragón), thirteenth (Valencia, Murcia, and the Balearic Islands), and fifteenth (Andalusia) centuries. These transformations were carried out in the context of a conquest that often involved population substitution, something that finds no parallels within medieval Islam.84 The feudal colonization meant not only the occupation of agricultural areas created by Andalusi peasant communities but also the introduction of changes in the crops planted and in the ways these spaces were managed.85 In some cases, however, especially in Valencia and Aragón, the colonization process included the transformation and expansion of former Andalusi irrigation systems, in effect creating new agricultural spaces.86 In the aménagement du terroir dans la vallée de l’Andarax (Almería): les reseaux anciens de Ragol,” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 21 (1985); 115–135; Carmen Navarro stressed the difficulties involved in distinguishing between different development phases in huertas, “El tamaño de los sistemas hidráulicos de origen andalusí. La documentación escrita y la arqueología hidráulica,” in Agricultura y regadío en al-Andalus. II Coloquio de historia y medio físico, ed. Lorenzo Cara Barrionuevo and Antonio Malpica Cuello (Granada, 1995, 177–189). See also some remarks by Arnald Puy, “La huerta de Ricote (Murcia, España) entre los siglos XV y XVIII,” Estudiar el pasado: aspectos metodológicos de la investigación en Ciencias de la Antigüedad y de la Edad Media (Oxford, 2012): 199–209. 84 Josep Torró, “Colonizaciones y colonialismo medievales. La experiencia catalano-aragonesa y su contexto,” in De Tartessos a Manila. Siete estudios coloniales y post-coloniales, eds. G. Cano y A. Delgado (València, 2008), 91–118. 85 Helena Kirchner, “Colonització de lo regne de Mallorques qui és dins la mar. La subversió feudal dels espais agraris andalusins a Mallorca,” in Histoire et archéologie des terres catalanes au Moyen Âge, ed. Ph. Sénac (Perpinyà, 1995): 279–316; “Arqueologia colonial: espais andalusins i pobladors catalans, 1229–1300,” in El feudalisme comptat i debatut. Formació i expansió del feudalisme català, eds. M. Barceló et al. (València, 2003), 201–236; Batet, L’aigua conquerida; Antoni Virgili, “La infraestructura hidràulica de la Conca del Gaià a mitjan segle XII segons el “Llibre Blanch” de Santes Creus,” Universitat Tarraconensis 8 (1985–1986): 215–226; “Espacios drenados andalusíes y la imposición de las pautas agrarias feudales en el prado de Tortosa (segunda mitad del siglo XII),” in Por una arqueología agraria, ed. Helena Kirchner (Oxford, 2010), 147–156. 86 Furió and Martínez, “De la hidràulica andalusí”; Josep Torró, “Terrasses irrigades a les muntanyes valencianes. Les transformacions de la colonització Cristiana,” Afers 51 (2005): 301–356; “Field and Canal-building after the Conquest,” 77–108; Josep Torró, “Tierras ganadas. Aterrazamiento de pendientes y desecación de marjales en la colonización cristiana del territorio valenciano,” in Por una arqueología agraria, ed. H. Kirchner (Oxford, 2010), 157–172; Enric Guinot, “L’horta de València”; Enric Guinot and Sergi Selma, “La construc- ción del paisaje en una huerta feudal: la Sèquia Major de Vila-Real (siglos XIII–XV),” in Hidráulica agraria y sociedad feudal, Técnicas, prácticas, espacios, ed. Josep Torró and Enric Guinot (València: Universitat de València, 2012),103–146; Teixeira, “O sistema hidraulico 88 H. KIRCHNER

Huerta of Valencia, the trend was to “fill in the gaps” left between Andalusi irrigation systems with a form of agriculture which, though open to irrigation, fundamentally focused on extensive farming. These operations, which often involved breaking new ground, are relatively easy to describe, because their plans are highly coherent, their size tends to be regular, and their identification in the written records is considerably precise, even with references to surface measurements.87 The constant efforts to determine the size of the irrigated areas have been key elements in recent research on al-Andalus peasant settlement and on the modifications suffered after feudal conquests. Size is directly indica- tive of the ability of the peasant group to survive and of its ability to gener- ate surplus to be surrendered as tax or rent.88 The expansion of the irrigated surface by the feudal lords was the direct consequence of changes in agricultural strategy. It is the most visible change that occurred in the agrarian production. The measuring of surfaces should always be in the research agenda on cultivation areas. A correct appraisal of scale is equally important. We need to promote regional studies capable of encompassing geographically and historically coherent areas and of carefully, and diachronically, examining settlement networks and their relationship with cultivation areas. Isolated, case study- based research does not offer a full insight into the selection processes undertaken by peasant communities in a given social context or the adaptation phenomena involved in the imposition of a new state or of a manorial class. The regional framework is also crucial in the analysis of further reaching historical processes, such as peasant migrations and colonizations or feudal conquests. Research on Andalusi hydraulics has clarified some issues which research in other regions had hitherto failed to resolve. This is in part due to the fact that medieval water management has not attracted everywhere as do Vale do Huecha”; Carlos Laliena, “Los regadíos medievales en Huesca. Agua y desarrollo social, siglos XII–XV,” in Agua y progreso social. Siete estudios sobre el regadío en Huesca, siglos XII–XX, ed. C. Laliena (Huesca, 1994), 19–44; “Agua y progreso social en Aragón”; Julián Ortega, “La agricultura de los vencedores y la agricultura de los vencidos. La investigación de las transformaciones feudales de los paisajes agrarios en el valle del Ebro (Siglos XII– XIII),” in Por una arqueología agraria, 123–146; Laliena and Ortega, “Formas feudales de especulación.” 87 Guinot, “L’horta de València”; “La construcció d’un paisatge”; Esquilache, Historia de l’horta d’Aldaia. 88 Barceló, “De la congruencia.” WATER MANAGEMENT AND IRRIGATION IN MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN… 89 much attention as in the Iberian Peninsula. But research on Andalusi hydraulics and irrigated areas has hatched a specific methodology, turning this issue into a unique case study. Finally, as pointed out by F. Retamero, this research has enabled us to precisely draw the relationship between political order and agrarian strategies, in terms that contradict the rigid association set forth by Wittfogel. Thanks to this approach, the study of agricultural spaces can finally transcend the field of “agrarian history”89 or even that of “the history of technology,” within which it has too often been constrained.

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Irrigation and Political Power in the Medieval Kingdom of Valencia

Enric Guinot Rodríguez

Society in the Kingdom of Valencia in the Late Middle Ages: Feudalism, Landlords, Cities, and Peasants The origins of the medieval Kingdom of Valencia lie in the process of territorial expansion undertaken by the Crown of Aragón at the expense of al-Andalus between the mid-twelfth and the mid-thirteenth centuries. During this period, the former kingdoms of Catalonia and Aragón, united since 1137 under the aegis of the Count of Barcelona, embarked on the progressive conquest of the eastern regions of the Iberian Peninsula. During the reign of King James I (1213–1276), the Crown directed the conquest

This chapter is part of the research project: HAR2014-58730-P, “Crecimiento económico y desigualdad social en la Europa Mediterránea (siglos XIII-XV),” financed by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Spanish Government).

E. Guinot Rodríguez (*) Universitat de València, València, Spain e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2019 99 M. T. Abate (ed.), Convivencia and Medieval Spain, Mediterranean Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96481-2_3 100 E. GUINOT RODRÍGUEZ of the Balearic Islands and the region of Valencia, thus adding two new discrete kingdoms: the Kingdom of Mallorca and the Kingdom of Valencia.1 Between the 1230s and the 1280s, both territories witnessed the expulsion of many of its former Muslim inhabitants, while houses and land were distributed among the new Christian colonists from the two kingdoms to the north. This so-called repopulation was much more than a simple colonization process; it was the creation and development of a new feudal society, with the foundation of lordly states but also of small villages and mercantile cities.2 Most of the new settlers who arrived during the course of the thirteenth century were peasant families. Their new lands were mostly used for dryland agriculture, but irrigation areas were also developed during the Muslim period. In fact, the irrigated lands were some of the first to be distributed among the new Christian settlers; often, these properties were also rearranged and, since they were the most productive areas, spread. In consequence, the new Christian society came to imprint its management style onto the Andalusi-Mediterranean irrigation systems that existed in the region.3

1 R. I. Burns, “The Many Crusades of Valencia’s Conquest (1225–1280): an Historiographical Labyrinth,” in On the Social Origins of Medieval Institutions: Essays in Honor of Joseph F. O’Callaghan, ed. Donald J. Kagay and Theresa M. Vann (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 167–177; A. Riera Melis, “James I and His Era. Brief Analysis of a Major Political and Cultural Inheritance,” Catalan Historical Review 1 (2008): 9–16; E. Guinot, “The Expansion of a European Feudal Monarchy During the Thirteenth Century: the Catalan- Aragonese Crown and the Consequences of the Conquest of the Kingdoms of Majorca and Valencia,” Catalan Historical Review 2 (2009): 33–48; A. Furió, “Jaume I: una corona i quatre regnes,” in Jaume I i el seu temps 800 anys després: Encontres acadèmics de Castelló, Alacant i València: actes, ed. R. Narbona (València: Universitat de València, 2012), 43–71. 2 E. Guinot, “The Expansion of a European Feudal Monarchy”; E. Guinot, Los valencianos de tiempos de Jaime I. La formación de una sociedad feudal en el Mediterráneo del siglo XIII, (Valencia, Editorial Tirant Lo Blanc, 2011). 3 T. F. Glick, Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970); T. F. Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages. Comparative Perspectives on Social and Cultural Formation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); T. F. Glick, (1995), From Muslim Fortress to Christian Castle. Social and Cultural Change in Medieval Spain, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995); A. Furió and L. P. Martínez Sanmartín, “De la hidràulica andalusí a la feudal: continuïtat i ruptura. L’Horta del Cent a l’Alzira medieval,” in L’espai de l’aigua: xarxes i sistemes d’irrigació a la Ribera del Xúquer en la perspectiva històrica, ed. A. Furió and A. Lairón (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València (PUV), 2000), 19–73; E. Guinot, “Com en temps de sarraïns. La herencia andalusí en la organización del regadío de una ciudad medieval: la huerta de Valencia,” in Musulmanes y cristianos frente al agua en las ciudades medievales, ed. M. I. Val IRRIGATION AND POLITICAL POWER IN THE MEDIEVAL KINGDOM… 101

Medieval Valencia: Natural Features Why was thirteenth-century Valencia so rich in irrigated agriculture? The first reason is the peculiarity of the Mediterranean climate, especially that which pervades the eastern façade of the Iberian Peninsula. In general, the Mediterranean climate is characterized by irregularity both throughout the year and from year to year, notably concerning rainfall. Rainfall is concentrated in the spring and the autumn, with peaks of torrential precipita- tions, which, historically, could not be effectively stored. In addition, the summers, when some crops require water in abundance, are extremely dry. Grosso modo, average annual precipitation is between 400 and 500 mm per square meter, but there are sharp local variations, and while some zones do not reach 250 mm, others have in excess of 1000 mm.4 It is easy to understand that this rainfall regime often requires the aid of irrigation, not only for the growing of vegetables and fruit but some years also for cereals, vines, and olive trees. Another matter to be taken into consideration is the physical configuration of the territory, which has an elongated shape, running parallel to the Mediterranean coast, and a very mountainous interior, that causes an abundance of small- and medium-sized valleys. The coastal strip, which is crisscrossed by the main rivers, forms the large plains where the main cities have historically been located.5 The main Andalusi irrigation systems, which were inherited and extended by the Christian settlers from the thirteenth century onward, were situated in these coastal plains. Concerning water resources, there are five major rivers in the region (Millars, Palancia, Turia, Xúquer, and Segura). These rivers are small by

Valdivieso and O. Villanueava Zubizarreta (Santander: Cantabria University Press, 2008), 173–196; J. Torró, “Després dels musulmans: les primeres operacions colonitzadores al regne de València i la qüestió de les tècniques hidràuliques,” in Arqueologia medieval: la transformació de la frontera medieval musulmana: II curs internacional d’arqueologia medieval, ed. F. Sabaté (Lleida: Pagès, 2009), 93–118; J. Torró, “Field and Canal-building after the Conquest: Modifications to the Cultivated Ecosystem in the Kingdom of Valencia, ca. 1250–ca. 1350,” in A World of Economics and History. Essays in Honour of Professor Andrew M. Watson, B. A. Catlos ed. (Valencia: PUV, 2009), 77–108; A. Furió, “I paesaggi dell’acqua nella Spagna mediterranea: le huertas e l’agricoltura irrigua,” I paesaggi agrari d’Europa (secoli XIII–XV) (Pistoia: 2015), 323–384. 4 A. Camarasa and J. Soriano (2014), “Empirical Study of Extreme Fainfall Intensity in a Semi-arid Environment at Different Time Scales,” Journal of Arid Environments 100–101, n. 3 (2014): 63–71. 5 V. Rosselló. Geografia del País València. Valencia: Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 1995. 102 E. GUINOT RODRÍGUEZ

European standards, but they were nevertheless important as they were the only permanent watercourses in the region. They run from west to east, and their lower courses were crucial for the construction of the great huertas in the coastal plains.6 In any case, the water supply of irrigation systems mostly relied on wells. These were small irrigation networks, barely a few hectares in size and managed by a single community, as illus- trated by the analyses of hydraulic systems in Beniali,7 Artana,8 Aín,9 Valle de Veo,10 and Valle de Perputxent.11 The resulting territorial configuration included six majorhuertas , connected with rivers: Plana de Castelló, Huerta of Sagunto, Huerta of Valencia, Huerta de la Ribera, Huerta of Gandía, and Huerta of Orihuela; three medium-sized huertas: Middle Turia, Magro River, and Huerta of Xàtiva12; and several hundred small irrigated areas scattered all over the region in mountainous regions and valley-bottoms. The number of these small huertas is uncertain, but there could well be as many as 300. During the 1980s and the 1990s, geographers and some historians13 classified irrigation systems in Valencia according to size and associated population (macrosystems, mesosystems, and microsystems). This classification, however, did not go very far, as it was merely formal and only

6 Ibid. 7 K. W. Butzer, et al., “Una alquería islámica medieval en la Sierra de Espadán. Benialí,” Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura 61 (1985): 305–365. 8 S. Selma, “La integración de los molinos en un sistema hidráulico: la alquería de Artana (Serra d’Espadà, Castelló),” in I Coloquio Historia y Medio Físico. El agua en zonas áridas: arqueología e historia, edited by Lorenzo Cara Barrionuevo (Almería: Instituto de Estudios Almerienses, 1989): 2, 713–736. 9 S. Selma, “El molí hidràulic de farina i l’organització de l’espai rural andalusí. Dos exemples d’estudi arqueològic espacial a la Serra d’Espadà (Castelló),” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 27 (1991): 69–106. 10 S. Selma, “Evolució des de l’època andalusí de l’espai agrari irrigat a la vall de Veo (Serra d’Espadà, Castelló),” in IV Congreso de Arqueología Medieval Española, Alicante, 1993 (Alicante: Diputación Provincial, 1994): 3, 567–574. 11 J. Torró and J. M. Segura, “Irrigación y asentamientos en la Vall de Perputxent,” Aigua i poblament musulmà (Alicante: Ajuntament de Benissa, 1988): 67–92. 12 J. B. Marco, J. F. Mateu and J. Romero, Regadíos históricos valencianos. Propuestas de rehabilitación (Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana, 1994). 13 K. W. Butzer, et al., “Irrigation Agrosystems in Eastern Spain: Roman or Islamic Origins?,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 75 (1985): 479–509. (Translated in Catalan: “L’origen dels sistemes de regadiu al País Valencià: romà o musulmà?” Afers 7 (1988–1989): 9–68). IRRIGATION AND POLITICAL POWER IN THE MEDIEVAL KINGDOM… 103 applicable to the twentieth century. It did not take into consideration historical transformations, and its reproduction, for example, by Jorge Hermosilla, is of little use for research.14

Social Management of Water After the Christian Conquest in the Thirteenth Century After the Christian conquest of Valencia, between 1233 and 1258, the Crown initiated a program of land distribution among the new settlers. This topic has been analyzed in detail in recent years and is by now relatively well known.15 The settlements from whence the former Muslim settlers were expelled were colonized by Christian immigrants according to the rules and hierarchies of feudal society. The king or the feudal lord to whom the king had granted possession of the land distributed this land among newly arrived peasant families. At the beginning, small, family- based agricultural units were predominant; the average size of these properties was nine hectares. Land used for dryland agriculture was more common, but, wherever there were irrigations systems, these became the most sought-after properties among the new Christian settlers.16 Colonizers soon demanded more irrigation land than was available, and, wherever it was materially possible, irrigation was expanded as far as irrigation water reached, which sometimes pushed the limits of these

14 J. Hermosilla Pla, ed., El patrimonio hidráulico del Bajo Turia: l’Horta de Valencia (Valencia: Dirección General de Patrimonio-Generalitat Valenciana, 2007); J. Hermosilla Pla and E. Iranzo García, “Censo de hidráulica tradicional en el Mediterráneo,” Areas: Revista internacional de ciencias sociales 29 (2010): 73–90. 15 J. Torró, “Guerra, repartiment i colonització al regne de València (1248–1249),” in Repartiments medievals a la Corona d’Aragó: segles XII–XIII, ed. J. Torró and E. Guinot (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2007): 201–276; E. Guinot, “El repartiment feudal de l’Horta de València al segle XIII: jerarquització social i reordenació del paisatge rural,” in Repartiments medievals a la Corona d’Aragó: segles XII–XIII, ed. J. Torró and E. Guinot (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2007): 115–199; T. F. Glick, “Reading the Repartimientos: Modeling Settlement in the Wake of Conquest,” in Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain, ed. Mark D. Meyerson and Edward D. English (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999): 20–39. 16 J. Torró, “Arqueologia de la conquesta. Registre material, substitució de poblacions i transformació de l’espai rural valencià (segles XIII–XIV),” in El feudalisme comptat i debatut. Formació i expansió del feudalisme català, ed. M.Barceló et alii (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2003): 153–200; Torró, “Field and Canal-building after the Conquest”; Guinot, “El repartiment feudal de l’Horta de València,”; Furió, “I paesaggi dell’acqua.” 104 E. GUINOT RODRÍGUEZ

systems to the very edge of the sea; often this also involved the draining of marshlands.17 Although Luis Martínez has demonstrated that some of the channels used in the Muslim period were predominantly used to power watermills, rather than for irrigation, these examples are exceptional and are limited to the vicinity of the city of Valencia.18 As we have abundantly proven in recent years, the territory was crisscrossed by major channels which supplied discrete huerta areas located near rural hamlets, but ample tracts of land that existed between them were exploited for dryland crops, which also played a key role in the Andalusi agroecosystem.19 Therefore, Andalusi peasants mixed two complementary agricultural regimes: one was intensive, involving multiple cropping (cereal, vines, vegetable, and fruit), was labor-intensive and reliant on the use of manure, and was practiced in well-defined and discrete areas; the other, which took place in the areas interspersed between irrigation areas, combined dryland agriculture, grazing, and gathering.20

17 J. Torró, “Terrasses irrigades a les muntanyes valencianes. Les transformacions de la colonització cristiana,” Afers 51 (2005): 301–356; Torró, “Field and Canal-building after the Conquest”; J. Torró, “Tierras ganadas. Aterrazamiento de pendientes y desecación de marjales en la colonización cristiana del territorio valenciano,” in Por una arqueología agraria. Perspectivas de investigación sobre espacios de cultivo en las sociedades medievales his- pánicas, ed. H. Kirchner (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2010): 157–172; J. Torró, “Colonización cristiana y roturación de áreas palustres en el reino de Valencia: Los marjales de la villa de Morvedre,” in Hidraúlica agraria y sociedad feudal: prácticas, técnicas, espacios,ed. J. Torró and E. Guinot (Valencia: Publicacions Universitat de Valencia, 2012): 147–185. 18 L. P. Martínez Sanmartín, “Els molins com a clau de l’articulació de l’Horta medieval de València: La sentència de 1240 entre els moliners d’Alaxar i la comunitat de Rascanya,” Afers: fulls de recerca i pensament 51 (2005): 369–396; L. P. Martínez Sanmartín, “Tecnoexperts, perits i sistemes hidràulics: la Séquia de Mislata i les comunitats de regants de l’Horta de València al segle XV,” Recerques. Història, Economia, Cultura 69 (2014): 31–97. 19 E. Guinot, “L’Horta de València a la Baixa Edat Mitjana. De sistema hidràulic andalusí a feudal,” Afers. Fulls de pensament i recerca 51 (Valencia 2005): 271–300; E. Guinot, “Agrosistemas del mundo andalusí: criterios de construcción de los paisajes irrigados,” in XVIII Semana de Estudios Medievales. Cristiandad e Islam en la Edad Media hispana, ed. J. I. De la Iglesia (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 2008): 209–238; E. Guinot and F. Esquilache, “La reorganización del paisaje agrario en la Huerta de Valencia después de la conquista cristiana. El sistema hidráulico y el parcelario de Montcada y Benifaraig en el siglo XIII,” Debates de Arqueología Medieval 2 (Granada, 2012): 229–276. 20 T. F. Glick, “Regadío y técnicas hidraúlicas en al-Andalus: su difusión según un eje Este- Oeste,” Actas del I Seminario Internacional. La caña de azúcar en tiempos de los grandes descubrimientos (1450–1550) (Motril: Casa de la Palma 1990): 89–98; T. F. Glick, Paisajes IRRIGATION AND POLITICAL POWER IN THE MEDIEVAL KINGDOM… 105

Given that irrigation in Andalusi times was practiced only in discrete areas, which were, furthermore, of moderate size, the Christian colonists from Aragón encountered few difficulties in the expansion of the system during the thirteenth century. This expansion was justified by the adoption of a different productive strategy, based on the extensive cultivation of cereal and vines, which required more land but less water (and followed a different calendar altogether). The spread of irrigation was allowed by a privilege granted by the Crown in 1239, and, although sometimes it was carried out individually, it was largely done on the initiative of the leading groups of the newly imposed feudal society: the king, lords, and, progressively, also the new municipalities founded in the thirteenth century.21 Individual projects were generally limited to the interior of pre-existing irrigation systems: for example, by peasants wishing to turn a former dryland-agriculture property into an irrigated field, thus taking advantage of a nearby channel. The only condition for doing so was to start contrib- uting to the maintenance costs of the infrastructure (the acequia), which was an annual fee (the sequiatge) based on the size of the property. Most expansions, at all events, were promoted and controlled by the feudal leadership: the king (or his officials) or the local lord, even if the actual work was executed by the peasants.22 Concerning the ownership of irrigation water, the general principle in the post-conquest Kingdom of Valencia was that irrigation water was attached to the land that was to be irrigated. Thus, when the king or the lords distributed irrigation land, it was specified that the grant included the necessary water and the use of the irrigation infrastructures. At the de conquista. Cambio cultural y geográfico en la España medieval (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2007). (Original edition: From Muslim Fortress to Christian Castle: Social and Cultural Change in Medieval Spain) (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1995); T. F. Glick and H. Kirchner, “Hydraulic Systems and Technologies of Islamic Spain: History and Archeology,” in Working with Water in Medieval Europe: Technology and Resource-Use, ed. P. Squatriti, (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 267–329; A. Malpica, “El agua en la agricultura: agroecosistemas y ecosistema en la economía rural andalusí,” Vínculos de Historia 1 (2012): 31–44. 21 A. Furió, “La domesticación del medio natural. Agricultura, ecología y economía en el País Valenciano en la Baja Edad Media,” in El medio natural en la España medieval. Actas del I Congreso sobre ecohistoria e historia medieval, ed. J. Clemente (Cáceres: Universidad de Extremadura, 2001), 57–103. 22 Torró, “Terrasses irrigades a les muntanyes”; Torró, “Field and Canal-building after the Conquest”; E. Guinot, “De la Vega andalusí a la huerta feudal. Herencia y cambio en el regadío medieval,” in Actas del XI Simposio Internacional de Mudejarismo, Teruel 2008 (Teruel: Centro de Estudios Mudéjares-Instituto de Estudios Turolenses, 2009), 223–253. 106 E. GUINOT RODRÍGUEZ same time, if it was possible to incorporate new land into the irrigation system because it was technically possible to extend the channels thereto, they could do so by virtue of the privilege conceded by the monarchy to the new Kingdom of Valencia.23 Professor Glick was the first to note that, in some areas in southern Valencia and in the neighboring region of Murcia, things were different and irrigation rights, measured by hours, could be sold and were, therefore, dissociated from the land.24 This model was compared with the system used in the oases located in the most arid zones of North Africa and Arabia. The system aims to make the most of the little water available and ensure that the water that a family did not need, perhaps because their land was left fallow, or because of the sort of crop that they were growing, was used by someone else. The model places a premium on efficiency, and for this reason it is found in southern Valencia, which is among the most arid areas of the region. However, this situation is exceptional and, moreover, has been attested only from the fourteenth century onward. It is, for this reason, not certain whether the alienability of water was an inherited Andalusi custom or a radical shift introduced by the Christian settlers in the thirteenth century.25 Finally, as a consequence of the progressive expulsion of the Andalusi population and the distribution of their land among Christian colonists, which was still taking place on a local scale in the early fourteenth century, approximately 70% of irrigation land in the Kingdom of Valencia was being worked by Christian peasants in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This is clearly relevant for the social dimension of irrigation, and its management and governance, because the political and social status of Christians and Muslims in medieval Valencia was very different. So-called Mudéjar had been turned into a marginal social minority with little access to political power, as demonstrated by Brian Catlos.26

23 T. F. Glick, Regadío y sociedad en la Valencia medieval, 2nd ed. (Valencia: Biblioteca Valenciana, 2004.) (Original text: Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia) (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970); Furió, “I paesaggi dell’acqua”; Guinot, “Com en temps de sarraïns.” 24 Glick, Regadío y sociedad en la Valencia. 25 E. Guinot and S. Selma, Las acequias de Elche y Crevillente, (Valencia: Conselleria d’Agricultura Generalitat Valenciana, 2003). 26 B. Catlos, The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon, 1050–1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). IRRIGATION AND POLITICAL POWER IN THE MEDIEVAL KINGDOM… 107

Institutions and Governance of Irrigation in the Kingdom of Valencia (Thirteenth–Fourteenth Centuries) As noted, a direct consequence of the Christian conquest of Valencia between 1233 and 1245 was the expulsion of a large proportion of the Andalusi population and the distribution of their lands among Christian colonists. In many places, the management of the pre-existing irrigation systems and of those newly built was left in the hands of the new settlers. We must not lose sight, however, of the fact that in 1300 up to 50% of the population was still Muslim,27 and thus very often the governance of irrigation remained, totally or partially, in the hands of Mudéjar groups, at least on a local level. At all events, we must always remember that the management of irrigation systems and the distribution of Muslim and Christian populations were far from homogeneous in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Locally, however, small communities, both in terms of population and of the size of irrigated lands (in mountain areas, the irrigated systems were between 0.5 and 6 ha) were generally ethnically homogenous, and they were able to implement their own management criteria autonomously. In any case, in larger irrigation systems located alongside riverbanks and on coastal plains, the same channel of acequia could irrigate the land of up to 15 villages, and it was common for this to include both Christian and Muslim communities, for example, with the Acequia Real de Alzira.28 If this was the case, the management and governance of irrigation was invari- ably in the hands of Christian communities or lords. This fact needs to be stressed for future reference: whenever “mixed” irrigation existed, the power of ruling over water was always a Christian prerogative. Our knowledge is a little less certain with regard to small Mudéjar communities in mountain regions. Generally, water was supplied by wells and the size of the irrigated land areas did not exceed 5 ha. Although almost

27 J. Torró, “Els musulmans de la Corona d’Aragó en temps de Jaume I,” in Jaume I i el seu temps 800 anys després: encontres acadèmics de Castelló, Alacant i Valencia, actes, ed. R. Narbona Vizcaíno (València: Fundació Jaume II el Just-PUV, 2012), 109–132. 28 T. Peris Albentosa, Regadío, producción y poder en la Ribera del Xúquer (La Acequia Real de Alzira, 1258–1847), (Valencia: Confederación Hidrográfica del Júcar, 1992); T. Peris Albentosa, La séquia reial del Xúquer (1258–1847): síntesis històrica i aportacions documentals, (Alzira: Germania, 1995); Furió and Martínez Sanmartín, “De la hidràulica andalusí.” 108 E. GUINOT RODRÍGUEZ all of the local documents have disappeared, we have enough evidence to maintain that, in those instances, the Mudéjar communities (aljama) were allowed to organize themselves without interference. The record even mentions the operation of Mudéjar acequieros in these local systems,29 but their exact jurisdiction is harder to ascertain. Similarly, we are in the dark concerning how much authority the aljama had over the water and the irrigation systems and how conflicts, either internal or between neighboring communities that used the same channel, were resolved. For example, the acequia of Carlet, in the Magro River, supplied at least three small Mudéjar villages, namely Llombai, Alfarb, and Benimodo, and some court proceedings dating to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have been preserved.30 Also, we must remember that in the late thirteenth century approximately 90% of the Mudéjar population (half the total population of the kingdom) had become vassals of feudal lords. Therefore, it may be that Mudéjar acequieros had as much autonomy in the everyday management of the irrigation systems as their Christian counterparts. The main doubt relates to how much the lords interfered with everyday practices through their local agents: the Christian alcaide or baile, or the Mudéjar alamí. Concerning irrigation systems which affected towns and villages where Christian colonists lived, the proportion of Christian and Muslim inhabitants varied widely. In Plana de Castellón, all irrigators were Christian, as were most irrigators in the Huerta of Valencia from the fourteenth century onward; other places, for example, Alzira, Gandía, Xàtiva, and Oriola, had a higher proportion of Muslim inhabitants, but irrigation systems always remained under the control of the Christians, and the role played by the Water Tribunal of Valencia and the irrigation communes has claimed a permanent place in popular imagination.31 In recent years, as aptly

29 Glick, Regadío y sociedad en la Valencia; E. Guinot, “El regadiu històric en el món mudèjar-morisc (segles XIII–XVII),” in Entre terra i fe. Els musulmans al regne cristià de València (1238–1609), ed. N. Piqueras Sánchez (València: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2009), 219–228; F. Esquilache and E. Guinot, “La gestió técnica de la irrigació en les hortes històriques valencianes. El sequier, dels orígens a la desaparició (segles XIII– XVII),” Millars: espai i historia 37 (2014): 59–99. 30 M. Ardit Lucas, Creixement econòmic i conflicte social.La foia de Llombai entre els segles XIII i XIX (Valencia: Editorial Afers, 2004). 31 V. Giner Boira, El Tribunal de las Aguas de la Vega de Valencia, 960–1960 (Valencia: Ed. del Tribunal de las Aguas, 1960.) (Reeditado: Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana, 1988); V. Fairén, El Tribunal de las Aguas de la Vega de Valencia y su proceso: oralidad, concentracion, rapidez, economia, 2nd ed., corrected and augmented (València: Caja de Ahorros de Valencia, IRRIGATION AND POLITICAL POWER IN THE MEDIEVAL KINGDOM… 109

summarized by Luis Martínez,32 several authors have begun to prove that the idea of peasant-controlled irrigation systems is largely a twentieth- century notion, and that, historically, the membership of the Water Tribunal included noblemen and burgesses along with actual irrigators.33 On the other hand, Professor Glick’s early works on late medieval water management highlighted the coexistence of two governance models: the one practiced in the communes of the city of Valencia and those exercised by municipalities. There were, however, three models and not two: direct management by a royal official, municipal governance, and autonomous governance of irrigation communities, for example, in the city of Valencia, which is the origin of the Water Tribunal. Let us see how these models worked in the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries.

Direct Management by Royal Officials This model was short-lived and less widespread than the others. It was active only in the immediate aftermath of the conquest; that is, in the central decades of the thirteenth century. In fact, the record provides evidence of only three examples, which had little in common apart from the fact that all were considerable in terms of irrigated surface and the number of irrigators. These are the Acequia de Montcada, in the Huerta of Valencia, the Acequia Real de Alzira, in the homonymous town, and the Acequia Mayor de Vila-real, located in Vila-Real, which was the property of the king. The firstacequia was built during the Andalusi period and is the only acequia of the nine that existed in the huerta and city of Valencia that the Crown retained between 1238 and 1268, when it was turned into a commune and handed over to the landowners.34

1988); V. Fairén, “Breve examen del Tribunal de las Aguas de Valencia y de su proceso,” Arbor: Ciencia, pensamiento y cultura 175, n. 691 (2003): 1295–1330. 32 Martínez, “Tecnoexperts, perits i sistemes hidràulics.” 33 E. Guinot and J. Romero, “El Tribunal de les Aigües de l’Horta de València: continuïtat institucional i canvi social,” in Derecho, historia y universidades. Estudios dedicados a Mariano Peset, (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de Valencia, 2007), 755–769; S. Garrido, “Las instituciones de riego en la España del Este. Una reflexión a la luz de la obra de Elinor Ostrom,” Historia Agraria 53 (2011): 13–42; Martínez, “Tecnoexperts, perits i sistemes hidràulics.” 34 E. Guinot, “El gobierno del agua en las huertas medievales mediterráneas: los casos de Valencia y Murcia,” in Estudios dedicados a Ángel Barrios (Salamanca: University of Salamanca, 2007): 99–118; Guinot, “El repartiment feudal de l’Horta de València,” Esquilache and Guinot, “La gestió técnica de la irrigació.” 110 E. GUINOT RODRÍGUEZ

The other two examples, namely Alzira and Vila-real, were newly constructed systems promoted by the Crown within the framework of the distribution of land among the Christian settlers in the 1250s and 1270s, respectively. We have documents that record some of the payments made by the king’s men during the works and the allocation of plots of land.35 The duration of these systems was limited to approximately 20 years, after which the Crown handed over the governance of irrigation to the municipalities. The reasons for this are not well known, but maybe it was simply that, once the works were finished and the need for extra supervision had ceased, it was always the idea to assimilate these areas with the rest of the Kingdom of Valencia.

Municipal Model The most common model laid the responsibility for water management at the feet of the municipalities; this system could be found in both lord- and king-owned populations, but only in predominantly Christian towns or villages, which were the only ones that could have municipal governments. Their basic characteristics were described by Professor Glick,36 and the study of the most important examples has resulted in the publication of monographs, for example, on Alzira,37 Vila-real,38 and Castelló de la Plana.39 It would be desirable for other important populations, such as Gandia, Sagunto, and Orihuela, to receive similar close attention in the future. In general, this model left the jurisdiction of water management to the municipal council, which in Valencia was a collective government model formed by two, three, or four magistrates. These magistrates were assisted by an advisory board, which could comprise from a handful of members

35 M. Gual Camarena, Estudio histórico-geográfico sobre la acequia real del Júcar (Valencia: Institución Alfonso el Magnánimo, 1979); I. Román Millán, El regadío de Vila-real durante los siglos XIII–XV. Orígenes, administración y conflictos (Vila-Real: Ajuntament de Vila-real, 2000); E. Guinot and S. Selma, (2012), “La construcción del paisaje en una huerta feudal: la Séquia Major de Vila-real (siglos XIII–XV),” in Hidráulica agraria y sociedad feudal. Técnicas, prácticas, espacios, ed. J. Torró and E. Guinot (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de Valencia, 2012), 103–145. 36 Glick, Regadío y sociedad en la Valencia. 37 Peris Albentosa, Regadío, producción y poder. 38 Román Millán, El regadío de Vila-real. 39 Glick, Irrigation and Society. IRRIGATION AND POLITICAL POWER IN THE MEDIEVAL KINGDOM… 111 to as many as 40 or 60 in the larger towns.40 The citizens themselves, through the council, were the owners of the channels and of the water that circulated through them, a right granted by Crown or the local lord during the time of settlement. Generally, the concession of the water rights to the community (universitas) was already included in the foundational population charters issued in the thirteenth century. In the following decades, this universitates organized itself as a municipality according to the privileges awarded by the Crown to the Kingdom of Valencia between 1245 and 1283. Magistrates and board, therefore, made all of the decisions concerning water management, organizing irrigation, negotiating with neighboring communities which used the same river, appointed management officials (or auctioned their positions), controlled expenses, perhaps managed the watermill, and so on.41 A second level of management involved the administration of everyday situations and the resolution of internal conflicts between irrigators, which were the functions of the acequiero, who in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries could be either a local man or also a foreigner who, following a public auction, assumed the job for one or two years. Progressively, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the responsibilities of theacequiero were assumed by an official belonging to the municipal council, who was appointed by either the citizens or the magistrates.42 Similarly, we must also take into account that, between the mid- thirteenth and the mid-fourteenth century, Crown villages accumulated royal privileges, which guaranteed their autonomy from interference by royal officials concerning irrigation; but this was not applicable to villages under lordly jurisdiction, which in the second half of the fourteenth century controlled approximately 80% of the Kingdom of Valencia. In these cases, the municipalities were much more exposed to external interference, which does not mean that all of them were subject to it. In my opinion, most of the time the peasants and their local institutions were left

40 R. Narbona, “La configuración del perfil municipal a la xarxa urbana del regne de Valencia, 1238–1329,” in Jaume I. Commemoració del VIII Centenari del naixement de Jaume I, ed. M. Teresa Ferrer i Mallol (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2012), 579–588. 41 Glick, Regadío y sociedad en la Valencia; Gual Camarena, Estudio histórico-geográfico;Peris Albentosa, La séquia reial del Xúquer; Román Millán, El regadío de Vila-real. 42 Martínez, “Tecnoexperts, perits i sistemes hidràulics”; Esquilache and Guinot, “La gestió técnica de la irrigació”; I. Román Millán, “La figura del cequier en Vila-real durante el siglo XIV,” Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura 62 (1996): 401–415. 112 E. GUINOT RODRÍGUEZ alone in terms of the everyday management of their irrigation systems, and the lords intervened only occasionally, when they had some particular design in mind, which could well be to assist their peasants in their fights against those under the neighboring lord, as Glick demonstrated with the case of Massamagrell in the Huerta of Valencia in 1438.43 The important thing to remember is that this ability to intervene was the raison d’etre, the core, of feudal society.

The Communal Model in the Huertas of Valencia and Xàtiva The third irrigation management model in late medieval Valencia was based on the autonomous commune, which could act independently of municipal authority. This system seems to have been applied, and is still today, in the Huerta of Xàtiva and the Huerta of Valencia, which is the best-known example because of the emergence, throughout the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries of the so-called Water Tribunal.44 Valencia and Xàtiva were the most important cities in the kingdom at the time of the Christian conquest in the mid-thirteenth century, in demographic, political, and economic terms. Historically, these huertas were divided between seven communities of irrigators, although these have been documented only for the Christian period. Esquilache and Guinot explained that the implementation of the communal system was the norm among Christian communities in the early decades after the repopulation process started, from 1233 onward.45 The reason for this is that, after the arrival of colonists to villages and towns, the priority was to hand the new settlers their land and houses (or the land to build them) and to get production and irrigation going. With the second generation of settlers, especially from the Privilegio General (General Privilege) of 1283, municipalities started forming in Valencia and the councils began taking care of the management of irrigation. The common belief survives that these communes were composed of and controlled by the peasants who worked the land and who set and enforced their own rules autonomously from any superior social and political authority. This belief followed the expansion of small peasant holdings

43 Glick, Regadío y sociedad en la Valencia. 99. 44 Giner Boira, El Tribunal de las Aguas; Fairén, El Tribunal de las Aguas; Glick, Regadío y sociedad en la Valencia; Guinot and Romero, “El Tribunal de les Aigües.” 45 Esquilache and Guinot, “La gestió técnica de la irrigació.” IRRIGATION AND POLITICAL POWER IN THE MEDIEVAL KINGDOM… 113 in Valencia during the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, as demonstrated by Romero and Mateu,46 but the fact is that the image of the independent small peasant has been quite successful, not only in the popular imagination but also within academic circles. For example, Elinor Ostrom used the Valencian communes as an example of the regulation of conflict- resolution mechanisms through collective action.47 Romero and Mateu sufficiently proved that the idea of a “popular” governance and justice was not applicable to the huerta before the nineteenth century—see more on this topic in Samuel Garrido for the nineteenth century and Peris Albentosa for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries48—and that irrigation communes in the city and huerta of Valencia were not peasant-governed institutions in their early stages of development in the thirteenth century. Professor Glick pointed this out for the fifteenth century in his early works,49 and recent publications have confirmed further that the popular notion is baseless.50 Also of enormous interest are Peris Albentosa’s work on the Modern Period and Luis Martínez’s comprehensive and splendid works on the acequia of Mislata and the Huerta of Valencia, and on the acequia of Favara.51 The fact is that thirteenth-century Christian irrigation communes were composed of landowners and not, strictly speaking, of irrigators. Typically for a feudal society, the distribution of land that followed the conquest of the city in 1238–1239 allocated most of the agricultural land to nobles, knights, and religious institutions. In consequence, most of the Huerta of Valencia ended up in the hands of the upper echelons of society and was worked by peasants who exploited it as tenants. It is also true that some of

46 J. Romero, and J. F. Mateu. “Canales de riego del barón de Passá, informe sobre los regadíos mediterráneos en la transición al liberalismo.” In F. Jaubert de Passá, Canales de riego de Cataluña y Reino de Valencia, reedició de J. Romero i J.F. Mateu. vol. 1 (Madrid: Ministerio de Agricultura—Universitat de València, 1991) 5–101. 47 E. Ostrom, Governing the Commons. The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 48 Garrido, “Las instituciones de riego.” 49 T. F. Glick, “Irrigation and Society.” 50 Guinot, “El gobierno del agua en las huertas”; Guinot and Romero, “El Tribunal de les Aigües.” 51 Martínez, “Tecnoexperts, perits i sistemes hidràulics”; L. P. Martínez Sanmartín and V.Terol, “El libro de los actos, provisiones y reuniones de la acequia de Favara (1362–1521): aproximación a un registro clave para la historia del regadío en la Huerta medieval de Valencia,” in Irrigation, Society and Landscape. Tribute to Thomas F. Glick (Valencia: Polytechnic University of Valencia, 2014), 598–618. 114 E. GUINOT RODRÍGUEZ this land was fragmented into small properties and that the owners of these properties were members of the irrigation communes, but the fact remains that most of the people who actually tilled the land were never members of said communes. It follows that communes were ruled by interclass boards with aristocrats, knights, notaries, merchants, craftsmen, and, of course, a few peasants. Naturally, as could be expected in a feudal society, shared membership did not mean equal rights: a nobleman’s voice always had precedence over that of a peasant. In the Huerta of Valencia (and probably also in Xàtiva), there was a clear distinction between the government of the commune and the everyday management of irrigation, including the negotiation of infractions. In the former, the social groups that formed the commune interacted in ways that naturally reflected the hierarchical differences existing between the members, while the latter was generally left to the peasant sector of the commune to deal with. That is, the collective power of the commune was firmly in the grasp of socially relevant members, who also played a deter- minant role in the relationships of the commune with other political orders: the monarchy and the municipality. Conversely, everyday problems concerning the quotidian dynamics of irrigation were solved by smallholders. It is important to remember that this category only included those peasants who owned land, not those who were someone else’s tenants; these featured as litigants in judicial records, paid fines and taxes, and maintained secondary channels, but did not participate in any decision- making processes. On the other hand, it must always be taken into consideration that neither the municipalities nor the communes in the Huerta of Valencia existed in a vacuum. They were part of a complex feudal society and had to interact with other orders of authority, some of which had jurisdiction over water policies.

Institutions with Political Power Over Irrigation Concerning the political administration of irrigation in the medieval Kingdom of Valencia, the theory says that irrigation was essentially under the control of municipal bodies or, alternatively, of the syndics and governing boards of communes. Within each of these bodies, the IRRIGATION AND POLITICAL POWER IN THE MEDIEVAL KINGDOM… 115 responsibility of managing the individual channels fell on the acequieros, as recently analyzed by Peris and Martínez.52 In practice, however, the number of institutions and officials with jurisdiction over irrigation was considerably higher. Feudal societies are characterized by the fragmentation of authority and political and judicial power, and this atomization was often illogical, irrational, confusing, and, it follows, conflict prone. Ironically, conflicts can leave a considerable doc- umental trail and are particularly useful for the historian. From the bottom up, at the base of the water management hierarchy were the acequieros, who in some places were coordinated by an overseer, called sobreacequiero. Above them was the municipal council and, in the Huertas of Valencia and Xàtiva, the governing board of irrigation communes. With communes, there was also the potential intervention of the corresponding municipal councils, but this was always rejected by the communes, which kept up the pressure throughout the Late Middle Ages to maintain their independence.53 Above councils and governing boards were the lords, or their agents, and the Crown, represented by its local officials. The authority of the lordly or royal bailiffs depended on the legal status of each municipality or irrigation system. Also, in areas under lordly jurisdiction, the lords could intervene directly in the exercise of their supreme judicial authority, or could appoint an official to do it in their stead. A fourth layer was represented by the royal officials of the Kingdom of Valencia, specifically the general bailiff, who was responsible for the king’s property and the royal taxes, and especially the governor, who exercised supreme political and judicial authority in the king’s name, and on whose archives Thomas Glick based most of his work.54 It was possible, for instance, for towns and villages under lordly jurisdiction to elevate appeals against the ruling of their lord, which was theoretically supreme, to the governor, as demonstrated by Glick. Finally, the last order or authority was represented by the king himself and the royal council, which could operate as supreme court, although the most common practice was to appoint a specialized judge out of the kingdom’s legal experts.

52 Martínez, “Tecnoexperts, perits i sistemes hidràulics.” 53 Guinot, “El gobierno del agua en las huertas.” 54 Glick, Regadío y sociedad en la Valencia. (Original text: Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia). 116 E. GUINOT RODRÍGUEZ

First Level: The Acequieros The acequieros were persons with the technical knowledge necessary to organize water catchment systems alongside riverbanks, arrange networks of acequias and, especially, manage the allocation of irrigation water among users. In this regard, they were responsible for the enforcement of water-allocation rules and for the punishment of infractions. The role and the hierarchical status of acequieros changed considerably over time: at first, customs inherited from the Islamic period were still very prevalent, but between the Late Middle Ages and the contemporary period, they evolved beyond recognition. It is, therefore, a mistake to extrapolate nineteenth- and twentieth-century habits to earlier periods. With regard to water management, the acequieros has received the most historiographical attention. They were studied, for example, by Professor Glick, who was the first to describe in detail their function and powers in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Valencia.55 Many scholars followed Glick’s wake in the study of acequieros, for example, Román Millán for Vila-real,56 and for the acequia of Mislata,57 in Valencia. In general, these studies stress the autonomy of other institutions similarly involved in the management of irrigation with which acequieros carried out their tasks. More recent works by Martínez, Martínez and Terol, and Esquilache and Guinot highlight that the acequieros focused on the control and allocation of irrigation water among users.58 This is an important idea, which confirms that sometimes popular sectors may have had a say in the management of irrigation, but never through the operation of collective, equalitarian institutions. In European feudal societies, no peasant, no matter how wealthy, could ever compare to a noble knight.

Second Level: Municipalities and Communes Above the acequieros and truly in control of irrigation policies were the municipalities or, in Valencia and Xàtiva, the communes. These institu-

55 Ibid. 56 Román Millán, El regadío de Vila-real. 57 M. V. Febrer Romaguera, “Las ordenanzas medievales de la acequia de Mislata y los acequieros, vehedores y otros cargos ocupados en su gobierno,” Annals de l’IDECO 2 (1985–1986): 157–163. 58 Martínez, “Tecnoexperts, perits i sistemes hidràulics”; Martínez Sanmartín and Terol, “El libro de los actos”; Esquilache and Guinot, “La gestió técnica de la irrigació.” IRRIGATION AND POLITICAL POWER IN THE MEDIEVAL KINGDOM… 117 tions determined the irrigation policies and supervised the economic management of irrigation systems; they could take part in conflicts that were above the jurisdiction of the acequieros. They appointed the acequiero in those cases in which this position was leased to an external agent, negotiated with the lord or with the royal officials, depending on the jurisdiction, and negotiated with other communes or towns/villages, or sued them before the Crown and the royal courts. In short, they governed irrigation in a very real sense, as described in detail by Martínez.59 We have already gone over some of the characteristics of communes and municipal councils, but it is worthwhile giving a few extra details. First, we must take into account that throughout the Late Middle Ages, that is, between the launching of the repopulation policies in the thirteenth century and around 1500, the Kingdom of Valencia underwent a significant process of economic and demographic growth. Initially, because of the way land had been distributed after the conquest, the norm was for all first-generation settlers to possess irrigation land and to be members of the corresponding commune or, alternatively, to be represented by the council in one way or another. Over the years, inheritances, land transfers, and the arrival of new colonists resulted, especially in larger towns, in the emergence of a new class of landless peasants, people who generally earned their living by working someone else’s land. Therefore, by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries not all peasants took part in municipal irrigation governing bodies. New types of conflict that did not fit in the official categorizations and which have in consequence left little trace ensued. The new situation was felt most acutely in the Huertas of Valencia and Xàtiva, where the social distance between high-class landowners and landless peasants was greater. On the other hand, in the communes of Valencia and Xàtiva, the municipalities also played a significant role in the management of irrigation. Peris Albentosa and Luis Martínez have examined the coexistence of communes and municipalities in the capital during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and the fifteenth century, respectively60; most of their observations can be applied to the late medieval period, as suggested long ago by Professor Glick. Thus, the municipal council of Valencia often played the role of arbiter between communes in the huerta, although these were always reluctant to yield to this intervention and jealously

59 Martínez, “Tecnoexperts, perits i sistemes hidràulics.” 60 Martínez, “Tecnoexperts, perits i sistemes hidràulics.” 118 E. GUINOT RODRÍGUEZ maintained their own internal judicial and punishment apparatus. The council also regulated the distribution of water from the Turia in times of drought, with the appointment of sobreacequieros with authority over the acequieros appointed by the individual communes. Conversely, following the conflicts caused by the construction of dams over the river, the municipal council also stood up to defend the rights of the communes before those of towns and villages located higher up the river course, sometimes as far as the modern province of Teruel. Finally, the council also represented all of the communes before the Crown, defending their rights and, indeed, their privileges against the demands posed by other social agents.

Third Level: Lords and Local Royal Officials Feudal landlords were ranked above landowners and irrigators, and they could act in person or through the mediation of their appointed representatives. In royal villages, this role corresponded to the local royal officials. Although here they are all on the same level, for obvious reasons lordly representatives had more extensive powers over irrigation than their royal counterparts. Traditionally, in the medieval Kingdom of Valencia municipalities and communes enjoyed considerable autonomy in the everyday management of irrigation, a privilege that was guaranteed by the laws of the kingdom (Fueros de Valencia). However, in a feudal society lords always possessed great authority over their vassals because of their political and judicial prerogatives. It was, therefore, common for the noble lords to take part in the governance of the irrigation systems located within their jurisdiction, as well as in the resolution of conflicts between them, although we have much less evidence of this than in the town/villages under royal jurisdiction because the records of noble houses have been preserved to a much lesser extent than those of the Crown. In practice, lords intervened in the management of irrigation systems by issuing orders to their vassals through the lordly tribunal or, more often, through the mediation of a local agent: the alcaide or baile, or a judge. Castillo has analyzed a series of judicial processes and other forms of more direct intervention in irrigation systems in the duchy IRRIGATION AND POLITICAL POWER IN THE MEDIEVAL KINGDOM… 119 of Gandía in the fifteenth century and has demonstrated the wide variety of issues in which lords tried to have a say.61 In royal villages, for their part, the Crown was represented by one or more royal officials, the principal of which was thebaile , who was responsible for the royal property and taxes. The king’s property could include one or more watermills, which paid an annual fee to the Crown; this made the correct operation of the water network a direct concern of the king, and was the source of frequent conflicts with municipalities, among other things because millers could enroll the support of the royal baile in their conflicts with irrigators.62

Fourth Level: Royal Officials of the Kingdom—The General Bailiff and the Governor A tier above municipal authorities and even lords were the two major royal officials of the late medieval Kingdom of Valencia. Despite their pre- eminent position, their power over lordly villages/towns was more restricted than with those under the king’s jurisdiction, where they could act with more freedom, which was precisely the reason behind their permanent struggle with municipal councils, as originally explored by Glick.63 This does not mean that they did not act in towns and villages under lordly jurisdiction. The general bailiff was responsible for the administration of the king’s rents and properties, including the mills, which was probably, along with the mills’ rights to the use of irrigation water, their main reason for intervening in matters concerning municipalities under the jurisdiction of a lord. The general bailiff also had political and judicial power over the Jewish and Muslim communities. In principle, this jurisdiction was applicable only to royal villages, but in practice it was also exercised over Mudéjars, who were the subjects of a lord, and this was a cause of frequent conflicts between these lords and the Crown. In any case, the governor was the high magistrate who most often intervened in matters of irrigation, both directly and through the three territorial delegations created in the early fourteenth century in Plana de

61 J. Castillo, Els conflictes de l’aigua a la Safor medieval (Gandia: CEIC Alfons el Vell, 1997). 62 T. Peris Albentosa, “Consideraciones acerca de la ‘hidráulica feudal’ desde la perspectiva de los molinos valencianos (siglos XIII-XVIII),” Historia agraria 66 (2015): 41–73. 63 Glick, Regadío y sociedad en la Valencia. 120 E. GUINOT RODRÍGUEZ

Castelló, Xàtiva, and Orihuela. In theory, the powers of each of them, under the supervision of the general governor, within their own territory were well defined, but in practice the powers of the general governor seem to have gone beyond this supervisory role, acting in fact as an all-powerful magistrate. It is also possible that this picture is not entirely faithful to the truth, but rather a result of the fact that the archives of the general gover- nor for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have survived while those of the local governors are lost. The governor of the Kingdom of Valencia could intervene in matters of irrigation for a variety of reasons, but his role as judicial authority seems to have been more relevant in this regard than his position as the executive magistrate; irrigation-related conflicts were brought before him, and he passed sentence and made sure that it was enforced. Professor Glick’s works are to a large extent based on the record generated by these processes in the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries. These records show that the cases in which the governor mediated involved all social agents and situations: between individual landowners; between individuals and communes or municipalities; between communes or between municipalities which disagreed over the use of river water; between vassals and lords; between irrigators and the king’s officials; between municipalities (including their respective lords); and so on.

Fifth Level: The Crown and the Royal Judges Finally, the Crown intervened in water policies in two ways: by issuing laws concerning the use of water and the jurisdiction of different officials over it and as a court of justice. The Crown intervened periodically by enacting laws that had an effect upon the management of irrigation systems. In some cases, these laws affected operational matters, for example, the regulation of the jurisdiction and functions of acequieros, which was originally issued as a royal privilege but was soon incorporated into the Fueros de Valencia. In other instances, the monarchy simply issued orders to be executed by royal officials or municipalities, or granted a municipality and its citizens’ privileges concerning irrigation water, dams, and canals. A good example of the latter is the collection of privileges awarded by James II between 1310 and 1325 for the defense of the interests of the acequia of Montcada against the pressure posed by the municipal council of the city of Valencia. IRRIGATION AND POLITICAL POWER IN THE MEDIEVAL KINGDOM… 121

On the other hand, the political and judicial structure of the Crown of Aragón, including the Kingdom of Valencia from the thirteenth century onward, was shaped like a pyramid, with the monarch at the top. The task of the royal council was to assist the monarch in government; among other functions, the council worked as a supreme court of appeal. It was possible, therefore, for lawsuits concerning the use of water and the operation of irrigation systems to reach the royal court, but this only occurred with important cases, such as lawsuits which confronted different towns or a village against its master, because these processes were very costly. The direct royal intervention in these conflicts was rarely through the actual council, but by appointment of a royal judge. In the late thirteenth century the monarchy created a team of jurists in each of the kingdoms that comprised the Crown of Aragón, jurists whose job was to intervene in judicial processes in the name of the king, and who were often instrumental in having the lawsuits elevated to the highest courts. Also, the Crown acted as arbiter when jurisdiction conflicts emerged between royal and municipal officials, by determining whose jurisdiction was to prevail or simply by commanding a royal official to take a matter in hand. In any case, this is an issue on which much more research is needed.

Conclusions The aim of this chapter has been to provide a systematic account of the political and institutional agents that regularly participated in the operation of irrigation systems in the Kingdom of Valencia in the Late Middle Ages, especially during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in the immediate aftermath of the Christian conquest. Traditionally, historiography has focused on the municipal and, chiefly, the communal governance of irrigation systems, especially in the Huerta of Valencia, no doubt owing to its iconic character and its relationship with the modern Water Tribunal. I have tried to prove that the governance of irrigation in thirteenth- century Valencia varied almost from system to system, especially because municipal councils did not become common until the closing years of the century. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, on the other hand, the municipal model was clearly predominant, but communes still prevailed in Valencia and the oft-forgotten Xàtiva. Finally, Mudéjar communities had their own management systems, but the lack of documentation has made it almost impossible to analyze them. 122 E. GUINOT RODRÍGUEZ

Also, we have seen that the governance of irrigation in late medieval Valencia was a multilayered affair. We have thus identified up to five orders of authority, from the most basic, everyday water allocation by the acequieros to the collective governance of municipalities and, in two specific locations, communes. Furthermore, these communes were composed of landowners, who were not necessarily the peasants who worked the huertas of Valencia and Xàtiva. Three more hierarchical levels must be added on top of these: the lords and their local agents, in areas under lordly jurisdiction, and royal officials, in towns/villages under royal jurisdiction. Above them were the royal officials for the Kingdom of Valencia, the general bailiff and the governor, and above them the king and the royal council. As the record makes clear, the jurisdictions of these institutions were not always well defined; this was common in feudal society, which was characterized by the privatization of public power. In fact, the gray areas between institutions and the legal contradictions were often used by the agents that operated within this system in order to try to get the upper hand in legal conflicts and lawsuits, for example, concerning irrigation rights. Given the complexity of the picture, it would seem that one of the things to be done when writing the history of the irrigation communes of Valencia is to situate them in their right context. Finally, we must stress what an important role conflict resolution appears to have played for water management policies in general and that this tells us a lot about the characteristics of the society that enacted these rules. Yet, it is just as important not to forget the other face of everyday life, that of normality in the use of water: the quiet acceptance of the common norms. There is no need to see these two dimensions as contradictory: they are two sides of the same story.

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Contacts CHAPTER 4

Notes on the Methodology of Studying the History of the Dhimmis

Torki Fahad A. Al-Saud

Methodology is the main regulator of scholarly research. Thus, it is a concern to scholars in all fields. I have noticed, and discussed with colleagues, historical studies that in my view do not adhere to rigorous standards of historical thinking. The objective of this chapter is not to refer to passages or quote other scholarly works but rather to point out some considerations that I hope it will lead to more accurate results in studying dhimmis. The word dhimma1 and its derived words in the sense of “protection” have been and still are in wide usage since Jahiliyah (pre-Islamic) times; however, in Islam its usage has been somewhat limited in referring to non- Muslim subjects of an Islamic government. The term began as a reference to all non-Muslims and only later was applied to Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians exclusively and later still it was applied again to all non- Muslims

1 Dhimma means covenant. See: Ibn Manzur, Muhammad b. Makram, Lisan al-’Arab, Beirut: Dar Sadir (1414/1994), XII: 221; al-Fayruz Abadi, Muhammad b. Ya’qub, Al-Qamus al-Muhit, Egypt: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi (1371/1952), IV: 117.

T. F. A. Al-Saud (*) King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

© The Author(s) 2019 131 M. T. Abate (ed.), Convivencia and Medieval Spain, Mediterranean Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96481-2_4 132 T. F. A. AL-SAUD living in Islamic territory.2 It is very difficult and essentially incorrect to classify all non-Muslim groups living under Islamic regimes in one category regarded by Muslims as protected people (dhimmis) and sharing the status of the non-Arab Jews and Christians. For example, the mainly Christian Arab tribe of Taghlib was treated uniquely. Although they were not forced to convert, they were not considered to be fully Christian.3 ‘Ali b. Abi Talib, the fourth Caliph, said the only thing that Taghlibis shared

2 There is a clear reference to dhimmis meaning all non-Muslims in a Hadith. The Prophet used to tell leaders of his armies and detachments “… When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. … If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya.” See: Muslim, Muslim b. al-Hajjaj al-Qushayri, Sahih Muslim, Istanbul: al-Matba’ah al-’Amirah (1334 A.H.), V: 140; Abu Yusuf, Ya’qub b. Ibrahim, Kitab al- Kharaj, Beirut: Dar al-Ma’rifah (n.d.), p. 128–129; Ibn Salam, Abu ‘Ubayd al-Qasim, Kitab al-Amwal, (ed.) Muhammad Khalil Harras, Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-’Ilmiyyah (1406/1986), pp. 29–30. The Zoroastrians being ḏimmis in the sense that they are protected if they pay the jizya is mentioned in the Prophet’s letter to al-Mundhir b. Sawa, the ruler of Hajar or Bahrain. See: Abu Yusuf, p. 129; al-Shafi’i, Muhammad b. Idris,al-Umm , (ed.) Rif’at Fawzi ‘Abdulmuttalib, al-Mansurah, Egypt: Dar al-Wafa’ (1422/2001), V: 406ff.; Ibn Hudaidah, Muhammad b. ‘Ali, al-Misbah al-Mudi fi Kuttab al-Nabi al-Ummi wa-Rusulih Ila Muluk al-Ardh min ‘Arabi wa-A’jami, (ed.) Muhammad ‘Azim al-Din, Beirut: ‘Alam al-Kutub (1405/1985), II: 281; Ibn al-Qayyim, Muhammad b. Abi Bakr, Zad al-Ma’ad fi Hadyi Khair al-’Ibad, (eds.) Shu’ayb al-Arna’ut and ‘Abdulqadir al-Arna’ut, Beirut: Mu’assasat al- Risalah (1407/1987), III: 692–693; al-Qastalani, Ahmad b. Muhammad, al-Mawahib al- Ladduniyyah bi-l-Minah al-Muhamadiyyah, (ed.) ‘Imad Zaki al-Barudi, Cairo: al-Maktabah al-Tawfiqiyyah (n.d.), I: 546–547; Hamidullah, Muhammad,Majmu’at al-Watha’iq al-Siya- siyyah ll-’Ahd al-Nabawi wa-l-Khilafah al-Rashidah, Beirut: Dar al-Irshad (1389/1969), p. 114. And supporting Hadiths are recorded in most of the Sunnah books, see: Ibn Anas, Malik, al-Muwatta’, Cairo: Jam’iyyat al-Maknaz al-Islami (1421/2000), p. 96; al-San’ani, ‘Abdulrazzaq b. Hammam, al-Musannaf, (ed.) Habib al-Rahman al-A’zami, Karachi: al- Majlis al-’Ilmi (1416/1996), VI: 68; al-Bukhari, Muhammad b. Isma’il, Sahih al-Bukhari, (ed.) Mustafa Dib al-Bugha, Damascus: Dar Ibn Kathir (1410/1990), III: 1151; Abu Dawud, Sulaiman b. al-Ash’ath, Sunan Abi Dawud, Cairo: Dar al-Hadith (1408/1988), III: 165; al-Tirmizi, Muhammad b. ‘Isa, al-Jami’ al-Sahih, (eds.) Ahmad Shakir and Ibrahim ‘Atwah, Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi (1382–1395/1962–1975), IV: 146; Ibn Hanbal, Ahmad b. Muhammad, al-Musnad, (eds.) Ahmad Shakir and Hamzah al-Zain, Cairo: Dar al-Hadith (1416/1995), II: 302–303, 313, 320. And see what was narrated about Salman al-Farisi in Ibn Salam, p. 30. The general opinion among Sunnis is that non-Arabs “al-ʿajam” are considered dhimmis if they pay the jizyah even if they were not Jews or Christians; however, Arabs must be Jews or Christians to be accepted as dhimmis. See Abu Yusuf, p. 58, 122, 128–129; Ibn Salam, p. 35. About the development of the definition, see “Dhimma” EI2. 3 Abu Yusuf, p. 121; and see the section of “fatwas” on the Taghlibis situation in al-Sara- khsi, Muhammad b. Ahmad, al-Nukat, (ed.) Abu al-Wafa’ al-Afghani, Hyderabad: Lajnat Ihya’ al-Ma’arif al-Nu’maniyyah (1378 A.H.), pp. 112–129. NOTES ON THE METHODOLOGY OF STUDYING THE HISTORY… 133 with other Christians was the drinking of wine.4 Some Muslim scholars disagree and have written that they should have been treated fully as Christians.5 There were also differences of opinion concerning the Sabian status as dhimmis, probably because almost all of the early scholars and muftis6 were not precisely certain what their religion was, as Ibn al-Qayyim pointed out.7 The general notion regarding the Sabians of Harran was that they worshipped the stars. Jewish scholars contributed their share to the polemical writings against them as well.8 The Sabians of Iraq (al- Minda’iyun) however, claim to be the followers of John the Baptist and have their own revealed book.9 Thus, they were treated differently. The first point I would like to shed some light on is the disregarding of the School of Islamic Law (madhhab) under which particular incidents regarding dhimmis occurred which are the most frequent and misleading notions in the field. Otherwise one would be lead to a misunderstanding of the event and it would, therefore, result in misinterpretation. Counter to the common notion, differences between Schools of Islamic Law regarding dhimmis are considerable and who is dhimmi in the eyes of law in the various Schools is wide and fluid. The Maliki School considers every

4 Al-San’ani, VI: 72. 5 Op. cit., 73f. 6 A “fatwā” is an opinion on a point of Islamic Law. The “muftı”̄ is the person who gives the opinion based on Islamic texts. 7 Ibn al-Qayyim, Muhammad b. Abi Bakr, Ahkam Ahl al-Dhimmah, (ed.) Subhi al-Salih, Beirut: Dar al-’Ilm lil-Malayin (1983), I: 92. On the other hand, the diversity of opinion between Abu Hanifah and his disciples Abu Yusuf and al-Shaybani concerning the Sabians was due to the question in the fatwa itself. Abu Hanifah prohibited marriages between Muslims and Sabians because he had been asked about those of Harran who worshiped the planets. However, his disciples allowed them because they were asked about those in Iraq who are considered a sect of Christians. See: al-Qifti, ‘Ali b. Yusuf, Ikhbar al-’Ulama’ bi- Akhbar al-Hukama’, Egypt: Matba’at al-Sa’adah (1326/1908), p. 204. And further explanation of the differences in the Hanafis view in al-Jassas, Ahmad b. ‘Ali,Ahkam al-Qur’an, (ed.) Sidqi Jamil, Beirut: Dar al-Fikr (1421/2001), III: 135. 8 Al-Qirqisani, Ya’qub, Kitab al-Anwar wa-l-Maraqib (Code of Karaite Law), (ed.) Leon Nemoy, New York: The Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation (1939–1943), p. 326 (III. 20.8), p. 676 (VI. 43.3); Maimonides, Moses, The Guide of the Perplexed, (trans.) Shlomo Pines, Chicago: University of Chicago (1984), II: 39, III: 29. 9 Their book is called Kanz Arba. It’s divided into two sections on the right and the left sides. It contains a strong prohibition against worshipping stars “whenever one of them (Sabian women) present a sacrifice at the idols’ temples, or kneels before an astrologer, their fathers’ souls will be asked about their [actions]. So how would you disclaim your misdeeds?” Kanz Arba, (trans.) Yusuf Maty Quzy and Sabih al-Shiri, Baghdad: n. p. (2001), XVII: 1. For more on them, see: “Ṣābiʾa” EI2. 134 T. F. A. AL-SAUD non-Muslim, Arab or non-Arab to be dhimmi, including idol worshippers.10 The Shafi’i School considers Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians whether Arab or non-Arab to be dhimmis but not those of other religions.11 The Zahiri School deems Arab or non-Arab from the People of the Book (i.e., Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians) only as dhimmis.12 The Isma’ili Shiite School regards only non-Arabs from the People of the Book to be dhimmis. According to it, Arabs are not allowed to be followers of any religion other than Islam.13 Of course, all of these concern non- Muslims who lived under Islamic hegemony and paid the jizyah. This leads us to another common notion that the jizyah was part of Islamic jurisprudence from the advent of Islam; hence, the Jews of Hijaz in the beginning of the Islamic State in Medinah were dhimmis. This is an additional misunderstanding. The jizyah became a part of Islamic Law only when the Prophet was about to go to Tabuk in 9 A.H./630 C.E.14 He sent instructions to Yemen, Bahrain, Aylah (present day Al-’Aqabah), Jarba’,15 Adhruh,16 Maqna,17 and Dawmat Al-Jandal (present day Al-Jawf) to collect the jizyah from all of them.18 Consequently, the Jews of Hijaz

10 Al-Qurtubi, Yusuf b. Abdullah, al-Kafi fi Fiqh Ahl al-Madinah al-Maliki, (ed.) Muhammad Walad Madik, n. p. (1399/1979), I: 413. 11 Al-Shafi’i, v: 410; Al-Nawawi, Yahya b. Sharaf, al-Majmu’ Sharh al-Muhazzab lil-Shi- razi, (ed.) Muhammad al-Muti’I, Beirut: Dar Ihya’ al-Turath al-’Arabi (1422/2001), xxi: 190. 12 Ibn Hazm, ‘Ali b. Ahmad, Al-Muhalla, Egypt: Idarat al-Tiba’ah al-Muniriyyah (1349–1352 A.H.), VII: 347–349, 345. 13 Al-Tamimi, al-Nu’man b. Muhammad, Da’a’im al-Islam wa-Zikr al-Halal wa-l-Haram wa-l-Qadhaya wa-l-Ahkam ‘an Ahl Bayt Rasul Allah ‘Alayh wa-’Alayhim Afdhal al-Salam, (ed.) ‘Arif Tamir, Beirut: Dar al-Adhwa’ (1416/1995), I: 446–447. 14 Ibn Hisham, ‘Abdulmalik, al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah, (eds.) Mustafa al-Saqqa, et. al., Cairo: Mustafa al-Halabi (1375/1955), IV: 548; Ibn Salam, p. 25; Al-Tabari, Muhammad b. Jarir, Jami’ al-Bayan fi Ta’wil Ay al-Qur’an, Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi (1373/1954), X: 109; Ibn Kathir, Isma’il b. ‘Umar, Tafsir al-Qur’an al-’Azim, Cairo: Dar Ihya’ al-Kutub al-’Arabiyyah (n.d.). II: 347; Ibn Al-Qayyim, Ahkam, I: 6; Al-Suyuti, Abdulrahman b. Abi Bakr, al-Durr al-Manthur fi al-Tafsir bil-Ma’thur, (eds.) Abdullah al-Turki and ‘Abdulsanad Yamamah, Cairo: Markaz Hajar (1424/2003), VII: 311–312. 15 In Al-Balqa’, in Jordan, near al-Sarat mountains from the Hijaz side. Al-Hamawi, Mu’jam al-Buldan, II: 118. 16 In Al-Balqa’ region, near Al-Garba’. Al-Hamawi, op. cit., I: 129. 17 Near the previously mentioned Aylah. Al-Hamawi, op. cit., V: 178. 18 Ibn Hisham, IV: 525–526, 589, III: 1027, 1030–1032; Ibn Sa’d, Muhammad, al- Tabaqat al-Kubra, Beirut: Dar Sadir (1418/1998), II: 166; Al-Kila’i, Sulayman b. Musa, al-Iktifa’ fi Maghazi Rasul Allah wa-l-Thalathat al-Khulafa’, (ed.) Mustafa Abdulwahid, Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanji (1387–1389/1968–1970), II: 385–386; Ibn Sayyid Al-Nas, NOTES ON THE METHODOLOGY OF STUDYING THE HISTORY… 135 were not dhimmis and should not be considered as such; however, they were considered mu’ahidun,19 which comes from the root (‘ahd), which in this case means armistice (hudnah). The second point is ignoring the differences between cultures when studying dhimmis’ situation. To position all communities in the Islamic hegemony in one mold will necessarily lead to promiscuous judgment. S.D. Goitein correctly points out that Jewish societies in Islamic territories during the Middle Ages were not the same in a number of respects as they reflected their own region’s culture. He remarks, “an attempt to draw a general picture of the Jews under Islam would be futile and would result in a schematic image which nowhere was a reality.”20 This is true for all dhimmis and Goitein’s point is fundamental to the study of minorities. It’s necessary to take into account the immediate political, economic, and cultural milieu of the subjected minorities. For example, to consider but one of the conditions usually present in official Islamic documents enumerat- ing the laws for non-Muslim subjects, dhimmis were proscribed from riding horses but not donkeys or mules. In the ninth century, al-Jahiz (d. 869 C.E.) composed a book about mules in which one finds that indeed riding a mule or a donkey was not favored.21 This cultural bias existed only in limited places within the Islamic World where the Bedouin standards were dominant while in others where an agricultural lifestyle and/or the geographical constraints made it very unlikely for people to ride animals other than donkeys or mules, such as in Yemen or Afghanistan and wherever the land was mountainous. In Yemen the Sultan, the tribal chiefs, the qadi, the faqih, the wazir, and so on from the elite, all rode mules.22 There are many examples in the Arabic sources

Muhammad b. Muhammad, ‘Uyun al-Athar fi Funun al-Maghazi wa-l-Shama’il wa-l-Siyar, (eds.) Muhammad al-Khatrawi and Muhiy al-Din Mistu, Medinah: Maktabat Dar al-Turath (1413/1993), II: 297, 352, 358. 19 Al-Shafi’i, V: 503; Ibn Zanjawih, Humaid b. Mukhlid, al-Amwal, (ed.) Shakir Fayyadh, Riyadh: Markaz al-Malik Faisal lil-Buhuth wa-l-Dirasat al-Islamiyyah (1406/1986), II: 466; al-Jassas, II: 610–611. 20 Goitein, S. D., “Jewish Society and Institutions Under Islam,” in Jewish Society Through the Ages, (eds.) Haim H. Ben-Sasson and S. Ettinger, New York: Schocken Books (1971), p. 172. 21 Al-Jahiz, ‘Amr b. Bahr, al-Qawl fi al-Bighal, (ed.) Charles Pellat, Egypt: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi (1375/1955), p. 17ff. 22 For example, al-Khazraji, ‘Ali b. al-Hasan, al-’Uqud al-Lu’lu’iyyah fi Tarikh al-Dawlah al-Rasuliyyah, (ed.) Mahmud Basyuni ‘Asal, Egypt: Matba’at al-Hilal (1329–1332/1911–1914), I: 57, 66, 425, II: 50, 185. 136 T. F. A. AL-SAUD of chief judges and other officials riding mules and donkeys in times when dhimmi rules were enforced.23 Furthermore, there is a quotation one finds in Arabic sources attributed to al-Hasan al-Basri,24 despising such luxuries as riding a mule.25 This clearly shows us the scale of cultural differentiation in the Islamic World. The third point is the error of treating an entire community as a single economic entity presupposing no distinction between the wealthy, middle class (employees of the governments), and the poor and if one considers the prohibition of riding horses, we should not imagine that it lasted too long unless evidence from the sources differ. However, the majority of cases would reinforce these regulations again and again; consequently, they were imposed for short periods. Additionally, imagining the effects of such regulations and that they would touch the majority of a dhimmi society, is in my opinion, far from reality and heavily influenced by emotions. If one but reads the Islamic sources of a period of such regulation he would conclude that the rich and those in the military (by means of salary and other expenses)26 exclusively had the capability to own and maintain horses. Subsequently, effects of such dictates would have touched only the wealthy dhimmis who possessed the means and position to influence their societies. The fourth point is the disregarding of the parallel Islamic society of the period and region under study. When one evaluates the status of dhimmis, one must evaluate the collateral society as the picture is incomplete with-

23 For example, al-Maqrizi, Ahmad b. ‘Ali, al-Suluk li-Ma’rifat Duwal al-Muluk, (eds.) Muhammad Ziyadah and Sa’id ‘Ashur, Egypt: Lajnat al-Ta’lif wa-l-Tarjamah wa-l-Nashr, Dar al-Kutub (1376–1403/1956–1983), II/b: 444 (the judge of Damascus); Ibn al-Athir, ‘Ali b. Muhammad, al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh, Lugduni Batavorum: E. J. Brill (1851), IX: 648 (the Abbasid Caliph al-Qaʾim) who in his reign (1031–1075 C.E.) renewed the pact of Omar I; al-Safadi, Khalil b. Aybak, A’yan al-’Asr wa-A’wan al-Nasr, (eds.) ‘Ali Abu Zayd et. al., Beirut: Dar al-Fikr al-Mu’asir (1418/1998), II: 675 (the chief judge of Damascus) refused to ride a mule like the other judges as a sign of asceticism. 24 Al-Hasan b. Yasar al-Basri (d.728 C.E.). A well-known religious scholar, was born in Medinah, and lived later in al-Basrah in Iraq. See: Ibn Sa’d, VII: 156; al-Hamawi, Yaqut, Mu’jam al-Udaba’, (ed.) Ihsan ‘Abbas, Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami (1993), III: 1023. 25 Ibn al-Qayyim, Muhammad b. Abi Bakr, al-Da’ wal-Dawa’, (eds.) Muhammad al-Islahi and Za’id al-Nashiri, n. p.: Dar ‘Alam al-Fawa’id (n.d.), I: 146; Ibn Rajab, Abdulrahman b. Ahmad, al-Zayl ‘ala Tabaqat al-Hanabilah, (ed.) Abdulrahman al-”Uthaymin, Riyadh: Maktabat al-’Ubaykan (1425/2005), I: 74. 26 See for example: Al-’Urainy, al-Saiyyd al-Baz, Al-Mamalik, Beirut: Dar al-Nahdhah al- ’Arabiyyah (n.d), p. 159 ff. for the military spending on soldiers in the Mamluk State, in which such regulation was enforced twice. NOTES ON THE METHODOLOGY OF STUDYING THE HISTORY… 137 out taking it into consideration and would lead to false assumptions. We have a shining example of this; the Movement of ‘Abdulnabi b. Mahdi. ‘Ali b. Mahdi al-Himyari (d. 1159 C.E.), founder of the short-lived Mahdi State in Yemen (1159–1174 C.E.), a preaching Sufi. In 1136 C.E. followers started to accept him as their leader. He began as an itinerant preacher serving villages on the coast of Zabid27 in Tihamah. There was a typical messianic tone to his preaching, for example, “O’people! The time is near. Everything I’ve been telling you, you will see happening with your own eyes!”28 and the claim that the entire earth would submit to his rule.29 He was known to have prophesied the future as one of his contemporaries ‘Amarah al-Hakami (d. 1174 C.E.) related and that was the strongest attraction for his adherents.30 When the number of his believers increased, he requested a waiver of taxes for himself and his followers from the Sulayhi31 princess which she generally granted to Sufi groups. Shortly thereafter, considerable wealth became available and he began to buy weapons, horses, and other military equipment.32 In c. 1142 C.E. ‘Ali led his first raid with a large number on al-Kadra’33 but was defeated and took refuge in the mountains, remaining for three years. He then wrote to the Sulayhi princess asking for forgiveness and permission to return home which eventually was granted. He continued preaching for a few years, saving money and recruiting more acolytes.34 Al-Mahdi’s state is described as a Kharijite regime in most of the Islamic sources35 but in reality he was an Isma’ili Shiite, at least politically, as most of the Yemeni leaders at the

27 A famous valley in Yemen, then a city, was built in the Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun’s reign. Its name was al-Ḫusayḅ and it later came to be known by the valley’s name. See al-Hamawi, Mu’jam al-Buldan, III: 131. 28 Al-Hakami, ‘Amarah b. ‘Ali, Tarikh al-Yaman, (ed.) Hasan Sulaiman Mahmud, San’a: Maktabat al-Irshad (1425/2004), p. 150. 29 Ibn Shaddad, Yusuf b. Rafi’,al-Nawadir al-Sultaniyyah wal-Mahasin al-Yusufiyyah, (ed.) Jamal al-Din al-Shayyal, Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanji (1415/1994), pp. 87–88; Ibn Khillikan, I: 306. 30 Al-Hakami, p. 149. 31 The Sulayhids: An Isma’ili dynasty ruled in the name of the Fatimids over much of the Southern highlands and the Tihamah region of Yemen (1047–1138 C.E.). For more information see: “Ṣulayḥids,” EI2. 32 Al-Hakami, 149. 33 A city in Yemen overlooking the Saham Valley, built around the year 1010 C.E. See: al-Hamawi, Mu’jam al-Buldan, IV: 441. 34 Al-Hakami, pp. 149–150. 35 Ibn Khillikan, Ahmad b. Muhammad, Wafayat al-A’yan wa-Anba’ Abna’ al-Zaman, (ed.) Ihsan ‘Abbas, Beirut: Dar Sadir (n.d.), I: 306; al-’Arshi, Husain b. Ahmad, Bulugh al- 138 T. F. A. AL-SAUD time followed the Fatimids.36 There were two reasons for this: first, he disavowed allegiance to the Abbasid Caliph and declared himself an Imam and second, as the Islamic sources inform, he adopted two practices of the Kharijites. He had people executed for committing one of the “kaba’ir” (great sins in Islam) and legitimized the enslavement of Muslim women and children whom he had conquered for being, in his view, unbelievers.37 After ‘Ali’s death, his son Mahdi (d. c. 1164 C.E.) assumed control of the State. He was succeeded by his brother ‘Abdulnabi, during whose reign the Mahdi regime controlled almost all of Yemen38 until defeated on May 12, 1174 C.E. by the Ayyubids.39 The Ibn al-Mahdi messianic movement which arose in Yemen was the primary impetus for the persecution of the Jews and was the reason for Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen written during ‘Abdulnabi’s reign in 1172 C.E.40 During this time a Jewish man who was inspired by the Mahdi’s messianic teaching41 and also motivated by the persecution of his people pro- claimed he was a messenger preparing the way for the Jewish Messiah.42

Maram fi Sharh Misk al-Khitam fi man Tawalla Mulk al-Yaman min Malik wa-Imam, (ed.) Anistas Mari al-Kirmili, Cairo: Maktabat Luwis Sarkis (1939), p. 17. 36 Al-Hakami, p. 151; al-Zahabi, Muhammad b. Ahmad, Siyar A’lam al-Nubala’, (eds.) Shu’aib al-Arna’ut and Muhammad al-’Irqsusi, Beirut: Mu’ssasat al-Risalah (1417/1996), XX: 583; al-Safadi, Khalil b. Aybak, al-Wafi bil-Wafayat, (eds.) Hellmut Ritter, et. al., Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag (1381–1429/1962–2008), XIX: 246; Ibn al-’Imad, Abdulhai b. Ahmad, Shazarat al-Dhahab fi Akhbar man Zahab, (eds.) Abdulqadir al-Arna’ut and Muhammad al-Arna’ut, Damascus: Dar Ibn Kathir (1411/1991), VI: 386. 37 Al-Hakami, p. 155; al-Zahabi, Siyar, XX: 322; al-Ja’di, ‘Umar b. ‘Ali, Tabaqat Fuqaha’ al-Yaman, (ed.) Fu’ad Sayyid, Beirut: Dar al-Qalam (n.d), p. 184; al-Asbahani, Muhammad b. Muhammad, Kharidat al-Qasr wa-Jaridat al-’Asr (Qism Shu’ara’ Bilad al-Sham), (ed.) Shukri Faisal, Damascus: Al-Majma’ al-’Ilmi al-’Arabi (1378/1959), IV: 64–65; al-Qalqa- shandi, V: 29. 38 Al-Yami al-Hamazani, Muhammad b. Hatim, al-Samt al-Ghali al-Thaman fi Akhbar al-Muluk mina al-Ghuzz bi’l-Yaman, (ed.) Rex Smith, London: Luzac (1974), p. 16. 39 Al-Ja’di, p. 211; al-Yafi’i, III: 393; al-Yami al-Hamazani, p. 16. 40 In his letter to the Jews of Marseilles in 1194 C.E., Maimonides mentioned that the persecution in Yemen had occurred 22 years earlier. See Stitskin, Leon D. (ed. & trans.), Letters of Maimonides, New York: Yeshiva University Press (1977), pp. 118, 128. 41 Bat Zion, Eraqi Klorman, “The Yemeni Messiah in the Time of Maimonides: Prelude for future messiahs,” in From Iberia to Diaspora, (eds.) Yedida Stillman and Norman Stillman, Leiden: E. J. Brill (1999), pp. 132, 136. 42 Stitskin, p. 128. NOTES ON THE METHODOLOGY OF STUDYING THE HISTORY… 139

We learn from Maimonides’ letter to the Jews of Marseilles that there were also Muslims among the followers of the Jewish messiah.43 Muslim agony caused by the Mahdi movement was largely ignored by papers on this subject which lead to inaccurate assessments. The Mahdi sect tortured, enslaved, killed, and bestowed heavy taxes on everyone who refused to follow, Muslims and Jews.44 Consequently, the movement seemed a somewhat indiscriminate revolution which possessed a creed that converted the allegiances of all non-political followers and destroyed for good any rival power. Finally the fifth point relates to the differentiation between religion and religion driven by politics. When one reads most papers in the discipline, one gets the idea that most events discussed were driven truly by religious justification and goals which is, in my opinion, an oversimplification of events and displays insubstantial analyses of historical texts. The previously mentioned Mahdi movement is a prime example. Another is the Sabians situation during the time of the Abbasid al-Qahir. During his reign (932–934 C.E.) the Sabians were given a choice: conversion to Islam or death. Although the threat was rescinded as soon as they provided the Caliph with the quantity of money he had requested.45 It should be noted that the scholar who declared the fatwa was a Shafi’i.46 As was mentioned, this School does not recognize the Sabians as dhimmis, neither those in Harran nor those in Iraq. A clear condition was imposed by al-Shafi’i: if they (Samaritans and Sabians) differ from Christians in the substance (asl) of the Torah (i.e., they do not recognize it as their book or part of it), then they are not People of the Book.47 In this example, one clearly sees how politics played the religious card. The main qadi and mufti at the time, who was ignored by the Caliph, was ‘Umar b. Abi

43 Ibid. 44 Al-Hakami, pp. 153, 155–156; Sibt Ibn al-Jawzi, Yusuf b. Qaza’ughli, Mir’at al-Zaman fi Tawarikhal-A’yan , (eds.) Muhammad Barakat et. al., Damascus: Al-Risalah al-’Alamiyyah (1434/2013), XXI: 195; al-Dayba’ al-Zabidi, Abdulrahman b. ‘Ali, Bughyat al-Mustafid fi Tarikh Madinat Zabid, (ed.) Abdullah Habashi, San’a: Maktabat al-Irshad (1427/2006), p. 63. Many other sources reported similar narratives. 45 Al-Baghdadi, Ahmad b. ‘Ali, Tarikh Baghdad, (ed.) Bashshar Ma’ruf, Beirut: Dar al- Gharb al-Islami (1422/2001), VIII: 208; Anonymous, Kitab al-Hawadith, (eds.) Bashshar Ma’ruf and ‘Imad Ra’uf, Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami (1997), p. 97; Ibn al-Qayyim, Ahkam, I: 92–93. 46 Abu Sa’id al-Hasan b. Ahmad b. Yazid al-Istakhrị (d. 940 C.E.). See, al-Baghdadi, VIII: 208; Ibn Khillikan, II: 74; al-Zahabi, Siyar, XV: 250. 47 Al-Umm, V: 435; al-Nawawi, al-Majmu’, XVII: 230. 140 T. F. A. AL-SAUD

‘Umar al-Azdi (d. 940 C.E.),48 a Maliki and as was mentioned, the Maliki School considers the Sabian as dhimmis. In conclusion, the time has come to consider dhimma studies within the confines of strict historical methodology which will provide a more accurate reading of history apart from treating the dhimmi community as secluded. One cannot begin to understand historical events without basic knowledge of the elements which influenced them and without an understanding of non-historical works which were written in the same period. What we are reading in contemporary papers should only reflect the facts, culture, and conditions of the period under study, not our own time.

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Convivencia as Persecution in Ninth-Century Córdoba

Kenneth Baxter Wolf

One challenge faced by Christian dhimmis living under Muslim rule was how to participate in a pluralistic society dominated by Islam without compromising their own religious identity. But what constituted such a compromise was not set in stone; it varied from Christian to Christian, depending on how the various allegiances that governed his or her life played out.1 Differences of opinion of this subject could be the source of considerable friction. One of the best and most vividly captured examples of a community divided over precisely this issue is to be found in Córdoba in the mid-ninth century. Thanks to the writings of the priest Eulogius, we are in an unusually good position to appreciate it in all its complexity.

1 For the most elaborate version of this kind of approach to identity in religiously pluralistic environments in Medieval Europe, see: Brian Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c. 1050–1614 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 508–515.

K. B. Wolf (*) Pomona College, Claremont, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected]

Eulogius was a self-appointed apologist for what we now refer to as the “Córdoban martyrs’ movement,”2 involving some four dozen Christians executed for religious offenses against Islam between the years 851 and 859. Eulogius began his Memoriale sanctorum3 in the summer of 851, after the first modest wave of Christians was executed for blaspheming Muhammad. Six or seven years later, when the number of decapitations had risen to more than 40, he produced the Liber apologeticus martyrum.4 Eulogius wrote these two works partly to record the details of these executions for liturgical purposes. As far as he was concerned, these “martyrs” deserved to be celebrated every bit as much as the original Christian martyrs who suffered under Rome more than half a millennium before. But not every Christian in Córdoba saw it this way, and so Eulogius felt compelled to defend these new “martyrs” from those of their coreligionists who saw them as boat rockers, unnecessarily incurring the wrath of the Muslim authorities against the Christian community as a whole. Though none of the Christians representing this more moderate, “accommoda- tionist” point of view left behind any writings that capture it, the logic of their position is easy to reconstruct from Eulogius’ works. The three main arguments advanced against treating the executed Christians as martyrs of the ancient Roman type were, first of all, that the executions were not marked by any miraculous signs; second, that the executed Christians had not died at the hands of pagans; and third, that the Christians of Córdoba were not subject to any persecution. It is the third of these criticisms—the absence of a persecution—that is, the focus of this chapter precisely because it sheds so much light on the differences of opinion within the community as to what it meant to be a Christian living in a Muslim world. The argument that the Córdoban “martyrs” were not really martyrs for lack of a persecution is captured twice in Eulogius’ writings, each time as a prelude to one of his extended rebuttals. This chapter is organized accordingly, each half dedicated to one of Eulogius’ responses. The first time Eulogius stated the “no persecution” argument, he put it this way:

2 Two accessible overviews of the martyrs of Córdoba are: Kenneth Baxter Wolf, Christian Martyrs in Muslim Spain (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988) and Jessica Coope, The Martyrs of Cordoba: Community and Family Conflict in an Age of Mass Conversion (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1995). 3 Eulogius, Memoriale sanctorum, in Corpus Scriptorum Mvzarabicorum [hereafter CSM] ed. Juan Gil, 2 vols. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Madrid: Instituto Antonio de Nebrija, 1973) 2:366–459. 4 Eulogius, Liber apologeticus martyrum, Gil, CSM 2:475–495. CONVIVENCIA AS PERSECUTION IN NINTH-CENTURY CÓRDOBA 147

There are many among the faithful—even (heaven forbid!) priests—who, not afraid to rashly remove the glory of these confessors, demand that they not be received in the catalogues of the saints, asserting that a martyrdom of this kind is unusual and profane. Clearly no violence on the part of the authorities compelled them to renounce their faith or separated them from the worship of the holy and pious religion. Instead they were killed offering themselves to this danger of their own free will on account of their pride— which, as they say, is the “beginning of every sin”—and thus they became murderers of their own souls.5

Fortunately for our purposes, Eulogius did not stop here, but pro- ceeded to lay bare the reasoning that led his opponents to this conclusion.

They believe this can be demonstrated on the basis of evangelical precepts, according to which it is said: “Love your enemies, bless them who hate you, and pray for those who are persecuting and slandering you, so that you might be sons of your Father, who is in heaven.” [Matthew 5:44–45] And again: “Do violence to no man; nor commit slander.” [Luke 3:14] And again: the Lord, “when he was reviled, reviled not. When he suffered, he threatened not: but delivered himself to the judge who judged him unjustly.” [I Peter 2:23] Moreover, they argue the same point on the basis of the Apostle [Paul]: “Revilers shall not possess the Kingdom of God.” [I Corinthians 6:10]6

There is a significant disconnect between the stated objection—that is, that Eulogius’ martyrs “offered themselves to this danger of their own free will”—and the biblical passages garnered in its support. Far from challenging the martyrs for their excessive volition, these passages were aimed at their militancy. Simply put, the “violence” of their unprovoked denunciations of Muhammad was inconsistent with Jesus’ admonitions against hating, slandering, reviling, and threatening one’s enemies. It is easy to imagine how attractive such passages would be for Christians who were more inclined to accept the trials of dhimmi life and treat them as a form of daily ascesis that would ultimately lead to benefits in heaven. Eulogius’ first reaction to this argument was to impugn his opponents’ credibility as exegetes:

5 Eulogius, Memoriale sanctorum 1.18, Gil, CSM 2:382. 6 Ibid. 148 K. B. WOLF

They are not content to understand the scriptures in a sensible manner, interpreting them instead in accordance with their pleasure, finding evidence on the surface of the words that seems consistent with this insanity. They do not use [the scriptures] simply, in the Christian manner, nor do they explore the excellence of their meaning by means of [the efforts of] the more erudite.7

As clear as it was to Eulogius that this approach to scripture was wrong, he had a hard time articulating the criteria that led him to this conclusion. The bottom line for him seems to have been that his opponents were detracting from the “glory of the courageous [martyrs] who, without a doubt, are already in the presence of their King, raising the banner of their victory,” and therefore they simply had to be wrong.8 Much more interesting is Eulogius’ subsequent attempt to reinterpret the very passages that his opponents used against his martyrs—the passages about loving one’s enemies and passively enduring persecution—in such a way as to show how his martyrs had in fact acted in concert with them.

These very saints … in no way turned away from upholding the aforementioned dictates. Loving their enemies on account of God and preoccupied with their salvation lest they be detained any longer in this labyrinth of impiety, they did not stop challenging them, doing good to those who had hated Christ.9

The “good” that they did out of their “love” for “those who hated Christ” was none other than their willingness to sacrifice their lives in witness to the truth of Christianity with an eye to jolting their “persecutors” into seeing the light and converting.

[The martyrs] seemed to instruct their frenzied [executioners] more by the shedding of their own blood than by the words of their teaching, so that, once the vanity of superstition had been left behind, those who had frequently and incessantly insulted the members of the church could strive not only to believe in Christ but to fight to the death for his sake, without a

7 Ibid. 8 Thomas Sizgorich, Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), p. 26. 9 Eulogius, Memoriale sanctorum 1.20, Gil, CSM 2:383. CONVIVENCIA AS PERSECUTION IN NINTH-CENTURY CÓRDOBA 149

doubt obtaining the salvation of their souls with prayers and entreaties in the presence of God.10

Nevertheless the “love” that properly governed the martyrs’ relations with their executioners did not, as Eulogius saw it, release them from the responsibility of hating Islam and actively denouncing it: “The only thing [the martyrs] threatened,” he contended, “was that which inflicted abuse on God, that which impugned his tremendous majesty; that is to say, the sacrilegious prophecy of that most vain and lost little man (homunculi),” Muhammad. That is how, despite their “love” for their enemies and their determination not to “revile” those who reviled them, the martyrs could, in good faith, “rise up against those who [were] jealous of God, armed, according to the Psalmist, ‘with a perfect hate’” [Psalm 138:22]. This distinction between the Muslim (who could be saved) and Islam (that from which he had to be saved) allowed Eulogius to turn the tables on his opponents: compared to his martyrs, they were too quick to disavow even this “perfect” kind of hate in the name of non-violence. Taking a page from Arnobius, Eulogius thus cast the passivity of his opponents as a form of “false mercy,” analogous to King Saul’s ill-fated decision to spare the Amalekite king after God specifically ordered him to destroy that entire people. [I Samuel 15:9] “Who can doubt that what happened to Saul will happen to him, who spares heresiarchs or preachers of falsehood and does not slay them with the sword of the faith?” Elsewhere Eulogius would provide his reader with plenty of scriptural passages of his own in support of his contention that no Christian should ever be chary of defending the faith. I have chosen to focus on this particular subset of his exegesis precisely because it shows him trying to beat his opponents at their own game: taking those passages that would seem to support a more passive approach to one’s enemies and making them work for his martyrs. By doing so, Eulogius assumed the role of a “boundary keeper,” claiming the right as a priest to interpret timeless scripture according to the specific historical setting within which his flock lived. Eulogius was very clear about this dimension of his “cure of souls,” baldly stating at the beginning of the Memoriale sanctorum that “just as the office of preaching falls on us, so the need to listen pertains to you.”11

10 Ibid. 11 Eulogius, Memoriale sanctorum 1.4, Gil, CSM 2:372. John Chrysostom made similar claims. Sizgorich, Violence and Belief, p. 26. 150 K. B. WOLF

Unfortunately for Eulogius, he was not the only priest in Córdoba; and clearly not all of them were on the same page. Remember Eulogius’ words: “There are many among the faithful—even (heaven forbid!) priests” who rejected his martyrs. As priests they would have felt obliged to do exactly what Eulogius was doing when faced with something as unusual as these spontaneous, public denunciations of Muhammad; they would have scoured the Bible for passages that justified their opinions about them. Hence the string of “evangelical precepts” that Eulogius ascribed to these other priests before reinterpreting them for his own purposes. And hence Eulogius’ concern that he was losing the battle for the “hearts and minds” of the Córdoban Christians to fellow clerics whom he described as “carrying their interpretations on the tips of their tongues, displaying, reviewing, and reciting them in the forum, in the streets, among the people, and in the markets.”12 Right after Eulogius accused the other priests of falling into the trap of “false mercy,” he stepped back and captured for a second time their claim that there was no persecution in Córdoba.

They say that these ones ought not to be regarded as martyrs because they were not violently dragged to martyrdom but instead, going forth of their own free will, they hurled insults on those who had not caused them any troubles.13

Once again the heart of this criticism is that these “martyrs” went to their executions “of their own free will,” yet the emphasis in this case is less on the unacceptably high level of volition or militancy than on the lack of a persecutory context. Eulogius’ wording, which conflates being “dragged to martyrdom” with being subject to unspecified “troubles,” is strategic. The juxtaposition of these two working definitions of “persecution” made it easier for Eulogius to ignore the one and focus on the other. It was clear to anyone—including Eulogius—that no one in Córdoba was being “dragged to martyrdom”; on the other hand it was equally evident that Christian life in Muslim Córdoba came with its share of “troubles,”; troubles that, depending on your perspective, felt like persecution or just another day in the plaza.

12 Eulogius, Memoriale sanctorum 1.19, Gil, CSM 2:383. 13 Eulogius, Memoriale sanctorum 1.21, Gil, CSM 2:385–386. CONVIVENCIA AS PERSECUTION IN NINTH-CENTURY CÓRDOBA 151

Eulogius’ response is one of the most revealing passages in the Memoriale sanctorum.

Clearly [the ones who say this] do not think of the destruction of churches, the taunts directed at priests, and the fact that we pay a monthly tribute with such hardship as constituting “troubles.” … Who among all the persecutors of the faithful has attacked the church as cruelly as this abominable one? Who has heaped up so much in subversion of Catholics as this ill-omened one? No one of us [clergy] may walk secure in their midst, no one may pass by in peace, no one may penetrate their enclosures without being dishon- ored. Indeed whenever the need for any ordinary thing compels us to go forth in public, or some pressing domestic necessity forces us to head out into the forum from the recesses of our huts, the moment they notice the symbols of our sacred order, with a shout of derision they attack, as if mad- men or fools. This is not to mention the daily mockery on the part of the children, for whom it is not enough to inflict verbal abuse and heap up shameful [examples] of scurrility; they do not cease from pelting us with rocks from behind. Why should I mention what they do as an insult to the venerable sign? For when the appropriate time for singling psalms compels us to give a signal to the faithful, and the hour demands that we make the accustomed indication of prayer to the people, the crowds of people, enticed as they are by lying superstition, try to detect the clang of reverberating metal and do not hesitate to exercise their tongues in every curse and obscenity. Therefore not unfairly are they cursed, who inform their followers with so much hate aimed at God’s portion. We are often—indeed incessantly—slandered by them and everywhere we endure their ferocity on account of religion. Many of them judge us unworthy to touch their gar- ments and abhor our coming close to them. They deem it pollution if we mix in any of their affairs.14

Here Eulogius identifies three particular “troubles” faced bydhimmi Christians—“the destruction of churches, the taunts directed at priests, and the fact that we pay a monthly tribute”—adding a fourth—curses directed at the sound of bells—in medias res. It turns out that each of these “troubles” can be traced to a legal restriction imposed on the Christians by virtue of their status as dhimmis, that is, as members of a “People of the Book” residing within the Dar al-Islam and subject to the terms of a capitulation agreement or dhimma. I want to consider them here one at a time.

14 Eulogius, Memoriale sanctorum 1.21, Gil, CSM 2:386. 152 K. B. WOLF

The easiest of these four “troubles” to contextualize in this way is the “monthly tribute,” a reference to the head tax or jizyah that subject Christians were expected to pay as a symbol of their political subordina- tion to Islam. That Eulogius should elevate the jizyah to a “trouble” that could justify martyrdom is not as strange as it might seem, given similarly hyperbolic reactions to post-Conquest taxation on the part of dhimmi Christians in the East.15 But clearly this was not how Eulogius’ opponents saw it. I suspect that if asked they would have said they were content “rendering unto Caesar the things that were Caesar’s” as long as they were allowed to “render unto God the things that were God’s” [Mark 12:17]. The context for the “destruction of churches” is less obvious at first glance, but its provenance becomes clearer when considered alongside a later reference in the Memoriale sanctorum, one that recounts how the emir Muhammad I, who came to power in the fall of 852, responded to the spontaneous “martyrdoms” that had plagued the final months of his predecessor’s reign. According to Eulogius, the new emir:

ordered churches of more recent construction to be destroyed, and commanded that whatever stood out in the way of new construction in the old churches—[that is,] anything that had been added to their original structures during the time of the Arabs, be dismantled.16

This decision on the part of the emir to destroy churches of “more recent construction” instantly brings to mind the Pact of Umar, one portion of which reads: “We [Christians] shall not build, in our cities or in their neighborhood, new monasteries, churches, convents, or monks’ cells, nor shall we repair, by day or by night, such of them as fall in ruins or are situated in the quarters of the Muslims.”17 Presumably in the 140 years since the Muslim conquest of Spain, such restrictions on church building and repair had not been consistently enforced in Córdoba, and that gave Muhammad I something dramatic he could do to get the point across to Christian dissidents without actually violating the letter of the

15 “Heavy taxation … is the most ubiquitous complaint of the [Christian] apocalypses of the early Islamic era.” Robert G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, 13 (Princeton, NJ, Darwin: 1998), p. 281. 16 Eulogius, Memoriale sanctorum 3.3, Gil, CSM 2:441. 17 Bernard Lewis, ed., Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople, 2 vol. (New York: Harper, 1974) 2:218. CONVIVENCIA AS PERSECUTION IN NINTH-CENTURY CÓRDOBA 153 dhimma. That Eulogius was aware of the principles at play here is clear from the last part of his complaint, where he contends that a number of the churches affected by this edict were, in fact, churches whose construction predated the conquest, that is, those that had “been erected in the time of peace by the zeal and industry of [our] fathers, more than three hundred years having passed since the days of their construction.” With regard to Muslims cursing when the bells tolled, this, too, had its roots in the universal proscriptions placed on subject Christians. The pertinent part of the Pact of Umar reads: “We [Christians] shall use only clappers in our churches very softly.”18 Clearly, in mid-ninth-century Córdoba, such restrictions were not being enforced, leading individual Muslims to take matters into their own hands, ritualistically protecting themselves from the intrusiveness of the Christian summons. Incidentally, this Muslim reaction to the ringing of the bells had its Christian counter- part. In his Liber apologeticus martyrum, Eulogius reminisced about his grandfather who, upon hearing the Muslim call to prayer, would “immediately fortify his forehead with the sign of the cross” and recite a portion of Psalm 82: “O God, who shall be like to thee? hold not thy peace, neither be thou still, O God. For lo, thy enemies have made a noise: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head.”19 Eulogius went on to admit that he regularly had recourse to the same kind of ritual, though in his case it involved praying—“Save us, Lord, from the evil that we have heard, now and for all eternity”—and then reciting a verse from Psalm 96: “Let them be all confounded that adore graven things, and that glory in their idols. Adore him, all you his angels.” Like grandfather, like grandson. The connection between the “taunts directed at priests” and the legal restrictions placed on dhimmis is less direct, but no less significant. The Pact of Umar prohibited Christians from “manifest[ing] [their] religion publicly or convert[ing] anyone to it.”20 At the same time, it insisted that Christians not dress like Muslims, thus inadvertently legislating a kind of “public manifestation” of Christianity in the form of clearly identifiable clerical garb. A priest like Eulogius, who proudly wore the “symbols of [his] sacred order,” was a natural place for these two restrictions to collide, creating an instantly recognizable, walking synecdoche that, as far as the local Muslims were concerned, stood for the church as a whole. It is not

18 Ibid. 19 Eulogius, Liber apologeticus martyrum 19, Gil, CSM 2:487. 20 Lewis, Islam, 2:218. 154 K. B. WOLF hard to imagine how a priest’s mere presence in the plaza might inspire some “taunting,” maybe even the occasional projectile. But it could also set the stage for more elaborate forms of exchange, as is clear from Eulogius’ account of the events leading up to the execution of a fellow priest named Perfectus. One day, while running an errand in Córdoba, Perfectus was “confronted with the inquiries of certain gentiles about the Catholic faith, bidding him offer, in their presence, testimony about Christ and the prophet Muhammad.”21 Perfectus complied with their request to share his views about Christ, but demurred when it came to expressing his views about Muhammad: “I do not dare say how your prophet is regarded among the Catholics, because without a doubt what I say will wound you, causing you grave anxiety.”22 Only when the Muslims agreed to a “friendly truce,” allowing Perfectus to speak his mind without fear of repercussions, did he share his thoughts about Muhammad, launching into an extended, blistering diatribe against this “false prophet.” Though taken aback by the ferocity of the attack, the Muslims respected the agreement and let Perfectus go on his way. Only later, when they ran into him again, did they denounce him before a judge. What is noteworthy about Perfectus’ exchange with the Muslims is the unmistakable signs of its routine nature. To begin with, Perfectus shows no sign of surprise when asked to share his thoughts on such a loaded subject. Both he and the Muslims would seem to be acknowledging his right as a priest to speak about Christianity with impunity. At the same time, both parties knew that he, as a dhimmi, was prohibited from public expressions of disrespect toward Muhammad.

21 Eulogius, Memoriale sanctorum 2.1.2, Gil, CSM 2:398. A monk named Argemirus ran into a similar situation some five years later: “After he had removed himself from the administration of justice and was cultivating the leisure of the monastery in peace, he was surrounded by the deceit and hate of certain pagans and was accused before the judge of mocking their prophet, claiming him to be the author of vanity and a leader of the damned, and was reproached for his profession of the divinity of the Son of God and for professing that no one was more powerful than this one.” Eulogius, Memoriale sanctorum 3.16, Gil CSM 2:455–456. 22 Janina Safran explains the legal basis for Andalusian pluralism this way: “According to the general principles of the ‘covenant,’ ‘Peoples of the Book’ who acknowledged Muslim rule, paid a poll tax, and obeyed certain restrictions were free to practice their religion and live according to their communal laws. Here we see they were free to say, ‘Muhammad is your prophet, but Jesus or Moses is ours.’ They could not, however, deny the truth of the shahada. …. He who insults the Prophet violates the ‘covenant of protection.’” Janina M. Safran, “Identity and Differentiation in Ninth-Century al-Andalus,” Speculum 76 (2001), p. 590. CONVIVENCIA AS PERSECUTION IN NINTH-CENTURY CÓRDOBA 155

That the priest thought he could do so safely if his interlocutors agreed to a temporary suspension of this prohibition suggests that this was not the first time that such a “gentlemen’s agreement” had been negotiated. In short, Perfectus’ encounter with the Muslims presupposes an environment within which it was not unusual for Christians and Muslims to engage in impromptu debates, bound by mutually understood rules of engagement, both implicit and explicit. Though it was in Eulogius’ rhetorical interests to exaggerate the kind of taunting, it is important to keep in mind that these kind of interactions were part of a larger spectrum of exchanges made possible by the visibility of priests, who “manifested their religion” every time they stepped forth in public. The point of considering the specific context for each of these four “troubles” is, on the one hand, to appreciate how Eulogius managed to craft something resembling a persecution out of the official restrictions under which Andalusian dhimmis had been operating for 140 years. With this goal in mind, he challenged his readers to look at their circumstances with fresh eyes, to appreciate the “reality” of that unrelenting, insidious, low-level “persecution” that had come to be so cleverly disguised as daily life in mid-ninth-century Córdoba. In the process, he relied on a number of sleights of hand. For one thing, he never bothered to point out that, had the authorities consistently enforced the laws governing dhimmi behavior, there would have been no “destruction of churches” nor any “curses and obscenities” directed at the sound of bells, simply because there would have been no illegal churches to tear down or bell ringing to curse. Moreover, Eulogius obscured the fact that Muhammad’s sudden enforcement of the dhimma was a reaction to the actions of his martyrs, not a precipitating factor leading to them. From Eulogius’ perspective as a self-appointed boundary keeper, this fudging of the facts was justified under the circumstances. His church was under siege and its dozing members had to be rallied to its defense. On the other hand, this contextualization of the four “troubles” allows for a deeper appreciation of Eulogius’ imagined audience—the more moderate Christians—and the way they looked at their relationship with the surrounding world. Though Eulogius only devotes a few lines to rec- reating this perspective, the immense amount of energy that he expended to counter it can only be explained by the near universality of its appeal. The bottom line is that the vast majority of the Córdoban Christians who inhabited Eulogius’ world did not see themselves as “persecuted.” How could they? They lived under the protection of a dhimma that for almost 156 K. B. WOLF a century and a half had explicitly confirmed their legal right to remain Christian and to administer their own internal affairs without interference from the government. Even Eulogius had to admit that “we are permitted to bear the banner of the Christian faith freely by the worshippers of this prophet amidst the privileges of their kingdom,” although instead of cred- iting the Muslims for this, he credited God, who “preserved his patriarchs, prophets, and apostles in the midst of the savagery of the gentiles, elevat- ing them to honors and raising them to dignities.”23 Regardless of where this protection came from, it was awfully hard, under the circumstances, to make a case for persecution. Rehearsing the restrictions under which Córdoban Christians operated and the inconveniences that they suffered was not enough to counter the simple, undeniable fact that Christians were allowed by law to remain Christian and practice their faith. To conclude, Eulogius’ writings provide an invaluable window into a Christian dhimmi community that was divided as to how to interpret the “martyrdoms,” a division that attests to deeper differences as to what it meant to be a Christian living under Muslim rule. Priests on both sides of this divide struggled for the attention of ordinary Christians in two her- meneutical arenas. One of them—an exegetical arena—was the scene of a struggle over how to interpret scripture. The other—more of an empirical arena—featured a debate over how to interpret the life of a Christian dhimmi. This was by no means an even fight. Though Eulogius’ perspective is much better represented in the extant sources (most of which he wrote!), there is little doubt that his was the minority position, that he was swimming against the Christian current in the ninth-century Córdoba. But if Eulogius’ opponents had the advantage of numbers and the inertia of 140 years of dhimmi life, at least he could tap into deeply seated tropes and narratives from Christianity’s early, “heroic” years, ones that effectively equated martyrdom with Christian perfection. Invoking this mar- tyrial discourse may have seemed ludicrous from the perspective of his opponents, but it nevertheless put them on the defensive, forcing them to articulate a justification for their own, decidedly less militant response to the challenges of a Christian life lived within a non-Christian context.

23 Eulogius, Memoriale sanctorum 1.30, Gil, CSM 2:392. CONVIVENCIA AS PERSECUTION IN NINTH-CENTURY CÓRDOBA 157

Bibliography Catlos, Brian. Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c. 1050–1614. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Coope, Jessica. The Martyrs of Cordoba: Community and Family Conflict in an Age of Mass Conversion. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. CSM: Corpus Scriptorum Mvzarabicorum. Edited by Juan Gil. 2 vols. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Madrid: Instituto Antonio de Nebrija, 1973. Eulogius, Liber apologeticus martyrum. In Corpus Scriptorum Mvzarabicorum. Edited by Juan Gil. 2 vols. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Madrid: Instituto Antonio de Nebrija, 1973, 2:475–95. Eulogius, Memoriale sanctorum. In Corpus Scriptorum Mvzarabicorum. Edited by Juan Gil. 2 vols. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Madrid: Instituto Antonio de Nebrija, 1973, 2:366–459. Gil, Juan. Corpus Scriptorum Mvzarabicorum. 2 vols. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Madrid: Instituto Antonio de Nebrija, 1973. Hoyland, Robert G. Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam. Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, 13. Princeton, NJ, Darwin: 1998. Lewis, Bernard., ed. Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople, 2 vol. New York: Harper, 1974. Safran, Janina M. “Identity and Differentiation in Ninth‐Century al–Andalus.” Speculum 76 (2001), 573–598. Sizgorich, Thomas. Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Wolf, Kenneth Baxter. Christian Martyrs in Muslim Spain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. CHAPTER 6

Ramon de Penyafort’s Responses to Questions Concerning Relations Between Christians and Saracens: Critical Edition and Translation

John Tolan

Introduction Raymond of Penyafort is one of the most prolific and important canon lawyers of the thirteenth century. Born in Catalonia, he studied law in Bologna (1210–1219); there, according to tradition, he encountered St. Dominic and joined the Order of Preachers in 1222. It was probably between 1222 and 1226 that he composed his Summa de paenitentia, a sort of law code for confessors, in the tradition of the Bologna law commentaries. When he joined the papal curia of Gregory IX in 1230, the pope asked him to compile the Decretals, a major collection of pontifical decrees; the work was destined to become one of the pillars of canon law.

The research leading to this publication has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Progamme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 249416.

J. Tolan (*) University of Nantes, Nantes, France e-mail: [email protected]

He completed the Decretals in 1234; Gregory promulgated them in his bull Rex pacificus on September 5, 1234.1 In 1238 Raymond was elected Master General of the Dominican order; he supervised the revision of the rule of the order. He retired from the head of the order in 1240 and returned to Barcelona, where he became a key advisor to King James I. He convinced the king to make Muslims and Jews listen to Dominican missionaries in their synagogues and mosques. He was influential in the promotion of mission to the infidels, notably in encouraging the king to organize a public disputation between Friar Pablo Christiani and Rabbi Nachmanides in Barcelona in 1263.2 Toward the end of 1234, a letter arrived at the curia from the Franciscan minister and the Dominican prior residing in Tunis, posing a series of 40 questions concerning their ministry to the Catholic community of Tunis— primarily on whether certain sins called for excommunication, or whether they were mortal or venial. The ecumenical councils and pontifical decrees had indeed established the rules in principle, but they had not imagined all the particular cases that these friars encountered in Tunis. Raymond explains that the pope gave his answer to each of these questions and that he, Raymond, wrote them down and sent them to the two friars. Questions and answers are preserved in a text known as the Responsiones ad dubitabilia circa communicationem christianorum cum sarracenis, dated January 19, 1235. Each section contains first a question posed by the friars and then the pope’s response, transmitted by Raymond. The questions concern the legality (or not) of a whole series of transactions with Muslims: from selling them nails to secretly baptizing their children. This text offers us precious information on the Latin Christian community of Tunis, which is numerous and diverse. There are merchants: Genoans, Pisans, and “Spaniards” (no doubt Catalans). There are clerics: Franciscans and Dominicans, of course, but also the priests from the maritime cities,

1 L. Robles, Escritores dominicos de la Corona de Aragon, siglos XIII-XV (Salamanca, 1972), pp. 13–57; J. M. Coll, “San Raymundo de Peñafort y las misiones del norte africano en la edad media,” Missionalia hispanica, 5 (1948), 417–457; C. Longo, ed., Magister Raimundus: atti del convegno per il IV centenario della canonizzazione di San Raimondo de Penyafort (1601–2001), (Rome, 2002); S. Kuttner, “Raymond of Penyafort as editor: The ‘decretales’ and ‘constitutiones’ of Gregory IX,” Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law 12 (1982) 65–80; A. García Y García, Iglesia, sociedad y derecho (Salamanca, 1985), 79–115. 2 See R. Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and its Aftermath (Berkeley, 1992). RAMON DE PENYAFORT’S RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS… 161

associated with their funduqs. There are mercenaries, crusaders, converts to Islam, captives, slaves, and even persons serving as pawn for loans.3 This text offers a unique glimpse of the workings of the Latin Christian community in Tunis and of papal responses to the problems posed by Christians living in Muslim lands. In the first place, it provides documentation of trade practices of European (principally Italian and Catalan) merchants in Ifrıqiyā (roughly what is now Tunisia). In this it complements other important documentation: the treaties (in Latin and Arabic) between European and Maghribi rulers and the great number of trade documents (primarily contracts) in the archives of Pisa, Genoa, Venice, Barcelona, and other cities. What is particularly intriguing about this document is that it places these issues clearly in the framework of papal prohibitions of certain kinds of trade with Muslims: one sees some merchants openly flouting these prohibitions, others trying to respect them or making excuses for their non-respect of them. The pope emphasizes that certain types of trade incur the penalty of excommunication, as had been established by the ecumenical councils of Lateran III (1179) and Lateran IV (1215). In particular, those who sell weapons, ships, or iron or wood that could be used to make weapons or ships (Responsiones ¶1). Those who were unaware of these prohibitions are still excommunicated; they can however be absolved and are given lighter penance than those who were conscious of the prohibitions (¶33, 37). The friars (¶5) also ask about those who take swords, knives, or other weapons into “lands of Saracens” without intent to sell (but only for their own self-defense) and who subsequently sell them to Saracens. They too, are excommunicated, as are hired hands on ships of traders involved in illicit commerce, though the latter can be given lighter penance, at the discretion of the confessors (¶40). Yet other cases are less clear-cut: selling of saddles and other equipment for horsemen (¶2) and selling of food (¶3). Some Christian merchants transported victuals from

3 Much of what follows is based on the two following articles: J. Tolan, “Taking Gratian to Africa: Raymond de Penyafort’s legal advice to the Dominicans and Franciscans in Tunis,” in A. Husain & K. Fleming, eds., A Faithful Sea: The Religious Cultures of the Mediterranean, 1200–1700 (Oxford: One World, 2007), 47–63; J. Tolan, “Marchands, mercenaires et cap- tifs: le statut légal des chrétiens latin en terre d’islam selon le juriste canonique Ramon de Penyafort (XIIIe s.),” in S. Boisselier, F, Clément & J. Tolan, eds., Minorités et régulations sociales en Méditerranée médievale (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010), 223–234. For a more detailed analysis of some of the articles in the Responsiones, see the corresponding entries in the RELMIN database: http://www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/ auteur1593/ 162 J. TOLAN one “Saracen” port to another (¶4); some took iron from one Saracen port to another (¶23); and some transported armed Saracens (¶24). The Friars asked if it was licit to sell ligna parvicula (tiny pieces of wood ¶25). They asked the same questions about hemp, pitch, and flax, materials essential for building and equipping ships (¶26). Iron and weapons were banned, but what about cultellos parvissimos et clavos minutissimos, tiny knives and teensy-weensy nails (¶27)? In the vast majority of cases, Raymond, in the name of the pope, responds that such traders are excommunicated if and only if their trade helps Saracens who are fighting against Christians or works otherwise to the detriment of Christians; in other cases, such trade is licit. The Responsiones are also an important document in the early history of the Dominican and Franciscan orders in two ways: they show the increasing presence of those orders beyond the borders of Catholic Europe and the role that these orders play in the papacy’s effort to more forcefully and effectively exercise its authority. Before becoming Pope Gregory IX, Cardinal Hugolino knew both Dominic and Francis and was cardinal pro- tector of their two orders. As pope, he had both men canonized and took an active interest in the consolidation and expansion of both orders. The document provides testimony of the attempts of the Papacy and the mendicants to extend their reach into new realms; here as elsewhere (e.g., the University of Paris at the same time), the mendicants drew sharp resistance from secular clergy who did not want to see their prerogatives trampled. The friars are not the only Christian clergy present in Tunis. They at times come into conflict with priests who resent their presence and who refuse to recognize their authority. The friars ask the pope how they should proceed in the case of certain married fratres spirituales (¶12) present in Tunis before the arrival of the friars. Such marriage is in clear violation of the principles of the so-called Gregorian Reform of the eleventh century. This is the same sort of problem faced in the wake of the crusades (particularly the fourth crusade) which brought Latin clerics into contact with married clergy of the Eastern churches. The response here is that such men should be separated from their wives if possible, but otherwise they may remain married; in no case should new marriages of clerics be contracted. Another fundamental issue of the reform movement was the immunity of clerics from lay justice and punishment. The friars mention the case of “some people” who seize “clericos latrones” (thieves who are clerics) and whip them (¶28). The question is whether these people are to be excommunicated and whether the friars can absolve them. The pope responds RAMON DE PENYAFORT’S RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS… 163 that yes, they are to be excommunicated, and that yes, the friars can absolve them. Hence the principle of clerical immunity is affirmed, but those laymen who have punished errant clerics can receive absolution. Other questions involve the pope’s delegation of powers to the friars. Pope Honorius III had conferred upon them the power to grant absolution to excommunicates, in cases where the persons could not easily (commode) come to Rome to receive absolution directly from the pope (¶20). The friars ask, what does commode mean? In response, Gregory confirms the powers granted by his predecessor and defines what commode means here: the friars may absolve excommunicates who are prevented from traveling to Rome by illness, old age, and poverty. Others should go to Rome to receive absolution from the pope. In a similar vein, the friars have received the power of according absolution in extremis (¶31). They ask what that means: does a fever or dysentery qualify? The pope answers that a person should be considered in extremis only if there is real danger of death. Moreover, the Responsiones give us a unique glimpse at the richness and complexity of the European Catholic community in Tunis that the friars seek to serve: not only the Italian and Catalan Merchants but also mercenaries, crusaders, fugitives, captives, or pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. We find, in particular, a number of marginal persons whose existence is seldom registered in other contemporary documents, in Arabic or Latin: renegades, slaves, converts, and mixed couples. Of particular interest are a series of questions involving conversion. In general, of course, conversion in Muslim Tunis is envisioned in only one direction: to Islam. Christians who in “fear of the Saracens” (¶16) participate in secret night-time services may be nominal Muslims who have sur- reptitiously returned to Christianity. Only one passage (¶9) deals with the actual baptism of Muslims. Some Christian servants or slaves of Muslims took care of Muslim children. They asked the friars whether they could and should secretly baptize these children: if they then died before the age of discretion, they would be saved. The pope responds that they should be baptized. We may presume, then, that a number of Muslim children of thirteenth-century Tunis were secretly baptized by their Christian nannies. One of the friars’ questions (¶10) involves those who were Christians and subsequently converted to Islam. Some converted when they were young, some adult; some slave, some free. Many of them converted, say the friars, largely because they were ignorant concerning the articles of the 164 J. TOLAN faith. Such apostasy, in Christian Europe, is illegal—potentially a capital crime. But of course in Muslim Tunis, there is no question of punishing them, as they are beyond the reach of Christian princes and indeed of spiritual penalties such as excommunication (since they have voluntarily removed themselves from communion with the Church, according to Gratian’s Decretum).4 The concern here is for their relatives who have remained Christian. According to Canon law, Christians ought to shun the company of heretics5; exceptions are allowed for those who seek to bring them back to the Catholic fold. Yet the friars realize that if they try to prohibit Christians in Tunis from maintaining contact with their Muslim relatives, they will have little luck and will most likely only push them to apostatize as well. “It seems to us that they cannot easily abstain from frequenting the above-mentioned people, either because they love them according to the flesh, as their children, or because they receive food from them.” The pope answers that they may frequent these Muslim causa correctionis vel necessitatis—in other words, either in order to try to bring them back into the Christian fold or for material necessity. By applying Gratian’s legislation concerning heretics to Muslims, Raymond and Gregory place Islam—in legal and practical terms—in the category of heresy. This is in line with much contemporary theological reflection on Islam, particularly the work of Latin Christian polemists against Islam in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.6 One group of Christians remains difficult to identify: the “aromes” (¶13: variant manuscript (MS) readings are arrones or atronies). Who are they? All we learn from this passage is that the friars are ministering to them (“quorum curam gerimus”) and that they are prone to make oaths. The term (or variants on it) appears in other works of Raymond. In his Summa de paenitentia, Raymond explains that the atronii are Christians living under Muslim rule. He affirms that some of them participate in Muslim rites: they proclaim that “Mahumatus” is a prophet or they kiss the “sepulcrum Almeadi.”7 The latter is a reference to the pilgrimage cult

4 C 24 q 1 c4–5. For analysis of C24 and references to a new critical edition, see Anders Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), chap 2, “Heresy and Excommunication: Causa 24,” pp. 50–92. 5 “Hereticorum consortia a catholicis sont fugienda” C 24 q1 c2. 6 See J. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). 7 Raymond of Penyafort, Summa de paenitentia 1.7.7 (col. 334–335): “Ecce multi christiani resident in quibusdam civitatibus sarracenorum, et maxime illi qui vocantur atronii; RAMON DE PENYAFORT’S RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS… 165 of the Mahdi Ibn Tumart, founder of the Almohad movement, at his tomb in Tinmāl (near Marrakech), which became an important means for the Almohad caliphs to affirm their legitimacy as successors of Ibn Tumart.8 Raymond asserts that many of these atronii behave in public as Saracens and in private as Christians. Raymond says that these people are apostates if they do these things out of a desire to revere God (i.e., if they believe in the efficacy of these non-Christian practices) but merely commit a mortal sin if they do so out of fear. In a letter to the Minister General of the Dominican order, Raymond argues in favor of the Dominican missions to the Saracens by presenting six “fruits” gleaned from such missions. The second fruit is “among the aramos who are Christians but servi of the Saracens and do not understand any language but Arabic, who desire the [presence of the] friars with a great yearning, so that they might be instructed and strengthened by them”9 In the text of this letter we find the term aramos, while in the Summa de paenitentia is the term atronii. Both terms are found as variant readings, in the Responsiones, of aromes, so we may presume that all these references are to the same group and that European scribes unfamiliar with the term produced the variant spellings. If these three passages indeed refer to the same group of Christians, this provides evidence of Arabic-speaking Christian communities in North Africa (in particular in Ifriqiya) in the thirteenth century. Raymond presents them as the “servi” or the Saracens: the term could mean slaves in a strict legal sense but could also designate simple subservience, corresponding with the status of dhimmi. Some of them are apparently crypto- Christians who publicly practice Islam: it is tempting to see here the results of forced conversion to Islam under the Almohads, though this is of course conjecture. The two friars in Tunis claim to have some sort of direct aliquis illorum profitetur Mahumatum nuntium esse Dei, sicut et sarraceni faciunt ad laudem et venerationem illius quem colunt et venerantur pro sancto. Alius osculatur sepulcrum Almeadi, quasi ex reverentia, ac si esset sanctus. Alii in publico gerunt se pro sarracenis et in occulto pro christianis.” 8 See P. Buresi, “Les cultes rendus à la tombe du Mahdı ̄ Ibn Tūmart à Tinmāl,” in F. Déroche et J. Leclant eds., Monuments et cultes funéraires d’Afrique du Nord, (Paris, 2010), pp. 185–231. 9 “Secundo, inter Aramos, qui sunt Christiani, sed Sarracenorum servi, nec intelligunt nisi linguam Arabicam et desiderio magno desiderant fratres, ut instruantur et confirmentur ab ipsis.” The letter is preserved in Gerardus de Fracheto, Vitae fratrum Ordinis Praedicatorum necnon Cronica Ordinis ab anno MCCIII usque ad MCCLIV. Recensio prior, B. Reichert & J. Berthier, eds. (Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Historica, 1: E. Charpentier & J. Schoonjans, Lovanii, 1896), pp. 309–310. 166 J. TOLAN responsibility toward this aromes. Does it imply that some sort of ecclesiastical authority had been granted by the Hafsid ruler? Does this mean that the Aromes lacked their own clerics? We have seen that the friars mention married fratres spirituales (¶12) present in Tunis before their arrival, which does suggest the existence of a local clergy. In any case, these brief allusions suggest that indigenous Arabic-speaking communities survived in the Maghrib, albeit precariously, well into the thirteenth century. The following section (¶11) deals with the problem of mixed marriages. While it is not legal for a Christian to marry a non-Christian, the question here is what happens when one member of a married Christian couple labatur in haeresim, slides into heresy—in other words (in this context) converts to Islam (here again, Islam is treated as heresy). Gratian echoes earlier church legislation in strictly prohibiting marriage between Christians and non-Christians. Yet exceptions are made in cases of conversion: Causa 28 of the Decretum deals with the case of a married infidelis who converts to Christianity and whose spouse remains infidelis. Gratian affirms that it is permitted for the new Christian to separate from his non- Christian spouse, but also that she or he may remain married if she or he so wishes. The key distinction here is to know whether the now Christian member of the couple can remain married to the infidel spouse without contumelia creatoris, “insult to the creator.” This is a direct reference to Decretum C28 q2 c2: when the non-Christian spouse hates Christianity, and is guilty of insult to the creator, the Christian spouse may not only separate from the infidel but may marry anew. The Bible prohibits divorce; separation or annulment is allowed on specific grounds, including consan- guinity and adultery. The Decretum affirms thatcontumelia creatoris is a sort of spiritual adultery, far worse than the mere physical kind and that it is therefore grounds for separation and annulment of marriage. Raymond and the pope apply Gratian’s ruling concerning conversion of the marriage of a convert to Christianity to the case of mixed couples where a Christian has converted to Islam. These two cases in particular show a willingness to creatively engage with the traditions of canon law in order to find solutions to practical problems. Some Christians in Tunis are clearly going to continue to convert to Islam, and their spouses and other relatives are going to continue to socialize with them. Raymond and the pope were willing and able to find legal justifications for them to do so. Some Muslim muftis were adept at ijtihad, adapting the shari‘a to the changing needs of Muslims, ground- RAMON DE PENYAFORT’S RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS… 167 ing their concessions in the textual traditions of Muslim law. Clearly some canon lawyers could do the same; the Dubitabilia provide striking examples of thirteenth-century Christian ijtihad. This text is thus not only of value as a source for the social history of a diverse and poorly documented community of Christian Europeans in thirteenth-century North Africa, it is also a testimony to the malleability and creativity of legal traditions.

Manuscripts There are 7 extant manuscripts of the Dubitabilia.

1. Y New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke rare book and manuscript library, Marston MS 127, f. 135v, col b.–137r, col a

Thirteenth century, parchment, ff. i (early parchment flyleaf) + 138. Measures 168 × 114 mm. 2 columns, 40 lines. Double outer and single inner vertical bounding lines with an additional ruling between columns. Single upper horizontal ruling. Ruled in lead or crayon. Remains of prick- ings in upper, lower, and outer margins. Fine flourished initial, 5-line, divided red and blue, with penwork designs in both colors and long marginal tail of letter Q, f. 1r. Smaller flourished initials incorporating the heads of bird-like grotesques and cross-hatching designs. 1-line initials alternate red and blue for chapter lists. Paragraph marks and running headlines in red and blue. Rubrics throughout; instructions for rubricator along outer edges of leaves, some perpendicular to text. Middle of the thirteenth century. Written in Italy or Southern France, according to Shailor; in Spain, according to Faye & Bond. Purchased from Enzo Ferrajoli in Geneva in 1957 by L. C. Witten, who sold it the same year to Thomas E. Marston. The MS contains part of Raymond of Penyarfort’s Summa de poenitentia et matrimonio, selections from the Decretales of Gregory IX, and various unidentified texts on canon law. This is the oldest surviving manuscript of the text and contains what is probably the best text; it is complete, though the scribe occasionally makes errors due to inattention (substituting arma for naues or lignamina for legumina). I have used this as the base manuscript and followed its spelling and word order, correcting it only when other manuscripts offered a clearly better reading. 168 J. TOLAN

Barbara Shailor et al., Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, vol. 3 (Binghamton, 1992), 235–237. C. Faye & W. Bond, Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (New York, 1962) p. 79, no. 127.

2. E Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 24.6, fol 79rb–80ra

Thirteenth century, parchment, 83ff, 32 × 24 cm. Contains Raymond’s De penitentia. No signs of provenance or previous ownership on MS; this is a fairly luxurious illuminated MS probably destined for the library of a Dominican convent.

3. F Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, Conventi soppressi I.X.49, fol 162ra–163vb

Parchment, 175ff, fourteenth century. 18 × 12 cm (small modest “pocket” codex; could be carried around by friar). From the Dominican convent of San Marco, Florence. Contains texts on virtues and vices, largely from a monastic/mendicant perspective. The last collection of texts, in which the Responsiones are inserted, shows a concern in particular for questions of excommunication as a punishment; this may explain why certain chapters of the Responsiones are omitted. Indici dei manoscritti scelti nelle bibliotheche monastiche del diparti- mento dell’Arno dalla commissione degli oggetii d’arti e scienze e dalla medesima rilasciati alla Pubblica Libreria Magliabechiana (hand-written catalogue, no date), pp. 145–146. Di Benedetto, Filippo, Review of Berthold Ullman & Philip Stadter, The Public Library of Renaissance Florence: Niccolò Niccoli, Cosimi de’ Medici and the Library of San Marco, in Studi medievali xiv (1973), 947–960 (esp. 954–955). Kaeppeli, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicaatorum 3:285.

4. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Canon Mis. 269, f. 206–210

Fifteenth century, parchment, 135 × 106 mm, 274ff. RAMON DE PENYAFORT’S RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS… 169

Clear, very readable MS, in various gothic hands, with different print sizes and rulings (perhaps originally different works bound together later; binding in leather with paper end papers, seventeenth to eighteenth century). This quite small MS seems to be a pocket book for friars, for consultation on issues of penance. Final text in Italian, suggesting Italian provenance of MS. Contains various works on penance, mostly by Franciscan authors, including Angelus de Perusio (fl mid-fifteenth century). H. O. Coxe, Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecase Bodleianae, pars III: Codices Codices graecos et latinos canonicianos complectens (Oxford, 1854), 638–639.

5. P Pisa, Biblioteca del Seminario MS 100, f. 42v–45v

Fifteenth century, parchment, 72ff 19.5 × 13.5 cm. Several different hands, different rulings (2 columns throughout; 30 lines per column at beginning, 26 at end, where writing is larger). This undecorated manuscript in clear gothic hand was the base MS for Ochoa’s 1976 edition. It is defective in parts, due to omissions, in particular part of question 37 and all of question 38. Vitelli gives fairly detailed listing of incipits, but does not identify any of the texts. The MS contains various texts dealing with canon law, particular questions of penance. G. Tamburini, Inventari dei manoscritti d’Italia 24: Pisa, Biblioteca Cateriniana del Seminario (Florence, 1917), p. 81. C. Vitelli, “Index codicum latinorum qui pisis in bybliothecus conven- tus S. Catherinae et universitatis adservantur,” Studi italiani de filologia classica 8 (1900), 321–427 (esp. 375–376).

6. V Vatican, Bibl. Ap. Ottob. lat. 45, fol. 103v–104

Thirteenth century, parchment. Contains works on penance and confession. Includes Raymond’s Decretales novae. Xavier Ochoa & Aloiso Diaz, Universa bibliotheca iuris, volumen 1, S. Raimundus de Pennaforte, tomus C (Rome: Commentarium pro religiosis, 1978), p. cxxxvi. 170 J. TOLAN

7. A Prague, Bibl. Kapit. K 12, fol 16v–18v

Fourteenth century, parchment. A collection of texts concerning canon law and penance, including selected decretals of Gregory IX and texts by Johannes Andreae and Johannes de Capito. This manuscript contains a defective version of the text, with many omissions and errors (as indicated in the notes to the edition). J. Von Schulte, “Die canonischen Handschiften der Bibliotheken Prags,” Abhandlungen der k. böhemischen Gesellschaft der Wichenshaften 6 (1868), 87–105. (online at http://books.google.fr/books?id=831FAAA AcAAJ&lpg=PA99&ots=kuksjgvALG&dq=et%20si%20postea%20repe- tuntur%20%20non%20redduntur&pg=PP5#v=onepage&q&f=falsef).

Earlier Editions There have been five previous editions of the Dubitabilia.

1. J. Von Schulte, “Die canonischen Handschiften der Bibliotheken Prags,” Abhandlungen der k. böhemischen Gesellschaft der Wichenshaften 6 (1868), 97–102. Edition based on MS A. (online at http://books.google.fr/books?id=831FAAAAcAAJ&lpg=PA99& ots=kuksjgvALG&dq=et%20si%20postea%20repetuntur%20%20 non%20redduntur&pg=PP5#v=onepage&q&f=falsef). 2. F. Balme, C. Paban & I. Collomb, Raymundiana seu documenta quae pertinent ad S. Raymundi de Pennaforti vitam et scripta, Monumenta Ordinis Praedicatorum Historica 4 (Rome, 1898), pp. 29–37. Based on MSS A & F. 3. A. López, La provincia de España de los frailes menores (Santiago de Compostela, 1915), pp. 368–376. Based on MS E. 4. José Rius Serra, Diplomatario: Documentos, Vida antigua, Crónicas, Procesos antiguos (Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona, Facultad de derecho, 1954), pp. 22–28. Reprints edition of F. Balme, C. Paban & I. Collomb (no. 2, above). 5. Xavier Ochoa & Aloiso Diaz, eds., Dubitabilia super communicationem Christianorum cum Sarracenis, in Universa bibliotheca iuris, volumen 1, S. Raimundus de Pennaforte, tomus C (Rome: Commentarium pro religiosis, 1978), cols 1024–1036.

This edition is based on that of Rius (“Documenta directa haurimus de Diplomatario edito a J. Ríus”), with a critical apparatus referring to variant readings in the six manuscripts that the editors consulted (they did not RAMON DE PENYAFORT’S RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS… 171 know of MS Y). They show a preference for the readings of MS P, even though that MS, as noted earlier, is defective in places. They also “mod- ernize” (or rather classicize) the medieval spellings of the MSS. Ochoa’s & Diaz’s edition of Raymond’s works provoked sharp criticism from A. García y García,10 who describes Ochoa’s & Diaz’s methodology as “more scholastic than historical.” Far from being a critical edition, he affirms that they produce a “texto mixtificado, que hasta ahora nunca había existido como tal.” With no scientific criteria for establishing the text, no clearly stated policy for choosing a manuscript as the base of each text, they produce a text which corresponds to “el texto que los editores desearían que San Raimundo hubiese escrito siete siglos antes.”

Editorial Principles Given the shortcomings of the five earlier editions, and given the fact that their editors did not have access to Y, the oldest and in many respects best manuscript of the text, a new critical edition is needed. I have used MS Y, the oldest and for the most part most reliable MS, correcting the scribes’ occasional errors when other manuscripts offer a clearly better reading. I have noted variant readings in the notes. I have not noted minor variants such as inversion of word order, substitution of synonyms for common words (uel/siue, an/utrum, etc.), or minor variations of spelling (saracenus/sarracenus, etc.) The edition is accompanied by my translation into English.

Critical Edition of Latin Text of the Dubitabilia De quibusdam dubitabilibus.11 Dilectis12 in Christo fratribus J.13 priori de ordine predicatorum et G.14 de ordine fratrum minorum ministro in regno tunicii commorantibus

10 A. García y García, “¡No es esto! Glosa a una nueva edición de las obras de San Raimundo de Peñafort,” Revista Española de Derecho Canónico 35 (1979), 187–196. 11 Quedam consultationes domini pape et earumdem responsiones (E); Incipit casus fratris raimundi (P); Incipit quedam declaratio (O); Incipiunt noui decretales a magistro Remundo (A). 12 Dilectis … domino; F: Fratribus commorantibus apud tunic ̂ frater Raymundus pape premarius salutum. 13 n. (A, E, V); (O, P). 14 n. (A, E, V); (O, P). 172 J. TOLAN frater raymumdus, domini pape penitentiarius, salutem in domino. Postulastis per apostolicam sedem edoceri quid in subsequentibus tenere articulis debeatis. Perlectis itaque coram domino papa subscriptis articulis, responsiones ipsius, quas deliberatione habita edidit cuilibet articulo, duxi de speciali mandato suo15 fideliter subnectendas,16 ut in foro penitentiali iuxta tenorem ipsarum intrepide iudicetis.

1.17 Cum ex constitutione domini Innocentii sint excommunicati qui uendunt naues et deferunt arma uel ferrum uel impendunt aliquod auxilium sarracenis, quid est quod18 ianuenses uendunt naues et maxime ueteres sarracenis, dicentes hoc sibi non fuisse19 prohibitum a prelatis suis?20

Respondemus: qui deferunt naues21 uel lignamina galearum, arma uel ferrum sunt excommunicati, quocumque tempore hoc faciant, et hoc per utrumque concilium. Qui uero alia deferunt in dispendium terre sancte sunt excommunicati per ultimum concilium. Uel22 si ad impugnandum christianos, sunt excommunicati per primum23 lateranense concilium.

2. Similiter yspani dant uel uendunt calcaria, frena, et sellas, de quibus dubitamus utrum sint24 arma computanda.

Respondemus: si tempore guerre hoc faciunt, excommunicati sunt.

3. Item, si sub nomine auxilii continent uictualia, ut dicitur quid est quod yspani uendunt arietes et oues et huius, pisani et ianuenses25

15 Sic (A) 16 Subnotandas (A) 17 The questions not numbered in MSS, I have numbered them here for ease of reference. 18 Quid est quod: quicumque (V). 19 Fuisse sibi (V) 20 The text of A is somewhat garbled: Cum ex constitutione domini Innocentii sint excommunicati qui uendunt naues et maxime ueteres et deferunt arma uel ferrum uel impendunt aliquod auxilium et quodcumque Ianeum sarracenis, dicentes hoc sibi non fuisse prohibitum a prelatis suis? 21 arma (Y); (F) 22 Vel … concilium; (F) 23 ultimum (Y) 24 Sint sint (A) 25 pauenses (O) RAMON DE PENYAFORT’S RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS… 173

frumentum, uinum et legumina,26 castaneas, auellanas et huius sarracenis, dicentes talia non esse prohibita sibi27 a prelatis suis, et ideo in dubitationem inducimur utrum predicti omnes sint excommunicati.

Respondemus: utique sunt tempore guerre huius uenditores sarracenis qui pugnant cum christianis,28 et hoc per primum lateranensem concilium.

4. Item, quidam christiani mercatores honerant naues suas anona et aliis uictualibus in quibusdam partibus sarracenorum ubi est fer- tilitas, et portant in alias partes sarracenorum facientium guerram cum29 christianis. Qui umquam30 sarraceni fuissent forsitan destructi, tum ex caristiam tum esset guerra, nisi per huius mercatores eis fuisset subuentum in uictualibus.31 Cum igitur huius deportatio uictualium maximum sit auxilium sarracenis, siue sit guerra siue non, querimus utrum sint excommunicati tales.

Respondemus: sunt utique, secundum proximam responsionem.

5. Item, utrum sic sit excommunicatus qui portat arma, gladium uidelicet, lanceam uel cultellum uel huius in terram sarracenorum, non cum proposito uendendi, sed ad sui defensionem, et postmodum, occasione32 pecunie,33 uendit eadem sarracenis.

Respondemus: sunt excommunicati.

6. Item, utrum sint excommunicati qui uendunt christianos sarracenis, maxime cum tales, postquam uenduntur, a sarracenis compelluntur fieri sarraceni pro maiori parte.34

26 lignamina (Y) 27 Eis (V) 28 sarracenis qui pugnant cum christianis: (A) 29 guerram cum: inurias (A) 30 inquam (Y, E, P, O) 31 subuentum in uictualibus: deleuati (A) 32 esset (Y); causa (F) 33 penurie (F) 34 postquam uenduntur, a sarracenis compelluntur fieri pro maiori parte: compelluntur esse sarraceni in maiori parte (A) 174 J. TOLAN

Respondemus: non sunt excommunicati, set mortaliter peccant.

7. Item, quidam furantur iudeos uel sarracenos, et maxime feminas, et ducentes eas in terram sarracenorum pro coactionem35 uel alias faciunt eas profiteri coram sarracenis, quod36 sint christiani uel christiane, et sub nomine christiano uendunt eos uel eas sarracenis.37 Querimus utrum tales sint excommunicati propter iniuriam quam faciunt nomine christiano in huius uenditione.

Respondemus: non sunt excommunicati38 sed mortaliter peccant.

8. Item, utrum sint excommunicati milites christiani uel allii, qui conuersantes cum sarracenis,39 obligant uel impignorant40 uiros uel feminas de familiis suis sarracenis, necessitate compulsi, et maxime qui eos obligant nec credunt se posse sufficere ad redemptionem eorum.41 Contingit autem multoties, quod taliter obligati et maxime pueri uel puelle42 fiunt postmodum sarraceni et si postea repe- tuntur43 non redduntur.

Respondemus: similiter.

9. Item, quidam captiui christiani siue christiane conuersantur cum sarracenis habentibus infantulos.44 Querimus utrum possimus talibus christianis45 ut bapticent consulere furtiue eos infantulos, sine consensu et46 uoluntate siue conscientia parentum, sub spe quod taliter baptizati si47 decedant antequam atingant annos discretionis48

35 comunicationem (F) 36 qui (Y) 37 uel eas sarracenis: (A) 38 quod non (Y) 39 Christianis (A) 40 uel impignorant: (A) 41 ipsorum (A) 42 et maxime pueri uel puelle: (A) 43 repetantur (V) 44 infamulos (E) 45 (A) 46 consensu et (O, Y) 47 (Y) 48 discretos (Y) RAMON DE PENYAFORT’S RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS… 175

saluabuntur, licet presumatur de talibus uel de taliter49 baptizatis, quod cum annos discretionis attingerint, displicebit eis fuisse bap- tizatos, si eis constiterit de baptismo suscepto.

Respondemus: baptizentur tales.

10. Item, sunt quidam qui fuerunt christiani et postmodum facti sunt sarraceni. Alii in minori etate, alii iam adulti: alii ex ipsis sunt liberi, alii captiui.50 Cum omnes51 errent contra articulos fidei negantes christum52 esse deum et dei filium, negantes53 etiam incarnationem ipsius et passionem, querimus si cum talibus possint communi- care54 patres uel matres eorum, uel huius coniuncte persone uel quilibet alius indifferenter, et cum illis maxime quia facti sunt sarraceni ignorantes articulos fidei, uel quia fuerunt ab infantia cap- tiuati55 uel alias quacumque neglegentia mediante cum predicte persone uix uideatur nobis quod56 possint abstinere commode57 a communione predictorum, tum propter carnalitatem qua eos dili- gunt utpote58 filios, tunc quia recipiunt ab eis uictualia.

Respondemus: possunt ei communicare59 causa correctionis uel necessitatis et60 recipere ab eis uictualia in necessitate61 et maxime parentes62 uel alie coniuncte persone.

11. Item, si alter coniugum labatur in heresym, utrum possit communicare uel cohabitare ei alter qui remanet in fide.

49 uel de taliter (A) 50 alii captiui (A) 51 (A) 52 (A) 53 negantes … passionem (F) 54 cohabitare (A) 55 captiui (A, O) 56 uideatur nobis quod (A) 57 domo (A) 58 ut potes (E) 59 cohabitare (A) 60 et … uicutalia (P) 61 in necessitate (A) 62 pater et mater (F) 176 J. TOLAN

Respondemus: potest, si uult, dummodo sine contumelia creatoris, etsi non pertrahit eum63 ad mortalem. Sed tutius est ut, auctoritate64 ecclesie, a tali cohabitatione recedat.

12.65 Item, querimus qualiter procedemus cum fratribus spiritualibus matrimonio copulatis ante aduentum nostrum in regno de tuni- ci.66 Timemus enim ex separatione talium uel magnum scandalum uel apostasie secuturum periculum in quod ipsi67 facile dilabantur,68 maxime cum clerici sub quorum cura erant tunc cum contraher- ent, super hoc ab ipsis consulti,69 contractum huius non dissua- derent nec interdicerent, immo potius70 auctoritatem contractam uel contractui preberent inter tales in facie ecclesie matrimonium71 sollemniter celebrando.

Respondemus: si potest fieri absque scandalo et periculo apostasie, separentur72 tales: alioquin secreto73 in foro penitentiali in secreto74 dispensetur cum contractis, et districte ac publice inhibeatur ne de cetero similia fiant.

13. Item, aromes75 quorum curam gerimus, sunt multi proni76 et faciles ad uouendum et ad iurandum quedam licita,77 puta non bibere uinum et huius. Que. postmodum, sine magna difficultate non possunt obseruare: immo ipsi auctoritate propria infringunt uota et iura- menta sua, etiam si nos non dispensemus cum eis. Unde indigeremus, si fieri posset, ut possemus cum talibus aliquatenus78 dispensare.

63 Eum: (A, V) 64 occasione (A) 65 ¶12 (F) 66 tunis (A, V) 67 (A) 68 dilabuntur (E, P, V) 69 ab ipsis consulti: ab episcopis consultis (V) 70 possius (V) 71 nullam prohibitionem (A) 72 si parentur (E) 73 (A) 74 (A) 75 arrones (A, E, F); atronies (P, O); barones (V) 76 (P) 77 Illicita (V) 78 per commutaniones (V) RAMON DE PENYAFORT’S RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS… 177

Respondemus: dispensetur cum talibus79 per commutationem penitentie et inhibantur ne sint proni ad uota similia emittenda.80

14. Item, qualiter procedemus, cum hiis qui accommodant denarios uel res alias ad fortunam maris et utrum hec sit usura, cum plus accipiant quam dent.

Respondemus: procedatur secundum nouam decretalem Nauiganti.

15.81 Item, de dispensatione82 cum hiis qui, post crucis signationem, uenerunt in terram sarracenorum et post modum, multis de causis impediti, utpote83 quia duxerunt uxores ibi84 tacito quod essent crucesignati, uel quia non audent recedere propter metum sarracenorum.

Respondemus: iniungatur alia penitentia crucesignatis85 qui propter infirmitatem, paupertatem uel timorem sarracenorum uotum implere non possunt; alii grauibus occupationibus detenti, non implicent se aliis, sed illis expeditis prosequantur uotum.

16. Item, utrum liceat nobis celebrare missam ante auroram propter timorem in86 quo sunt isti quorum curam gerimus, et maxime in diebus paschalibus, in quibus nec aliter nobis sufficeret commode tempus ad celebrandum diuina et ad populum communicandum.

Respondemus: potest aliquando87 fieri propter metum88 sarracenorum; alias non nisi in nocte Natiuitatis.89

79 aliquatenus dispensare. Respondemus: dispensetur cum talibus (A) 80 dispensetur cum talibus per commutationem penitentie et inhibantur ne sint proni ad uota similia emittenda; Potest dispensari cum eis de licentia pape uel episcopi diocesi et inhi- beat ne sint proni ad uota similia emittenda. 81 (F) 82 dispensatione nauiganti (Y) 83 ut pute (P) 84 sub (E, V) 85 cruce assignatis (E, P) 86 in quo: in quorum partibus (O); iniquorum (P) 87 (V) 88 timorem (V) 89 Natiuitatis domini (A) 178 J. TOLAN

17. Item, utrum liceat celebrare illi qui post hesternam90 comestionem usque91 ad horam celebrationis non dormiuit, uel quia non potuit, uel propter occupationes licitas.

Respondemus: potest utique, si celebraturus credat cibum iam digestum.

18. Item, utrum liecat celebrare cum92 uestimentis93 et maxime corpo- ralibus non benedictis, causa necessitatis.

Respondemus: non licet.

19. Item, utrum liceat nobis94 consecrare chrisma et oleum infirmo- rum et cathecumenorum cum uno socio tantum uel duobus, cum plures habere non potuerimus.

Respondemus: licet Episcopo.

20.95 Item, cum ex indulgentia domini Honorii, nobis liceat excommunicatos illos absoluere, qui ad sedem apostolicam commode non possunt accedere causa absolutionis, querimus quid notare uelit illud commode,96 et utrum possimus excommunicatos illos absoluere qui non tenentur ire ad curiam, prius prestito iura- mento quod quam citius poterunt mandatum97 ecclesiasticum adimplebunt in suorum presentia prelatorum, et utrum teneat absolutio illorum, quam bona conscientia usque huc fecimus circa huius; sin autem quid nos oporteat facere.

Respondemus: intellegitur non posse accedere commode, ubi iustum impedimentum est, puta infirmitatis, senectutis98 multe99 paupertatis et similia,100 que melius dispensantis prouidentia, quam uerbi expressione,

90 externam (Y) 91 (A) 92 cum uestimentis (P) 93 uestimentis non consecratis (V) 94 (A) 95 (F) 96 incommode (A) 97 (P) 98 (P) 99 multis (Y) 100 familia (E) RAMON DE PENYAFORT’S RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS… 179 possunt comprehendi.101 Illos autem qui non tenentur ire ad curiam, sed a suis praelatis possunt absolui, potestis absoluere. Quia dominus Papa con- cedit hoc uobis, dum tamen102 sint commorantes. Absolutio quoque facta a uobis huc usque de talibus, uel ab illis fratribus qui fuerunt103 in regno marochitano,104 non tenet nisi fuissent subiecti uostri uel105 ipsorum, aut uobis uel eis fuisset indultum; unde taliter absoluti remittantur106 ad suos prelatos, uel illos quibus absoluendi tales fuerit indulta potestas.

21. Item, de hiis107 qui furantur decimas sarracenis utrum eisdem teneantur restituere.108

Respondemus: tenentur restituere.109

22. Similiter utrum teneantur de usuris contractis110 restituere sibi.

Respondemus: tenentur.111

23. Item, super quibusdam aliis similiter articulis112 dubitamus. Primo, utrum portantes ferrum una terra sarracenorum in aliam sint excommunicati.

Respondemus: non, nisi fiat in dispendio terre sancte, uel alias contra christianos.

24. Item, et illi qui apportant sarracenos cum armis suis.

Respondemus ut supra.

101 comprehendi … prelatis (E) 102 modo vobiscum (A) 103 fuerant (V) 104 maior bono (E); maioricano (V); maiorichano (A) 105 uostri uel: (V) 106 remittentur (V) 107 illis (A) 108 eisdem teneantur restituere: teneantur restituere sibi (V); restituere: reddere (A) 109 Respondemus: tenentur restituere: (A, V) 110 certis (O) 111 restituere eis tenentur (O, P, V) 112 capitulis uel articulis (F) 180 J. TOLAN

25.113 Item, quidam apportant ligna paruicula. Dubitamus114 utrum de115 hiis lignaminibus intellegatur canon.

Respondemus: si ad naues uel116 ad machinas ad impugnandum christianos uel in dispendium terre sancte, sunt excommunicati.

26. Item, sunt quidam qui portant stuppam et canapum, picem et funes et similia.

Respondemus ut supra, proximo.

27.117 Item, cultellos118 paruissimos et clauos minutissimos, et isti uel uendunt uel dant, utrum sint excommunicati.

Respondemus ut supra.

28. Item, sunt quidam alii qui capiunt clericos latrones uerberando cum prelati non sint utrum119 sint excommunicati. Et si sunt, utrum possimus eos absoluere.

Respondemus120: sunt,121 nisi122 de mandato prelatorum123 hoc faciant, et id rebellio exigat talium clericorum. Potestis autem eos absoluere si sit uobis indultum, alias non.

29. Item, sunt alii qui uolunt permutare124 cultellum cum arcu uel e conuerso, uel aliquod consimilem,125 utrum qui fecerint sint excommunicati.

113 (V) 114 Dubitamus (Y) 115 de … canon (E) 116 uel ad machinas (F) 117 (A) 118 cultellus (Y); cullilos (E) 119 utrum sint (Y) 120 (O) 121 Si clericorum sunt (Y) 122 non nisi (P, Y) 123 prelatorum: prelatorum suorum (V) 124 (P) 125 simale [sic] (Y) RAMON DE PENYAFORT’S RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS… 181

Respondemus: non nisi126 fiat in dispendium terre sancte, uel ad impugnandum christianos.127

30.128 Item, qui intellegantur commorantes: utrum qui per annum uel dimidium moram fecerint intellegantur commorantes.129

Respondemus: qui proponit de cetero ibi morari, maxime si iam morati sunt per annum.

31. Item, cum contineatur in indulgentia quod possimus absoluere in necessitatis articulo130 dubitamus131 de quo articulo intellegatur pro qualibet132 febre uel fluxu.

Respondemus: ubi timetur uel timeri potest periculum mortis.

32. Item, quid faciendum sit de clericis negotiatoribus, cum scandalum generent?

Respondemus: compescantur133 a prelatis suis per censuram ecclesiasti- cam, uel aliam penam canonicam.

33. Item, sunt quidam qui apportant prohibita ignorantes esse prohibita, utrum sint excommunicati, et si sunt, utrum possimus eos absoluere.

Respondemus: cum in utroque concilio prohibita sint et publicata non licet ignorare; tamen absoluantur ad minus ad cautelam.

34. Item, quid de illis faciendum est qui portant prohibita,134 et quam cito sciunt illa esse prohibita, reportant et nolunt uendere sarracenis.

126 (Y) 127 nisi fiat in dispendium terre sancte, uel ad impugnandum christianos: nisi fiat in dis (A). 128 (F) 129 utrum … commorantes (Y) 130 in necessitatis articulo: in articulo mortis (A) 131 dubitamus de quo articulo (O, P, V) 132 qualibus (A) 133 compescamus (E) 134 prohibita ignorantes (A) 182 J. TOLAN

Respondemus: non sunt excommunicati.

35.135 Similiter sunt quidam qui apportant res prohibitas et uendide- runt et partes, et alia superest ad uendendum. Si tales contingat absolui aliqua necessitate, cuiusmodi consilium dabitur eis de alia parte.

Respondemus: reportent eam.

36. Item sunt qui petunt absolutionem causa maris. Utrum possimus eos absoluare.

Respondemus: Non.

37. Item sunt alii qui dant uel uendunt prohibita sarracenis ignorantes quod propter hoc sint excommunicati, et quam cito sciunt recup- erant. Utrum tales sint excommunicati; et si sunt, utrum possint136 absolui.

Respondemus: sunt excommunicati137 et absoluantur.

38.138 Item139 utrum teneamur uitare excommunicatos ante denuntia- tionem, cum quidam sint qui non asserere uideantur, et nobis, de iure, contrarium uideatur.

Respondemus: tenemini, secundum distinctionem decretalis Cum desideres140.

39. Item, quomodo intellegatur illud quod dicitur de sarracenis habentibus guerram cum christianis, utrum si cum uno rege uel ciuitate, uel cum141 ecclesia, uel qualiter intellegatur.

135 (F) 136 possint … absoluantur (P) 137 excommunicati, sed absoluantur (F) 138 ¶s 38–39 inverted (A, E); ¶38 (F, V) 139 Item utrum (P) 140 fideres (E) 141 una (A) RAMON DE PENYAFORT’S RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS… 183

Respondemus: de quolibet christiano.

40. Item aliquis est debitis obligatus pro uictu suo uel aliis, et nichil habet, nec aliquid lucrari potest. Necessitate tali compulsus intrat nauem aliquam pro marinario ut possit lucrari unde possit uiuere et debita persoluere142; et nauis illa portat143 res prohibitas in terram sarracenorum, et aliam non potest inuenire ubi possit lucrari. Utrum iste talis sit excommunicatus, precipue cum ipse plus habeat de lucro mercedis quam expendit uel debeat, saltem144 .vi.145 denarios, uel circa illud, uel plus.146

Sunt excommunicati quia communicant in crimine illis qui mittunt uel portant, dando eis auxilium et cooperationem, licet pro mercede. Sed in satisfactione pecunie uel penitentie147 mitius agatis cum eis, prout uestra discretio uiderit expedire. Datum Perusii XIIII kalendas februarii, pontificatus domini Gregorii anno VIII.148 Ramon de Penyafort Responses to questions concerning relations between Christians and Saracens (January 19, 1235) Translation by John Tolan Brother Raymond, confessor of the Lord Pope, to the beloved brothers in Christ, J., prior of the order of Preachers and G., minister of the order of Minor Brothers residing in the kingdom of Tunis, greetings in the name of God. You have asked to be instructed by the Holy See what you should do in regard to the following items. Your questions, which are transcribed below, were read before the Lord Pope. His responses, which he gave after deliberation concerning each item, I faithfully disposed, in accord with his special mandate; [they are] binding, so that in the confessional you may intrepidly judge according to their tenor.

142 soluere (V) 143 portat uiveres uel (E) 144 soluere ut (V) 145 sex (F); .v. (O, P) 146 saltem .vi. denarios, uel circa illud, uel plus: soluere (A). 147 uel penitentie (A) 148 Datum … VIII (E, F, Y); Laus tibi Christe AMEN (V) 184 J. TOLAN

1. Since by the order of Lord Innocent, those who sell ships or take arms or iron or provide any aid to Saracens are excommunicated, what of those Genoans who sell ships, particularly old ones, to the Saracens, saying that this was not prohibited to them by their own prelates?

We respond: those who take ships or wood for galleys, arms or iron are excommunicated, whenever they do it, and this by both councils. For those who trade these things to the detriment of the Holy Land are excommunicated by the last council [Lateran IV]; while if these things serve to fight Christians, they are excommunicated by the first Lateran council [in fact, Lateran III].

2. In the same way, Spaniards give or sell spurs, bits and saddles; we wonder if these things should be considered as arms.

We respond: if they do this in time of war, they are excommunicated.

3. Also, if the category of aid includes foodstuffs, what of Spaniards who sell goats, sheep, and so on; Pisans and Genoans wine, wheat, beans, chestnuts, hazelnuts, and so on to the Saracens, saying that such sales were not prohibited to them by their prelates; hence this leads us into doubt as to whether all the aforementioned people are excommunicated.

We respond: those who sell such things are indeed [excommunicated] if they do this in wartime and sell such things to Saracens who are fighting against Christians; and this is according to the first Lateran Council [Lateran III].

4. Also, certain Christian merchants charge their ships with grain and other food in Saracen regions which are fertile and take them to other regions of Saracens who are at war with Christians. These Saracens would perhaps in the end be defeated, either through lack of rations or through war, if these merchants did not aid them in this way by bringing them food. Since this supplying of food is of great aid to the Saracens, whether or not they are at war, we ask whether such merchants are excommunicated. RAMON DE PENYAFORT’S RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS… 185

We respond: they are indeed, as according to previous response [§3].

5. Also, whether he who takes arms (i.e., a sword, a lance, a knife, etc.) into the lands of the Saracens, not intending to sell it but for his self- defense and who later, out of financial need, sells it to Saracen, is excommunicated.

We respond: they are excommunicated.

6. Also, whether those who sell Christians to Saracens are excommunicated, especially since most of those who are sold are forced to become Saracens.

We respond: they are not excommunicated, but they sin mortally.

7. Also, some capture Jews or Saracens, especially women, and take them into the lands of the Saracens, by force or not, and make them declare to the Saracens that they are Christians; they then sell them, as Christians, to the Saracens. We ask whether such people are excommunicated for the insult they proffer to the Christian name through this kind of sale.

We respond: they are not excommunicated, but they sin mortally.

8. Also, whether are excommunicated those Christians, knights or others, who, having commerce with Saracens, pawn or mortgage to Saracens men or women from among their own servants, compelled by necessity. In particular, in those numerous cases when they know that they will not be able to redeem those whom they pawn. It often occurs that those who are pawned in this way, especially the boys and girls, later become Saracens—and if they later are reclaimed, they are not returned.149

149 This presumably refers to negotiations to free captives, either by exchange or for ransom: the idea being that those who have converted to Islam are not given over to the Christians. 186 J. TOLAN

We respond in the same way.

9. Also, certain Christian captives, men or women, live with Saracens who have infant children. We ask whether we can advise such Christians to secretly baptize these infants, without the knowledge, will, or consent of their parents, in the hope that, should some of those thus baptized die before they reach the age of discretion, they may be saved. For we may presume that those who have been so baptized, once they reach the age of discretion, would be displeased if they were to learn that they had been baptized in this way.

We respond: let them be baptized.

10. Also, there are some who were once Christians and then became Saracens, some while they were minors, others as adults; some of them are free, others captives. Since they all err against the articles of the faith, denying that Christ is God and Son of God, since they deny his Incarnation and Passion, we ask if the fathers, mothers, or other relatives of such people, or other people may communicate with them. Many of these people, when they converted, were ignorant of the articles of the faith; some were taken captive as infants; others converted due to a certain negligence. It seems to us that they cannot easily abstain from frequenting the abovemen- tioned people, either because they love them according to the flesh, as their children, or because they receive food from them.

We respond: they may communicate with them, either in order to correct them or out of necessity, and may receive food from them when they are in need, especially their relatives and other people connected with them.

11. Also, if one person in a married couple sinks into heresy, whether the one who remains in the faith may communicate or cohabit with him.

We respond: he can, if he wishes, as long as it is without insult to the Creator and if it does not lead him into mortal sin. Yet, by the authority of the Church, it is safer that he refrain from such cohabitation. RAMON DE PENYAFORT’S RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS… 187

12. Also, we ask how to proceed in the case of spiritual brothers who had bound themselves in matrimony before our arrival in the Kingdom of Tunis. For we fear lest by separating them, the result would be either a great scandal or the danger of apostasy, into which they could easily slide. This is particularly the case since the priests under whose care they were when they contracted [marriage], when consulted about this, did not dissuade them or prohibit them from doing so; on the contrary they granted their authority to the contract, solemnly celebrating the wedding in the face of the Church.

We respond: if it can be done without scandal or risk of apostasy, separate such couples. Otherwise, secretly in the confessional, grant dispensation to those who have contracted such marriages, and strictly and publicly prevent others from doing similar things.

13. Also, the Aromes,150 whose care we have, are quite prone to swear- ing oaths on legitimate things, for example, not to drink wine or things of the sort. They then find themselves unable to respect these oaths, except through great exertion on their part. They then break their vows by their own authority, unless we absolve them of their vows. Hence, we ask if it is possible that we might on some occasions dispense them from such oaths.

We respond: they may be dispensed from such oaths by commutation of penance. And let them not be prone to make such oaths.

14. Also, how should we proceed with those who lend money or other things, entrusting them to the risks of sea travel; should this be considered usury when they take more than they give?

We respond: the new Decretal Naviganti151 should be followed.

15. Also, concerning the dispensation of those who, after having been marked with the sign of the cross, come to Saracen lands and later, for many and various reasons, are prevented [from fulfilling their

150 On the Aromes (elsewhere Aramos, Arrones, Atronii or Atronies), see introduction. 151 X V, 19, 19. 188 J. TOLAN

crusade oath], either because they marry there without revealing that they are marked with the cross or because they do not dare return through fear of the Saracens.

We respond: another type penance shall be imposed on those who are marked with the cross who, on account of illness, poverty, or fear, are unable to fulfill their vow. Others, who are detained by important occupations should not take on new occupations, but, once their other duties have been performed, should fulfill their vows.

16. Also, whether it is permitted to us to celebrate mass before dawn, on account of the fear of those whose care we have, particularly in the Easter season, during which there is not enough time for us to celebrate the divine offices and to give communion to the people.

We respond: it can be done sometimes, on account of fear of the Saracens; otherwise not, except on Christmas Eve.

17. Also, whether it is permitted for those to celebrate the mass if they have not slept between their meal the previous day and the hour of the mass, either because they were not able to or on account of licit occupations.

We respond: it may be done, if he who celebrates the mass believes that his food has been digested.

18. Also, whether it is permitted to celebrate with unblessed vestments and vessels when necessary.

We respond: it is not permitted.

19. Also, whether it is permitted for us to consecrate chrism and oil for the sick and for catechumens with only one or two companions, since we cannot have more.

We respond: it is permitted for the Bishop to do this.

20. Also, since through the indulgence of lord [Pope] Honorius [III], it is permitted to us to absolve excommunicates who are not able easily to go to the Apostolic See to be absolved, we ask what, in RAMON DE PENYAFORT’S RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS… 189

this case, “easily” means, and whether we can absolve excommunicates who are not required to go to the Curia, if they first vow that they as soon as they can they will fulfill the Church’s orders in the presence of their prelates and that in order for their absolution to be maintained. This is what we have done, in good conscience, up until now. Otherwise, how should we proceed?

We respond: it should be understood that those who cannot “easily” go are those who have a true impediment, such as illness, old age, great poverty, and so on: this can be better judged by the prudence of he who gives the dispensation than by verbal expression. Those who are not required to go to the curia, but rather to be absolved by their prelates, you may absolve, because the Lord Pope conceded this to you, as long as they are residents. The absolution performed by you until now concerning such persons, or by those friars who were in the Moroccan Kingdom, does not apply for they were not subject to you or to them, nor were you or they granted an indult. Hence, those thus absolved should be sent back to their prelates or to those to whom power of absolv- ing these people has been granted.

21. Also, if those who steal the tithes of the Saracens are obliged to return them.

We respond: they are obliged to return them.

22. Similarly, whether they are required to pay debts contracted through usury.

We respond: they are required to restitute them.

23. Also, we have doubts concerning other similar items. First, whether those who take iron from one Saracen land into another are excommunicated.

We respond: No, unless this is done to the detriment of the Holy Land, or in other ways against Christians.

24. Also, those who transport armed Saracens.

We respond as above. 190 J. TOLAN

25. Also, some transport small pieces of wood. We doubt whether this should be understood as wood prohibited by the canon.

We respond: if it is used for ships or war machines for fighting Christians or to the detriment of the Holy Land, they are excommunicated.

26. Also, some transport flax, hemp and pitch, and ropes and similar things.

We respond as directly above.

27. Also, tiny knives and miniscule nails—are those who sell them excommunicated?

We respond as above.

28. Also, some people who are not prelates capture thieves who are clerics and whip them. Are these people excommunicated? If so, may we absolve them?

We respond: they are [excommunicated], unless they do this at the orders of a prelate, and the rebellion of such clerics makes this necessary. You may however absolve them if you have been granted an indult to do so, otherwise no.

29. Also, there are some who wish to exchange a knife for a bow or the opposite, or something similar, whether those who do this are excommunicated.

We respond: no, unless they do it to the detriment of the Holy Land, or for fighting against Christians.

30. Also, who should be considered to be residents: those who stay for a year? For half a year?

We respond: those who intend on staying there, especially if they have already stayed for a year. RAMON DE PENYAFORT’S RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS… 191

31. Also, since the indulgence allows us to perform absolutions in case of necessity, we wonder what this means, if it includes any fever or infection.

We respond: where death is feared or can be feared.

32. Also, what to do about clerics who are merchants, since they cause scandal?

We respond: they shall be restrained by their prelates through ecclesiastical censure or through another canonical punishment.

33. Also, they are some who transport prohibited items without knowing that they are prohibited. Are they excommunicated, and if yes, may we absolve them?

We respond: since these things are publically prohibited by both councils, it is not permitted to ignore this. But they may be absolved with lighter penance.

34. Also, what about those who transport prohibited items, and as soon as they learn that they are prohibited, take them back and refuse to sell them to the Saracens.

We respond: they are not excommunicated.

35. Similarly, there are some who bring prohibited things and sell part of them, and part remains to be sold. If it so happens that they are absolved through some compulsion, what advice can we give them about the other part?

We respond: they should return it.

36. Similarly some petition for absolution by reason of being a seafar- ing merchant. May we absolve them? 192 J. TOLAN

We respond: no.

37. Also, there are others who give or sell prohibited items to Saracens, not knowing that they are excommunicated for this, and as soon as they know it, they retrieve the things. Are such people excommunicated? If so, can they be absolved?

We respond: they are excommunicated, but they shall be absolved.

38. Also, whether we are obliged to avoid excommunicated people before they have been denounced, as some claim; to us, according to law, it seems to be the contrary.

We respond: you indeed are required [to avoid them], as according to the distinction of the Decretal Cum desideres.152

39. Also, how should we understand that which is said about Saracens at war with Christians: does it mean with one king or city, or with the Church, or how should it be understood?

We respond: with any Christian.

40. Furthermore, someone is obliged by debt, for his sustenance or for other reasons, and he has nothing, nor does he have any means to earn money. Compelled by such necessity, he boards a ship as a sailor so that he can earn a living and pay his debts; and this ship carries prohibited items into Saracen lands; and he can find no other way to earn a wage. Is such a man excommunicated, in particular since he has, as profit or wage beyond that which he spends and owes, perhaps fivedenarii , more or less?

We respond: they are excommunicated, for they participate in the crime with those who send or carry, giving them aid and cooperation, even if only for a wage. But in the granting of penance act more mildly with them, as your discretion will see fit to expedite. Given in Perugia on the 14th of the Calends of February, in the eighth year of the pontificate of Lord Gregory.

152 X V, 39, 15. CHAPTER 7

Al-Tābisı ̄ and His Descendants: The Failed Integration of a Military Andalusi Family into the Christian Society of the Kingdom of Valencia (1238–1283)

Josep Torró

In May 1258, King James I launched the campaign to conquer what remained of Muslim Valencia, concluding an enterprise begun with the siege of Borriana, 25 years earlier. The southern tip of the new Christian kingdom still suffered from the presence of the enigmatic vizier Abū ‘Abd Allāh b. Hudhayl, better known as al-Azraq, with whom the king had signed a capitulation pact in 1245. The terms of the treaty, however, were not exactly met, and in 1247 the Muslim leader resumed fighting with the aid of a few Andalusi military chiefs that remained in the area and, probably, also the local peasant communities (jama‘āt), but his position was very precarious. More than ten years of fighting alone—this war is referred to as “al-Azraq’s war” in the Christian sources—had fatally weakened his

J. Torró (*) Universitat de València, València, Spain e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2019 193 M. T. Abate (ed.), Convivencia and Medieval Spain, Mediterranean Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96481-2_7 194 J. TORRÓ territories, resources, and support. The end was further expedited by the treason of one of his own men, who advised him to sell, imprudently, the grain reserves that he kept in his castles. Warned of this circumstance, the King of Aragón rapidly left Valencia in order to take the last fortresses under the control of al-Azraq’s men, which were located in the mountains to the south, four days’ travel away from the capital. The position of the Muslims was so weak, anyway, that they started surrendering when the king was still en route. It seems that the qā’id of Pego was the first to surrender his castle; on his arrival in Cocentaina, the last stop before reaching the war frontier, the king also received the capitulation of the castles of Planes and Castell. The end of the war is a well-known episode. The arrival of James I forced al-Azraq to abandon his hilltop fortress of Alcalà and seek refuge in Gallinera. This bought him only a short reprieve and he had to surrender a few days later. In the end, the campaign, which was brief and involved no fighting that we know of, was resolved through the signing of capitula- tions in which the vizier and his quwwād could receive some compensation. In this regard, the qā’id of Castell, Abū Yaḥyá b. Abı ̄ Isḥāq, was very fortunate: his son Bakrūn was awarded a horse and the title of miles, an appointment about which nothing else is known and which seems to have been of no practical consequence. More importantly, the banū Abı ̄ Isḥāq were granted the castle of Tàrbena and a number of nearby villages (qurā). For his part, al-Azraq was exiled to an unknown location, but not before negotiating the concession of the tower of Altea and its villages and the castles of Polop and Xaló for his nephew and brother.1 As we see, none of these concessions was to last very long. It is in this context that the figure known in the Christian documents as Tevicino makes an appearance with his son Sa‘d (Çahat). On June 16, after returning to Cocentaina, James I donated to them the castles of Orxeta, Finestrat, and Torres and their associated lands, villages, and rents. One significant limitation to the grant affected the alienation of the land, which Tevicino and his son could pass on only to their descendants; the grant expressly forbade the sale of the land to anyone but the king and his successors. In addition, the king reserved for himself the right to recover the land for a fair price. Thus, the king did not lose control of the fortifica-

1 Pierre Guichard, Les musulmans de Valence et la Reconquête (XIe-XIIIe siècles) (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1990–1991), II: 428–433; Josep Torró, El naixement d’una colònia. Dominació i resistència a la frontera valenciana (1238–1276) (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2006), 63–68. AL-TĀBISĪ AND HIS DESCENDANTS: THE FAILED INTEGRATION… 195 tions and its dependencies. The grant document includes a final disposition which exonerates Tevicino from royal taxes and the obligation of serving the king militarily. This final disposition is similar to the tax exemption granted to knights, but in this case it only extended to Tevicino and, in principle, not to his son Sa‘d.2 Unsurprisingly, Tevicino received the historiographical attention of Robert I. Burns, who collected and presented (repeatedly) the information available about this character. Tevicino is situated in that nebula of “inapprehensible lords,” the Andalusi aristocrats who had survived the Crusade. Based on the scraps of information conveyed by the Christian documents, Burns tried to classify—and clarify—this evanescent and heterogeneous group. Tevicino was placed in an intermediate position, behind a “great lord,” such as Abū Zayd. In a different sense, he was also different from the “patriot cheiks,” which included al-Azraq and the banū ‘Isā ̄ from Xàtiva-Montesa. Tevicino was still, according to Burns, a member of the “military Mudéjar aristocracy” and was awarded a feudal grant similar to that enjoyed by Christian lords. Although Burns’ definition of this military class is arguable, he was clearly right in distinguishing Tevicino from the group of “heroes” and rebels. The reward for his loyalty to James I was “a continuing position in the military-feudal structure of Valencia,” that is, his integration into the political order of the new kingdom. This integration, however, would have been discontinued for reasons that are not at all clear, perhaps his participation in the “obscure troubles” of the 1260s.3 This work, which I am presenting as a testimony of admiration and friendship to Professor Thomas F. Glick, aims to reexamine in detail all of the extant references to this character, plus some more that were not hitherto known.

2 Robert I. Burns, ed. Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia. The Registered Charters of its Conqueror Jaume I, 1257–1276, 4 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985–2007), 2: doc. 144. 3 Robert I. Burns, Islam under the Crusaders. Colonial Survival in the Thirteenth-Century Kingdom of Valencia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 314–315; Robert I. Burns, Le royaume chrétien de Valence et ses vassaux musulmans (1240–1280). Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 28, no. 1 (1973): 200; Robert I. Burns, “The Muslim in the Christian Feudal Order: The Kingdom of Valencia, 1240–1280,” in Studies in Medieval Culture, 5, edited by John R. Sommerfeldt, Larry Syndergaard and, E. Rozanne Elder, (Kalamazoo: The Medieval Institute, 1976), 119–120; Robert I. Burns, L’Islam sota els Croats. Supervivència colonial en el segle XIII al Regne de València, 2 vols. (Valencia: Tres i Quatre, 1990), 2: 61–63. The last reference corresponds to the Catalan edition of Burns, Islam under the Crusaders, which is a corrected and updated version of the original in English. 196 J. TORRÓ

Who Was “Tevicino”? Tevicino’s grant was similar in appearance to those conceded in order to facilitate the surrender of the banū Hudhayl and the banū Abı ̄ Isḥāq, which confirmed the ownership of some of the castles that they already possessed. The three fortifications thus granted are in the same area, on the coastal southern tip of the Kingdom of Valencia, and form a single territorial unit, bordered on the north with the castles of the banū Hudhayl (Polop and Altea) which, for their part, border the lands of the b. Abı̄ Isḥāq (Fig. 7.1). Yet, in contrast with the qā’id of Castell, Abū Yahyā b. Abı ̄ Isḥāq, who was clearly linked to al-Azraq in the 1245 capitulation pact,4 Tevicino is not mentioned in any of the documents related to the vizier or to his actions. Similarly, Tevicino is not referred to as qā’id in any known text. Moreover, the name of Tevicino appears in the chancery reg- isters around the time when James I was in campaign against al-Azraq, but in a totally unrelated context. A royal document dated to May 26, 1258, when the king was mustering his forces in Cocentaina for the final assault, indicates that Tevicino owned land in the Huerta of Valencia, just outside the capital of the kingdom. It is, to be sure, but a passing mention: the honore Tevicini is only alluded to as a topographical indication. It served as a boundary for three fields confiscated from a Jew by the name of Mubārak, who had been convicted for murder and hanged, fields which Mubārak’s widow was rebuying from the king. These properties are in the raḥal of Soterna, near the qarya of Mislata, barely 2.5 km away from the city wall.5 It is, naturally, justified to wonder whether these two Tevicinos are indeed the same person although all the evidence suggests that they are. Tevicino is, to begin with, a rather peculiar name. It is neither a personal name (ism) nor a patronymic (nasab), but a nickname or nisba, which, in this case, alludes to his geographical origin or that of his ancestors. Almost without doubt, the name refers to the fortress of Tābisa (the modern Tivissa), which is located in the mountains that constitute the northern border of the Lower Ebro Valley in the province of Tarragona, in Catalonia.6 Al-Idrısı̄ ’s̄ route-book Uns al-Muhaj, written in the mid- twelfth century, lists Tābisa among the castles linked to the harbor madınā

4 Robert I. Burns and Paul Chevedden, Negotiating Cultures. Bilingual Surrender Treaties in Muslim-Crusader Spain (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 24–28. 5 Robert I. Burns, ed. Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 2: doc. 131. 6 Josep Maria Vila, “Aproximació històrica i arqueològica al procés de formació del nucli antic de Tivissa,” Arqueologia Medieval 4–5 (2008–2009):70–99. AL-TĀBISĪ AND HIS DESCENDANTS: THE FAILED INTEGRATION… 197

Fig. 7.1 The castles held by al-Tābisı ̄ and his relatives (1258–1270). Partially based on Galiana (2011). (Courtesy of author) of Tortosa.7 The apparent absence of an article in the nisba is explained by the “solar” nature of the initial letter (tā’), which is duplicated in pronun- ciation, silencing lām in the article: at-Tābisı ̄ instead of al-Tābisı.̄ 8 Owing to the phonetic phenomenon of the imāla—which is frequent in Andalusi Arabic—according to which ā is pronounced as long “e” or “i,” the Catalonians would hear “Tevicí,” which they Latinized in their documents as “Tevicino.” The change of “b” for “v”—which in Catalan is a fricative phoneme similar to [f] and clearly different from the bilabial occlusive [b]—is still unaccounted for, but the fact is that it appears from the earliest

7 Dolors Bramon, De quan érem o no musulmans. Textos del 713 al 1010 (Barcelona: Eumo, 2000): 135. 8 For Carmen Barceló in El Sayyid Abū Zayd: Príncipe musulmán, señor cristiano, Awraq. 3 (1980):109, it is clear that the name Tevicino points to the modern Tivissa, but she suggests the forms “al-Tiwızı̄ ”̄ or “al-Tuwayzı”̄ because the mention of Tābisa in the Uns al- Muhaj was still unknown. Burns (Islam under the Crusaders: 314, n. 40) also believed in the Tivissa connection, although he suggested the transliteration “al-Tıfā ̄shı,”̄ which was based in a real nisba that points to Tıfā ̄sh (the old Tipasa of Ifrıqiya).̄ 198 J. TORRÓ mentions of Tābisa in Latin texts9: Teviça (1153), Teviçia (1168), and Teviza (1174). Perhaps the Christian scribes were, consciously or otherwise, reflecting the relationship between the personal name and the place names.10 Despite its brevity, the reference to the land owned by Tevicino—henceforth, al-Tabisı̄ —in̄ the Huerta of Valencia contains an important detail: the ownership of the land is labeled as an honor, a royal grant. The grant must be related to the distribution of land practiced by James I after the siege and conquest of the city, 20 years earlier. Indeed, the Repartiment of Valencia includes an entry, dated to April 15, 1238, in which ‘Alı ̄ b. Hamas’̄ (Aly Avinhameç) house and a vegetable garden, along with two jovades (6 ha) of land and a vineyard, apparently also previously owned by ‘Alı ̄ b. Hamas’,̄ are granted to Muhammaḍ al-Tabisı̄ ̄ (Mahomad Teviçi).11 The location of these properties is not indicated, and none of the four express entries in the Repartiment which refer to donations in the rahaḷ of Soterna (rahal Axuterni) mention Muslim beneficiaries nor anyone with a known link to al-Tabisı̄ ,̄ despite the fact that their date is very close to that of al-Tabisı̄ ’s̄ grant (April 22)12; this was precisely the moment when James I’s hosts abandoned their position in the castle of Puig in order to lay siege to Valencia, which surrendered in late September. The manuscript note referring to the donation is not exactly problem-free. At a later date, the name Guillem Berenguer was written by a different hand over the original name “Mahomad Teviçi,” the initial M being cursorily crossed out, but not the rest of the name. In principle, this could be interpreted as a cancelation of the donation, but other evidence indicates that al-Tabisı̄ ’s̄ family remained the owner of a substantial amount of land in the vicinity of Soterna. It is, in consequence, likely that the original grant was permuted by another property, still under the category of royal grants, in the same area. James I’s grant to al-Tābisı ̄ is unusual and only increases the interest that surrounds the identity of this character. To start with, the Andalusi beneficiaries of theRepartiment of Valencia are very few in number:

9 Joan Coromines, Onomasticon Cataloniae, 8 vols. (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1989–1997), 7: 280–281. 10 However, a Iacobus Tibiçi is listed in the 1239 house survey of Valencia (M. D. Cabanes and R. Ferrer, eds. Libre del Repartiment del Regne de Valencia, 3 vols. [Zaragoza: Anubar, 1979–1980], 3: n. 1366, 2936). 11 Archivo de la Corona de Aragón [hereafter cited as ACA], Cancillería, reg. 5, f. 11v; Cabanes and Ferrer, eds. Libre del Repartiment, 1: n. 194. 12 Cabanes and Ferrer, eds. Libre del Repartiment, 1: n. 204–207. AL-TĀBISĪ AND HIS DESCENDANTS: THE FAILED INTEGRATION… 199 around 20 out of a total of 1829 in the first volume.13 Most of these concessions, moreover, are merely the confirmation of possessions (land and houses) which the beneficiaries already owned. In these cases, the circumstance is explicitly indicated in the text (domos quas habet, hereditatem quam habet, etc.), and this is not the case concerning al-Tābisı’s̄ donation. The entry clearly states that the object of the April 1238 donation had previously belonged not to al-Tābisı ̄ but to somebody else (although this does not mean that al-Tābisı ̄ may not have owned other property in Valencia). One name stands out among the few Andalusi beneficiaries of the Repartiment: Aḥmad b. Ghamr (Avenguamero) was awarded three royal grants (which concerned both his own property and that of expelled Muslims), which makes him the second most favored Andalusi beneficiary, after the sayyid Abū Zayd. The really remarkable point, in any case, is that this character is in all probability the “Avingamero” whom the sources mention as the murder victim of the Jew Mubārak, whom we previously encountered as the owner of land in Soterna, bordering with al-Tābisı’s̄ property.14 This strange coincidence suggests that there may have been some connection between al-Tābisı ̄ and Ibn Ghamr (who may have also owned land in the area), but the available evidence makes it impossible to know exactly what this relationship was if it actually existed. There is another peculiarity of al-Tābisı’s̄ grant that is worth stressing: it took place before the city was taken, something that applies to only 4 of the 20 donations which have Andalusi beneficiaries; furthermore, al-Tābisı’s̄ is the earliest. Another one benefited the sayyid Abū Zayd, the former Almohad governor of Valencia, who had been deposed in January 1229 in favor of the cavalry commander (qā’id al-a‘inna) Zayyān b. Mardanısh.̄ 15 Abū Zayd sought refuge in Aragón and, in April, signed a treaty with James I, in which he committed to hand the king one-quarter of the rents exacted from the land, towns, and castles that he could acquire in Valencia “by force or cunning.” The treaty was confirmed in May 1236 in terms that consecrated the fidelity (amicitia) of Abū Zayd and his

13 Enric Guinot, “El repartiment feudal de l’Horta de València al segle XIII,” In Repartiments a la Corona d’Aragó (segles XII–XIII), edited by Enric Guinot and Josep Torró (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2007), 163. 14 Cabanes and Ferrer, eds. Libre del Repartiment, 1: n. 1042, 1130, 1165, 1583. Burns, Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia: Societies in Symbiosis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984:), 144–148 offers detailed information on Mubārak “the murderer.” He did not overlook the close proximity of his lands to those of al-Tābisı,̄ “the important Mudéjar castellan” (whose name he transliterates as al-Tıfā ̄shı),̄ but his statement that “the Mislata-Soternes district was heavily Mudéjar” is a bit inflated. 15 Pierre Guichard, Les musulmans de Valence, 1: 146. 200 J. TORRÓ descendants to the kings of Aragón.16 In December 1238, after the fall of Valencia, the monarch exonerated the sayyid from the payment of one- quarter of his income, but only during his own lifetime.17 The donation in Valencia, dated to July 28, 1238, is part of a set of rewards with which James I recompensed the loyalty of Abū Zayd. Although the king kept the riyāḍ, or palatial estate, which Abū Zayd had enjoyed in Valencia during his time as governor, he compensated him with another riyāḍ, a house in the city, a munya and land in Valencia, Cullera, and Corbera.18 That same day, 136 jovades (407 ha) of land, distributed in different qurā, were handed to 52 of his men (hominum de Aceyt Aboceyt), presumably members of his entourage and personal guard.19 Once the exceptional character of al-Tābisı’s̄ donation has been firmly established, it is now time to try to identify him more precisely and to find out what he did that put the king under such an immediate obligation to him. The geographic nisba indicates that his family came from the Upper March of al-Andalus (al-Thaghr al-A‘lā), specifically the Lower Ebro Valley, conquered by the count Ramon Berenguer IV between 1148 and 1153. It is, therefore, likely that al-Tābisı ̄ was a member of one of the military Andalusi lineages that abandoned this region and relocated to Valencia and Murcia, like the banū Mardanısh.̄ 20 It is true that none of the sources identifies him in a military capacity, and he is never referred to as qā’id, but we must take into account that all the quwwād mentioned in the thirteenth-century Catalan-Aragonese documents were or had been ene-

16 R. Chabás, “Çeid Abu Çeid,” El Archivo, 5 (1891): 147–158; A. Huici and M. Cabanes, eds., Documentos de Jaime I de Aragón, 5 vols. (Valencia-Zaragoza: Anubar, 1976–1982), 1: doc. 119, 236. 17 This date was established by Barceló, “El Sayyid Abū Zayd,” 109, correcting Chabás, “Çeid Abu Çeid”: 299–300. 18 Cabanes and Ferrer, eds. Libre del Repartiment, 1: n. 562. These properties had belonged to the banū Shalbūn, a family of intellectuals, viziers, and high state officials (Pierre Guichard, Les musulmans de Valence, 2: 319). It must not be forgotten that, after the surrender of the city, the sayyid was favored with three further grants: more houses in the city (1239), the qarya of Aldaia, and the village of Ganalur (1242): Cabanes and Ferrer, eds. Libre del Repartiment, 1: n. 1167, 1462, 1463. 19 Cabanes and Ferrer, eds. Libre del Repartiment, 1: n. 561. 20 Pierre Guichard, Les musulmans de Valence, 1: 112; 2: 320–332. There is also evidence to the settlement of people from Tābisa in Mallorca, where an alcheria Tebici is listed among the properties distributed after the conquest (J. Coromines, Onomasticon Cataloniae, 7: 281). AL-TĀBISĪ AND HIS DESCENDANTS: THE FAILED INTEGRATION… 201 mies of the king: that is, they had taken part in military activities outside the political order imposed by the Christian conquerors.21 In al-Tābisı’s̄ case, it is possible that an explicit resignation of the title of qā’id may have helped to win the king’s favor. Also, the granting in 1258 of the castles of Orxeta, Finestrat, and Torres, which held a key position between the frontier of the Kingdom of Murcia, the coast, and the fortifications of Altea and Polop, which were in the hands of the unreliable banū Hudhayl, would not have made any sense had al-Tābisı ̄ not possessed any military qualities.

The Abū Zayd Connection In contrast with the banū Abı ̄Isḥāq—a well-regarded lineage of quwwād— it seems clear that al-Tābisı ̄ and his son did not ally themselves with al- Azraq, which could also help to explain the favor and even the trust of James I. It is, at all events, worth wondering how this obscure Andalusi officer was in a position to strike a direct, and favorable, deal with the King of Aragón. It is likely that his access to the monarch was mediated by al-Tābisı’s̄ loyalty to the deposed Abū Zayd. Along with the sayyid and his men, al-Tābisı ̄ is almost the only Andalusi who benefited from the king’s grants before the city had fallen; it is, however, clear, that this is too tenu- ous a link to support the relationship between them. However, the extant evidence points toward a connection that is worth exploring further: the castles of Orxeta and Torres, which (along with that in Finestrat) James I handed over to al-Tābisı ̄ at the end of the al-Azraq’s war, had previously been in the hands of Abū Zayd. Unfortunately, the date and the circumstances that surrounded the acquisition of these castles by the sayyid are unclear. In his 1229 pact with James I, which was renewed in 1236, the hand played by the former governor relied on his ability to gain castles “by force or cunning” (per poten- tiam aut ingenium) and his committing to surrender one-quarter of the rents to the king and the custody of the fortresses to an Aragonese

21 The documents pertaining to the 1276–1277 rebellion present the same peculiarity (Burns, L’Islam sota els Croats, 2: 84–90). 202 J. TORRÓ

castellan.22 As pointed out by Burns and Chevedden,23 this commitment is similar to an important clause in the bilingual treaty signed by the king and al-Azraq in 1245, the Arabic version of which states that “whatever castles the Wazır̄ obtains for the ruler of Aragon, either by power or by friendship, the Wazır̄ shall have half of the revenue” for three years.24 This suggests, in any case, that Abū Zayd was still capable of exerting some influence upon political and military chiefs and convincing them to surrender the fortresses under their command. Abū Zayd’s influence was, as the facts would prove, limited, but still not negligible: the sayyid won the castle of Alpuente and a significant territory in the higher Mijares Valley.25 In addition to this, he contributed to the conquests of James I with several castles in the southernmost section of the area that Aragón was entitled to conquer, after this was determined in the Treaty of Almizra (March 26, 1244): to the west, the castles in the Valley of Castalla (Castalla, Ibi, and Tibi) and, to the east, the coast fortresses of Orxeta and Torres.26 Roque Chabás27 points out that, given his agreement with the king, Abū Zayd was interested in “conquering himself, instead of leaving James I to do it,” and that the castles of Castalla, Ibi, and Tibi must have been

22 At least until the sayyid could directly hand over the six castles that he had promised to win for the monarch in northern Valencia: Peníscola, Morella, Culla, Alpuente, Jérica, and Segorbe. See A. Huici and M. Cabanes, eds., Documentos de Jaime I de Aragón, 1: doc. 119, 236. 23 Burns and Chevedden, Negotiating Cultures, 27. 24 In the Castilian version, the terms are similar: “que de quantos castielos yo pueda ganar d’aquí adelant fasta los tres annos que vos de la meetat de la renda; et los tres annos compli- dos, que vos dé los castielos que ganare” (Burns and Chevedden, Negotiating Cultures, 36, 41–50). 25 Chabás, “Çeid Abu Çeid”: 145–163, 296–300; Robert I. Burns, El reino de Valencia en el siglo XIII: Iglesia y sociedad. 2 vols. (Valencia: Del Cenia al Segura, 1982), 1: 121–128; Robert I. Burns, “Príncipe almohade y converso mudéjar: nueva documentación sobre Abū Zayd,” Sharq al-Andalus. Estudios árabes, 4 (1987): 111–112, 122; Robert I. Burns, “Daughter of Abū Zayd, Last Almohad Ruler of Valencia: The Family and Christian Seigniory of Alda Ferrándis, 1236–1300,” Viator 24, (1993): 143–187: 155–156; Burns, ed. Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 3: doc. 608. 26 Enric Guinot, Els límits del regne. El procés de formació territorial del País Valencià medieval (1238–1500) (Valencia: Edicions Alfons el Magnànim, 1995): 37–42. The territory associated with the castle of Torres more or less corresponds to the modern municipality of Vila Joiosa, a Christian town founded in 1300 (Agusti Galiana, “La fundació de Vilajoiosa per Bernat de Sarrià,” Sarrià. Revista d’investigació i assaig de la Marina Baixa 6, (2011): 4–39). 27 R. Chabás, “Çeid Abu Çeid”: 367. AL-TĀBISĪ AND HIS DESCENDANTS: THE FAILED INTEGRATION… 203 under his control by 1248, but no specific date is suggested. Barceló formulated an interesting possibility: that the sayyid conquered the Valley of Castalla, Orxeta, and Torres in March 1244, while James I and Prince Alfonso of Castile were not far away (Almizra is in the Valley of Biar, directly to the west of Castalla), negotiating the treaty that was to establish the frontier between the (Catalan-Aragonese) Kingdom of Valencia and the (Castilian) Kingdom of Murcia.28 As the king narrates in his memoirs, the treaty left Castalla and Torres on the Aragonese side, which suggests that the conquest of these places could be more or less coetaneous with the signing of the treaty.29 However, other places, such as Biar, which was not conquered until nearly a year later, were also mentioned in the treaty, as were the castles of Relleu, Polop, and Altea, which were clearly in the area under the influence of al-Azraq and his allies. It is important to clarify why the task of taking these castles fell to Abū Zayd—whom the sources do not record as being present in Almizra. In any case, the fact is that the sayyid took Castalla at a date that could not have been much later than the signing of the treaty, or at least that is what James I suggests: after the conquest of Biar, in February 1245, the king returned to Valencia and tried to make Abū Zayd comply with “the right he owed us of Castalla, according to our charters.” Although the 1229 and 1236 pacts granted the monarch one-quarter of the rents, we have seen that the sayyid had been exonerated from this obligation in 1238, and thus the king is probably referring to the commitment to hand the castles over to loyal Aragonese castellans. The king’s Llibre dels fets pays some attention to this issue. The nobleman Ximén Pérez de Tarazona, one of the king’s most trusted friends, told James I not to worry about the fortress of Castalla, which was at the time under the guardianship of García Pérez de Castalla, one of Ximén’s men.30 This character was a knight from Navarre called García Pérez de

28 Barceló, “El Sayyid Abū Zayd”: 105–106. 29 F. Soldevila, J. Bruguera, and M. T. Ferrer, eds., Llibre dels feits del rei En Jaume, (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2008): c. 349: “e nós que haguéssem Castalla e Biar e Relleu e Seixona e Alarc e Finestrat e Torres e Polop e la Mola que és prop d’Agües e Altea.” See Guinot, Els límits del regne: 37–42. 30 Soldevila, Bruguera and Ferrer, eds., Llibre dels feits: c. 360: “e volguem demanar a l’Azeit lo dret que ens devia donar de Castalla segons les cartes nostres. E dix-nos Don Eixemèn Peris d’Arenós que no ens calia, que ell la tenia e que ben se’n porien avenir ab ell. E nós dixem-li con ho tenia ell; e ell dix que don Garcia Peris de Castalla la tenia per ell, e que ell la’ns podia rènder quan que nós nos fóssem avenguts ab ell.” 204 J. TORRÓ

Ollo (who later desired to be renamed “de Castalla”), who in 1244 already features in the record as a beneficiary of land and houses in Caztalla.31 The situation of Ximén Pérez—henceforth, “de Arenós”—concerning Castalla is, no doubt, explained by his alliance with Abū Zayd, because Ximén’s son Blasco had married Abū Zayd’s daughter, Alda Ferrández. The presence of García Pérez, it follows, must be connected with the capture of the valley fortresses by the sayyid and his daughter’s father-in-law. On the other hand, it must be taken into account that Abū Zayd’s commitment to hand over to the king the castles that he conquered was a clause which aimed to ensure that the six fortresses he had promised to conquer in the north of the kingdom ended up in the king’s hands.32 At all events, since all of these places (Peníscola, Morella, Culla, Alpuente, Jérica, and Segorbe) had been conquered long before 1245 and, most of them, without the intervention of Abū Zayd, the king decided to exonerate him from this obligation on February 14—a date which fits with the king’s return to Valencia after the conquest of Biar and the Castalla episode described in the Llibre dels fets. The king was, however, careful to explicitly maintain the obligation that referred to the quarter of the rents (which had been lifted only during the life of the sayyid).33 There is one aspect of Abū Zayd’s life that has received little attention to date and which could help to clarify his actions in the areas of Castalla and Orxeta-Torres. I am referring to his relationship with the city of Murcia, where he lived intermittently during the period of the Castilian

31 Unfortunately, the unpublished piece of parchment on which this information was written was torn and badly preserved: ACA Cancillería, pergs. Jaume I, Extrainventario, n. 2853. We do not know the month when this guardianship, and the supersession of Abū Zayd, was officially confirmed. In 1262, the king endorsed the homage that García Pérez de Castalla had paid the sayyid for the castle and was entrusted with guarding it in the king’s and the sayyid’s name: (Burns, ed., Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 2: doc. 405). We also know of other land donations to García Pérez de Ollo, “alcaydo de Castalla,” in March 1260: ACA Cancillería, pergs. Jaume I, Apéndice, n. 29. In late 1258, Abū Zayd had to hand over to him the nearby castle of Ibi: Burns, ed., Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 2: doc. 204. 32 See supra note 21. 33 A. Huici and M. Cabanes, eds., Documentos de Jaime I de Aragón, 2: doc. 401: remitti- mus et deffinimus vobis Aceydo Abuceyt omnem demandam quam aliqua causa vel ratione possemus facere in aliqua castra et villas vestras … salvis quartis redituum. Quos quartos redituum debemus percipere et abere in castris et villis vestris prout plenius continetur instrumentis ad invicem inde factis. … In the same section of the royal memoirs, it is said that Ximén Pérez agreed to give Castalla to the monarch in exchange for Cheste and Vilamarxant, but this transaction does not appear to have taken place until September 1251, six years later: A. Huici and M. Cabanes, eds., Documentos de Jaime I de Aragón, 3: doc. 581. AL-TĀBISĪ AND HIS DESCENDANTS: THE FAILED INTEGRATION… 205

“protectorate,” between 1243 and 1264.34 We must remember at all times that the territorial “center of gravity” of the sayyid’s political influence was a compact block of land in the higher Mijares Valley (between Cortes de Arenoso and Villamalur), 100 km to the north of Valencia, which is, for its part, 150 km to the north of Castalla and Orxeta. Therefore, Castalla and Orxeta were very far away from the regions where Abū Zayd could expect to play a strong political hand; outside the higher Mijares Valley and Alpuente, his most optimistic expectations did not go farther south than Morvedre (modern Sagunt), still to the north of Valencia, as demonstrated by his concessions to the diocese of Segorbe- Albarracín in 1236 and 1238.35 The presence of Abū Zayd in Murcia, moreover, cannot be explained in the absence of some agreement with Prince Alfonso of Castile and even with the Hūdıd̄ sovereign Bāhā’ al-Dawla, who was enthroned after the deposition of Zayyān b. Mardanısh,̄ former emir of Valencia, who had briefly ruled Murcia between April 1239 and the beginning of 1241.36 Drawing links between both of these rulers cannot have been easy. One the one hand, while still a governor, Abū Zayd had broken a pact of vas- salage signed with Ferdinand III in 1225, “pushing him away from the domination and the friendship” of the King of Castile37; on the other hand, there was the likely animosity that a Hūdıd̄ must have felt toward a member of the Almohad dynasty who, to make matters worse, was an apostate.38 In any case, as demonstrated by later events, some sort of understanding was arrived at, which highlights the sayyid’s canniness and instinct for political survival. My hypothesis is that Abū Zayd gained control over the Castalla Valley and Orxeta-Torres by making use of the relationships that he had fostered

34 E. Molina, Ceyt Abu Ceyt. Novedades y rectificaciones. (Almería: Diputación Provincial de Murcia, 1977): 32–33. 35 Burns, El reino de Valencia, 1: 117–129. 36 Molina, “El gobierno de Zayyān b. Mardanīš en Murcia (1239–1241)”, de Zayyān b. Mardanıš̄ en Murcia (1239–1241), Miscelánea medieval murciana 7. (1981): 159–182; Guichard, Les musulmans de Valence, 1: 154–156. 37 Julio González, Reinado y diplomas de Fernando III. 3 vols. (Córdoba: Publicaciones del Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorros, 1983–1986): 3: doc. 205; Luis Charlo ed. “Chronica Latina Regum Castelle,” in Chronica Hispana Saeculi XIII. (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medieaevalis, LXXIII), 7–118. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997, c. 46, 48): et pactum … postea idem Aceit de Valencia tanquam vilis apostata, nulla iusta causa ductus, dirupit …; rupto federe sine causa, a dominio et amicicia regis nostris. 38 Bāhā’ al-Dawla was the uncle of Ibn Hūd al-Mutawwakil, who in 1228 had led the Andalusi rebellion against the Almohads (Guichard, Les musulmans de Valence, 1: 139–145). 206 J. TORRÓ in Murcia. Due to the geographical position of this region, in the unclear limits between the territories of Dénia and Alicante, it cannot be disregarded that, prior to the conquest, this area had depended administra- tively on the latter, which was for its part under the governorate of Murcia. We know, also, that the nephew of Bāhā’ al-Dawla, the famous emir Ibn Hūd al-Mutawakkil, had been able to depose the Almohad governor of Murcia in June 1228 thanks to the support of the city’s qāḍi, Abū l-Ḥ asan al-Qastạ ̄llı,̄ who was probably Castalla-born.39 The date on which the sayyid acquired the castles must have been between the signing of the Treaty of Alcaraz, on April 2, 1243, when Bāhā’ al-Dawla surrendered to the King of Castile and that of the Treaty of Almizra, on March 26, 1244, and probably closer to the latter than to the former. We know that Abū Zayd was living in Murcia in September 1244, when he started negotiating with the Order of Santiago, in an event which was attended by Prince Alfonso.40 This was not exceptional. The sayyid was again present in the city in May 1251, when Ximén Pérez de Artieda was awarded some land to the north of the Castalla Valley, between Ibi and Alcoi,41 and also in 1262, when he signed a convention with James I, in which the castle of Castalla was offered in guarantee.42 We even know that one of his sons, baptized Sancho Ferrández, purchased 115 tahúllas in the area of Beniaján, in the Huerta of Murcia.43 It is, therefore, clear that Hūdıd̄ Murcia under the Castilian protectorate was a common abode of the sayyid, but it is impossible to be precise concerning his specific political role in the city

39 On the other hand, after the anti-Almohad revolts led by Ibn Hūd in Murcia and Zayyān in Valencia, the city of Xàtiva declared its loyalty to the former, so the territories located to the south of the city, with the exception of the harbor city of Dénia and its hinterland, must also have fallen within the political orbit of the Murcian hūdıs̄ (Guichard, Les musulmans de Valence, 1: 145–153). In fact, the resulting uncertainty was behind the tension between the kings of Aragón and Castile, which was resolved by the Treaty of Almizra. In the previous treaty of Cazola (1179) the frontier between Aragón and Castile was located in Calp, to the north of Torres, which suggested that Altea, Polop, and Orxeta-Torres were, therefore, to be regarded as part of Murcia’s area of influence. 40 Regina Sáinz de la Maza, La Orden de Santiago en la Corona de Aragón. La encomienda de Montalbán (1210–1327) (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1980): doc. 30; Josep Torres Fontes, ed., Colección de documentos para la historia del reino de Murcia, II. Documentos del siglo XIII (Murcia: Academia Alfonso X el Sabio, 1969): doc. 5. 41 J. Torró and J. R. Nebot, “‘Inter Iui et Alcoy ….’ Nota sobre una referència de 1251 a la partida de Polop,” Iberis 5, (2007): 93–97. 42 Torres Fontes, ed. Colección de documentos: doc. 20. 43 José Torres Fontes, ed. Repartimiento de Murcia. Madrid: CSIC, 1960: 190. For this character, see Burns, “Daughter of Abū Zayd”: 164–165, 178. AL-TĀBISĪ AND HIS DESCENDANTS: THE FAILED INTEGRATION… 207 and the kind of relationship—if there was any—that he had with the city’s Muslim rulers. A problem that cannot be overlooked is that, between Murcia and the frontier in Castalla and Orxeta-Torres, there were two towns that escaped the control of Bāhā’ al-Dawla and their Castilian “protectors”: Orihuela, which was under Wazır̄ Abū Ǧāfar b. ‘Isạ ̄m, at least until 1250, and especially the coastal fortress of Alicante, where Zayyān b. Mardanısh̄ had gone after escaping from Murcia and where he remained until 1246 or 1247.44 Both the Castalla Valley and Orxeta-Torres were bordered on the south by Alicante—that is, the last stronghold of Abū Zayd’s great enemy since his deposition in January 1229, and now also of Castile’s puppet, the Murcian Hūdıd̄ (Fig. 7.1). It is, therefore, likely that the sayyid’s presence in this sort of no-man’s-land was not a coincidence, but rather had much to do with the Castilian and Hūdıd̄ interest in preventing Zayyān’s expansion toward the mountainous regions around Dénia—the city where he had settled after leaving Valencia—where he may have had followers.45

The Castles of al-Tābisı̄ Abū Zayd could retain, at least partially, his rights over Castalla, but this was not the case with Orxeta and Torres, which he had to hand over to the Order of Santiago on September 2, 1244, during one of his stays in Murcia. The donation also included the castle of Tibi, located on the southernmost tip of the Castalla Valley and closer to Orxeta. This donation aimed, in his own words, to guarantee the “pardon of my sins and the salvation of my soul,” as well as to recognize the services paid to him by

44 It is worth keeping in mind that Zayyān even offered Alicante to James I in exchange for Menorca (Guichard, Les musulmans de Valence, 1: 153–154, 161). The Aragonese king refused because he thought that this city was in the areas earmarked for Castilian conquest after the Treaty of Cazola (1179). According to the Llibre dels Fets, this took place early in 1239, when Zayyān was still in Dénia (Soldevila, Bruguera and Ferrer, eds., Llibre dels feits: c. 307). If this chronology is correct, it seems clear that Zayyān had important support in Alicante even before he became emir in Murcia. 45 Dénia was conquered for James I in June 1244, but it was in the castles located in the city’s mountainous hinterland that the vizier al-Azraq and his allies organized their last stand, first by negotiating a truce with the King of Aragón and later by taking the offensive: Guichard, Les musulmans de Valence, 2: 417–433; Burns and Chevedden, Negotiating Cultures: 3–14; Josep Torró, “Guerra, repartiment i colonització al regne de València (1248–1249),” In Repartiments a la Corona d’Aragó (segles XII–XIII), ed. Enric Guinot and Josep Torró, (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2007) 201–224. 208 J. TORRÓ the Grand Master of the order Pelay Pérez; the donation, however, was burdened with a debt of 14,000 s. jaqueses from a loan that the sayyid had taken from an unknown creditor, the castles having been presented in guarantee. Surprisingly, this seemingly “pure” donation was unveiled barely four weeks later as an undisguised sale. A document dated to September 30 formalizes the transference of these three castles and the debt to the order in exchange for 15,000 gold maravedíes and the usufruct of a “good house” that the order possessed in Anchuelo—in the encomienda of Uclés—during the sayyid’s life.46 In contrast with the earlier donation document, the sale contract features a list of witnesses, at the head of which is Prince Alfonso of Castile, although this does not clarify the relationship between both agreements or to what extent the second neutralizes the first. Another important difference is that the earlier document includes a reminder of the fact that one- quarter of the castles’ rent was compromised (as established in the 1229 and 1236 agreements), whereas in the purchase contract there is no mention of this. One rather gets the impression that the earlier donation of these fortresses—located on the very frontier agreed months before in Almizra—was a device to make their alienation to a Castilian military order acceptable to James I, which also explains the mention of the quarter of the rents.47 Thenceforth, the Order of Santiago was in possession of the castles of Orxeta and Torres, but not that of Tibi. Early in 1247, the comendador of Montalbán reached an agreement with the Bishop of Valencia concerning the tithes and the other ecclesiastical rents owed to the order for its properties in the diocese, which included Orxeta and Torres, but not Tibi.48 Similarly, in July 1257 James I confirmed before the Grand Master Pelay Pérez Abū Zayd’s donation—not the sale—of Orxeta and Torres, and Tibi

46 Sáinz de la Maza, La Orden de Santiago: doc. 28, 30; Torres Fontes, ed. Colección de documentos: doc. 4, 5: “una vuestra bona casa en Ancholo.” 47 The document also indicates, however, that the obligation to pay only begins with the death of the sayyid, in compliance with the privilege granted in 1238. In February 1245, the monarch raised the issue of the quarter of the rents pertaining to Abū Zayd’s castles and villages, as though the privilege did not exist, but at this point the king must have referred to the extant right which would become active at the death of the sayyid, not to the effective perception of the rents: Chabás, “Çeid Abu Çeid”: 298–299; Huici and Cabanes, eds. Documentos de Jaime I de Aragón, 2: doc. 401. 48 ACA Cancillería, pergs. Jaume I, n. 2319; Sáinz de la Maza, La Orden de Santiago: doc. 37. AL-TĀBISĪ AND HIS DESCENDANTS: THE FAILED INTEGRATION… 209 is left unmentioned.49 Through a document dated after the death of the sayyid, we know that this castle had not been sold to the Order of Santiago, but to Sancho Pérez de Lienda, a beneficiary in therepartimiento of Murcia in 1266 and the founder of an influential lineage in this city, although he seems to have initially settled in Alicante, the territory of which borders with that of the castle of Tibi.50 This appears to confirm that the transaction involving the Order of Santiago was in fact a sale— which was partially recanted, with regard to Tibi—and not the donation that James I endorsed. On the other hand, the confirmation awarded the order in 1257 went further because the king exonerated them from the obligation to hand the king one-quarter of the annual rent (from the death of Abū Zayd), and he also renounced all other rights that he could have concerning Orxeta and Torres.51 This confirmation, however, raises several questions. To begin with, quite some time had passed—13 years—since Abū Zayd’s donation-sale. It is important to keep the background, namely the al-Azraq war, in mind, as it seems that, after the beginning of hostilities in autumn 1247, Orxeta and Torres fell under the control of the vizier and his allies.52 In that way, the confirmation, and upgrade, of the order’s ownership, when the war was still active—although its end was in sight—could also be understood as the devolution of a lost property, associated with the order’s commitment to impose its presence on a remote and conflictive area. The second problem raised by the king’s confirmation is related to the fact that, less than a year after it was granted, the king handed over the castles of Orxeta and Torres to al-Tābisı.̄ As previously noted, this donation took place in June 1258, when the al-Azraq war came to an end, and although his

49 See supra note 51. 50 In 1271, the new owner of the castle of Tibi agreed with the King of Aragón to substitute a fixed annual tax forthe quarter of the rents (ACA, Cancillería, pergs. Jaume I, n. 2024). Sancho Pérez de Lienda, along with other caballeros mayores, was awarded land in a sector with a strong presence of people from the Kingdom of Valencia. This same person, or more likely a son of his by the same name, represented the town council of Alicante in the signing of an alliance or hermandad with other cities in the Kingdom of Murcia in 1295: Torres Fontes, ed. Repartimiento: 96; Colección de documentos: doc. 112. 51 Arxiu del Regne de València, Reial Cancelleria, reg. 614, f. 39rv: dantes et concedentes per nos et omnes nostros vobis, dicto magistro … et dicto ordini imperpetuum illam quartam partem quam nos, de predictis castris et eorum pertinenciis, post obitum dicti Çeyt Abuzeyt habere debe- bamus, et omnia iura, voces et acciones … que in ipsis castris et terminis et pertinenciis ipsorum habemus vel habere debemus. 52 Torró, El naixement d’una colònia: 61–67. 210 J. TORRÓ

beneficiary was also a Muslim, al-Tābisı ̄ had nothing in common with the quwwād who had fought hand in hand with the insurgent vizier, to whom the king made concessions in exchange for their loyalty. How is this peculiar donation to be explained, then? We know that James I must have had a previous understanding with the Order of Santiago, whereby they received the castle of Moixent in exchange for Orxeta and Torres, but the document that proves this has not been preserved, and we only know about it from a reference contained in a later document which does not reveal the specific terms of the transaction.53 The possibility must be entertained, also, that the order had little interest in keeping these fortifications, which were located in a remote and poor area populated by unruly and untrustworthy inhabitants, and thus they were probably quite happy to be rid of it. On the other hand, the election of al-Tābisı ̄ and his son Sa‘d must have been the result of two powerful reasons: they were loyal Muslims and they knew the local conditions. The link with Abū Zayd may have been behind the trust placed in al-Tābisı,̄ a relationship that had already become apparent during the repartiment of Valencia in 1238, but the connection between al-Tābisı ̄ and this specific area is harder to gauge. It is not unthinkable that al-Tābisı ̄ was attached to Abū Zayd when the sayyid acquired this region, and even that he had administered them in Abū Zayd’s name until their first transference to the order, but this situation must have been very brief. The possibility that a relationship existed before the Conquest of Valencia cannot be disregarded either, but the available evidence makes this rather implausible. As aforementioned, in practice the donation was reversible. The king allowed the castle and its dependencies to be passed from father to son, but not to be sold to a third party, and he reserved the right to recover them at will, pro communi precio.54 This highlights the latent provisionality of the donation. However, despite these limitations, the donation to al-Tābisı ̄ and Sa‘d is still a reward: the possession of castles, villages, and land; the full enjoyment of the associated rents; and a lifelong tax exemption

53 Burns, ed., Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 4: doc. 1144: dictum castrum de Horxeta et castrum de Torres, que fuerant fratrum ordinis Uclensis et pro quibus idem fratres habebant et tenebant castrum de Muxen … (1271). 54 Burns, ed. Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 2: doc. 144: Ita tamen quod vos nec vestri predicta castra seu villas nec earum aliquid, in toto vel in parte, non possitis dare, alienare, vel dimittere nisi filiis vestris ac vestre posteritati tantum, nec possitis ea vendere alicui persone nisi tantum nobis et nostris dum tamen ea nos velimus pro communi precio retinere. AL-TĀBISĪ AND HIS DESCENDANTS: THE FAILED INTEGRATION… 211 for al-Tābisı.̄ Given, moreover, the date and place where the donation was granted, I think that al-Tābisı ̄ and his son must have been serving James I during his final campaign against al-Azraq and participating in the negotiations that resulted in the handing over of different castles to the Andalusi quwwād between May and June 1258. As well as rewarding their services—whatever they were—the donation policy placed the area under the control of a Muslim dignitary, who probably had military experience, enjoyed the king’s trust and could easily understand the local jāma‘āt and the neighboring banū Hudhayl and banū Abı ̄ Isḥāq. Thus, al-Tābisı ̄ and his people became instrumental in the king’s control of a problematic area of the Kingdom of Valencia, located between the Castilian frontier to the south, the castles in the hands of the banū Hudhayl to the north, and the deserted coast to the east, which was frequently visited by Catalan slave raiders.55 This was a mountainous, poor, and remote area, populated only by Muslims and with few attractions for prospective Christian colonists. In fact, the donation was not limited to the castles of Orxeta and Torres but also included the castle of Finestrat, located between these and those in Altea and Polop, which were owned by the family of al-Azraq, the banū Hudhayl. Later, al-Tābisı ̄ or members of his family also gained control of two minor fortifications: Mola and Serra.56 This involved no territorial gains because Mola was on the border between Torres and Orxeta and the second in the district of Finestrat (Fig. 7.1). In any case, everything suggests that these were, more than anything else, natural shelters, rarely used and only half-built.57 Therefore, what al-Tābisı ̄ and his people did was simply take possession of two minor fortifications situated within the limits of their land, probably in order to prevent them from being occupied by local rebels or invaders, as eventually happened early in 1276, when the qā’id Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhim al-Ashqarı ̄ (of the banū Abı ̄ Isḥāq) occupied and rebuilt the castle of Serra, near Finestrat, which was at the time deserted.58

55 Torró, El naixement d’una colònia: 76–78. 56 The local researcher Agusti Galiana, “Topònims antics problemàtics de la Vila i voltants,” Revista de festes de Santa Marta, (2009): 250–257, has put forward a reasonable identification for Mola, on a mountain which is currently known as El Cantal. The location of Serra is less certain, but we know for sure that it was very close to the castle of Finestrat. 57 Pierre Guichard, “Los castillos musulmanes del norte de la provincia de Alicante,” Anales de la Universidad de Alicante. Historia Medieval, 1. (1982): 44–45. 58 Soldevila, Bruguera and Ferrer, eds., Llibre dels feits: c. 360: “venc-nos ardit que l’alcaid Abrafim s’era alçat, e que havia bastit un castell que nós havíem enderrocat ja peça havia, lo 212 J. TORRÓ

We are not sure of the exact date when the fortifications of Mola and Serra were claimed by al-Tābisı ̄ and his people, for we only know of this occupation when the fortifications were no longer under their control, in August 1270. It is possible that it was then that James I decided on the demolition of Serra and probably also of Mola. According to the king’s own chronicle, this demolition was settled before the revolt of the qā’id Ibrāhim al-Ashqarı ̄ in order to cut down on the cost of garrisoning the fortress.59 At any rate, not a single document reports on al-Tābisı ̄ and his family in the intervening years between the donation in 1258 and the recovery of the castles by the king in 1270. The only thing that we know for sure is that al-Tābisı ̄ was already dead.

The Family of al-Tābisı̄ In the summer of 1270, James I bought the castles of Orxeta, Torres, Mola, Finestrat, and Serra from the son of al-Tabisı̄ ̄ and “other Saracens.” We do not know the exact date, the price, or the conditions surrounding the transaction because the documents pertaining to the purchase have not been preserved. The evidence that we have of it is, therefore, indirect: notably the document which records the donation of these castles to Berenguela Alfonso, the king’s mistress, on August 21 and the devolution of Orxeta and Torres to the Order of Santiago in April 1271.60 The first of these documents indicates that Berenguela was granted the castles with the king’s rights, under the same terms “that Tevicino, his son and other Saracens, lords of said castles, had enjoyed them.” The second document says that the king “bought the castles from Azeth, son of the late Tevicino, and a number of other Saracens.” Burns interpreted “Azeth” as As‘ad, but it is

qual ha nom Serra de Finestrat.” A 1271 document distinguishes between the castle (castrum) of Finestrat and “the fortification known as Serra” fortitudinem( que vocatur Serra), which clearly indicates that the former had lands attached to it, unlike the latter: Burns, ed. Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 4: doc. 1128. 59 Concerning this decision, see Josep Torró, “Dominar las aljamas. Fortificaciones feudales en las montañas del reino de Valencia (siglos XIII–XIV),” in Mil anos de fortificações na Península Ibérica e no Magreb, (500–1500), edited by Isabel Cristina Ferreira Fernandes (Lisboa: Edições Colibri, 2001): 452–456. 60 Berenguela Alfonso kept Finestrat and Serra, the possession of which was confirmed in March 1271: Burns, ed. Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 4: doc. 1128. AL-TĀBISĪ AND HIS DESCENDANTS: THE FAILED INTEGRATION… 213 more likely that it is the same Sa‘d which appears in 1258 as “Çahat.”61 The identity of these “other Saracens,” who appear to have somehow shared in the possession of these properties, remains to be established. They must have been members of al-Tabisı̄ ’s̄ family, among which the management of the different castles and villages was probably distributed.62 It is interesting to note that the king took possession of these castles only after he had recovered those which had been granted in the north to the quwwād who had surrendered after the al-Azraq war: in March 1268, he bought Tàrbena from the qā’id Muḥammad b. Abı ̄ Isḥāq; about a year later, the vizier Abū Ja‘far b. Hudhayl, nephew of al-Azraq, saw his ownership of Altea and Polop confirmed, but both places were nevertheless back in the king’s hands in July 1270, and Orxeta, Torres, Finestrat, and the other associated fortifications followed shortly afterwards.63 As son and heir of al-Tābisı,̄ Sa‘d must have received whatever price the king deemed fair for the castles; it is possible that part of this money was distributed among his family and servants. In any case, the most important of his relatives were granted specific compensation by the king, probably as part of the main deal. Thus, six days after the donation of the castles to Berenguela Alfonso, on August 27, Sa‘d’s mother was given a stipend from the rents of the Muslim arrabal of Xàtiva, and one of his nephews was given a number of houses and land in Gelsa (Aragón). The name of the nephew appears in full in the Christian document, which is unusual: Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Ṣabr, and “Abenzabre” in the Latin text. The patronymic nasab indicates that his father was also called Muḥammad, which is the same name used to refer to al-Tābisı ̄ in the

61 Burns, ed. Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 4: doc. 1150: castra et villas de Orchita et de Serra et de Mola et de Finestrat et de Torres, sita in regno Valencie ultra rivum Xuquari, cum alqueriis et terminis … sicut Tevicinus et filius eius ac alii Sarraceni domini dictorum locorum ea melius et plenius habuerunt, tenuerunt, et possiderunt … (1270); Burns, ed. Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 4: doc. 1144: castra et villas de Horxeta, [et] de Serra, et de Mola, et de Finest[ra]to, et de Torres, sita in regno Valencie ultra Xucarum … que quidem castra et villas emeramus et adquisiveramus ab Azeth filio Tivicinio quondam et a quibusdam aliis sarracenis (1271). 62 An example of this kind of arrangement may be found in the division of the villages attached to the castle of Tàrbena between the qa’id Muḥammad ibn Abı ̄ Isḥāq and his nephew Bakrūn in 1264: Burns, ed. Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 3: doc. 569. 63 Tàrbena: Burns, ed. Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 3: doc. 790, 827, 839; Altea and Polop: Burns, ed. Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 4: doc. 1035, 1299, 1359. 214 J. TORRÓ

1238 repartiment, which suggests that this must have been al-Tābisı’s̄ sis- ter’s son (and not an unlikely homonymous brother’s). The second element of the nasab—Ṣabr, if my interpretation is correct—is very infrequent and, for this reason, problematic, and it is therefore possible that it refers to the family eponym and not to ism al-jadd (first name of the grandparent).64 James I’s compensation included a number of houses—or the plot on which to build them—and land in Gelsa, a Muslim village not far from Zaragoza, on the banks of the Ebro.65 These properties were granted in perpetuity, but they could not be sold, especially to Christians. This donation in Aragón is similar to the one awarded to Abū Zayd in Magallón and Ricla—also inhabited by Muslims—in 1236,66 but in this case it seems that the aim was to keep Muḥammad away from the Kingdom of Valencia and his contacts there. The grant consisted of 30 cahizadas owned by the king in Gelsa, and the document admits that this land may not suffice and that it might be complemented with other available properties. The size of the grant, around 15 ha, is not particularly large, but sufficient to make a living, judging by other similar donations in Valencia.67 In addition, Muḥammad was awarded a lifelong exemption from taxation, similar to the one granted to his uncle in 1258.68 It seems that al-Tābisı’s̄ nephew played a significant role in the management of his castles and properties. When his services were no longer needed, he was “forced” to

64 The document is cited by Brian A. Catlos, The Victors and the Vanquished. Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon, 1050–1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 198, 287, who transcribes “Abenzabit,” which could be related to the name Thābit, which is much more common. However, after examining the original document, I believe that “Abenzabre” is the only possible reading, on paleographic grounds. 65 María Teresa Ferrer Mallol, “Las comunidades mudéjares de la Corona de Aragón en el siglo XV: la población,” in VIII Simposio Internacional de Mudejarismo. De mudéjares a Moriscos: una conversión forzada 2, (Teruel: Centro de Estudios Mudéjares, 2002): 57, 60. 66 Chabás, “Çeid Abu Çeid”: 153–158. 67 Guinot, “El repartiment feudal de l’Horta de València.” 68 ACA Cancillería, reg. 16, f. 208r: concedimus per hereditatem propriam, francham et liberam tibi Mahomat Abenmahomat Abenzabre, sarraceno nepote Tevicini, et tuis imperpetuum, domos vel patuum ad opus domorum in villa nostra de Xielsa, et xxxa kaficiatas terre in termino eiusdem de hereditate nostra quam ibi habemus, et si ipsa non sufficerit, de alia terra que ibi fuerit ad dandum. Quas domos sive patuum cum domibus quas ibi feceris et dictas .xxx. kaficiats terre volumus quod habeatis, teneatis et possideatis decetero tu et tui … hoc tamen excepto: quod aliquid de predictis vendere non possitis tu vel tui aliquibus christianis [v]el alium alienare. Volumus insuper et de speciali gracia concedimus tibi Mahomat Abenmahomat pre- dicto quod diebus omnibus vite tue sis franchus ab omni peyta, questia, cena et exercitu et caval- cata et redemptione earum, et etiam ab omni alia qualibet exaccione regali. AL-TĀBISĪ AND HIS DESCENDANTS: THE FAILED INTEGRATION… 215 leave the kingdom, although in relatively comfortable conditions, as a rentier and, perhaps, local headman in a small Muslim village on the banks of the Ebro. The widow’s concession was granted on the same day. The donation document conveys a key aspect of al-Tābisı’s̄ life: his son Sa‘d was begot- ten with a Christian woman by the name of Mascarosa.69 There is little that we can say about the identity of this woman, especially since the name Mascarosa was not uncommon among Catalonian and Occitan women in the thirteenth century, as demonstrated by the indices of archival collections.70 The fact that her family is not mentioned and that the stipend granted by the king was for a small amount suggest that she was not a member of an important family. The hundred solidi that she was to receive from the rents exacted in the Muslim quarters of Xàtiva were the equivalent of three dineros per day, just enough to keep her above the breadline. It is almost certain that this amount was only a complement to the rents that she must have received from elsewhere, but it is still significant to note that she was considered to be of little importance. The big question is whether al-Tābisı ̄ and Mascarosa were married. al-Tābisı ̄ may have emulated the strategy of Abū Zayd, who married María Ferrández, although this was only after converting to Christianity in secret. This woman, the mother of his children Ferrando Pérez and Alda Ferrández, does not seem to have been a member of a relevant aristocratic family because the only information that we have about her is a mention in her son’s last will, dictated in Valencia in October 1262.71

69 Burns, ed. Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 4: doc. 1052A: Fidelibus suis baiulis Xative presenti et futuris, salutem et graciam. Noveritis nos dedisse, cum presente carta nostra, Mascharose Christiane matri de Çaat de Tevicino C solidos regalium in vita sua, habendos et percipiendos quolibet anno in reditibus et exitibus nostris ravalli Xative. 70 As pointed out by Brian A. Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c. 1050–1614 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014): 478, it is difficult to agree with Burns’ thesis in an article published in 1984 (but not present in previous works): “most likely, Mascarosa is an Arabic name, and her a convert to Christianity” (Robert I. Burns, “Los mudéjares de la Valencia de las Cruzadas: un capítulo olvidado de la historia islámica,” Sharq al-Andalus. Estudios árabes, 1 [1984]: 22). It could be the same Donna Mascarosa who features in Torres Fontes, ed. Repartimiento de Murcia (233), but nothing supports this identification apart from the onomastic and chronological coincidence. 71 The date of Abū Zayd’s conversion is unknown, but must be between 1229 and 1236, and it was probably the latter date, although it was not made public until the surrender of Valencia. His marriage with María Ferrández could also have taken place in 1236 or shortly afterwards: Chabás, “Çeid Abu Çeid”: 289–296, 365–366; Burns, “Daughter of Abū Zayd.” 216 J. TORRÓ

The problem posed by this possibility is that, given the Christians’ dominating position, this sort of marriage was inconceivable if not preceded by the husband’s conversion, as the example of Abū Zayd demonstrates. This was understood even by the indomitable al-Azraq, who tried to trick James I, attempting to arrange a meeting under the pretext of wishing to follow the sayyid’s example, marrying a relative of the nobleman Carròs and becoming a Christian, none of which was true.72 Yet, no evidence exists that al-Tābisı ̄ was baptized, not even in secret as was Abū Zayd. He, his son, and his nephew are clearly labeled “Saracens” in the 1270 and 1271 documents; furthermore, at this stage it no longer made sense to keep conversion to Christianity a secret. It is possible, however, that some relatives or other members of his entourage had been baptized at the time of the Conquest, as the inventory of houses carried out in Valencia in 1239 records a Jaume Tibiçi in the vico sarracenorum, where the men of Abū Zayd had settled, or nearby.73 If a mixed marriage was not acceptable, concubinage was no better, and it was harshly punished by the law of the Kingdom of Valencia: both parties were to be burned at the stake.74 Therefore, there are two possibilities with Mascarosa. The first is that she was the Muslim wife of al-Tābisı,̄ and that she converted and adopted a Christian name on her own initiative. This would have happened while her husband and son remained Muslim, which is not an impossible situation in the context of the Christian Conquest, although a divorce would have been legally required. In such a case, however, she would have been referred to as “neophyte” or “baptized”—a common practice in documents from this period—and not as Christian proper. The second possibility is that the relationship between al-Tābisı ̄ and the Christian Mascarosa—either marriage or concubinage— antedated the Conquest, since their son, as we see presently, must have been born by 1238. We must take into consideration that Abū Zayd’s

Fancy’s claim that the conversion was not made public until 1264 is unconvincing (Hussein Fancy, “The Last Almohads: Universal Sovereignty between North Africa and the Crown of Aragon,” Medieval Encounters 19, no. 1–2. [2013]: 108, 112–113). 72 Soldevila, Bruguera and Ferrer, eds., Llibre dels feits c. 375: “Alazrac … era vengut a nós e ens havia dit que es volia fer cristià e que volia pendre una parenta d’en Carroç per muller.” Carròs was a knight and adventurer of Italian origin, admiral of Aragón, and lord of Rebollet, who served under James I as quartermaster in the mountains south of Valencia. 73 See supra note 10. 74 This norm features in the early version of the Valencian law, the Costum: G. Colón and A. Garcia, eds. Furs de València, 8 vols. Barcelona: Barcino, 1989–1999, 7: 9.2.9. AL-TĀBISĪ AND HIS DESCENDANTS: THE FAILED INTEGRATION… 217 entourage, when he was still recognized as rex Valentie—which involves a degree of political sovereignty over his men—must have included some Christians to assist the “liaison officer” appointed by James I, the knight Furtado Pérez “del Aceyt.”75 It cannot even be disregarded that Mascarosa was originally a captive. Regardless of the influence of Mascarosa, the pull toward conversion was too strong for a family in this kind of circumstance. Thus, al-Tābisı’s̄ descendants were soon converting to Christianity. It seems that the original impetus came from his own son Sa‘d, whose name vanishes from the record after the king recovered the castles in 1270. Given the compensation granted to his mother and cousin, it seems plausible that he retired with his own settlement to the land that his father had owned in the Huerta of Valencia. It is there that we find the last recognized members of the family, who feature in the city’s court records. It is uncertain when and in what circumstances the family converted to Christianity. If this had not already taken place by then, it is very likely that the attack on the Muslim quarters of the city of Valencia and other nearby morerías in 1276 precipi- tated said conversion.76 In 1283, the family property of Soterna was in the hands of a man called Eiximén Jaume Altevicí, who also owned some land in Aldaia. Obviously, this character was already a Christian, and he was married to a Christian woman with whom, in a short period of time, he had four sons and two daughters. His name was a Christian one, but he had carefully preserved the nisba al-Tābisı.̄ This seems to be more than mere family pride: the name carried prestige, even among Christians. He was economi- cally comfortable: the land in Soterna was composed of a riyāḍ (an enclosed vegetable garden with a country house), several houses, a dove- cote, and some agricultural land; the property of Aldaia was divided into five pieces of land, with an aggregate size of 18 ha (3jovades ), a vineyard, and a house in the village. The properties in Aldaia were only burdened by the annual obligation to provide the convent of Sant Vicent with three pounds of wax. His wife was called Elisèn, and his children Ferrando, Marieta, Eiximeneta, Eiximenol, Andreuet, and Lopello, all of whom were minors. He adopted a name that pays homage to the king (Jaume) and to

75 Chabás, “Çeid Abu Çeid”: 153–162. 76 Robert I. Burns, “Social Riots on the Christian-Moslem Frontier (Thirteenth-Century Valencia).” American Historical Review 66, no. 2 (1961): 380–382; Torró, El naixement d’una colònia: 81–82. 218 J. TORRÓ

Aragonese aristocracy (Eiximén), although the diminutive suffixes used for his children suggest at least some influence of the Catalan tongue. We also know that Eiximén Jaume Altevicí’s late father was called Guillem Jaume. Although we cannot be absolutely sure, it is very likely that this is none other than Sa‘d, who would have adopted his mother’s faith after the sale of the castles and his retirement in Valencia in 1270, adopting the surname Jaume in honor of the king.77 This identification is at least consistent with a reasonable estimation of the age of all of these characters. It is clear that al-Tābisı ̄ was fully grown by 1238, when he was rewarded by the king during the siege of Valencia—say 25 or 30 years old—so it is almost certain that his son of Mascarosa was already born. Therefore, Sa‘d was at least 20—and probably older—in 1258, when the king recognized him as his father’s associate, and must have been around 50 at the time of his death as Guillem Jaume, before 1283. The record only bears witness to one male son, his heir, although his will also singled out two nephews who had, significantly, been baptized the same names chosen to exhibit the conversion of the family to Christianity: Guillem and Eiximén. We also know of a plausible relative in Valencia, a man who features, simply, as “Tenevicinus”—he appears in one of the records of the justiciar—and who worked as a broker (cursor in the Latin text). Let us not forget that the family seems to have had converted relatives in the city or its hinterland from 1238. As we have noted, in 1283 Eiximén Jaume must have been at least 25 years old, but it is likely that he was closer to 30, a much more plausible age for a father of six living children, even if they were minors. The notice presents a picture of success, of the integration of an ancient Andalusi family into the heart of the Christian colonial society. However, that these biographical data are recorded at all indicates that, in matter of fact, the reality was quite the opposite and that everything came crashing to the ground. The record regarding Eiximén Jaume Altevicí is concerned with the public auction of his possessions in summer 1283, which was executed by the justiciar of the city of Valencia.78 Indeed, Eiximén owed money to a number of people, but the decisive event that triggered the intervention

77 It is likely that the Jaume Tibiçi mentioned attested in 1238 See supra note 10. 78 R. M. Gregori, J. V. García Marsilla, and R. J. Pujades, eds. Llibre de la Cort del Justícia de València (1283–1287) (València: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2008): 500–503, 518. AL-TĀBISĪ AND HIS DESCENDANTS: THE FAILED INTEGRATION… 219 of the court was Eiximén’s conviction for the murder of his wife. Although the kingdom’s law prescribed capital punishment for the murder of close relatives, in this case the penalty was left at 200 morabatins.79 When the sentence was executed, Eiximén was absent, but we do not know why. It is likely that the penalty also included lifelong banishment, but also that he had fled, as he could be hanged if he defaulted on payment. In fact, the justiciar did not find enough cash or movable wealth in his property to get even close to the aggregate amount of his debts and fine, which could not be raised even after the auction of his landed property. Once the possessions of the condemned man were put up for auction, the broker of the justiciar could not find anyone willing to pay a fair price for them, so ordered a property valuation. The experts valued the house and land in Aldaia at 520 solidi and the properties in Soterna at only 1000 solidi, amounts that the creditors and the Eiximén’s children’s tutor accepted, but we can suspect that the evaluation was rather conservative. The 520 s. from Aldaia were used to pay the creditors Nicolau de Manyeres (142 s.) and Pere de Sòria (326 s.), as well as the laudemio or entry fine (52 s.) for the convent of Sant Vicent, which owned the domain. Of the 1000 s. from Soterna, half was destined for the orphans. This was “the mother’s share of the property by virtue of her dowry,” an amount to be administered by the tutor Llop Eiximenis de Massanassa, who was appointed by the justiciar. Guillem and Eiximén, cousins of the murderer, received 150 s. that Guillem Jaume had bequeathed them in his will, but which Eiximén Jaume had not released. Also, another large debt was also settled, namely 120 s. to the Jew Vives, alongside a few minor debts to others: Bartomeu Ortí (30 s.), Jaume Zaydín (28 s.), Pere Andreu (13 s.), Arnau de Subirats (13 s.), Pere de Tarragona (13 s.), the broker Tenevicinus (2½ s.), and the shopkeepers Romeua (2 s.) and Ozenda (1 s.). Finally, the remaining 74½ s. went to the king as part of the payment of the fine. This amount is still far from the 900 s. (the equivalent of 100 morabatins, half of the fine) that Eiximén was compelled to pay to the king, according to the public sale order that the justiciar issued the broker.

79 Colón and Garcia, eds. Furs de València, 7: 9.7.78. The penalty for murder committed during a brawl was 200 morabatins (half for the king, half for the heirs) and lifelong exile, and it seems that this was the legal figure applied to Eiximén. Those who did not pay the fine exposed themselves to the possibility of execution: Colón and Garcia, eds. Furs de València, 7: 9.7.72. 220 J. TORRÓ

Conclusions Although he is never referred to explicitly as qā’id, it seems clear that Muḥammad al-Tābisı ̄ was descended from one of the military lineages that abandoned the Upper March (al-Thaghr al-A‘lá) after the conquest of Tortosa and the region of the Lower Ebro in the mid-twelfth century, in order to settle in Valencia. His early presence in the Christian siege of Valencia (April 1238) and the donation (honor) given by the King of Aragón in the city huerta not only prove he changes sides but also strongly suggest that he had links with the clique of “collaborationists” led by the convert Abū Zayd, to whose entourage al-Tābisı ̄ probably belonged. It is hard to see how else he could have won the trust of James I. It is plausible that these circumstances were related to his ties with the Christian Mascarosa, but it is difficult to say precisely how; at all events, we do not know the formal shape of this relationship, which gave al-Tābisı ̄ his son and heir. Twenty years after the fall of Valencia, al-Tābisı,̄ working alongside his son Sa‘d this time, seems to appear once more collaborating with James I to facilitate the surrender of the rebel quwwād, during the king’s last campaign against al-Azraq (May–June 1258). Although what al-Tābisı ̄ did during the two intervening decades is unknown, his participation in 1244 in the actions led by Abū Zayd in the southern frontier of the kingdom, which resulted in the conquest of the castles in the Castalla Valley, as well as Orxeta and Torres, is likely. In any case, at the end of al-Azraq’s war, James I rewarded al-Tābisı’s̄ and Sa‘d’s services with the castles of Orxeta and Torres, along with Finestrat. The donation was subject to limitations (the beneficiaries could not alienate the castles, and the king reserved the right to buy them back at any time) and implied a further service to the king, who found in al-Tābisı ̄ an ideal agent—loyal and Muslim—for policing this remote and mountainous region, which was far from the closest colonization centers (Dénia and Cocentaina), inhabited only by Muslims, near fortifications which were still in the hands of former rebel quwwād, continuously visited by slave raiders and not at all attractive for Christian colonists. Muḥammad al-Tābisı,̄ his son, and his nephews kept the castles of Orxeta, Torres, and Finestrat for 12 years, also extending their control to the minor fortifications of Mola and Serra, located in the vicinity. During this period, al-Tābisı ̄ died. Once the risk formerly posed by al-Azraq’s relatives in the neighboring areas of Polop and Altea had vanished, in summer AL-TĀBISĪ AND HIS DESCENDANTS: THE FAILED INTEGRATION… 221

1270, James I did not hesitate to exercise his rights and recovered the castles. This decision was of crucial importance for the family, which had to face, on the one hand, the geographical dispersion of its members and, on the other hand, a new life in a Christian social environment. Mascarosa, the partner of al-Tābisı,̄ left the stage discreetly with a modest assignation from the rents exacted from the Muslim arrabal of Xàtiva, whereas al-Tābisı’s̄ main nephew, Muḥammad b. Ṣabr, was moved to Gelsa, near Zaragoza, in order to lead a life as a rentier among the local Muslims. Apparently, the heir Sa‘d had to retire to his family’s lands in the Huerta of Valencia, where he soon converted to Christianity along with the rest of his family, under the name Guillem Jaume. He must have died there not long before 1283, leaving behind a son baptized as Eiximén Jaume and two nephews who feature in his will: Guillem and Eiximén (Fig. 7.2). There is little doubt that their conversion was an attempt on the part of al-Tābisı’s̄ family to adapt to the changes brought about by the loss of the castles and the territorial possessions in the southern frontier. At a time— 1270—when the colonization process was being reactivated and the Crown’s few commitments with Andalusi dignitaries of dubious loyalty were being liquidated, the perpetuation of the family’s elevated position was very difficult; this possibility was definitely canceled by the relative social isolation to which they were exposed on the doorstep of Valencia, the capital of the kingdom and epicenter of Christian society. Regardless of the potential effect as catalyzer of the attack launched by Christian colonists to the Muslim quarters of Valencia in 1276, their conversion was, therefore, opportunistic and aimed to preserve, as far as was possible, the

Fig. 7.2 Genealogy: al-Tābisı ̄ and his descendants (1238–1283), a hypothesis. (Courtesy of author) 222 J. TORRÓ family’s fortune and position. It was a radical and risky move, but they had little option. As rightly pointed out by Brian Catlos,80 conversion is equivalent to “cultural and social exile.” The breach with the original cultural substratum added to the mistrust and the disdain of the new social environment; this, in turn, resulted in difficulties in establishing social and matrimonial ties. In fact, the descendants of al-Tābisı ̄ lived in Soterna, surrounded by a small community of converts, who were probably related to them and who included some of the creditors of Eiximén Jaume (Ozenda, and Tenevicinus). Although this may sound like a paradox, one of al-Tābisı’s̄ family’s best assets was the prestige of their Andalusi past as a military lineage, “lords” of castles and, finally, loyal servants of the king to boot. It is, therefore, unsurprising that Sa‘d’s son and heir Eiximén Jaume preserved the nisba “Altevecí.” This is in some way reminiscent of Abū Zayd’s insistence on keeping, despite his conversion, his Arabic name and his identity as the grandchild of the amır̄ al-mu’minın—̄ the Almohad caliph (nepos Almiramomenim)—as a reminder of his own personal claim to glory, especially after the king allowed him no longer to use the title rex Valentie, which had been tolerated until 1238; Abū Zayd’s Christian name (Vicente) was only used in the record of his dealings with the Church. Eiximén Jaume Altevicí married a Christian called Elisèn, with whom he had, over a short period of time, four sons and two daughters. We know nothing about her, her family or her social extraction, although it is very likely that she was a convert or daughter of converts. In any case, a recognized Christian marriage in the vicinity of the capital, a respectable economic position and an ample number of offspring seem to suggest a truly exceptional outcome: the true integration—rather than assimilation—of a family of Andalusi notables into Christian colonial society. If what they wanted was to enter the fabric of the good Christian society—as rentiers, obviously, although it would be risky to try to be more precise— they still treasured the memories of the Andalusi origins, by adding the nisba to the baptismal name. It is worth insisting, however, that the pres- ervation of the nisba was not whimsical, as it was a source of family prestige, which could be wielded to argue a social position at a level equal to that of the lesser Christian aristocracy, or at least, clearly above that of Muslims and (the rest of) converts. The exceptionality of the achievement is made manifest by comparison with the doom that befell the families of

80 Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom: 339–340. AL-TĀBISĪ AND HIS DESCENDANTS: THE FAILED INTEGRATION… 223 al-Azraq and the rebel quwwād, who were forced into exile, and also with the descendants of Abū Zayd himself down through the female line of his daughter Alda Ferrández; significantly, they decided to identify themselves exclusively with the paternal lineage of Ximénez de Arenós.81 This success, if it was ever real, was ephemeral. Eiximén Jaume piled up debts—some of which were, perhaps, inherited—that amounted to more than half the value of his properties, and he eventually killed his wife. We cannot prove that his debts were caused by his attempts at consolidating his and his family’s social integration, and it would be pointless to specu- late on the reasons that drove him to murder Elisèn, but it seems obvious that the radical process of transformation undergone by the family must have carried strong tensions with it, tensions which may have had an effect on the final events. Family prestige, at any rate, saved Eiximén Jaume from the death penalty, yet everything suggests that he ran away. His six children were left with a modest patrimony of 500 s., to be administered by the tutor appointed by the justiciar. They were also left with the stain of their father’s crime, which forced them to expunge all references to their origin. What al-Tābisı’s̄ grandson left behind were offspring without fortune or social distinction. The memory of the family also disappears from the record, although it is possible that it was preserved in the small local community of Soterna. Essentially, assimilation depended on conversion—the formal incorporation into the community of the faithful—and on the adoption of the language, the names and the social rituals of the host society, thus creating the possibility of matrimonial links. But integration was qualitatively different. It involved a distinction constructed upon the memory of a past identity made manifest in this case through the prevalence of a specific onomastic reference. Without this link with the past, Urban IV’s 1264 wish, subsistat in secula semen vestrum, in favor of Abū Zayd, on the occasion of the conversion of a son and two grandsons (or nephews), would make no sense82; the seed—the filiation—would be gone, leaving no trace of the lost identity.

81 Abū Zayd’s male heir, who died without children, openly owned in his last will, dated to 1264, to being the “son of the sayyid Abū Zayd … (great-grand) son of the amır̄ al-mu’minın̄ ” (Burns, “Daughter of Abū Zayd”: 155). 82 Burns, “Príncipe almohade y converso mudéjar”: 120–121. 224 J. TORRÓ

Concerning the descendants of al-Tābisı,̄ the failed attempt at integration may have triggered a retreat into the community of converts. In 1326 there were rumors that in Soterna and other places in the Huerta of Valencia “where people live who are baptised,” meat was consumed during Lent, fasting done during Ramadan, and money collected for the ran- soming of Saracen captives. The reports even said that men were having intercourse with their sisters, but this is likely to refer to marriages between parallel cousins, which are common among Muslims but not allowed by the Church. This is a canonical description of crypto-Muslim practices (similar to those associated with the Moriscos in the sixteenth century) and triggered an investigation by a royal judge.83 Forty years after the events of 1283, the converts of Soterna, among which the unfortunate descendants of al-Tābisı,̄ either had crypto-Muslim habits or at least resisted practicing those Christian customs that were most averse to their social cohesion. If they did not end up as migrants or captives for these practices, it is possible that they ultimately, and despite their reluctance, ended up merging with the lower levels of Christian society. In any case, the history of this family shows that more often than not, assimilation was a tough deal and of little social relevance overall. I think it fitting that this tribute to Professor Thomas Glick ends with a mention of the parallelism between assimilation and acculturation processes in the Christian kingdoms of medieval Iberia, since the latter was the topic of one of Professor Glick’s earliest works. What both processes have in common is the highly selective pressure exercised by the predominant and receptor group. Although not everything might be on offer, “not all that is offered is acceptable.”84

83 Ad nostrum noveritis pervenit auditum quod in loco de Soterna et quibusdam aliis locis orte Valencie, ubi aliqui babtizati existunt, in diminucione fidei catholice tempore Quadragesime per Dominum nostrum nobis dato comedunt carnes et Quadragesimam sarracenis datam iei- unant et etiam faciunt inter se escot pro redimendis sarracenis captivis, et etiam, non contentis de hiis, in contemptu iurisdiccionis nostre aliqui ipsorum congnoscunt sive habent rem carnali- ter cum eorum sororibus (M. T. Ferrer Mallol, Els sarraïns de la Corona Catalano-Aragonesa en el segle XIV. Segregació i discriminació [Barcelona: CSIC, 1987]: 74, doc. 31). 84 Thomas. F. Glick and Oriol Pi-Sunyer, “Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 11 no. 2. (1969): 151–152. AL-TĀBISĪ AND HIS DESCENDANTS: THE FAILED INTEGRATION… 225

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Molina, Emilio. Ceyt Abu Ceyt. Novedades y rectificaciones. Almería: Diputación Provincial de Murcia, 1977. ———. El gobierno de Zayyān b. Mardanıš̄ en Murcia (1239–1241). Miscelánea medieval murciana 7. (1981): 159–182. Sáinz de la Maza, Regina. La Orden de Santiago en la Corona de Aragón. La encomienda de Montalbán (1210–1327). Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1980. Soldevila, Ferran, Jordi Bruguera, and M. Teresa Ferrer, eds. Llibre dels feits del rei En Jaume. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2008. Torres Fontes, José, ed. Repartimiento de Murcia. Madrid: CSIC, 1960. ———, ed. Colección de documentos para la historia del reino de Murcia, II. Documentos del siglo XIII. Murcia: Academia Alfonso X el Sabio, 1969. Torró, Josep. “Dominar las aljamas. Fortificaciones feudales en las montañas del reino de Valencia (siglos XIII–XIV).” In Mil anos de fortificações na Península Ibérica e no Magreb, (500–1500), edited by Isabel Cristina Ferreira Fernandes, 451–463. Lisboa: Edições Colibri, 2001. ———. El naixement d’una colònia. Dominació i resistència a la frontera valenciana (1238–1276). Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2006. ———. “Guerra, repartiment i colonització al regne de València (1248–1249).” In Repartiments a la Corona d’Aragó (segles XII–XIII), edited by Enric Guinot and Josep Torró, 201–276. Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2007. Torró, Josep and Josep R. Nebot. ‘Inter Iui et Alcoy…’. Nota sobre una referència de 1251 a la partida de Polop. Iberis 5, (2007): 93–97. Vila, Josep M. “Aproximació històrica i arqueològica al procés de formació del nucli antic de Tivissa.” Arqueologia Medieval: revista catalana d’arqueologia medieval, 4–5 (2008–2009): 70–99. CHAPTER 8

The Mustassaf of Castelló de la Plana

Doug Kierdorf

The office ofmustassaf has received considerable attention from students of medieval Spain both as an example of the survival of Islamic cultural and legal institutions in the post-Conquest Christian society and as a revealing feature of the economic life of the new Christian societies. The firstmustassaf in the Christian Kingdom of Aragón was installed at the city of Valencia in 1238, the very year of the Christian Conquest and two years before the foundational charter granted to the city by James I, “The Conqueror.” The term itself is from the Arabic muhtasib, a centrally appointed official in charge of the marketplace, but also a guardian of public morality and religious observance. Subsequently, in Christian towns, the mustassaf took on more and more functions until he became the second most important and powerful officer, after thejusticia , in the towns of the Kingdom of Valencia. In this chapter, I briefly trace the origins of the office of the mustassaf, outline his functions in the Crown of Aragón in the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, and offer several case studies of his functioning in the town of Castelló de la Plana that illuminate the spread of the furs of Valencia City throughout the Kingdom.

D. Kierdorf (*) Bentley University, Waltham, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected]

Thomas Glick has traced the origins of the mustassaf to the agoranomos and the astynomos of the Hellenic and Hellenistic world.1 The agoranomos oversaw the running of the marketplace and the astynomos other municipal functions dealing with health, safety, and the smooth running of urban matters like infrastructural works, garbage collection, and so on, including public morality. Glick is primarily interested in establishing the lineage of the mustassaf from classical Greece, by way of the Byzantines and Persians, to the Islamic World and thence to Christian Spain, as an example of cultural diffusion or borrowing. The functions of these two officers, theago- ranomos and astynomos, tended to overlap, and in smaller towns the offices were sometimes held by the same individual. The role of the astynomos was gradually absorbed by the agoranomos until, in the Roman period, the astynomos appears not to have anything to do with its original role in the Hellenic magistracy.2 Glick cites a third-century bilingual inscription in Palmyra in which the Greek agoranomos is translated by the Aramaic wa-hū rab šūq. This estab- lishes the bridge between the classical Greek and the Arabic since the Arabic for this functionary is sāhib al-sūq, “The master of the market”; “sūq,” meaning “market,” being a loan word from Aramaic. It is probable that the Arabs encountered this concept when they erupted out of Arabia and into the Byzantine and Sassanid empires in the seventh century. In a more general sense, it is clear that when the commercial economy of a society attains a certain scope, both geographically and in volume, it becomes imperative to regulate transactions, to enforce standard weights and measures, coinage, quality of goods, and honest dealing. To do this, some mechanism must be in place, so it is natural that a municipal office would be created to fulfill this function along with a legal apparatus of enforcement. The office ofmuhtasib , derived from the sāhib al-sūq, appears by the ninth century in al-Andalus and his authority has expanded to include not only the market but a wide range of urban concerns such as cleaning the streets, acting as a clerk of works and generally overseeing matters concerning public health and public morals. After the Christian Conquests of the eleventh century, this urban official appears in León-Castile as the almotacen and in the thirteenth century, in the newly conquered Kingdom

1 Thomas F. Glick, “Muhtasib and Mustasaf: A Case Study of Institutional Diffusion,” Viator, Vol. 2 (1971): 59–81. 2 Ibid., p. 63. THE MUSTASSAF OF CASTELLÓ DE LA PLANA 231 of Valencia, as the mustassaf. Both titles derive from the Arabic muhtasib. Glick asserts that the Christian mustassaf was a much more solid institution than its Islamic predecessor. There was no specifically urban law in Islamic jurisprudence.3 As part of his duties overseeing the marketplace, the mustassaf was charged with ensuring that food for sale was wholesome and fresh. He also enforced quality standards for goods of all kinds. In 1270, James I granted the council of Valencia City the right to appoint two inspectors (veedores) from each guild from among the leading citizens who were members of those guilds.4 These inspectors were to aid the mustassaf in discharging his duties. They would be familiar with the standards of manufacture and quality prescribed by the guild and would be able to identify violations of those standards. The mustassaf also was charged with making sure that the weights and measures in use in the market were honest. Prices for a number of basic products, mainly food, were fixed by law and the mustassaf also enforced these. In addition to these duties the mustassaf was charged with making sure that new building works were completed in compliance with the law; that the upper floors of houses, for instance, did not overhang the street in a way that blocked light from entering and air from circulating; that the streets were not obstructed by garbage or debris; that animals were not kept illegally within the town limits; that damage done to roadways, bridges, and so on was repaired; and that the town’s defenses were maintained in good order. Ordinances regarding the mustassaf were incorporated into the furs i privilegis, the charter, and lawcode of the municipality as granted by the monarch. The furs served as the constitution of the city and settled absolute authority on the municipal council. They could not be altered or abrogated even by the king. The city was intensely protective of its furs and cited them to resist any threat to its independence and autonomy, including threats from the crown. In the course of the thirteenth century the furs of Valencia City were extended to all the royal towns of the new kingdom. Thus, the law of Valencia City became the template for all the towns of the kingdom, and then, gradually, it was extended to Catalonia and Aragón as well. In 1339 the councilors of Barcelona petitioned Peter

3 Personal communication August 21, 1999. 4 Francisco Roca Traver, “El gremio de curtidores de Castellón: unas ordenanzas descon- cocidas del siglo XIV,” Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura 26, no. 3 (1950): 198. 232 D. KIERDORF

IV for the right to install a mustassaf on the Valencian model and he granted this privilege on October 19 that year.5 This model of municipal government served the needs of James I by keeping urban centers of the Kingdom of Valencia out of the control of the feudal nobility whose military function he had employed in the Conquest. It also set up a town-dwelling bourgeoisie as a political coun- terweight to the knights, and it encouraged the growth in the towns of an economic engine that the crown tapped into to replenish its coffers. The town of Castelló was originally granted by the king to a succession of feudal landlords, but in 1297 the crown purchased it from the monastery of Poblet, its then lord, and thereafter it remained a “royal” town.6 In 1284, King Peter III extended the furs of Valencia to all the royal towns of the Kingdom of Valencia and in that year he specifically extended to Castelló the same privileges enjoyed by the metropolis to elect municipal officers, including the mustassaf. This was notwithstanding the fact that the town was at that point still a fief of the monastery of Poblet. The privileges and ordinances pertaining to the mustassaf and his jurisdiction were collected in a codex called the Libre del la Mustaçaffía. The earliest mention of this volume in Castelló is in an entry in the records of town council meetings for March 12, 1375. There, it refers to an ordinance regulating the price of fish that was entered in theLibre del la Mustaçaffía on February 27, 1369.7 But there probably was such a book much earlier. The mustassaf had the power to enforce the ordinances by levying specified fines on offenders on the spot. The amount of fines varied from a few dinars up to 60 sous depending upon the severity of the offense. The money collected in this way was usually divided into thirds with the crown getting one-third, the town’s coffers getting one-third and the accuser getting one-third. In 1339 Peter IV granted to the mustassafs of the Kingdom of Valencia the power to waive fines of up to ten sous and to waive fines greater than this if the royalbaile were present.8 The fine for

5 Francisco Sevillano Colom, “De la institución del Mustaçaf de Barcelona, de Mallorca y de Valencia,” Anuario de História del Derecho Español 23 (1953): 529. 6 José Sanchez Adell, Castellón de La Plana en la Baja Edad Media, (Castellón de La Plana: Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura, 1982), p. 28. 7 Libre de Consell, 1374–1375, Arxiu Municipal de Castelló de la Plana, Entry for March 12, 1375. 8 José Sanchez Adell, ed., El Libre de Privilegis de Castello de la Plana (1245–1470), (Castellon de la Plana: Excmo. Ayuntamiento de Castellon de la Plana. 1993). Privilegio num. XXVIII of Peter IV, doc. num 35. THE MUSTASSAF OF CASTELLÓ DE LA PLANA 233 using false weights and measures was 60 sous. This was, of course, a serious offense and the fine is a considerable amount of money. In an ordinance of 1444 the Castelló council notes that the office of the mustassaf may fall to people of many different social stations and in the Libre there is no guidance on fines to impose on street vendors who may, through ignorance or poverty, be using inaccurate weights or measures and so the mustassaf has no recourse but to fine them 60 sous. The council therefore orders that he may henceforward impose fines of only fivesous except in cases where the miscreant is found to be using dishonest weights and measures with intent to deceive.9 The newly elected mustassaf for the year 1389/1390, Johan Tauhenga, arrived with a new broom. He reported to the council that he found the Libre de la Mustaçaffia in tatters and missing pages to such an extent that he was unable to discharge his duties properly. He showed the book to the council and asked that the ordinances that pertain to his office be put in a book so that he might deal justly and equitably with people.10 Less than a week later Tauhenga told the council that there were many super- fluous ordinances in the book of the mustassaf and some contradicted others, for instance, concerning the price of fish and the ordinances about fishermen and fishmongers. He asked that the council let him put the book in order and annul outdated and contradictory ordinances.11 To this end he asked that some reliable people help ascertain what the ordinances were. In the case of ordinances pertaining to the control of the quality of goods manufactured or sold in town, these would have been received from the masters of guilds or, if there were no such guild in Castelló, they might be received from the mustassaf of Valencia City.12 His office of overseeing the quality of goods on sale in the marketplace led to the setting out in writing of specific standards for items like candles, textiles, leather goods, and foodstuffs. A few days later Tauhenga told the council that the ordinances regulating the butchers were incomplete because some of the charters (cartes)

9 Francisco A. Roca Traver, ed., El Mustaçaf de Castellón y el “Libre de la Mustaçaffia.” (Castellón de la Plana: Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura. 1973): fol. 131, pp. 107–108. 10 Libre de Consell. Arxiu Municipal de Castelló de la Plana, Entry for November 28, 1389. 11 Ibid. 12 In 1404 the council commissioned a new redaction of the Libre de la Mustaçaffía. Libre de Consell. March 11, 1404. 234 D. KIERDORF were missing and he asked for their help in completing them.13 On the same day he informed the council that there was a law on the books to the effect that no one might have a tavern in the town where they sell any wine but that of their own harvest on penalty of a fine of 50 sous. Tauhenga asked that this outdated ordinance be revoked and that it not be prose- cuted. There had been a law prohibiting the import of wine into the town by non-residents, presumably to protect local vintners, and this was temporarily suspended during the great famine of 1374/1375. There was a similar law in Valencia City in 1418, where the import of wine into the city was absolutely forbidden and any such wine that was discovered could be confiscated and given to prisoners in the town jail, going first to the most miserable.14 Denizens of the city were entitled to bring into town wine that they had produced from their own grapes but only for their own use. In this case it seems that the law was out of date. Possibly there was not enough wine being produced in Castelló to satisfy its needs and therefore this ordinance had fallen into desuetude. (Or, possibly the original ordinance was against setting up a tavern in town—a question of public morals—and times had now changed. This seems less likely and more speculative.) In fact, in 1375 the jurats, the executive officers who carried out the council’s wishes and oversaw the day-to-day affairs of the town, informed the council that it had come to their notice that na Falqueca had purchased 15 quarts of wine from Nicholau.15 They had spoken with Nicholau and told him that he might not do anything that deprived the town. The jurats wished to know the council’s pleasure about this. The council resolved that if na Falqueca would not sell the wine in the town, then she was to be informed that she would not receive a license to export it. Wine was almost as much a necessity as bread and a specific against illness and thus a vital provision during a time of pestilence, like 1375.

13 Libre de Consell. December 1, 1389. 14 Maria Cueves Granero, “Abastimientos de la Ciudad de Valencia durante la Edad Media,” Saitabi, vol. 12 (1962): 151. 15 Libre de Consell. May 7, 1375. THE MUSTASSAF OF CASTELLÓ DE LA PLANA 235

Weights and Measures and the Mustassaf One of the main duties of the mustassaf was making sure that the weights and measures in use in the marketplace were accurate. To carry out this duty the mustassaf, of course, had to have an accurate set himself. Since many units of length were originally derived from parts of the human body, they necessarily varied as to the size of any given person’s foot, arm, thumb, and so on. This rough and ready system may have served well enough for dealings in the local marketplace between neighbors, but as trade expanded throughout Western Europe in the Later Middle Ages, it led to a chaotic situation since adjacent towns or districts might have different systems in use, and such a situation invites abuse. A variety of weights and measures were in use in the Crown of Aragón. Most measures were fractions or multiples of other measures and were divided into halves, quarters, and so on. From the immediate post- Conquest period up until the introduction of the metric system in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, the standard measure of length in Valencia was the vara, or rod, which was divided into 4 palmos of 12 dedos each. The vara was also divided into 3 pies which were, in turn, divided into 16 dedos.16 According to Orenga Beltran, the vara was 906 millimeters in length in both Valencia City and Castelló. However, liquid and dry measures of capacity differed between the two places, as did units of weight.17 The arroba, a liquid measure used for oil, equaled 12.14 liters in Castelló but only 11.93 liters in the capital. Likewise, the barcella, or bushel, a unit of dry weight used for measuring grain, was 16.6 liters in Castelló and 16.75 liters in Valencia, and the weight of a lliura, or pound, varied by three grams, 358 (Castelló) to 355 (Valencia). The difficulties, and opportunities, that these discrepancies would present to both merchants and purchasers are clear. Unfortunately, Orenga does not bother to say at what date these measures were in use. By the late fourteenth century the crown

16 José Maria Orenga Beltran, “El sistema de medidas, pesos y monedas del Reino de Valencia,” Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura 49, Nos. 2, 3 & 4, (1973): 132. Palmo, pie and dedo are all body parts, being “palm,” “foot” and “finger” (or “toe”). One charming fact that Orenga does not mention is that the Castilian word for inch, pulgada, is meant to express the distance between the tip of the thumb and the first knuckle. It is so named because this was what was used to crush fleas, pulgas in Castilian. 17 Ibid., p. 136 et seq. 236 D. KIERDORF sought to rationalize the system by making the standards in use in Valencia City uniform for the whole kingdom.18 To accomplish this, mustassafs from throughout the kingdom sought guidance from the mustassaf of Valencia and sent there to get weights and measures produced consistent with those of the capital. A good illustration of this is a controversy which arose in Castelló in 1389. This flare-up concerned the device used to measure out the miller’s share of grain being milled. The miller’s pay for milling someone’s grain was a portion of that grain. This share was called the moltura and the scoop that was used to measure it was the palmada. This is described as round and made of iron with a wide mouth.19 Orenga says that measures in use in Valencia were in the form of a truncated pyramid and were used along with a stick called a rasero that, he says, was used to get out the remains of the matter being measured, but that was probably used to level off the measure.20 The new mustassaf, Johan Tauhenga, informs the council in writing that for some time a fraud has been perpetrated on those coming to the mills to have their grain milled.21 In times past the palmades were heaped up with millet and this was correct as 16 of these made an almut.22 But if the palmades are heaped up with forment, high-quality wheat used for making bread, only 12 of these make an almut. In other words, forment is denser than millet and the same volume weighs more. Because the same palmada was in use for forment, those who brought their forment to be milled were paying a quarter more in moltura than they should have. Therefore Tauhenga wanted the council to address this matter and bring the weights and measures in use in Castelló in conformance with those in Valencia City. Tauhenga’s letter, being read to the council, indicated that there were so many frauds being committed in determining the moltura using the palmada of iron as at present, that the council, in accordance with the furs and privileges of the Kingdom of Valencia, which say that there ought to be one weight and one measure, directed Tauhenga to write to the

18 See the following section. 19 Libre de Consell. November 28, 1389. 20 Orenga Beltran, “El sistema,” 137. Ras-a—adj. ‘level with the brim, full measure.’ Salvador Oliva & Angela Buxton, Diccionari Català—Anglès, Barcelona, 1986. 21 Libre de Consell. November 28, 1389. On this date, the scribe is recording the report that Tauhenga made on the first of the month. 22 The almut is a unit of dry measure. There are 4 almuts in a barcella which equals about 16.6 liters. Ergo, an almut equals approximately 4.15 liters. THE MUSTASSAF OF CASTELLÓ DE LA PLANA 237 mustassaf of Valencia City asking at length what method was in use in the city by the lords of the mills (senyors dels molis) in Valencia City to determine the moltura. The council agreed that the same thing would be done in Castelló. Since the fraud appeared manifest, the council ordered that millers not measure the moltura with the palmades but with a quarter almut or half almut or a 16th until the correct measure came from the city of Valencia.23 It is notable here that the council said that according to the furs and privileges there ought to be one standard of weights and measures in the kingdom and they intended that the measure in use in Castelló should conform to that in use in Valencia City. The story does not end there. As soon as the mustassaf’s communique had been read to the council, three members of that body, Guillem Miró, Johan d’Alçamora, and Lorenç Tauhenga, said that they had their mills, Miró and Tauhenga under the seigneurie of the king and Alçamora under lady Petronilla, the widow of the honorable Bernat Mercer, and they and all of the lords of the mills had had possession to measure the moltura of those who come to mill their wheat at the mills with the said palmada for such a time as, “the memory of men is not to the contrary.” For this reason they would not consent in any way to the council making any provision that was prejudicial to them or to the direct lords of the mills. The council replied that since it had seen the manifest fraud that the people require, notwithstanding the objection of the lords of the mills, they would stand and persevere in everything that they had ordered. Mills were royal monopolies, a valued source of income, and the Crown regularly alienated the income from them in order to favor those whom it wished to enrich or, more often, granted the income from a mill to someone in return for a lump sum of money. Guillem Miró and Lorenç Tauhenga had such an arrangement with the king. They had presumably paid a substantial amount for this and they obviously did not want their income from the mills eroded. Alçamora had his mill from the widow of Bernat Mercer who may have gotten it from the Crown herself. All three of these men were prohomens, that is, among the leading men of the town, and all three surnames appear frequently among the lists of council officers, Tauhenga being, of course, the name of the mustassaf who was making all this trouble for them. What the relation was between Johan and Lorenç is not known. Guillem Miró was the lieutenant governor of the province north of the river Uxó and the royal baile and had been for over

23 Libre de Consell. November 28, 1389. 31 v.–32 r. 238 D. KIERDORF ten years. Their objection to the new measure for the moltura is based not just on the loss that it means for them but they also stated that it is an infringement of the prerogative of the crown. Sixteen days after this fractious council meeting, Johan Tauhenga sent to the mustassaf of Valencia a letter explaining the problem, saying that the palmada of the 16th that is made of iron is just when measuring millet, but the millers are using it to measure all kinds of wheat and this is very false and resulted in fraud. He said that when using it to measure wheat heaped up with the palmada made from the standard measure (patro) of the office of the mustaçaffía, which was made in the form of an almut or half almut made of iron, this results in the millers taking a 12th rather than a 16th. For this reason the council had ordered that all mills and millers from now on use the 16th made of wood as they do in Valencia. He further informed the mustassaf of Valencia that there was now a legal case in progress between the town and the lords of the mills and the millers who claimed that according to the fur they might take a 16th of forment, a 15th of millet and a 13th of barley. The mill owners also said that they were entitled to a 13th and a half of mestal as was the case with all other wheat and that they ought to be given measures so that they might take their rights according to the fur.24 The council asserted to the contrary, that the amount of the moltura of wheat should be dealt with as it was in the other royal towns and places of the kingdom, that is, that of all wheat (blats) they should take only a 16th and no more. Tauhenga asked his Valencian opposite number to allow the veedors of flour of the city to come to Castelló and that they bring with them a copy of the ordinances concerning mills, and if the mustassaf of Valencia would not allow this, might he deliver to Castelló a copy of the ordinances that they may guide them in the moltura? Also, he requested to know the measures that the millers must have from the barcella on down. Might it please Valencia to send this back with the bearer of this letter along with a response saying whether the moltura that is to be used for the wheat may be fashioned or not, that is, would the mustassaf of Valencia please make a set of measures for Castelló. As the bearer of this letter would pay for it, he begs the lord to send with him one example of each of the measures that the millers had to have. He also begs his colleague to send a measure

24 Mestal is a mixture of wheat with other grain, especially rye or barley. This mixture was thought of as inferior in quality to bread wheat. By mixing the wheat with lesser grains it was made to go farther. THE MUSTASSAF OF CASTELLÓ DE LA PLANA 239 of spart, that is, a measure made out of esparto grass, for the cafis de calç (see explanation later). Might one of each of the measures used according to the practice of Valencia be sent and might these be affixed with the seal of the mustassaf of Valencia in order that the mustassaf of Castelló might deal justly and equitably with people. Castelló further asked that Valencia be generous enough to inform whether the cafis de la calç in which must fit 12barcelles of oats ought to be heaping or level and how many jolts or shakes ought to be given to the cafis. The crown, in stipulating that the entire Kingdom of Valencia should use the same set of weights and measures, namely those in use in Valencia City, had effectively made the mustassaf of the capital the “head” mustassaf of the kingdom, the arbiter, and final authority for all matters and disputes arising over weights and measures. So the standard weights and measures of the Kingdom of Valencia were those kept by and produced under the guidance of the mustassaf of Valencia City. It took time, however, to bring all measures in the kingdom into conformity. In response to Johan Tauhenga’s letter, the mustassaf of Valencia, Johan de Çelma writes at length. He says that in Valencia it is customary to take for the mills and the lords of the mills the moltura of one 16th of the wheat brought to the mill and it does not matter what kind of wheat it is.25 If this is brought to the mill heaped up, the moltura is taken heaped up. He does not offer any guidance regarding the moltura of other grains. He has had made a set of bulk measures, which he lists, and is sending them to his colleague in Castelló, including the half of a half of a quar- teron, which is a 16th of an almut, which is the standard moltura, suggesting that this be used for such from now on. Calç is lime, an important building material, and the measure for the cafis de calç, made of esparto grass, mentioned near the end of the letter, was another unit of larger amounts of bulk measure and was used not just for lime but for many items, including cereals. A cafis was equal to 12 barcellas or 48 almuts.26 This was to be made of esparto grass, a kind of raffia, and the volume it was to contain was close to 200 dry liters if Orenga Beltran’s figures are correct. This would make it the equivalent of slightly more than five and a half US bushels. Note that Tauhenga asks how many

25 Libre de Consell. November 28, 1389. fol. 33 r & v. They recognized many different varieties of wheat—there are over 30 different varieties listed in Alcover’s dictionary, some specific to a particular region or even around a particular town or valley. 26 Orenga Beltran, “El sistema,” 137. 240 D. KIERDORF shakes or jolts (asacsades) this measure should be given. When one fills any container with cereal or any dry product there is an amount of air trapped between the bits. If one then shakes the container some of the air escapes and the item being contained settles, taking up less space. So it was not good enough to simply fill the cafis measure with the substance being measured out since the volume would change greatly as the wheat or oats or whatever settled. Thus it was necessary to have a standard number of shakes to give the measure. Esparto is a flexible material that grows widely in Spain. It is used for making rope and mats and is commonly used now for making the soles of espadrilles. Since this cafis is to be made of esparto it would seem that absolute accuracy in the measurement of large amounts was not thought a necessity, although in its construction the mustassaf of Valencia says that it has a circle on the top and on the bottom which were probably made of metal and provided rigidity. To ensure that the measures are official they must be affixed with the seal (senyal) of the mustassaf of Valencia. This seal is a guarantee of accuracy and honesty. In 1537 the mustassaf of Castelló, Johan Mas, wrote to his opposite number in Valencia that certain new converts had come to Castelló to buy oil and they are using an arroba measure bearing the seal of Valencia. Upon examination it was found that this measure was larger by one pound that it should be, that is, it held 31 pounds rather than 30, which would be the correct measure. When questioned about this, the buyers said that here in Valencia it was the custom to give an extra eight ounces of oil for the dregs or run off (scorreguda).27 They were claiming either that there were impurities in the oil or that the amount left sticking to the sides of the measure should be made up by the seller, like the concept of the baker’s dozen. Mas asked if “we have such a practice here,” (si tal pratiqua aqui tenem), and asked that the mustassaf of Valencia write to him and at the same time send him an arroba with his seal on it so that he might know better how to make the examination and do what he must do. Of interest here is the credibility conferred by the seal of Valencia, but also that when the mustassaf of Castelló asks if there is “such a practice here,” by “here” he means the Kingdom of Valencia. Over a century after the

27 Libre de Mustaçaffía, fol. 203; Roca Traver, El Mustaçaf de Castellón, 146. It is worth noting that these new converts have come to Castelló to buy oil. Is this a hint that the district is now producing a surplus of oil that it used to have to import? It is also interesting that they are identified as converts. Whether they are former Jews or Muslims is not specified though probably the latter. THE MUSTASSAF OF CASTELLÓ DE LA PLANA 241 controversy about the mill measures, the uniformity of such are taken for granted and even in questions of custom the towns look to the capital. As these examples show, to ensure that the measures in use in the town are on the up and up, it was the responsibility of the mustassaf to check them. In 1474 the mustassaf of Castelló, Johan Valentí, ordered that everyone, man and woman, of whatever law, standing and condition who had alnes, barcelles, almuts, mig almuts, quarterons de almuts, palmades, onzes, and so on, and whatever weights or measures that one cared to name, must hand them over to the mustassaf so that he might align and perfect (dreçar e affinar) them in order to avoid all fraud and deception.28 This was published abroad by the town cryer and the inhabitants had five days from then to comply. In the mills there should be measures from the barcella downwards, that is, an almut, half almut, quartero, half quartero, and the half of the half quartero which is the moltura of one almut since it is a 16th part of an almut. There are no other ordinances except that which concerns the cafis de la calç. This is made of a basket of esparto so that it is full to over- flowing with 12 barcelles of barley, and no more fits in, and when it has 7 or 8 barcelles, it is given 2 shakes and then filled. Then the calç of the said basket ought to be measured by two men grasping the basket, one with one handle and the other with the other handle, and lifting it as high as they can and then letting it fall to the earth and being thus shaken on the ground in this way, so that it is full and no more may be put in. That is the way calç is measured in Valencia. He says that first he has completed the almut, the half almut, and the half of the half quartero which is the 16th of an almut. He has sent these and a new quartero, and a basket of esparto encircled with two circles, on the bottom and on the top, and with its castles, as is the custom in Valencia, and each one sealed with our fig leaf seal (nostra senyal de fulla de figuera) as is the custom of our office under whose powers similar measures are fashioned (dreçats) and completed. He concludes by saying that if there are other things that he can do to please his colleague in Castelló, that he should please write to him with complete confidence. Written in Valencia, on November 23, 1389. At the council meeting on November 28, having heard the response of the mustassaf of Valencia, the council resolved to adopt all the measures of Valencia and to set the moltura at a 16th for all grains. Furthermore, they forbade the use of the old measure, the palmada, and decreed that from

28 Ibid., fol. 185, pp. 126–127. 242 D. KIERDORF that day forward no one may possess one on penalty of 60 sous.29 They also passed an ordinance requiring that those who measure calç may be neither the buyer nor seller but a third party elected by the council. This new official, the messurador, is to collect one dinar each from the buyer and seller for each cafis that he measures and must swear to the justicia that he will carry out his duties well and legally. The first two messuradors are named and they are Johan Mas and Guillem Català, both surnames that appear frequently among the prohomens of the town.30 This ordinance is ratified by Bernat Pinell, the LieutenantBaile on behalf of the king. In a final word about weights and measures: on the November 11, 1403, Pere Perellades, the weigher of flour (pesador de farina) informs the council that the weighhouse of the flour leaks when it rains and he cannot have his lodging there. He asks if they will pay for repairs and his lodging.31 The council agreed. So we learn that there was a building where flour was weighed under the authority of the town council and that they employed someone for this purpose and that he lived in the weighhouse, at least when the roof did not leak.

Case Study 1: Candlemakers In the Libre de Consell for 1389/1390 the quality of candles in the town is considered and standards for their manufacture are mentioned. These standards have been established previously and under them the mustassaf is empowered to fine the chandler 12 diners per defective candle and to destroy the illegal candles. Now the mustassaf reports that chandlers are selling candles with fewer threads in the wicks than specified by the ordinance.32 These candles were made by certain women and have been on sale all year; they have threads of cotton and apparently last longer than candles made according to the specifications. Likewise, it has been found that a man has been making candles with fewer threads in the wick than specified and he insists that these are made every year in this manner for the feast of All Saints. He did not know about the ordinances presently in

29 Libre de Consell. November 28, 1389. 30 This ordinance appears in Libre de la Mustaçaffía, fol. 104 v., Roca Traver, El Mustaçaf de Castellón, 94–95. Roca Traver mistakenly dates it a year previous, November 28, 1388. 31 Libre de Consell. November 11, 1403. 32 Libre de Consell. November 28, 1389. THE MUSTASSAF OF CASTELLÓ DE LA PLANA 243 effect nor that they were in effect last year. The mustassaf asks that the council consider this matter and pass ordinances expressing its wishes. Presumably the candles being manufactured by these women last longer because the wicks have fewer threads and in this case they consume the wax more slowly and this would cause them to give off less light. The mustassaf has not used his peremptory powers to seize and destroy them, but has, rather, asked the council for guidance because these candles, though defective by the standards of the ordinance, have their advantages and have been on sale all year apparently without complaint from the candle-consuming public. In the other instance—of the candle-maker producing deficient candles each year for the feast of All Saints—the chandler appeals to custom, that is, since he does this every year he has a precedent on his side. This shows the level of detail that the ordinances might go into to ensure that standards of quality are maintained. Candles are, of course, an important commodity and ordinances like this tend to appear when there is a problem that must be addressed. The mustassaf, Johan Tauhenga, has declined to peremptorily enforce the regulation to its letter because, since its purpose is to protect consumers whose interests may be served better by not enforcing it, he is acting rather in the spirit of the ordinance. The mustassaf had the authority to waive small fines on offenders. As for the chandler selling defective candles for the feast of All Saints, the weight of precedent and custom in law is very great.33 The mustassaf is careful to say that no blame should be imputed as a result of these things. The council’s decision in this matter is not in the record. Three months before this, on August 8, the council is notified that Jacme Rabaster is able to make candles and that if they will loan him some start-up money he will provision the town with an abundance of candles. The council agrees to loan him 200 sous on the condition that he makes candles as good as those that are sold in Valencia City.34 This reference to the quality of candles in the city, rather than specifying according to the ordinance, provides another nuance about the quality of artisanship in the city vis-à-vis the provincial town. Also, it is probable that the ordinance concerning quality control standards on this matter was adopted from that

33 See the testimony of mill owners in the mill measure controversy in the previous section. Litigants sometimes appeal their rights in court cases by insisting that, “the memory of men is not to the contrary.” 34 Libre de Consell. August 8, 1389. 244 D. KIERDORF of Valencia City. The fact that the council is subsidizing a chandler to make candles in Castelló indicates that there may not have been a master chandler in town and certainly no guild of chandlers. In such a case Castelló would have followed the ordinance and standard of the metropolis.

Case Study 2: Tanners The Libre de la Mustaçaffía provides another example of quality control in the regulations governing leather tanners. Tanning requires the use of caustic chemicals and quantities of salt and water to produce leather that is both supple and impervious to water and rot.35 Depending upon the use to which it is to be put, leather must be either completely free of grease and fat—parchment for instance—or treated with pig fat to make it flexible and waterproof—as for footwear. The Libre de la Mustaçaffía goes into detail about the materials used to treat skins and the quality of the finished product. In order to avoid fraud, any skin that has been produced outside of the town of Castelló or its terme which is found to be of a quality below the standard specified, that fraud coming to the attention of the veedors of the shoemakers, the mustassaf, after consulting with the veedors, shall confiscate the said skins and levy the specified fine on the owner of the skins.36 There are further ordinances to the effect that all skins must be properly cleaned with a knife, both flesh and hair sides, what chemicals might be used and in what quantities, and how many skins might be treated in one vat at a time. So that fraud may be avoided, the owners of the skins and the workers may be made to swear (fer sagrament) to the mustassaf that they have not used excessive amounts of tanning chemicals. No one may import leather into the town or its terme that is not produced according to the standards in the Libre de la Mustaçaffía on penalty of a fine of 20sous and the offending leather is to be burnt. Offenders are liable for these fines for each separate infraction. If a tanner is fined for producing inferior leather for a shoemaker or other cus- tomers, the fine may be assessed on the tanner’s possessions and if these are insufficient to pay both the fine and to reimburse the customer, the money to do so may be taken from the portion of the fine owed to the mustassaf. These penalties are very substantial and, as we can see in the last

35 Roca Traver, “El gremio de curtidores,” op. cit., p. 202. 36 Libre de la Mustaçaffía, fol. 52, Roca Traver, El gremio de curtidores, p. 60. THE MUSTASSAF OF CASTELLÓ DE LA PLANA 245 provision, potentially ruinous. They are not intended to just keep offenses down to a reasonable level, but to eliminate them altogether. In a continuation of the same series of ordinances the council, meeting at a later date, absolutely forbids the use of mastic to tan leather from whatever animal.37 They also raise the fine for doing so to 60 sous for each offense. They also forbid the importation into the town of mastic or its sale on penalty of a fine of 60sous . Also, no saddler, harness maker, or anyone who makes slings for bows, drumheads, or anything else of leather may use leather worked with mastic in contravention of the standards. This series of ordinances is signed by Pere de Begues who was the royal baile in Castelló in the 1380s. In spite of the impulse to extend the regulations of Valencia City to the entire kingdom, it was not always possible to do so. Tradesmen and artisans sometimes resisted having to adopt the standards of the metropolis and insisted that the demands and circumstances of Castelló differed from those of the city. The council had adopted a number of ordinances from Valencia concerning leatherwork, tanning, and so on.38 The cobblers of the town made a presentation to the council to insist that the ordinances that Francesch Tovarç, mustassaf of the town, has brought back from Valencia be emended. They list a number of specific objections, saying that they should not apply to their trade and explain why. In saying this they are asserting that the regulations of their guild are different from those of the guild of Valencia. They conclude their pleas by saying that the enforcement of the imported regulation requiring the leather to be stretched is really of no value since all it does is make the leather more delicate. In Valencia City, they sneer, everyone is more delicately shod than here. At the end of their presentation to the council, they ask that justice be done so that, unlike one tanner who has decided to leave, they will not be induced to move their domicile. This is a veiled threat that the economic life of the town will be damaged if the council insists on enforcing the new regulations. In this case the council took the advice of the guilds regarding these regulations.

37 Libre de la Mustaçaffía, fol. 52, Roca Traver, El gremio de curtidores, pp. 63–65. The herb is lentiscle which, according to Roca Traver, was cheaper and more readily available in the Kingdom of Valencia but produced an inferior leather. 38 Libre de la Mustaçaffía, fol. 52; Roca Traver, El gremio de curtidores, pp. 65–66. 246 D. KIERDORF

Case Study 3: Textiles Similarly, the Libre de la Mustaçaffía offers detailed regulations on the production of cloth.39 The council has ordered, with the agreement and advice of the veedors of the wool carders and weavers, a number of ordinances for the good and prosperity of the public. There follows a series of 15 ordinances. First, that no cloth three palms in length may be made on a card of less than 8 ligatures (liguadures) and that it must contain 80 threads and the card must measure 3 palms and 1 inch. If any card is found to be either bigger or smaller, it is to be broken and the owner of that card is to be fined ten sous. If that cloth is found to be of fewer threads, the owner of that cloth is to pay 20 sous and the weaver who wove it is to pay 10 sous. If the cloth belongs to the weaver he must pay both fines. This gives some idea of the detail contained in the ordinances. Such technical detail could only be derived from someone expert in textile weaving. Therefore we may conclude that the veedors consulted by the council were master weavers themselves and these specifications reflect those of the guild. So the standards are set by the guild, but they are enforced by the civil authority. Interestingly, although Castelló exported raw wool during this period, there is no mention of finished cloth being exported out of the Kingdom of Valencia, that is, to Barcelona or further abroad.40 The sort of detail in the Libre de la Mustaçaffía devoted to controlling the quality of goods for sale in the market of the town, and of goods manufactured in the town, suggests an absence of the spirit of caveat emptor and that it was necessary for the authorities, in the person of the mustassaf, to be vigilant. The fact that the mustassaf is to be advised by veedors selected from practitioners of the trade to be overseen indicates that these were members of the relevant guild of tanners, weavers, or chandlers or whatever, and since the fur specifies that they be prohomens, they are almost certainly masters. The existence of detailed written standards is consistent with this since it is improbable that the members of the council at large would have the expertise to be so specific about the technical details of leather tanning or candlemaking, for instance.

39 Libre de la Mustaçaffía, fol. 173; Roca Traver, El gremio de curtidores, pp. 120–123. 40 Pedro Lopez Elum, “Contribución al estudios de las relaciones comerciales marítimas de Castellón de la Plana durante los años 1412 a 1418 y 1422,” Estudios de Edad Media de la Corona de Aragón 9 (1973). THE MUSTASSAF OF CASTELLÓ DE LA PLANA 247

The fact that the fur to appoint two veedors was granted in 1270 may suggest that there were guilds forming even then. While Antoni Furió places the advent of guilds in Valencia as religious confraternities and mutual aid societies in the thirteenth century, he says they did not start regulating their trades until the second half of the fourteenth century.41 Guilds probably appeared in Valencia City before the other towns of the kingdom and the fact that these ordinances appear in the Libre de la Mustaçaffía of Castelló and in the records of its council meetings may simply reflect the fact that the towns of the Kingdom of Valencia borrowed wholesale from the furs of Valencia and its standards. In the Libre de la Mustaçaffía of Castelló for 1474, the veedors for each trade are named and identified as practitioners of the trade on which they are advis- ing the mustassaf.42 The insistence on maintaining these standards apparently had nothing to do with export, at least in this case, since I have found no mention of leather goods nor of textiles among the products that Castelló was exporting at this time.

Case Study 4: Veterinarian This is a curious case. In 1374 the council contracted the services of a veterinarian (menescal), Johan Ferrer, and paid him a pensio of 300 sous per year.43 Similarly, in 1403 John Sanconez, veterinarian, asked the council to pay him the wages that were due him.44 He also received an annual salary of 300 sous. It is likely that this stipend of 300 sous per annum was to ensure that there was a veterinarian present in town.45 Since the health of livestock was of great economic importance to the town, it seems probable that securing the presence of a veterinarian was a crucial matter. It is uncertain whether this veterinarian was obliged to treat the animals of citizens of the town for free. However, it is probable that one of his duties was to serve as an advisor to the mustassaf in order to ensure the health of livestock brought into the town for the market. This would be part of the

41 Antoni Furió, “La baixa edat mitjana (segles XIV i XV),” in Historìa del País Valencià, ed. Eliseu Climent (Valencia, 1992), 112. 42 Libre de la Mustaçaffía, fol. 188 v., Roca Traver, El gremio de curtidores, pp. 130–131. 43 Libre de Consell. July 17, 1374, and October 25, 1374. On these dates the council made payment orders to Ferrer. 44 Libre de Consell. November 3, 1403. 45 The town sometimes paid an annual stipend to doctors or craftsmen to induce them to settle and stay in the town. 248 D. KIERDORF mustassaf’s duties both in the fields of public health and governing the marketplace.46 This chapter has presented only one aspect of the mustassaf’s authority and duties: his oversight of quality control standards and weights and measures in the town marketplace. This office grew, from the date of its foundation in the wake of the Christian Conquest of the Kingdom of Valencia, to govern virtually all fields of the economic life of the municipality. In so doing, the mustassaf became the main officer by which the towns ran their own affairs and regulated their civic life. The growth of the competency of this institution is a sign of the expansion and the integration of the economy underway in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the Mediterranean, as this necessitated a standardized system of weights and measures. It also signals the consolidation of royal power in the Crown of Aragón.

Bibliography Arandez, Alvaro Santamaria. Aportación al estudio de la economia de Valencia durante el siglo XV. Valencia: Instituto Valenciano de Estudios Históricos. Institución Alfonso el Magnánimo, Diputación Provincial de Valencia y Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Valencia, 1966. Beneyto Perez, Joan. “Sobre la territorialización del Código de Valencia.” Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura 13, no. 1 (Castellón de la Plana: 1931): 15–19. Burns, R.I. Islam Under the Crusaders: Colonial Survival in the Thirteenth-Century Kingdom of Valencia. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1973. ———. Medieval Colonialism: Postcrusade Exploitation of Islamic Valencia. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975. Cabestany i Fort, Joan-F. “La institucionalització del govern municipal al segle XIII.” In El govern de les ciutats Catalanes, edited by Ana Maria Adroer Tasis, 51–60. Barcelona: Edicións de la Magrana. Institut Municipal d’Història. Ajuntament de Barcelona, 1985. Cueves Granero, Maria. “Abastemientos de la Ciudad de Valencia durante la Edad Media.” Saitabi 12 (Valencia: 1962): 141–167. Furió, Antoni. “La baixa edat mitjana (segles XIV i XV).” In História del Pais Valencià. Edited by Eliseu Climent, 83–134. Valencia: Papers basics 3i4, 1992.

46 Interestingly, although there was a licensing procedure for doctors, there does not appear to have been any way of certifying the competence of veterinarians. Nor were there any university or school curricula for training them. One can only assume that one became a veterinarian by serving an apprenticeship or simply by experience. THE MUSTASSAF OF CASTELLÓ DE LA PLANA 249

Glick, Thomas F. “Muhtasib and Mustasaf: A Case Study of Institutional Diffusion.” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 2 (1971): 59–81. Martín, José-Luis. Evolución Económica de la Penísula Ibérica (Siglos VI–XIII). Barcelona: Ediciones El Albir, S.A., 1976. Libres de Consells. Castelló: Arxiu Municipal de Castelló de la Plana. Lopez Elum, Pedro. “Contribución al estudios de las relaciones comerciales marítimas de Castellón de la Plana durante los años 1412 a 1418 y 1422.” Estudios de Edad Media de la Corona de Aragón 9 (1973): 211–266. Orenga Beltran, José Maria. “El sistema de medidas, pesos y monedas del Reino de Valencia.” Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura 49, nos. 2, 3 & 4 (1973). Roca Traver, Francisco. “El gremio de curtidores de Castellón: unas ordenanzas desconocidas del siglo XIV.” Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura 26, no. 3 (Castellón de la Plana: 1950): 195–215. ———, ed. Ordenaciones Municipales de Castellón de la Plana durante la Baja Edad Media. Valencia: Instituto Valenciano de Estudios Historicos, Institucion Alfonso el Magnanimo, Diputacion Provincial de Valencia, 1952. ———. El Mustaçaf de Castellón y el “Libre de la Mustaçaffia.” Castellón de la Plana: Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura, 1973. Sanchez Adell, José. Castellón de La Plana en la Baja Edad Media. Castellón de La Plana: Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura, 1982. ———, ed. El Libre de Privilegis de Castelló de la Plana (1245–1470). Castellón de la Plana: Excmo. Ayuntamiento de Castellón de la Plana, 1993. Sevillano Colom, Francisco. “De la institución del mustaçaf de Barcelona, de Mallorca y de Valencia.” Anuario de História del Derecho Español, 23 (1953): 225–238. ———. Valencia urbana medieval a través del oficio de Mustaçaf. Valencia: Instituto Valenciano de Estudios Históricos, Institución Alfonso el Magnánimo, 1957. PART III

Perceptions CHAPTER 9

The Battle of Zallaqa Between Mythos to Logos

William Granara

I In the story of the 222nd night of Alf Layla wa Layla, “The Slave Girl and Nur al-Din Ali Ibn Khaqan,” the caliph, disguised as a fisherman, asks the run-away Nur al-Din to explain to him the cryptic lines of a poem which his slave-girl companion Anis al-Jalis has recited (the night before). “Do you wish to hear it in prose or in verse?” asks Nur al-Din, to which the caliph/fisherman replies: “O my lord, prose is words, but verse is strung pearls.” Understanding the reply as an affirmation of the universal view of poetry’s highest esteem among Arabs, he retells the slave-girl’s story in his own verses, adding more detail and clarity but not satisfying the caliph’s quench to know it all. The caliph/fisherman then makes a second request: “My lord, Nur al-Din, [now] tell me the story in detail,” and Nur al-Din begins once again to narrate their story in prose.1

1 Husain Haddawi, trans., The Arabian Nights (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 376–377.

W. Granara (*) Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected]

This small anecdote calls attention to two larger issues that fare promi- nently in the Arabic literary tradition: first, the long-held belief that “what is said best is said in verse” and second, that in time the art of storytelling evolved in ways that required a plethora of detail which could most effi- ciently be given through prose. The binary of poetry (nazm: ordered speech like strung pearls) and prose (nathr: scattered words) operated on the general assumption that the former was the superior, where the mas- terpieces of pre-Islamic poetry were held to be the finest linguistic and artist exemplars of fine speech. The rise of Islam and the ascendency of the Quran as authoritative text had a profound impact on this binary, the dimensions of which far exceed the scope of this chapter, but poetry survived and flourished nonetheless, and it remained, at least in the eyes of philologists and literary critics, the most artful expression of human creativity throughout the early centuries of Arab-Islamic civilization. In fact, among the early Muslim criticism to poets and poetry is the view that in essence the poets were “all talk and no action,” to use a modern turn of phrase, and a good deal of early Arabic-Islamic philology worked assiduously to draw clear distinctions between poetry and the Quran.2 The decades and centuries that followed the diffusion of the Quranic text and the development of Quranic philology and sciences wrought a gradual but steady shift from an orality (poetry) to literacy (prose) culture which tipped the balance in this binary in prose’s favor. This shift echoes binaries in other premodern traditions, particularly that of the ancient Greeks who divided speech between mythos and logos. This binary, or dichotomy, “describes the transition in ancient Greek thought from the stories of gods, goddesses, and heroes (mythos) to the gradual development of rational philosophy and logic (logos).” Where logos appealed to reason and grounded the ancient Greeks to their environment and the reality of their physical world, mythos was centered in man’s interior, drawing on a language that is persuasive, soothing, probing, and capable of arousing emotions. They were not mutually antagonistic, nor was the one considered superior to the other.3 I do not employ here the mythos/logos binary as a static, monolithic concept, nor as an absolute dichotomy, but as a guide in reading my texts in broader perspective, that

2 On the debates concerning early Islam’s view on poetry, see: Irfan Shahid, “The Sura of the Poets, Qur’an XXVI: Final Conclusions.” Journal of Arabic Literature 35 no. 2 (2004): 175–220. 3 Karen Armstrong, The Case for God (New York: Knopf, 2009): x–xii. THE BATTLE OF ZALLAQA BETWEEN MYTHOS TO LOGOS 255 is, as one “between imagination and reason, fictive and factual.”4 If we read mythos and logos as different and complimentary, then might not we also see its survival—or, residual aspects of it—in the modern dichotomy of fiction and non-fiction? My project here is to examine written accounts of the Battle of Zallaqa within the framework of a mythos-logos binary. The battle took place in 1086 in the southwest region of al-Andalus (modern Spain and near the Portuguese border) between Alfonse VI, King of Castile and Galicia (r. 1077–1109) and al-Mu‘tamid Ibn ‘Abbad, Prince of the emirate of Seville (r. 1061–1091). My texts include two poems composed in the immediate aftermath of the battle and an account taken from a historical encyclopedia written in the fifteenth century. Both poems were composed by the Sicilian exile ‘Abd al-Jabbar Ibn Hamdis (d. 1133), one of several court poets of Prince al-Mu‘tamid, himself a highly accomplished poet, and were composed and performed soon after the battle. The fact that Ibn Hamdis was a boon companion and fierce loyalist to al-Mu‘tamid, along with being a fellow Muslim who lived at a time when Islam was on the defensive in the Iberian peninsula against stunning military successes of the Christian Reconquest, and given that his poems were crafted in the neoclassical tradition of mixing pre-Islamic feats of heroism with Islamic sacred attributes, would put these texts clearly in the mythos column. The historical account, on the other hand, was penned by Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al- Mu’min al-Himyari, some 400 years after the battle, who had access to a massive archive of historical, geographical, biographical, and other literary sources which he could read, reflect upon, select or delete, putting this text in the logos column. The challenge of reading the works of poet and historian separated by several centuries nonetheless provides a wider tem- porality in which I hope to show that a period of gradual change in the relation between Arabic poetry and prose had been in perpetual motion. My goal is to show that these texts, poetry and [historical] prose, equally tap into literality and historicity, share common tropes and themes, and cross each other’s discursive boundaries all the while telling the same story in oddly similar ways. They also reflect, if read within a wider literary and intellectual trajectory within the dynamic development of Arab- Islamic letters, both a gradual slipping away from a world steeped in a powerful tradition of heroic qualities of strength and virtue, of noble [Arabian tribal] lineage, and a superhuman steadfastness in times of stress,

4 Robert L. Fowler, “Mythos and Logos,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 131 (2011): 66. 256 W. GRANARA all preserved and reinforced through the creativity and longevity of “classical” Arabic poetry (mythos), as well as that perpetual motion that ran along the familiar lines of human progress, toward reason and the rational, with a rich complexity and a need for explanation, elaboration, alternative thinking, and a breaking down of the metaphor (logos). When the caliph/ fisherman asked Nur al-Din to tell his story first in verse, he was paying homage to the heroic age and sacred precedent, and when he asked for the retelling in prose, he wanted clarification, explanation, and details.

II The [hi]story of the Battle of Zallaqa can be summarized as follows: al- Mu‘tamid fails to make his scheduled payment on the treaty he concluded with King Alfonse due to the expenses he incurred fighting his Muslim rivals. Alfonse, in a fit of rage, extracts additional fees from other [Muslim] vassal states and, on the advice of his religious and medical advisors, demands compensation by having his pregnant wife occupy both the Mosque in Córdoba and the [former] caliphal palace in al-Zahra’. In response, al-Mu‘tamid dispatches a delegation across the Straits seeking the military assistance of Yusuf ibn Tashufin (r. 1061–1106), Berber warlord and leader of the newly triumphant Almoravids (r. 1040–1147). As both sides employ scouts and spies, Alfonse uses trickery and launches a preemptive strike on ‘Abbadid territory. The combined Muslim forces succeed in repelling the Castilian army and claim victory despite a severely wounded al-Mu‘tamid. The supreme irony of this battle, we come to learn, is that five years later Yusuf returns to Seville and puts an end to the ‘Abbadid dynasty, sending the prince and his family into exile, and establishing his brand of Islamic fundamentalism over the pleasure-loving statelets of al-Andalus. ‘Abd al-Jabbar Ibn Hamdis was one of a number of Sicilian poets who sought refuge at the ‘Abbadid Court of Seville in the early years of the Norman Conquest of Sicily due in part, no doubt, to al-Mu‘tamid’s reputation (like his father) for being a poet and patron of poets. As I have argued elsewhere, both men had much in common as poets, and as much as they shared a privileged life of art and leisure, both were highly cognizant of the dangers that hovered over them, not only from the Christian THE BATTLE OF ZALLAQA BETWEEN MYTHOS TO LOGOS 257

Reconquest but also from the tides of Muslim religious and social conser- vatism that were critical of their gilded courtly life.5 The first of the two poems, entitled by theDiwan ’s compiler as On the Occasion of al-Mu‘tamid’s return to Seville from the Battle of Zallaqa6 can be safely assumed to be the first of the two poems composed on the battle. It is a mono-thematic poem consisting of 42 lines and reads as follows: a prayer of thanks to God and offering congratulations to all Muslims for the victory (1–5); an address to al-Mu‘tamid’s injuries (5–6); verses of praise as a skilled commander in Jahili imagery (7–11); establishing a binary opposition between al-Mu‘tamid and his rival Alfonse (12); verses citing al-Mu‘tamid’s appeal to Yusuf Ibn Tashufin to join the jihad against the Castilians and addressing his [Muslim] critics who warned him against doing so (13–19); mixing of sacred and profane praises to al-Mu‘tamid (20–23); on Alfonse’s use of deception in waging war on the Muslims (24–26); pairing Arab versus Christian soldiers on the battlefield, with the climatic image of building a minaret from the skulls of the enemy (27–35), an ancient Near Eastern battle trope which may be read as much as poetic hyperbole as historical accuracy7; the insertion of host-guest etiquette (adab) in the victory and defeat (36–37); refrain of sacred and profane attributes to al-Mu‘tamid/Yusuf? (38–39); a shift to love poetry (ghazal) imagery to praise al-Mu‘tamid (40); and a prayer to God ending the poem and linking it to the opening (41–42). The second poem, which bears the title In Praise of al-Mu‘tamid on the occasion of his defeat of Alfonse VI at [the Battle] of al-Zallaqa8 consists of 46 lines and was according to other historical sources delivered at a public celebration of the ‘Abbadid victory over the Castilians several days after the battle. Unlike the mono-thematic, linear composition of the first poem, Ibn Hamdis composes this ode more in the fashion of the neoclassical Arabic qasida with distinctive constituent parts (aghrad) that mix and match conventional themes and tropes: wine song (khamriyya) preface with standard themes of boon companionship and bacchic imagery (1–9);

5 William Granara, “Sicilian Poets in Seville: Literary Affinities across Political Boundaries,” in A Sea of Languages: Rethinking the Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History, ed. K. Mallette and S. C. Akbari (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 199–216. 6 Ibn Hamdis, ‘Abd al-Jabbar, Diwan, ed. Ihsan ‘Abbas (Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1960), poem # 277: 424–428. 7 For a brief discussion of this practice, see: Thomas Leisten, “Mashad al-Nasr: Monuments of War and Victory in Medieval Islamic Art,” Maqarnas 13, no. 1 (1996), 14. 8 Ibn Hamdis, Diwan, # 283: 435–438. 258 W. GRANARA transition from a night of inebriation to the morning of facing sobriety in the image of an enemy combatant (10–11); establishment of east/west (read: Muslim vs. Christian) binary (12); the shift to the desert crossing (rahil) and description of the battlefield as hostile terrain (13–16); verses of praise (madih) to al-Mu‘tamid and reference to the ‘Abbadid Court as site of refuge (17–26); lines of invective (hija’) against Alfonse (27–28); mention of Yusuf Ibn Tashufin and his might (29–30); description of the battle in highly poetic language (30–44); prayer to God and thanks for His victory (45–46). As a professional court poet at this time and in this place, Ibn Hamdis served a number of courtly functions that may be classified as “archival” and “ceremonial.” Arabic literary history has amply provided a treasure trove of information on the rise of court poets and poetry from both aes- thetic and historico-political perspectives, and through this we see the extent to which court panegyrics had become a well-traveled and lucrative commodity. Ibn Hamdis joined the ‘Abbadid Court in 1078 having escaped the turmoil of the Norman Conquest in his beloved homeland, Sicily, and after a period of time roaming the North African littoral in search of a powerful patron worthy of his poetic talents.9 Arriving in Seville at a time of rapidly shifting religio-political boundaries, much to the advantage of the Christian Reconquest, his job was, among other things, to be a mouthpiece, in modern parlance, to his patron’s court. We know that al-Mu‘tamid Ibn ‘Abbad, like his father before him, was himself a practicing poet with his own fame, and that other poets from Sicily joined the Court at Seville around the same time. Thus, we can conjure a more vivid image of the politically charged artistic environment in which the fractious emirs were waging their defense against Christian military advances, not to mention against each other. The craft of panegyrics at this time and in this place required much more than reciting a hackneyed litany of praises to an oft-imagined detached potentate surrounded by court jesters only too eager to stroke the patron’s ego. It required that the poet first set the record, especially at courts whose rulers were engaged in battle, external or internal, and to add his voice to those of other government functionaries who served “the government.” This included incorporation of “eye-witness” accounts, realist descriptions of battle scenes, references to real people and places, and actions pertaining to the pre- or post-battle that bear historical significance. Again, Arabic literary history provides

9 Granara, “Sicilian Poets in Seville.” THE BATTLE OF ZALLAQA BETWEEN MYTHOS TO LOGOS 259 stellar examples, with the bar having long been raised with the panegyric verses of Abu Tammam (788–845) and al-Mutanabbi (915–965) in their post-victory verses to their patrons.10 In the two poems Ibn Hamdis composed on the occasion of the Zallaqa Battle in 1086, we see in each both the archival and ceremonial functions mentioned earlier. The first, On the Occasion of al-Mu‘tamid’s return to Seville from the Battle of Zallaqa, was composed shortly after the event and conveys much stronger the archival function than the ceremonial. It carries a tone and a flow that suggest extemporaneous composition, with relatively little rhetorical embellishment, and a considerable number of verses praising Yusuf Ibn Tashufin, drawing attention away from the intended subject (al-mamduh) al-Mu‘tamid and casting this victory as one ultimately belonging to God and Islam. Four essential “historical facts” are woven into this poem: (1) al- Mu‘tamid participated as a commander in battle and returned to Seville wounded; (2) al-Mu‘tamid invited Yusuf and his Almoravid army to join his “jihad” against Alfonse VI; (3) al-Mu‘tamid ignored the advice of his Muslim allies against bringing in the Almoravids from across the Straights; and (4) Alfonse used deception in his attack against the emirate of Seville. The poem nonetheless taps into poetic convention is several ways: (1) it rests on a binary of self/other: al-Mu‘tamid/Alfonse, Islam (faith, belief)/Christendom, sacred/profane, and truth/falsehood, all lending themselves neatly into the panegyric (madih)/invective (hija’) subgenres of the classical qasida; (2) it mixes easily and effectively [pagan] Jahili and Islamic values and attributes, a hallmark of the poetics of Ibn Hamdis as well as other neoclassical poets of the age; and (3) it employs an intertex- tuality with other poems and genres: line 13 “You avenged those who regret- ted your appeal to Yusuf, just as you continue to avenge those who oppose the truth,” echoes the celebrated panegyric which Abu Tammam composed to the caliph, al-Mu‘tasim, in 838 on his victory at Amorium against Byzantium in which he calls attention to the court astrologers’ advice against the attack, whereby Ibn Hamdis elevates al-Mu‘tamid and Zallaqa onto Arabic literary canonization. Ibn Hamdis also follows literary convention by strategically placing a rahil segment in the middle of the poem to tell the story of al-Mu‘tamid’s invitation to Yusuf to join the jihad and the Almoravids answering the call

10 Suzanne Stetkevych, The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: myth, gender, and ceremony in the classical Arabic ode (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002). 260 W. GRANARA by crossing of the Straits [of Gibraltar] and reaching the Iberian peninsula:

14- You called out to the people of the desert [Almoravids] to [holy] war and how quickly they traversed the [high] seas to come to you. 15- These warriors sought nourishment from the breast milk of battle, and what they found of it sweet to drink was [the bitterness of] colocynth. 16- They spurred to war detachments of mighty steeds, rendering emaciated on the rugged plain sturdy-hoofed camels. 17- When they smite with Samhari spears, you imagine them as lions thrust- ing snakes into hearts. 18- And when the resolute warrior wrapped in a turban (dhu litham) makes an attack, he becomes like one who kisses (laathim) war on the mouth.

The rahil segment of the classical tripartite qasida, it should be recalled, is placed between the [usual] amatory preface (nasib) and the boast poem (fakhr). It conjures images of the poet warrior extracting himself from his abode/homeland, making a treacherous crossing through inhospitable terrain and fighting off hostile natural and/or human elements. It is a test of skill, bravery, and resolve which prepares him for a triumphant return to the tribe. In Ibn Hamdis’ rahil earlier, we see the mixture of sacred and profane images in the narrative: he chooses the word “aadhanta” (to call to prayer) for al-Mu‘tamid’s appeal to Yusuf for help; and he employs familiar Bedouin (Jahili) tropes of desert crossings, the nourishment of camel’s milk, the bitterness of colocynth, and the fatigue of the mount throughout the journey as rhetorical devices to record the events of the battle. Above all, and most significantly, he draws a parallel between the Almoravids, Berber Lamtuna, and Gudela tribesmen, primitive, nomadic, masters of war, and fortified by a new faith, and between the Arabs and Berbers of the early eighth century who crossed the treacherous waters of the Straits, conquered the Visigoths, and established Islam and Arab civilization on the Iberian peninsula. Such an association would serve as a reminder not only to al-Mu‘tamid’s Muslim allies and rivals who warned him against bringing the Almoravids into the battle but to future generations of Muslims who would read Zallaqa and its commander, al-Mu‘tamid, as defending the faith. Finally a fourth archival element in the poem can be seen in Ibn Hamdis’ description of Alfonse’s deception in the art of war: THE BATTLE OF ZALLAQA BETWEEN MYTHOS TO LOGOS 261

24- I see Alfonse turning his back the day he encountered horsemen in wrapped turbans around their helmets, 25- Cursing Christ on the Cross who Himself repudiated him; and he who blasphemes in error does not lack being deceived. 26- Intending deceit in the [art of] war, War is deceit, and having been the aggressor, he retreated in defeat.

These verses do not make clear the exact nature of Alfonse’s deception. This could be due to the fact that it had become well known to the Muslims of the inner court as well as to the people of Seville since rumors of war were undoubtedly circulating at rapid pace from the Court to mosques and onto the town squares. Also, the collective memory of Muslims being subjected to acts of treason and deception by both friend and foe was a powerful trope in both the historical archive and poetry which find powerful resonant antecedents in the narratives of early battles of Badr (624), Uhud (625), and The Trench (Ghazwat al-Khanadiq) (627) in which acts of deception play a pivotal role, the last of which the Prophet Muhammad was reported to have said, “War is deception,”11 a quote that has entered the canon of Hadith and which Ibn Hamdis inserts effectively in line 25 of this poem. In the second poem, In Praise of al-Mu‘tamid on the occasion of his defeat of Alfonse VI at [the Battle] of al-Zallaqa, which we assume to having been composed after the passage of some time, and delivered in a public celebration of al-Mu‘tamid’s victory over the Castilians, Ibn Hamdis moves away from the mono-thematic occasional poem of the first to the more familiar and artistically conventional and challenging tripartite qasida. My reading of it is that while both poems draw on mythos and logos language to tell the story of the battle, the first bears a dominant archivist function where Ibn Hamdis seeks to “set the record straight” on what transpired, while in the second he plays the role of court panegyrist and extols the accomplishments and virtues of his patron. In the first Ibn Hamdis emphasis the local, the specific, and the detail, while in the second he ascends to the abstract, the universal, and the poetic. The second poem pays homage to the classical qasida especially by con- structing the poem using the conventional (tripartite) paradigm of amatory preface (nasib): journey (rahil) and boast (fakhr), after which he adds a highly poetic account of the battle (harbiyya). Taking a great deal of

11 Sahih al-Bukhari, Bab Harb Khad‘a: 2864. 262 W. GRANARA poetic license which Arabic neoclassical poets of his age tended to do, Ibn Hamdis substitutes the amatory preface with a wine song to set the mood for celebration. Here he is able to draw attention away from the serious wounds al-Mu‘tamid received in the war, while performing his duties as court panegyrist. The wine song allows the poet to boast about his boon companionship with his patron and insert other bacchic images, such as the unending flow of the wine goblets and the musical instruments and singing girls that accompany an evening of imbibing. Having set the mood, the poet shifts from the wine song preface to the journey segment, deftly crossing the thematic boundary by way of a series of contrasting images of night and day, light and darkness, inebriation and sobriety, pleasure and pain, and peace and war. He then begins his rahil on the familiar literary terrain of an arduous desert crossing, which subtlety transforms into the battlefield itself, as the noble Arab poet/warrior comes face to face not with a hostile environment but with the Christian enemy combatant. Well within what we call today the “horizons of expectation,” Ibn Hamdis moves on to the panegyric segment, strategically placed after the rahil. Here, however, he takes the approach of a compound boast consisting first of praise (madih) and followed by invective (hija’), a boast in reverse of sorts. In the first he repeats his signature attribute consecrating the ‘Abbadid Court as a shrine of sanctuary, calling attention to his own exile from Sicily, his own difficult desert crossing, and his reception by al- Mu‘tamid into his court The usual litany of (Jahili) celestial images of noble rank, supernatural feats of generosity and extraordinary perspicacity mix naturally with (Islamic) qualities of defender of the faith which he brings to a high point in line 26:

26- In your right hand is a sword which is inviolable (aHram), and by using it you safeguard that which is sacred (Harim).

At this point, the poem takes a turn by transitioning gradually away from praise proper to invective, and through a masterful use of antithesis (tibaq), he continues to praise al-Mu‘amid while insulting Alfonse. The first two lines make mention of Alfonse and draw attention to his flight on the night of the battle. The following lines pay homage to Yusuf and his role in the victory. THE BATTLE OF ZALLAQA BETWEEN MYTHOS TO LOGOS 263

27- [It was] a battle in which Alfonse encountered an opponent, one who wreaks havoc on the soul of [his] adversary, 28- when he took cover in the dark of night, and then fled in fear, with a terror that could shatter the ears of an ostrich. 29- Because of Yusuf, endowed with bravery, Alfonse was made to taste mis- ery, and the sweetness of a graced life was rendered bitter.

Here ends any further archival function of the poem, as the scant documentation, the logos of historical (factual) detail, as contrasted with its richness in the first poem, will give way to Ibn Hamdis’ ceremonial poetics whereby he retreats to the world of mythos in the last part of the poem (lines 31–46). He draws on all the “pyrotechnics” of the classical qasida, but in poetic abstractions that transcend the specific time and place of the Zallaqa Battle.

31- Your monotheism dissuaded him of his [trinitarian] polytheism, snipping at the hands of a fear, raging with anger. 32- Insulted, he watches you as you grin like a hunting hound who bares its teeth whenever it yawns. 33- In early morning he came with crosses that lead infidels astray, and he concocted the tricks of a mongrel army. 34- It was as though they [appeared] like devils, but you hurled at them the fire of stars. 35- Infidels, [although] their battle coats are made of armor, the whiff of their odor gives them away. 36- A tyrant [even] towards them leads them to their demise, and woe unto the tyrant! 37- He led them to pasture on the cane of the washıj* tree, and they tottered about, and such are the consequences of evil grazing. 38- He led them to watering holes amidst the sharp lances, and like a water boy he served the waters of death from the well. 39- And then when he came to you with a people from who knows where, you came along with the howling destructive wind. 40- You rekindled the fires of battle, and its moans related that they were the sparks from hell. 41- With the gallop of its sturdy horses there arose a dark gloom, by which they clothed the dawn with the night. 42- The robe of the air was frayed at the edges, and the face of the earth was scorched at the surface. 43- And the ascending spears of al-Khatt were inebriated, until every pli- ant straight arrow was arched. 264 W. GRANARA

44- They drank only from the wine of collarbones, and they inhaled only the scent of head wounds. 45- So, Pray to your God who is worshipped, and make a sacrifice to Him of their leaders, one after the other. 46- And celebrate with divine guidance, and prepare for the enemy the punishment of war, with the most painful of pain.

Poetically, these verses fit well within Arabic panegyric conventions wherein lies the ceremonial function of Ibn Hamdis as (standard) court poet. The invective against the enemy, as paired against the noble qualities of the panegyrized hero, celebrates the festive occasion, at the same time archiving the historical record of the happy occasion, that is, victory in battle. While these lines situate the poem comfortably and credibly in the event’s precise time and in place, assigning for Zallaqa its rightful place in Arabic history and literature, they can equally be read as extraneous to the specific time and place of the battle. The universal, trans historical, and abstract qualities of this closing section, in all its reworked language, images, and tropes, even if somewhat hackneyed, transcend the historical details of the battle itself, as they draw on the corpus of an Arabic poetics by now thoroughly familiar to an Arabic audience or readership.

III Very little is known about the personal and professional life of Abu ‘Abdallah Muhammad Ibn ‘Abdallah al-Himyari, author of Kitab al- Rawd al-mi‘tar fi khabar al-aqtar.12 Historians estimate that al-Himyari lived his entire life in the fifteenth century, and it is safely assumed that he was born and raised in the Maghreb, and that he was both a juris consult (faqih) and a legal notary (‘adl).13 On the front page of his 1938 critical edition, E. Lévi-Provençal (1894–1956) subtitled the work as an historico- geographical encyclopedia (mu‘jam jughrafi tarikhi), noting that al- Himyari composed it in 866/1464. Similar to poet Ibn Hamdis four centuries earlier, historian al-Himyari had the advantage of centuries of Arabic literature and scholarship that provided a plethora of historical data and literary models to draw upon. By

12 Abu Abdallah Muhammad Al-Himyari, Kitab al-rawd al-mi‘tar fi khabar al-aqtar, ed. E. Levi-Provencal (Cairo: Matba‘at lajnat al-ta’lif wa al-tarjama wa al-ashr, 1937). 13 T. Lewicki, “Ibn ‘Abd al-Mu’min al-Himyari,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed. http:// dx.doi.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_3030 THE BATTLE OF ZALLAQA BETWEEN MYTHOS TO LOGOS 265 the fifteenth century, Arabic historiography evolved into a multi-generic field of inquiry that traces its roots back to the tenth century with the emergence of a universal history which begins with creation, provides a summary of world history, and then proceeds to write an “Islamic history.”14 Historians by this century had access to a vast library of manuscripts that included pre-Islamic genres, such as ancient tribal battle accounts and genealogies, (Ayyam al-‘Arab, al-Maghazi) and early Islamic writings, from Prophetic hadith and sira to dynastic biographies and chronicles. Of course, Arabic poetry, traditionally woven into all kinds of prose writing in both its pre-Islamic (Jahili) and post-Islamic (Ummayad, ‘Abbasid) periods, more often than not read closely to historical events and thus provided a treasure trove of historical information as well. When Abu al-Hasan ‘Ali al-Mas‘udi (896–956) composed his Muruj al-dhahab wa ma‘adin al-jawhar (Meadows of Gold and Mines of Jewels), he fused history and scientific geography, and the link between the two, Gibb reminds us, “was maintained by a succession of writers down to the Ottoman Empire.”15 In addition to his immediate primary sources and influences,16 I hope to show that al-Himyari’s encyclopedia entry on “al- Zallaqa,” a relatively little-known backwater in the southeast of the Iberian peninsula but the site of a highly significant historical battle, comprises many facets of knowledge and strands of writing that go beyond the obvious, history, geography, and poetry. It includes Quranic references, Islamic law, adab (both in its sociological and textual dimensions), dreams, and folk legends. My strategy of reading al-Himyari’s “historical” account of the Battle of al-Zallaqa aims, I repeat, to show affinities shared by prose and poetry, fact and fiction, andmythos and logos. Al-Himyari’s account of the battle is written in linear progression and it inserts direct quotations, adding an audible quality to the text. The story line reads as follows:

1. al-Mu‘tamid fails to make [schedule] payments in terms of his treaty with Alfonse;

14 H. A. R. Gibb, Studies in Islamic Civilization (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), 116. 15 Gibb, Studies, 118. 16 In the Introduction to the edited Kitab al-Rawd, it is mentioned that three texts served as primary sources for al-Himyari: Kitab al-masalik wa al-mamalik of al-Bakri (c.c. 1067–1068); Nuzhat al-mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq of al-Idrisi (ca. 1154); and Kitab al-ist- ibsar fi ‘aja’ib al-amsar (ca. 1154); Lewicki, “Ibn ‘Abd al-Mu’min al-Himyari.” 266 W. GRANARA

2. Alfonse, in an act of revenge, announces his intention of lodging his pregnant wife between the palace of al-Zahra’ and the Mosque of Cordova; 3. al-Mu‘tamid in a fit of rage kills and hangs in public a Jewish emissary sent by Alfonse; 4. Both Muslims and Christians mobilize for war; 5. al-Mu‘tamid appeals to local warlords and princes of the towns, Bajados, Granada, and Cordoba to send their senior jurists to join a delegation (headed by his chief minister Abu Bakr Ibn Zaydun) to cross the Straits and entreat Berber warlord Yusuf ibn Tashufin to join his jihad; 6. Yusuf’s enters al-Andalus, is festively received, with many locals volunteering in the war effort; he marches with his army to Seville in grand procession; and is met halfway by al-Mu‘tamid’s son; al- Mu‘tamid comes out and embraces him (Yusuf) when he arrive outside the gates of the palace; they swear to defeat the infidels then both retreat to their stations; 7. Christians mobilize, raising their crosses and bibles, with Galicians and Catalans joining forces; spies from both camps cross boundaries; 8. Alfonse schemes to set Saturday, the day between the Muslim and Christian Sabbaths, for battle; 9. Yusuf sends a message to Alfonse inviting him to convert to Islam or pay the poll tax (in accordance with Islamic law); 10. Alfonse begins his attack (on Friday), tells his troops that the Africans don’t know the terrain, and they should hold their ground; 11. al-Mu‘tamid is seriously wounded, recites a poem to his child son, while his adult son flees with a battalion; later all the forces finally come together and chase away Alfonse, now struck with a serious knee wound that leaves him limping for the rest of his life; Alfonse escapes in the dark of night after many of his troops are killed; 12. victory brings Yusuf and al-Mu‘tamid together in embrace and celebration, praising each other but disagreeing on what to do with Alfonse: al-Mu‘tamid wants to pursue and kill him; Yusuf argues for patience until all the Muslim troops on the road return safely; that night the troops debated the issue: did Yusuf want to control or did al-Mu‘tamid want to cut Yusuf out; 13. Yusuf returns across the Straits and celebration festivities are held at the ‘Abbadid palace with Quran reciters and poets. (al-Himyari ends his account with Yusuf’s [disastrous] return five years later). THE BATTLE OF ZALLAQA BETWEEN MYTHOS TO LOGOS 267

Al-Himyari’s coherent linear narrative is embellished with rich geographical information, situating al-Zallaqa in the Iberian Peninsula, citing adjacent towns and cities (Baja, Triana, Niebla, Granada, and Córdoba), describing hills, plateaus, forests, mountain passages, and rivers, and even providing his reader with a feel for the climate. Also, he includes two poems which al-Mu’tamid composed extemporaneously on the battlefield: the first are five lines he composed on the onset of mobilization which al-Himyari suggests was something of a rally cry to his troops:

No doubt a happy outcome is at hand which will bring you a wonder so grand An attack that for you be a blessing and will bring forth a speedy victory Good fortune is God’s to give you and misfortune to the religion of the Cross No doubt we will have a day akin to the Day of the Well.

The second was composed in the thrust of battle immediately after al- Mu‘tamid was seriously wounded. In it he recalls the image of a favored young son from whom he sought the strength to carry on:

O Abu Hashim swords have crushed me To God I owe my patience to withstand the flame Your lovely image came to me amidst And remembrance of you kept me the black smoke of war from fleeing afar.

The incorporation of the poems into the historical account functions in various ways. First of all, it demonstrates the poetic talent and skill of al- Mu‘tamid. Second, it keeps with tradition among the Arabs that historical battle accounts often cite lines of poetry as a kind of memoria technica, as Gibb observes.17 And third, it shows us how al-Mu‘tamid, evoking the Battle of Badr (624) in his citation of the Day of the Well (yawm al-qalib), allowed himself to associate al-Zallaqa with one of the most sacred and revered battles in Islam’s wars against its enemies. Al-Himyari’s account also treats us to two dream reports: the first attributed to King Alfonse, and the second to the so-named Abu al- ‘Abbas Ahmad Ibn Rumayla, described as an ascetic legal scholar originating from Córdoba, and evidently in the military service of al-Mu‘tamid. In the first, it is reported that Alfonse (Ibn Ferdinand) dreamt that he

17 Gibb, Studies, 199. Gibb further adds: “it was the verse which maintained the currency of the tradition.” 268 W. GRANARA was riding an elephant while beating on the cymbal (naqira) of a drum. The vision frightened him, and when he inquired from his priests to no avail, he contacted a Jew18 to seek an interpretation from a Muslim. When he found one and related the dream as his own, the Muslim doubted the Jew as the owner of the dream. When the Jew confessed, the Muslim explained the dream and its ominous meanings. The Jew returned to Alfonse and, in fear, concocted an innocuous interpretation. To a Muslim, the dream clearly reflects the Quranic story [Quran 105: 1–5] of the Year of the Elephant which took place in 571 AD when Abraha, the Christian viceroy of Sanaa, marched against Mecca with a massive army and a herd of elephants to destroy the Kaaba, but was ultimately defeated. The second dream involves Ibn Rumayla’s vision of the Prophet Muhammad appearing before him announcing the joyous tidings of a Muslim victory and Ibn Rumayla’s martyrdom to take place the following morning. When he awoke, he prepared himself for martyrdom by performing the rituals of prayer, dyeing his hair with henna, and washing his body with perfume. The two dream reports, in essence, complement the poetry in their function to diffuse an unequivocal religious (sacred) quality to both the event and its location. Al-Zallaqa becomes poetically linked to Badr as site of jihad, and al-Mu‘tamid and Yusuf to the Companions of the Prophet and all subsequent Muslim rulers who joined the ranks of those who earned the title of “defenders of the faith.” Furthermore, both the dream and subsequent actions of Ibn Rumayla provide a concrete example of combining the performance of both “physical” and “spiritual” jihad in the reenactment of Prophetic practices. As a discrete text, the narrative of al-Zallaqa clearly subsumes an adherence to Islamic legal principles to which jihad and all aspects of conduct in waging and executing war are subject. In addition to the examples cited earlier, we read in the text others in which Islamic law comes into play. The story of al-Zallaqa begins with a contract, one legally binding in both Muslim and Christian legal codes. When an infraction of the agreement occurs, that is, failure to make payments, chaos arises. When al-Mu‘tamid kills the Jewish emissary for speaking to him in a haughty manner, a point we come back to, he seeks the legal opinion of his lawyers

18 The presence of the Jew in this anecdote as well as the earlier cited Jewish emissary Alfonse sent to al-Mu‘tamid affirms their roles as go-betweens for Christians and Muslims, most likely due to their multilingualism. THE BATTLE OF ZALLAQA BETWEEN MYTHOS TO LOGOS 269 to exonerate him of his actions. We see again the role of the legal scholars and other Muslim elders as they debate the legitimacy of al-Mu‘tamid’s jihad and the wisdom of his invitation to Yusuf to join the ranks. Third, prior to the actually commencement of war, Yusuf invites the enemy, that is, Alfonse to convert to Islam or agree to pay the poll tax (jizya), both prescribed in Quran and Islamic legal texts. Somewhere between theory and practice, between the abstract and the literal, al-Himyari inserts into his narrative facts (and fictions) of Islamic history and literature. With the accuracy and detail of a chronicle, with the sanctity and authority of Islamic religious writing, and with insertions from the revered Arabic poetic tradition, al-Himyari embellishes his story with adab, a socio-cultural phenomenon that spans centuries of Arab-Islamic intellectual and cultural history, from the middle to late decades of the second Islamic century, that is, the eighth century AD to the present. The lexical range of adab is wide, with meanings such as the prescribed (degree of) punishment for an infraction of a law; the inculcation of social behavior in a refined urbane setting; the compilation of texts that illustrate examples of good—or bad—behavior; the etiquette of social interaction across political, social, gender, cultural, and legal (sectarian) divides; and the promotion and codification ofbelles-lettres and related branches of humanistic prose composition. The most familiar uses of the contemporary term “adab,” above all, imply: (1) “politeness,” that is, fa‘altu dhalika min bab al-adab, “I did that out of politeness” and (2) “literature,” that is, darastu- l-adab fi-l-jami‘a, “I studied literature in college.” These two surviving uses of “adab,” as “polite behavior” and “writing,” best capture the ethos of the phenomenon and its functions in society. The emergence of adab coincides with several social phenomena in the new Islamic Empire. First, it comes at a pivotal point in the orality-literacy shift when a Bedouin Arabian culture, artistically represented by a powerful poetic tradition that was transmitted orally from tribe (region) to tribe (region), and from generation (father) to generation (son), gave way to the dominance of the Quran and the development of Quranic sciences, grammar, philology, and exegesis as new means of communication. Second, the replacement of the Bedouin oasis or campsite with the rise of garrison towns, and eventually with cities, created an expanded social environment, often centered around a court and a flourishing court culture, that required new patterns of behavior for a demographics that, by necessity, brought together disparate ethnic, social, linguistic, and religious 270 W. GRANARA communities not accustomed to living side by side with strangers. Habits ranging from the mundane, eating and drinking, dressing, and bathing to the more socially refined, such as speaking (especially addressing superi- ors), hosting, and working in new public sectors, were subjected to a social engineering of sorts that regulated all aspects of public comportment and guided the members of society toward a new sense of refinement and cultivation. And third, with the emphasis on literacy and the growing demand and respect for scholarship and erudition, what once began as a movement of social engineering transformed into a literary movement whereby man- uals of exemplary behavior—including satirical works of bad behavior— were penned throughout the Empire and circulated among libraries and other institutions of learning. Among the various aspects of adab assumed in both social praxis and literary text in the Arab-Islamic tradition, I cite two in particular as key to my justification for reading al-Himyari’s story of the Battle of al-Zallaqa within an adab framework: (1) speech, polite and socially dictated and (2) hospitality, that is, the rules and regulations for both host and guest conduct. The importance of both speech and hospitality lies in their functions to assure the maintenance of the proper boundaries of social classification and to preserve the values of a cultivated Arab. As much as adab was an urban social phenomenon, it drew heavily from pre-Islamic Bedouin values of muruwwa (manliness), shahama (gallantry), hilm (forbearance), diyafa (hospitality), and ijara (protection). Arabic poetry, as well illus- trated in the two poems of Ibn Hamdis discussed here, served as a major conservatory of these values, and with their extension into prose writings, we can see yet another venue for the fluid mixing ofmythos and logos. The eleventh-century al-Andalus of al-Mu’tamid Ibn ‘Abbad and Alfonse VI was very much part of what Américo Castro termed as a world that “vacillated between antagonism and the sharing of a common life,” and their relationship, reflecting much of the state of affairs between Christian and Muslim in and around the Mediterranean Basin, operated at many levels of contractual, socially acceptable, and moral behavior that were shared by both parties. The Zallaqa Battle of 1086, it should be recalled, was the result of Ibn al-‘Abbad’s failure to make his scheduled payments on a treaty concluded between the two parties and of Alfonse’s subsequent angry reaction. Economic historians would do well to read between the lines and conjecture that both men, once willing signatories to an agreement, were suffering from cash-flow difficulties. With Islam and Christendom ever in a constant state of war, the signing of the treaty THE BATTLE OF ZALLAQA BETWEEN MYTHOS TO LOGOS 271 obligated the weakened party (i.e., the Muslims of Seville) nonetheless to comply with the terms of the treaty, which, as we well know, were standard practices at the time. Al-Himyari’s account, having recorded the historic details, provides details and anecdotes that illustrate infractions, religious, social, and cultural, to the treaty by both parties, from the serious to the playful, and doing so by tapping into both the sociological and literary codes of adab. In his furious response to not receiving payment on the treaty, King Alfonse takes the decision to violate Muslim sacred space by announcing that his pregnant wife would occupy al-Zahra’, the abandoned palatial complex and seat of government for the last Umayyad caliphs built on the western outskirts of Córdoba, and that “the Contessa” would give birth to her child inside the Grand Mosque of Córdoba. This drastic decision, offensive to Muslim sensitivities for its rude reminder of loss and defeat, a rubbing of salt into the wounds, so to speak, and that constituted a blatant act of ritual impurity (najasa) especially abhorrent in a holy place such as a mosque, was one that went far beyond what must have been concluded in the terms of the treaty. In conveying this decision to al-Mu‘amid, Alfonse sends his [Jewish] emissary to the ‘Abbadid Court in Seville, and in a fit of rage for what he deems as unwarranted, impolite arrogance on the part of the messenger, al-Mu‘tamid strikes him dead with a blow to the head with an inkwell and then has him hung upside down in public, a punishment well exceeding what is required by adab. It is interesting to note that both rulers sought justification for their actions from their religious (legal) advisers, clearly mindful of the fact that each one acted outside the parameters of law and acceptable social behavior. A second decision taken by Alfonse to “invade” Muslim space was to march with his army right to the outer gates of al-Mu’tamid’s palace. Combining an act of military aggression with a severe case of bad manners in trespassing private property, Alfonse dispatches a written message to his adversary “politely” requesting a hand fan to relieve himself from the heat and swat away the flies, suggesting, in essence, that Seville was a fly-infested backwater. In response to all the rudeness of the gate-crashing antics of the classical Arab tufayli (uninvited guest) of medieval Arabic adab literature, al-Mu‘tamid assumes the role of the equally rude host by replying to the request by scribbling on the back of the message, not bothering to waste a clean sheet of paper, with a seemingly courteous and witty reply, replete with puns and good humor, saying that he will provide him with 272 W. GRANARA many fans crafted from fine Moroccan leather al-julud( al-lamtiyya),19 that will not only swat away the flies from his land but swat away Alfonse and his army as well, making abundantly clear his invitation to the Almoravid warlord to cross the Straits and join in his battle against the Castilians. The description of the leather as lamtiyya evokes the name of the Berber tribe which excelled in its production as well as many of the Almoravid conscripts who were about to participate in the battle. A final straw in the transgression of good behavior and host-guest etiquette comes in the very public ceremonial announcement that Berber warlord Yusuf Tashufin sends to Alfonse, King of Castile and Galicia, inviting him to either accept Islam (via conversion), agree to pay the protection tax (jizya), or face war. The fact that it was Alfonse who was the aggrieved partner in the initial treaty concluded between him and al- Mu‘tamid and who then was insulted with such a public and condescend- ing “invitation” to convert to Islam, by a foreigner to these lands no less, was an act of bad manners and an infraction on the adab that comprised a gentlemen’s agreement to behave in accordance with the shared codes of proper conduct and cultivation, not to mention the accepted terms of the contract.

IV Alfonse VI, King of Castile and Leon, and al-Mu‘tamid ibn ‘Abbad, Emir of Seville, lived in a time and place where defending the faith against the infidel enemy was the first order of business. They nonetheless shared a world in which adab and chivalry were powerful social forces. While the Arabic adab emphasizes the social and linguistic aspects of human conduct and the Christian (European) chivalry stresses the military, both concepts overlap in their inclusion of loyalty, forbearance, courage, honor, generosity, and courtesy. By the later centuries of eleventh-century al-Andalus/ Spain, Muslims and Christians had experienced centuries of coexistence and the one came to know the other in quite familiar terms. Everyday life was marked by skirmishes on the battlefields as well as exchanges in the marketplaces, bath houses, and even in the taverns that dotted the countryside. The centuries of such coexistence brought forth a modus-vivendi that governed relations between them.

19 Al-Himyari, Rawd al-Mi‘tar, 85. THE BATTLE OF ZALLAQA BETWEEN MYTHOS TO LOGOS 273

The Battle of Zallaqa in 1086 was small in scale but large in significance. It was a crucial turning point in the Christian Reconquest of medieval Spain, and it was a watershed in Muslim Maghreb history, putting an end, in effect, to one of the most flourishing of the post-caliphal petty kingdoms of al-Andalus and ushering in the age of fundamentalist Berber dynasties that effected the reshaping of “Western” Islam. Both ‘Abbadid Court poet ‘Abd al-Jabbar Ibn Hamdis and the later historian Ibn ‘Abdallah al-Himyari each contributed to composing a narrative of Zallaqa that would be inscribed into Arabic literary history. Ibn Hamdis’ account (logos?) came in the shape of strung pearls, in the tradition of the classical Arabic qasida with all of its words and phrases, figures of speech, rhyme schemes, images, and tropes, and with its uncanny ability to fuse the universal and the local, provide historical detail, arouse emotion by way of a creative and manipulative use of figurative language, and persuade and influence men’s thoughts and feelings. His version of the Zallaqa Battle was a narrative that included mythical gods and heroes, of binary oppositions between good and evil, strength and weakness, courage and cowardice, and (true) faith and blasphemy. Ibn Hamdis’ Zallaqa was firmly grounded in the bedrock of traditional Arabian virtues and Islamic righteousness composed explicitly as a celebration of victory but also implicitly as a response to an existential threat at a time and place marked by internal strife and political instability within a gradually shrink- ing al-Andalus. Al-Himyari’s account was penned several centuries later in scattered speech (prose) with the advantage of a written archive and historical hindsight. Like the caliph fisherman, he was interested in the details and all that lay in gray areas between the lines. His account (logos?) was an exposure, a revealing, of all that was not said and could not be uttered within the prosodic and cultural (read: political) boundaries of the qasida. Al-Mu‘tamid’s capitulation to Alfonse and his agreement to pay a poll tax, the initial abhorrence of the rulers of the Muslim statelets over the invitation to the Almoravids to cross the Straits to join a jihad against the Christians, al-Mu‘tamid’s brutal murder and public hanging of the Jewish emissary, and even the escape of a battalion of Muslims lead by al-Mu’tamid’s own son in the thick of battle are all the messy stuff of history that did not fit neatly into theqasida ’s stock images of superhuman bravery and honor. Al-Himayari’s Zallaqa is a narrative that clearly departs from the age of gods and heroes and moves, to complete Vico’s paradigm, into the age of man. 274 W. GRANARA

My project to read in juxtaposition the two Zallaqa stories not only sheds light on the battle itself but it calls attention to some of the obvious differences between medieval Arabic prose and poetry. More significantly, it shows how Arabic prose and poetry tapped into each other’s generic spaces. The power and distinction of Ibn Hamdis’ poems lie in the verses that name names, cite sites, and tell us what happened on the battlefield, and less on the repetition of hackneyed verses which could apply to any number of battles. Similarly, al-Himyari’s account finds its richness in the direct quotations, the conveyance of emotions, and the verses composed in the heat of battle. In other words, both authors effectively used mythos and logos speech to tell their stories, challenging my earlier suggestion of placing the first in themythos column and the second in the logos column. Finally, reading the poems in juxtaposition to the later prose allows us to see an expansive historical consciousness that was in motion in later eleventh-century poetry as well as in fifteenth-century historiography. The name of al-Zallaqa is virtually non-existent in the classical Arabic lexicon outside of the event of the battle, yet both court poet Ibn Hamdis and encyclopedist-historian al-Himyari succeeded in preserving its memory by inscribing it by means of vast temporal (history) and cultural (literature) space. In their faithfulness in recording the historical moment, that is, the actual details of the battle with its causes and effects, each was able to draw from an Arabic poetics that understood and explained the present by way of evoking eras past, from the Arabian Jahiliyya and the early Islamic wars of conquest to the rise and fall of the Córdoban caliphate. The story of Zallaqa thus survives somewhere between mythos and logos, between imagination and reason, fictive and factual. And like the story of “The Slave Girl and Nur al-Din Ali Ibn Khaqan,” in the Arabian Nights, the story of Zallaqa, when related in both poetry and prose, entertains and edifies, piquing our curiosity and then satisfying it.

Bibliography ‘Abd al-Jabbar Ibn Hamdis. Diwan, edited by Ihsan ‘Abbas. Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1960. Armstrong, Karen. The Case for God. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Fowler, Robert L. “Mythos and Logos.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 131 (2011): 45–66. Gibb, H. A. R. Studies in Islamic Civilization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962. THE BATTLE OF ZALLAQA BETWEEN MYTHOS TO LOGOS 275

Granara, William. “Sicilian Poets in Seville: Literary Affinities across Political Boundaries.” In A Sea of Languages: Rethinking the Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History, edited by Karla Mallette and S. C. Akbari, 199–216. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. Haddawi, Husain, trans. The Arabian Nights. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990. [al-] Himyari, Abu Abd-allah Muhammad (1937). Kitab al-rawd al-mi‘tar fi khabar al-aqtar, edited by E. Levi-Provencal. Cairo: Matba‘at lajnat al-ta’lif wa al-tarjama wa al-ashr, 1937. Leisten, Thomas. “Mashad al-Nasr: Monuments of War and Victory in Medieval Islamic Art.” Maqarnas 13 (1996): 7–26. Lewicki, T. “Ibn ‘Abd al-Mu’min al-Himyari.” In Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition. http://dx.doi.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1163/1573- 3912_islam_SIM_3030 Sahih al-Bukhari. Bab Harb Khad‘a: 2864. Shahid, Irfan. “The Sura of the Poets, Qur’an XXVI: Final Conclusions.” Journal of Arabic Literature 35 no. 2 (2004): 175–220. Stetkevych, Suzanne. The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: myth, gender, and ceremony in the classical Arabic ode. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. 2002. CHAPTER 10

Narratives of Muslim Violence in Christian Courts in the Late Medieval Kingdom of Valencia

Mark D. Meyerson

Francesc Centelles, a Christian shoemaker of Valencia who was well acquainted with the inhabitants of the local Muslim quarter, appeared in the court of the bailiff general on June 16, 1503, to testify about the character of Abrahim Murçi, a Muslim artisan whom a member of a rival Muslim family, the Torralbis, had severely wounded. Of Abrahim, Centelles said, “he is a man who seeks fights and quarrels, like any other Moor [Muslim].”1 In speaking thus, Centelles articulated a stereotypical view of the kingdom’s Muslims, or Mudéjars, long held by Christians—since King James I’s conquest of the Valencian region between 1232 and 1245 and his and

1 ARV (Arxiu del Regne de València): B (Bailia) 1433: fol. 415v. This case is treated in Mark D. Meyerson, The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel: Between Coexistence and Crusade (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 239–240, 245, 247, 254.

M. D. Meyerson (*) Department of History, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2019 277 M. T. Abate (ed.), Convivencia and Medieval Spain, Mediterranean Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96481-2_10 278 M. D. MEYERSON his heir’s suppression of the Mudéjar rebellions that punctuated the subsequent decades.2 Valencian Christians believed that Mudéjars were violent. Furthermore, they feared, or were periodically gripped by the fear, that the Mudéjar population, still approximately one-third of the kingdom’s total in the fifteenth century, constituted a well-armed fifth column who one day would rise up in conjunction with an invasion of the kingdom’s Muslim enemies, be they Granadan, North African, or Ottoman.3 The stereotypes and fears harbored by Centelles and his Christian fellows were not unfounded. Valencian Muslims did sometimes communicate and collaborate with foreign Muslim princes and corsairs; they did sometimes act together as a cohesive religious and political body; and they were violent. Yet the targets of the Muslims’ quotidian social violence were usually not Christians but other Muslims. Muslim violence, in other words, entailed intragroup feuding between Muslim families.4 The Christian stereotype of the violent Muslim originated, at least partly, in Christian observation of this social phenomenon. What unsettled Christians was the fact that this violence was perpetrated within a social world from which they were, by virtue of their non-Muslim identity, largely excluded, a world which they could not ever fully control or comprehend. Christians, it is worth pointing out, were just as frequently embroiled in disputes and feuds with their coreligionists.5 It is no surprise that Valencian Christians, like many ethnic groups in a particular time and place, would have regarded behaviors, which they accepted and even lauded when enacted by members of their own group, as problematic or abhorrent when performed by the members of another group. The aim of this chapter, however, is not to evaluate the accuracy of these Christian perceptions of Mudéjar conduct. Its primary concern is

2 Robert I. Burns, Islam Under the Crusaders: Colonial Survival in the Thirteenth-Century Kingdom of Valencia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973); Pierre Guichard, Les musulmans de Valence et la Reconquête (XIe-XIIIe siècles), 2 vols. (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1990–1991); and Josep Torró, El naixament d’una colònia. Dominació i resistència a la frontera valenciana (1238–1276) (Valencia: Universitat de València, 1999). 3 Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, La frontera amb l’Islam en el segle XIV: Cristians i sarrains al País Valencià (Barcelona: Consell Superior d’Investigacions Científiques, 1988), 17–72; Meyerson, Muslims of Valencia, 61–98. 4 Meyerson, Muslims of Valencia, 225–269. 5 Rafael Narbona Vizcaíno, Malhechores, violencia y justicia ciudadana en la Valencia bajomedieval (1360–1399) (Valencia: Ajuntament de València, 1990); and Pablo Pérez García, La comparsa de los malhechores: Valencia, 1479–1518 (Valencia: Diputació de València, 1990). NARRATIVES OF MUSLIM VIOLENCE IN CHRISTIAN COURTS IN THE LATE… 279 rather to explore the violent actions of Muslims on which such Christian views were based and the Muslims’ recounting and understanding of their own feuding violence. The exploration of the phenomenon of Muslim feuding and of the Muslim oral culture that commented on and publicized it should help to make some sense of a paradox in the history of the Muslims of the late medieval Kingdom of Valencia: how the Mudéjars could have been, on the one hand, a conquered, apparently servile population living for the most part under the thumb of Christian seigneurs and, it would seem, irremediably fractious and fratricidal, and, on the other hand, a population that inspired fear among its Christian overlords and evinced a remarkable group solidarity and deeply rooted Islamic identity, continuing, for instance, to adhere to Islam en masse for many decades after the forced baptisms of the early sixteenth century.6 In order to resolve this paradox, it is crucial to grasp that feuding and the social structures and assumptions in which it was rooted were integral to “Islamic” culture as the Mudéjars experienced and understood it. For the Mudéjars, feuding entailed the performance and the perpetuation of their Muslim identity. The Mudéjars’ feuding was a manifestation of their particular honor culture in a Valencian society that was a composite of three honor cultures—the Muslim, the Christian, and the Jewish. In each of them aggression and violence were integral to the processes through which families in local communities contested social status and access to relatively scarce material resources. Families and individuals couched their struggles for power in an idiom of honor. Since honor was a social value, the possession of which depended on the community’s evaluation of the conduct of an individual and his or her family, acts that entailed a challenge to or a defense of honor had a meaning recognized and understood by the entire community. Feuding violence, then, was a form of social discourse expressed by rival families and read by the community. The aggressive status competition in which Mudéjars engaged was group specific; it was intended for, and primarily had meaning for, a Muslim audience. The Mudéjars’ collective identity was partly achieved

6 The bibliography on the Moriscos is vast and growing. Some key works on the Valencian Moriscos are Tulio Halperin Donghi, Un conflicto nacional: Moriscos y cristianos viejos en Valencia (Valencia: Institución Alfonso El Magnánimo, 1980); Benjamin Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos: Juan de Ribera and Religious Reform in Valencia, 1568–1614 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); and Rafael Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, Heroicas decisiones. La Monarquía Católica y los moriscos valencianos (Valencia: Institució Alfons El Magnànim, 2001). 280 M. D. MEYERSON through the repeated exchange of violence.7 Through feuding Mudéjar males were, in addition to establishing a pecking order within their own communities, engaging in acts of cultural reproduction. They were, moreover, making an implicit political statement: that they were bold, unvan- quished men of honor, and not as subjugated as their Christian overlords wanted to believe. Paralleling and reinforcing the violent exchanges between feuding families, which themselves constituted a form of social discourse, was a discourse of contrasting narratives. In order for an act of violence to have had social significance, in order for it to have substantiated a family’s claim that it was more worthy than its opponents, it had to be publicized. The victors in a fight, or successful avengers, needed to recount their heroics and esti- mable conduct before the audience of the Mudéjar community; they had to post their triumph on the public scorecard. Although there were not, as far as we know, Mudéjar bards composing epics about the exploits of feuding families, parties to feuds did circulate stories about their violent deeds in order to persuade other members of the community of their honorable status. In accordance with the Mudéjars’ segmentary, oppositional ethos, such feuding narratives were contested. Each party to a feud fashioned its own version of events as audience and circumstances demanded. Narratives of violence, like the violence itself, were part and parcel of negotiations for power and status in Mudéjar society; they were constitutive of social relations.8

7 Michael Gilsenan, Lords of the Lebanese Marches: Violence and Narrative in an Arab Society (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1996), 206–207; Raymond Jamous, “From the Death of Men to the Peace of God: Violence and Peacemaking in the Rif,” in Honour and Grace in Anthropology, ed. J.G. Peristiany and Julian Pitt-Rivers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 178; and Michael Herzfeld, The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 23–39. 8 My argument here is inspired by Gilsenan, Lords of the Lebanese Marches, 57–64, 160–164; Steven C. Caton, “Peaks of Yemen I Summon”: Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemeni Tribe (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 13–14, 29–31, 40–41, 109–113, 175–179; Michael Meeker, “Meaning and Society in the Near East: Examples from the Black Sea Turks and the Levantine Arabs,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 7 (1976): 251–254; Andrew Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 14–17, 107–113, 144–147; Raymond Jamous, Honneur et “baraka”: Les structures sociales traditionelles dans le Rif (Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 77–78; and Herzfeld, Poetics of Manhood, 205–207. NARRATIVES OF MUSLIM VIOLENCE IN CHRISTIAN COURTS IN THE LATE… 281

The only source for Muslim narratives of Muslim violence in the late medieval Kingdom of Valencia is the records of Christian tribunals. Most useful are the very fragmentary records of the court of the bailiff general, who, as guardian of the royal patrimony of which the kingdom’s Muslims formed a part, exercised a general, though not exclusive, jurisdiction over Muslim affairs. Even from the bailiff’s court there survive only a handful of case files that deal with Muslim feuding violence. Here I examine two of these case files. One dates from 1452, the other from 1476; both are incomplete. The narratives in question are those of Muslim plaintiffs and Muslim defendants. The court scribe, however, did not record the Muslims’ statements verbatim. Rather, the Christian procuradors of the Muslim parties— legal representatives to whom the Muslims had given power of attorney—or the royal prosecutor himself presented the charges of Muslim plaintiffs and the confessions or denials of Muslim defendants before the court. This meant that the Muslims’ statements, or narratives, were structured in accordance with standard (Christian) judicial procedure—that is, in point form, with certain standard rhetorical flourishes—and were rendered in Catalan, the regional vernacular. By the fifteenth century, most Valencian Muslims could speak Catalan, and did so when communicating with Christians. Among themselves, however, they usually conversed in Arabic, and they presumably would have told their stories of feuding violence in Arabic. In other words, we do not have a verbatim transcript of Muslim narratives, but a record of narratives which were in certain respects restruc- tured and perhaps even translated to meet the needs of a Christian judicia- r y. 9 Furthermore, as I later show, it must be kept in mind that the stories, or versions of events, which Muslims presented before the bailiff’s court were not necessarily the same as those—and usually were not the same as those—which they would have recounted before a Muslim audience. Yet

9 On Muslims in the kingdom’s Christian courts, see Carmen Barceló, “Un asesinato en La Valldigna (Valencia, 1492),” Al-Qantara 26 (2005): 475–498; and Meyerson, Muslims of Valencia, 184–220. Barceló’s article includes her transcription and translation of one of the rare extant examples of the testimony of a Muslim witness recorded in Arabic; also, see her Minorías islámicas en el País Valenciano. Historia y dialecto (Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, 1984), 305–308, no. 149, for another example, also from Valldigna, dated 1511. Gideon M. Kressel, Ascendancy through Aggression: The Anatomy of a Blood Feud among Urbanized Bedouins (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1996), 54–59, 77–87, 101, 109, 117–122, which treats the Bedouin in Israel, is an instructive modern parallel to the situation of feuding Mudéjars using Christian courts in a Christian state. 282 M. D. MEYERSON by reading against the grain the stories that the Muslims, or their procuradors, offered in court, we can go some way toward reconstructing the sorts of narratives of violence that Muslims fashioned for the consumption of their coreligionists, we can get at—to steal a phrase from Michael Herzfeld—a Valencian Muslim “poetics of manhood.”10 The appearance of feuding Muslims in Christian courts to lay charges against their enemies was probably more the exception than the rule. In the minds of Mudéjars embroiled in feuds and of their Muslim public, assaults and homicides perpetrated in the course of feuds were not “crimes” to be corrected or punished by state authorities, least of all the officers of a Christian state. The real judges of a feud were the members of the Muslim community whose role was to evaluate the conduct of feuding families as honorable or dishonorable, not to penalize them for their violent actions. The feud was a form of private justice and was self-regulating, the opposing families being deterred from violence less by royal or seigneurial authority than by the mutual fear of provoking bloody retaliation. Mudéjars, moreover, had their own means of temporarily halting or per- manently settling feuds—through payments of blood money to the families of victims and through the arrangement of formal truces. The key figure in such peacemaking efforts was the faqîh, the local font of Islamic religious and legal knowledge who commanded respect and authority in the Muslim community.11 Royal magistrates and Christian seigneurs would intervene in Muslim feuds primarily in order to maintain the public peace and to uphold their own authority as the ultimate source of justice for all their subjects or vassals. In the first of the cases under consideration, for instance, the royal prosecutor Pere d’Anglesola indicted Azmet and Mahomat Albez in the bailiff general’s court after two of the bailiff’s vicars found the body of the Albezs’ alleged victim, Abrahim Pancorret, in the abattoir of Valencia’s Muslim quarter. There the vicars encountered the first cousin of the victim, one Homar Bayrini, and asked him if he could identify the killers and if he wanted to press charges. Such an obvious violation of the king’s peace

10 Herzfeld, Poetics of Manhood. 11 Meyerson, Muslims of Valencia, 201, 240–244, 264–268; and Kathryn A. Miller, Guardians of Islam: Religious Authority and Muslim Communities of Late Medieval Spain (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), on the role of the faqîh in Mudéjar communities. NARRATIVES OF MUSLIM VIOLENCE IN CHRISTIAN COURTS IN THE LATE… 283 in the capital city could not remain unpunished.12 In the second case, in which Yuceff Moris and his mother Xumen, Muslims from the lordship of Picassent, charged the Torraboni brothers of Valencia with assault, the plaintiffs registered their plea in the bailiff’s court conjointly with their Christian lord, the knight Ramon Castellà. Castellà’s judicial pursuit of the Torrabonis was an expression of his authority over his own Muslim vassals.13 Feuding Muslims had their own reasons for requesting the intervention of Christian authorities. If a family was faring badly in a feud and was too weak to take revenge personally on its enemies, it might prove useful to seek the protection of the Crown or local lord and bring royal or seigneurial pressure to bear on them. It might also be convenient and face-saving for both parties to a feud to have the Christian authorities step in to impose a peace between them. They could thus cease hostilities without dishonorably admitting to weakness and to a desire for peace.14 The first case, which dates from March 1452, begins with the royal prosecutor laying charges against the brothers Azmet and Mahomat Albez, once residents of Paterna and now residents of Mislata, for the murder of Abrahim Pancorret of Paterna, who was around 50 years old at the time of his death. The prosecutor was pursuing the “claim” initially registered by Homar Bayrini. Amîn of Paterna and participant in the fight that resulted in Abrahim’s death, Bayrini was the first cousin as well as the brother-in- law, by way of parallel-cousin marriage, of the victim.15 The prosecutor based his list of charges and rendering of events on the account of Homar Bayrini and presented them in the bailiff’s court in the form of a series of distinct capitols.16 In the following section, the content of each capitol is summarized and followed by commentary in parentheses:

12 ARV: B, Procesos, signatura 23 (March 24–May 9, 1452). This case file contains 28 unnumbered folios, though I am numbering the folios here for purposes of reference. The case file is incomplete and ends before the presentation of the witnesses for the prosecution and the defense; there is neither judicial decision nor sentence. Fol. 22r records the vicars’ finding of Abrahim Pancorret’s body on March 23 and Homar Bayrini’s identification of the killers and affirmation that he wanted the Crown to proceed against them as “matadors.” 13 ARV: B, Procesos, signatura 61 (May 14–June 25, 1476). This case file is also incomplete and lacks witness testimonies as well as the bailiff’s decision and sentence. It contains 32 unnumbered folios, though I will number them here for purposes of reference. 14 Jamous, Honneur et “baraka,” 81. 15 ARV: B, Procesos, signatura 23: fol. 1r, where Homar Bayrini is described as “moro afermant esser cosingerma e cunyat de Abraham Pancorret, occis.” 16 Ibid.: fols. 1r–2r. 284 M. D. MEYERSON

(1) In days past, the brothers Azmet and Mohamat Albez, on account of an argument or dispute they had with Abrahim Pancorret and some of his relatives, arrived at a peace and truce with Abrahim. Pere de Cabanyelles, the Crown’s representative in Paterna, presided over this peacemaking. (Here we see the telescoping of events typical of feud narratives: the feud originated vaguely “in days past.” The reasons for the original dispute are less important than the bloodshed that follows.) (2) Despite the truce, the Albez brothers still harbored ill will against Abrahim, which “they manifested verbally in the places or social gather- ings in which they found themselves.”17 (In feuds, publicly arranged truces or compensation payments rarely resulted in a permanent peace but usually just in a cease-fire. During such a cold peace, public displays of animosity and verbal bravado made it clear to all concerned that the parties to the peace had accepted it only grudgingly and not out of weakness. Even if the Muslim community did not expect such a peace to endure—and indeed the Albezs were broadcasting the fact that it would not—the prosecutor emphasized its existence because the violation of a “peace and truce” was a serious offense.) (3–6) recount the violence itself. Learning that Abrahim and some of his relatives were yesterday in Valencia, the Albez brothers planned to “injure and/or kill” them. The prosecutor then introduces Bayrini’s account of the fight with the rhetorical censure applied to the acts of all alleged criminals of whatever faith: “induced by malign spirit, having set aside the fear of God, and in great contempt of royal lordship,” the Albez brothers, out of enmity and with premeditation, attacked Abrahim and his companions with swords unsheathed. They wounded Abrahim with some blows, and then Azmet “gave a great blow or cut to the leg of Abrahim, from which blow he immediately died.” The prosecutor points out that “fresh blood” was found on the sword of Azmet Albez.18

17 Ibid.: fol. 1v: “iniquitat e mal volença … e axi de paraula ho manifestaven en los lochs ho ajusts ques. trobaven.” 18 Ibid.: fol. 1v, (4): “los dits delats e denunciats … induhits del spirit maligne e la temor de deu apart posada e en gran menyspreu de la senyoria real, ma armada e inimicablement e ab pensa deliberada irruhiren vers e contra lo dit Abraham e altres qui ab aquell eren, tirant los molts colps ab les spasses arrancades en tant que naffraren aquell de alguns colps, e seny- aladament lo dit Azmet [Albez] … dona un gran colp ho coltellada en la cama al dit Abraham, del qual colp aquell es de continent mort e passat de la present vida en la altra.” (5) notes the “sanch frescha” on Azmet’s sword. NARRATIVES OF MUSLIM VIOLENCE IN CHRISTIAN COURTS IN THE LATE… 285

(In Homar Bayrini’s story—retold by the prosecutor—Abrahim Pancorret appears completely passive and the defenseless victim of a premeditated armed assault. Although this was the sort of description of a “victim” which would have served to get the Albez brothers in hot water with the royal authorities and possibly condemned to capital punishment for premeditated homicide, Bayrini and the other relatives of Abrahim Pancorret would probably not have circulated in the Mudéjar community such a portrait of Abrahim in his last moments. Bayrini, who himself took part in this fight, would have told a story of how he and Abrahim and their fellows valiantly defended themselves when ambushed, lest they be seen as so many meek sheep going to slaughter.19) (7) The Albez brothers are “men of evil life, reputation, and conversation.” (Virtually all denunciations of alleged criminals end with such an assertion.20 It must be kept in mind, however, that the Mudéjar community would not have deemed committing homicide in the course of a feud as an indication of bad character but as consistent with the conduct of an honorable man.)

Each one of the clauses in the prosecutor’s denunciation of the Albez brothers typically ends with the assertion “and this is public knowledge,” which was meant to lend the impression that the circumstances of the crime were so well known that it was an open-and-shut case. Even so, acts of violence perpetrated in the course of a feud were supposed to be matters of “public knowledge” and commentary. Aggressors had no intention of concealing their crime and leaving the identity of the perpetrator as an unsolved mystery. Individuals and families embroiled in feuds usually made a point of making sure that all concerned knew just who had insulted, wounded, or killed whom. On the same day that the prosecutor presented his accusations—March 24—and again on March 30, the sons of Abrahim Pancorret, Mahomat

19 Kressel, Ascendancy through Aggression, 58–59, 77, 101, 109, emphasizes how Bedouin accounts of their actions in feuds shifted in response to different audiences: among their peers they boasted about the violence they had inflicted on their enemies; before the Israeli authorities or arbitrators they feigned innocence and exaggerated the amount of damage they had suffered. 20 ARV: B, Procesos, signatura 23: fol. 1v: “homens de mala fama, vida e conversacio.” See the appendix of transcribed documents in Narbona, Malhechores, for the use of the same sort of judicial rhetoric in the denunciations of Christian assailants. 286 M. D. MEYERSON and Yuceff, and his brother Ali appeared before the court to offer the names of other Muslims who had assisted the Albezs in their attack on Abrahim: Azmet Panquerret of Petrés, Ali Ivaydi and the son of Cilim Xaori of Alcàsser, and Azmet Yazit and Azmet Xori of Picassent.21 Such a manifestation of agnatic solidarity in a moment of crisis is noteworthy. Even if agnates lived in separate nuclear households and practiced partible inheritance, they usually banded together as a vengeance group in defense of family honor.22 Since their cousin Homar Bayrini had already initiated legal procedures against the Albezs—the vicars of the bailiff general, it is worth recalling, had left him little choice—the Pancorrets seized the opportunity to get the Albezs’ allies, who were also their enemies, in trouble with the Crown. At the same time, the Pancorrets’ public display of solidarity in court sent a message to their enemies that they were ready to take revenge—in or out of the courtroom, though preferably outside. Affairs of honor were better settled extra-judicially; besting enemies through the agency of royal or seigneurial courts did not do a great deal to enhance a family’s prestige. The case file contains an alternative, and rather more interesting, narrative of the events leading to the death of Abrahim Pancorret. Its source is Azmet Albez, the alleged killer, whom the bailiff’s officers had appre- hended. I have reconstructed Azmet’s narrative on the basis of his own response—point by point—to the accusations of the prosecution on March 24; the formal arguments for the defense presented by Azmet’s Christian procurador, Bernat Garí, on March 28; and Garí’s presentation of an additional argument in defense of Azmet on March 30. Garí of course formulated his arguments in consultation with his client Azmet. When Azmet was brought before the bailiff and his assessor, Francesc Mascó, also present were Ali Coret, lieutenant of Mahomat de Bellvis, the royal qâdî, or Islamic judge, and Mahomat Razbayda and Çaat Xupio, adelantats, or executive officers, of the Muslimaljama (community) of Valencia city. These Muslim officials, particularly Coret, the lieutenant qâdî, might have served as translators during Azmet’s hearing. However, there is not any indication in the proceedings that Azmet required a trans-

21 Ibid.: fols. 5r-v (March 24), 17r–18r (March 30). In the latter instance, the Pancorrets appeared in order to authorize their procurador, the notary Jacme de Sant Vicent, and the prosecutor, Pere d’Anglesola, to act on their behalf, which included adding the names of Yazit and Xori to the list of the Albezs’ accomplices. 22 Kressel, Ascendancy through Aggression, 1–2, 70; Herzfeld, Poetics of Manhood, 89–91. NARRATIVES OF MUSLIM VIOLENCE IN CHRISTIAN COURTS IN THE LATE… 287 lator. Garí would later, and lamely, assert on behalf of Azmet that his client did not know that a peace had been established between his family and the Pancorrets because he “does not understand aljemia [Romance vernacular/Catalan] well.”23 Garí was attempting to disqualify Azmet’s original admission that he had indeed been party to the public peace and truce with the Pancorrets. Yet, according to Azmet, it was not his family who violated the peace but the Pancorrets. Subsequent to the peace, Abrahim Pancorret and his cousin-cum-brother-in-law, Homar Bayrini, engineered the murder of two of Azmet’s brothers, Yuceff and Ali, one of them on the road from Paterna to Valencia. Azmet could even name the killer of his brothers: Homar Çuayhat. (Hiring a killer from another lineage to do the dirty work was not dishonorable; it was more likely a sign of the employer’s social power.24) Azmet thus admitted that because of the death of his brothers, he had in fact gone about making a show of his animosity toward the Pancorrets.25 Such ritual verbal abuse of the enemy in the wake of violence to one’s kin was part of a required presentation of self which, if revenge were later taken, would become part of the feud narrative—the dramatic foreshadowing of the actual blood-taking.26 The Pancorrets and their allies were apparently a dangerous lot, which is why the Albez brothers made a strategic, though by no means pusillani- mous, withdrawal from Paterna to Mislata. In fact, Azmet’s procurador Garí alleged that his client should not be tried for the murder of Abrahim Pancorret because Abrahim was “an enemy of the Lord King” who had been condemned to death in absentia for having taken part in the killing of another Muslim, Fat Navarro of the Vall d’Uixó.27 If this were the case,

23 ARV: B, Procesos, signatura 23: fol. 12v (March 28): “lo dit Azmet revoca la dit confen- sio [sic] com no sapia quey hagues pau e treva entre ells e lo dit Azmet no entena be aljemia.” Here Garí was attempting to invalidate Azmet’s original confession, or response to the capitols presented by the prosecutor, on March 24, in which he admitted to having agreed to a public peace and truce with the Pancorrets (fol. 3r-v). 24 Jamous, Honneur et “baraka,” 84. 25 ARV: B, Procesos, signatura 23: fol. 3r-v (from Azmet’s initial response to the prosecutor’s accusations): “li es stat mort un germa venint de Paterna a Valencia, en la qual mort son stats consents lo dit Abrafim Pancorret e lo dit Homar Albayrini e han sostengut lo matador en casa sua.” Of Çuayhat Azmet next stated, “havia mort a son germa lo primer e encara fon en la mort del germa qui darrerament li han mort.” 26 Gilsenan, Lords of the Lebanese Marches, 160–164. 27 ARV: B, Procesos, signatura 23: fols. 7v-8r: “era enemich del Senyor Rey com aquell e altres ab sentencia de proces de absencia fos condemnat a mort natural.” 288 M. D. MEYERSON then Garí’s argument stands as a commentary on the limitations of royal justice when dealing with mortal enemies determined to shed each other’s blood and on the growing power and prestige of Abrahim Pancorret, who clearly had gained the upper hand over his opponents, the Albezs and the family of Fat Navarro, precisely through killing their kinsmen. According to Azmet Albez’s version of the story, after he and his remaining brother Mahomat moved to Mislata, the faqîh of Paterna and another Muslim came there in an effort to arrange a peace between them and the Pancorret faction. The faqîh intervened at the instance of Abrahim Pancorret, Homar Bayrini, and their ally Azmet Fucey, who desired peace, allegedly because “they were afraid of” the Albez brothers.28 Azmet Albez’s gloss on the motives of the members of the Pancorret faction for extending their hands in peace is not wholly credible. True, they may well have feared the retribution of the Albez brothers, since they had seen to the murder of the other two, but in offering peace the Pancorrets and their allies were operating from a position of strength. On the public tally of assaults and homicides, the Pancorrets were clearly ahead; were they to make a lasting peace now, they would remain in that position. The Albezs, on the other hand, had the debt of their brothers’ blood to requite. Were they to accept peace with the Pancorrets, the Muslim community would perceive it as a humiliating act of submission. Yet, according to the Albez version, they told the faqîh that “they were content to make peace.” Furthermore, when the faqîh and his companion returned to Paterna, Pancorret, Bayrini, and Fucey “said that they had decided not to make [peace], for they preferred to be their enemies.”29 This retelling of the story, which left the Albez brothers looking blameless, was meant for the consumption of the bailiff general. What was more likely to have occurred was just the opposite: that the Pancorrets had sent the faqîh on a peace mission in order to consolidate their strong position and that the Albez brothers, wanting to even the score, rejected the peace offer. In the narrative he crafted for the bailiff’s court, Azmet Albez put in

28 Ibid.: fols. 15v-16r: “diu lot dit Azmet Albez quell alfaqui de Paterna e hun altre moro vingueren al Mizlata a requesta dels dits Abrahim Pancorret e Homar Bayrini e Azmet Fucey, pregant als dits Mahomat Albez e Azmet Albez que fessen pau ab les sobredits Homar, Abrahim e Azmet Fucey com aquells se temessen de ells.” 29 Ibid.: fols. 16r-v: the Albez brothers said “quen eren contents de fer la dita pau,” but when the faqîh and his colleague returned to Paterna, Abrahim Pancorret and his allies “digueren que havien delliberat de no fer ho [the peace] car mes amaven esser enemichs llurs.” NARRATIVES OF MUSLIM VIOLENCE IN CHRISTIAN COURTS IN THE LATE… 289 the mouths of his enemies the words that he and his brother had most likely spoken. Azmet Albez admitted that on March 23, the day of the killing of Abrahim Pancorret, he, his brother Mahomat, and some others30 had indeed gone to Valencia—not for the purpose of attacking Abrahim but in order to speak with the Albezs’ procurador Bernat Garí about arranging for the arrest of Homar Çuayhat, the hired slayer of their brothers. (This incidentally casts some doubt on Azmet’s alleged inability to communicate in Catalan, unless Garí could speak Arabic.)31 After leaving Garí’s house, which appears to have been outside the city, Azmet Albez and company stopped at an inn on the Quart road. There, before entering the city, they deposited their arms, “except their swords and bucklers,” which Azmet and his brother Mahomat “were accustomed” to carry “every day, because of their enemies and the murder perpetrated on the persons of Jucef and Ali Albez, their brothers.”32 In the account of the fight that Azmet fashioned in order to defend himself in the bailiff’s court, he naturally accuses Abrahim Pancorret and his fellows of having been the aggressors. Yet the words and behavior Azmet attributes to the Pancorret faction are those which he in all likeli- hood would have attributed to himself and his brother had he been telling the story before a Muslim audience. Azmet describes Pancorret and his colleagues as fearless, as possessed of an almost reckless courage, the qualities required of a man who placed the honor of his family above all else, even his own life—the qualities, probably, of an Azmet Albez, who rejected the peace offer of a more powerful enemy and then pursued him to Valencia, the seat of royal authority. In Azmet Albez’s narrative, an unidentified Muslim approached Abrahim Pancorret, Homar Bayrini, and Azmet Fucey when they were near the bosseria (pursemakers’ stalls) in Valencia’s market and told them that the Albez brothers, “their enemies,” were in the abattoir of the moreria (Muslim quarter) and that therefore they should not go there.

30 These would have been the individuals listed in the text above at n. 21. 31 ARV: B, Procesos, signatura 23: fol. 3v: “per parlar ab ell [Garí] e per fer pendre lo dit Homar Çuayhat”; and fol. 13r: “anaren a casa den Bernat Gari, procurador llur, per demanar de consell com los faria pendre.” It is far more likely that the Albez brothers were discussing these legal matters with Garí in Catalan than in Arabic. 32 Ibid.: fol. 3v: “al cami de Quart posaren les armes en un hostal, sino les spases e broquers”; and 8v: “ab spases e broquers axi com solien anar cada dia per llurs enemichs, de e per raho dels morts perpetrades en les persones dels dits Jucef e Ali Albez, germans llurs.” 290 M. D. MEYERSON

Pancorret, Bayrini, and Fucey responded, “‘So what?! If they are in the abattoir, then we will go there,’ or similar words, with threatening tone and gestures.”33 Homar Bayrini then “pulled out his buckler menacingly and, with his buckler out, he went with his companions from the bosseria toward the abattoir.”34 Having thus broadcasted their intention to kill or gravely wound the Albez brothers, when they arrived at the moreria’s abattoir and espied their intended victims, they immediately drew their swords and rushed at them. While slashing at the Albezs with their swords and delivering “great cuts and thrusts,” Abrahim Pancorret and his friends allegedly said, or were heard to say, “the traitors must die and they must not escape.” Mahomat Albez was wounded on the leg and Azmet on the right hand, which explained the “fresh blood” found on his sword—it was his own and not Abrahim’s. Azmet then managed to recover his sword and to defend himself as best he could. Azmet could not, or would not, say how or by whom Abrahim had been mortally wounded, but only that he and his brother “did much to defend themselves … and that it was a great miracle that they were not immediately killed.”35 Azmet Albez’s argument that he was guiltless because he had acted in self-defense might have persuaded the bailiff general. For Azmet’s Muslim audience, however, “guilt” was not the issue. For it, the salient point was that the Albez brothers had, one way or another, avenged their dead brothers by killing Abrahim Pancorret. The honor of the Albez family was at least preserved, if not enhanced. In order to ensure this, Azmet, if he managed to be acquitted, or his brother Mahomat, or one of their friends, would tell and retell the tale of the fight with the Pancorret faction, attrib- uting to themselves the same audacity and bravery Azmet had ascribed in the court version to his enemies Abrahim Pancorret and Homar Bayrini, and certainly not downplaying the “miracle” of the Albezs’ triumph against the odds.

33 Ibid.: fol. 9r: After the Muslim warned Pancorret, Bayrini, and Fucey that “enemichs llurs” were in the abattoir and “axi que noy anassen,” the three men “respongueren ‘non cura, que si ells son a la carniceria nosaltres hi irem’ o semblants paraules en so e gest de menaces.” 34 Ibid.: fols. 23v-24r: “Homar Bayrini arranqua lo broquer menacant e ab lo broquer arranquat ana ab sos companyons de la bosseria fins a la carniceria.” 35 Ibid.: fols. 9v-11v: While “tirant los grans coltellades e stoquades,” the assailants said, “Muyren los traydors e no se scapen a ells.” Nevertheless, the Albez brothers “feren molt de defensarse de aquells e fon gran miracle com de continent no foren morts.” NARRATIVES OF MUSLIM VIOLENCE IN CHRISTIAN COURTS IN THE LATE… 291

The second case, which dates from 1476 and pits the Moris family of Picassent against the Torraboni brothers of Valencia, also presents us with two opposing narratives of a violent confrontation that left Yuceff Moris with four or five wounds. One version of the story was presented by the plaintiffs, Yuceff and his mother Xumen (in conjunction with their lord Ramon Castellà). According to it, a dispute “in days past” between the Torraboni brothers—Mahomat, Acen, and Fucey—and the Moris brothers—Mahomat and Abrahim—led to a brawl. The brawl must have erupted in Valencia, for shortly afterward the two families agreed to subscribe to a “peace and truce” in the court of the bailiff general, which was located in the capital. The Torrabonis, however, could not overcome their rancor and ill will, and so “went looking for the opportunity to kill or gravely injure Yuceff Moris and other relatives of those [Mahomat and Abrahim Moris] with whom they had affirmed the said peace and truce.”36 Yuceff’s precise relationship to Mahomat and Abrahim Moris, the actual parties to the dispute, brawl, and truce, is unclear, but when two families were feuding—and in this case the feud may well have been long-standing—all male relatives in the opposing family were fair game. To make a short story a bit shorter, the Torrabonis, armed with swords and bucklers, ambushed Yuceff in Valencia, at the Quart gate through which he was exiting the city. They and some alleged Christian accomplices wounded Yuceff so severely that he was near death for a time. The Torrabonis then purportedly publicized their successful attack on Yuceff, saying “that they have done this to avenge the occurrence [i.e., the brawl] in and for which they had subscribed to the said peace and truce” and “that it displeased them that they had not finished killing him [Yuceff].” The plaintiffs, however, took the Torrabonis’ telling of the tale of their ambush of Yuceff, an act of violence and a story which would have earned them the approval of the Muslim community, and recast it as a kind of judicial confession for the purposes of their case against the Torrabonis in the bailiff’s court. In their denunciations, they asserted that the Torrabonis had publicly “confessed” and been heard to confess to the ambush of Yuceff Moris.37

36 ARV: B, Procesos, signatura 61: fols. 2v-3r: “e anaven cerquant opportunitat on porien matar o greument dampnificar al dit Yuceff e als altres parents de aquells ab qui havien fermades les dites pau e treva.” 37 Ibid.: fols. 3r-4r: “e que aço havien fet per venja del cars en e per lo qual havien fermades les dites pau e treva, dient mes avant quels desplahia com nol havien acabat de matar.” 292 M. D. MEYERSON

If the Torraboni brothers crowed before a Muslim audience about their savaging of their enemy Yuceff Moris, in the bailiff general’s court they presented an account of their bloody clash with Yuceff in which they cast themselves in a less-than-flattering light. According to the three separate responses of the brothers to the Moris’ accusations, and to their joint defense statement, of the three Torraboni brothers only Mahomat had even participated in the original brawl and truce with the Moris brothers, and Acen was not in any way involved in the incident that eventuated in the wounding of Yuceff Moris.38 Fucey Torraboni maintained, first of all, that it was not he and his brothers who had violated the public truce; rather, it was the Moris who had “come diverse times to the moreria [of Valencia] and made a thousand insults, malicious comments, and aggressive displays.”39 More to the point, Fucey and his brother Mahomat both asserted that instead of them having ambushed Yuceff Moris, it was Yuceff, in the company of five or six armed Muslims, who attacked them. The brothers had just arrived at the garden, or irrigated plot, of the Christian boilermaker Anthoni Martí, which was located just outside the Quart gate. They were getting ready to dine there with a Christian friend, one Pere Albarrazí, who was coming with the supper. Standing at the door of Martí’s garden house, the Torrabonis turned and saw “six or seven Moors with swords and bucklers coming very cautiously” through the Quart gate. Mahomat, by his own account, said to himself, “These [men] are coming for me, I’m afraid that they’ll harm my brother.”40 Moris and his allies then besieged the Torraboni brothers in the garden house.41 Because he was lame and had a

38 Ibid.: fols. 9r-12r for the confession of Mahomat; 12r-15r for the confession of Fucey; 15r-17r for the confession of Acen; and 23r-24r for the joint defense statement that the Torraboni brothers made before the court without the assistance of a procurador, which they could not afford because they were “poor and miserable people.” 39 Ibid.: fol. 13r: “ans los dits Moris son venguts diverses veguades a la moreria els han fet mil hontes e despits e parenteries de questio.” 40 Ibid.: fol. 10v: “sis o set moros ab spases e broquers qui venien molt cuytadament … E llavors el dit confessant [Mahomat] dix entre si mateix, ‘aquests per mi venen, por tinch que a mon jerma nol enugen.’” Mahomat identified a couple of Yuceff Moris’ men: “Fazardo” and a son of “Fay.” 41 Ibid.: In their joint defense statement (fol. 24r), the Torraboni brothers purposely exaggerated the assault of Yuceff Moris and his men on the garden house: “[Moris] esser stat cometedor de la dita bregua e haver insultat als dits Torrabonis e encara aquell e altres sos companyons haver combatut la casa e ort hon eren los dits Torrabonis o eren anats a sopar.” NARRATIVES OF MUSLIM VIOLENCE IN CHRISTIAN COURTS IN THE LATE… 293 crippled left hand, Mahomat locked himself into a room of the house.42 Fucey meanwhile managed to sneak back to the city, where he encountered his friend Pere carrying the food. He told him, “the Moors of Picassent are there outside and they want to kill my brother!” Pere told Fucey not to worry, that he would make his enemies go away, “and all will be peace.” But just as they turned, Yuceff Moris and company, who had already seen them, rushed at them. According to Fucey, Pere exclaimed, “I come only for the benefit of peace.” But the assailants only wanted swordplay; they forced Pere to draw his sword. Bystanders intervened to prevent Yuceff Moris and his cronies from killing Fucey.43 By the Torrabonis’ account, in sum, Mahomat was cowering in a room in a garden cottage; and Fucey, who never even drew his sword, was shielded by a Christian friend. Their version of the violent encounter, however, leaves some room for doubt. Mahomat Torraboni may well have suffered from a physical handicap, but he was in fact able to fight: he was the one Torraboni brother who, by his own admission, had participated in the brawl with the Moris brothers and who subsequently agreed to a truce with them.44 Even less credible was Fucey Torraboni’s suggestion that he was non-violent, a man who simply “lives from his labor and work as a shoemaker.” Most Mudéjars who were embroiled in feuds were actually artisans and peasant farmers.45 The Torrabonis, moreover, could not say with certainty how Yuceff Moris had been wounded, but suggested rather unpersuasively that one of the bystanders who broke up the fight might have done it.46 Such a story would hardly have redounded to the honor of the Torraboni family, but it might have persuaded the bailiff general that they were not the vindictive, boastful aggressors portrayed in the Moris’ narrative.

42 Ibid.: fol. 11r: Mahomat describes himself as “coxo e afollat de la ma squerra.” 43 Ibid.: fol. 14r-v. Fucey to Pere, “qui portava davall la capa lo sopar, … ‘los moros de Picacent son alli de fora e volen matar a mon jerma.’” Pere: “‘tot sera pau.’ E llavors ells tornaren e los dits moros, com les veren, irruhiren vers aquells.” Pere again: “‘Yo no vinch sino per beneffici de pau.’” In their joint defense statement, the Torraboni brothers emphasized that it was the intervention of bystanders that forced Moris and company to withdraw and saved Fucey from death (fol. 23v). 44 Ibid.: Both Mahomat (fol. 9v) and Fucey (fol. 12v) stated this. 45 Ibid.: fol. 15r: “viu de sa fahena e treball com sia sabater.”; Meyerson, Muslims of Valencia, pp. 244–245, on the central role of artisans and farmers in Mudejar feuds. 46 Ibid.: fol. 24r. After asserting that the wounding of Yuceff Moris was basically his own fault—“a gran carrech e culpa seu”—they suggested that “los departidors” must have inflicted the wound accidentally. 294 M. D. MEYERSON

Yuceff Moris’ lord, Ramon Castellà, and Yuceff’s mother would have none of it. They again insisted that the Torrabonis were the “assailants, perpetrators, and wounders.” They added the detail that 14 men—the Torraboni brothers and 11 others—had attacked Yuceff Moris and his fellows. Fleeing because they were so outnumbered, Yuceff’s companions left him alone.47 Yuceff’s mother must at least have been satisfied that no one would be able to question her son’s manhood, for he had struggled valiantly against overwhelming odds.48 However embellished, her version of the attack on her son would have served to inspire his kinsmen and friends in Picassent and environs to avenge him. Medieval judicial records, especially incomplete case files like those treated in this chapter, make it extremely difficult to determine precisely what happened and to establish the “facts” of any given case. Even if the denunciations of plaintiffs and prosecutors, the denials and counter- accusations of defendants, and the contradictory testimonies of witnesses produced by both sides frustrate historians in their attempt to ascertain the “truth”—or to compile statistics about crime and punishment—they can reveal much about social behavior and mentality. What I learn and am most interested in learning from court records is not whether Azmet indeed inflicted violence on Abrahim—or James on Pere or Isaac on Jahuda—but how medieval Muslims, Christians, and Jews understood, imagined, and described the acts of violence allegedly perpetrated by members of their own—or other—religious communities.49 In the frag- ments of fact or fiction in the archives, from the manner in which plaintiffs, defendants, and witnesses represented their actions and those of others in court—in effect, fashioning stories of a sort—one can detect patterns of meaningful social conduct, whether real or imagined, and in these behav- ioral patterns discern distinctive mental outlooks. The Kingdom of

47 Ibid.: Castellà and Yuceff’s mother both appeared in the bailiff’s court on the same day—June 22—to respond to and reject the Torraboni brothers’ defense statement (fols. 27v-31v). Castellà described the Torrabonis as “asaltejadors, cometedors e nafradors” (fols. 28v-29r). 48 Ibid.: fol. 31r: “e aquell [Yuceff] es stat a soles en la dita bregua.” 49 I am currently finishing a book manuscript, tentatively entitled Of Bloodshed and Baptism: Violence, Religion, and the Transformation of Spain, ca. 1300–1610, in which I treat violence both within and between Christian, Muslim, Jewish, converso, and morisco communities. It is a work of ethno-history that analyzes the practice and social significance of violence in distinct religious and ethnic groups; at the same time, it sheds new light on the transformation of Spain from a “land of three religions” into one uniformly Catholic. NARRATIVES OF MUSLIM VIOLENCE IN CHRISTIAN COURTS IN THE LATE… 295

Valencia’s messy and fragmentary court records leave little doubt about the frequency of violence within all three religious communities and that this violence had specific social meanings and functions. In this chapter I have tried to provide some sense of how Valencian Muslims feuded, understood their feuds, and talked about their feuds—in Christian courts, and, more speculatively, among themselves. Considering such feuding, it is not hard to see how a Christian like Francesc Centelles (quoted at the beginning of the chapter) might have drawn the conclusion that just about “any … Moor … seeks fights and quarrels.” That Centelles drew invidious conclusions about Muslim violence but was unwilling or unable to observe and criticize the violent conduct of his coreligionists is unsurprising, simply one of those social truths one gleans from medieval court records.

Bibliography Arxiu del Regne de València: Bailia. Barceló, Carmen. Minorías islámicas en el País Valenciano. Historia y dialecto. Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, 1984. ———. “Un asesinato en La Valldigna (Valencia, 1492).” Al-Qantara 26 (2005): 475–98. Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, Rafael. Heroicas decisiones. La Monarquía Católica y los moriscos valencianos. Valencia: Institució Alfons El Magnànim, 2001. Burns, Robert I. Islam Under the Crusaders: Colonial Survival in the Thirteenth- Century Kingdom of Valencia. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. Caton, Steven C. “Peaks of Yemen I Summon”: Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemeni Tribe. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990. Ehlers, Benjamin. Between Christians and Moriscos: Juan de Ribera and Religious Reform in Valencia, 1568–1614. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Ferrer i Mallol, Maria Teresa. La frontera amb l’Islam en el segle XIV: Cristians i sarrains al País Valencià. Barcelona: Consell Superior d’Investigacions Científiques, 1988. Gilsenan, Michael. Lords of the Lebanese Marches: Violence and Narrative in an Arab Society. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1996. Guichard, Pierre. Les musulmans de Valence et la Reconquête (XIe-XIIIe siècles), 2 vols. Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1990–91. Halperin Donghi, Tulio. Un conflicto nacional: Moriscos y cristianos viejos en Valencia. Valencia: Institución Alfonso El Magnánimo, 1980. Herzfeld, Michael. The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. 296 M. D. MEYERSON

Jamous, Raymond. Honneur et “baraka”: Les structures sociales traditionelles dans le Rif. Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press, 1981. ———. “From the Death of Men to the Peace of God: Violence and Peacemaking in the Rif.” In Honour and Grace in Anthropology, edited by J.G. Peristiany and Julian Pitt-Rivers, 167–192. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Kressel, Gideon M. Ascendancy through Aggression: The Anatomy of a Blood Feud among Urbanized Bedouins. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1996. Meeker, Michael. “Meaning and Society in the Near East: Examples from the Black Sea Turks and the Levantine Arabs.” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 7, no. 2 (1976): 243–70. Meyerson, Mark D. The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel: Between Coexistence and Crusade. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991. Miller, Kathryn A. Guardians of Islam: Religious Authority and Muslim Communities of Late Medieval Spain. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Narbona Vizcaíno, Rafael. Malhechores, violencia y justicia ciudadana en la Valencia bajomedieval (1360–1399). Valencia: Ajuntament de València, 1990. Pérez García, Pablo. La comparsa de los malhechores: Valencia, 1479–1518. Valencia: Diputació de València, 1990. Shryock, Andrew. Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997. Torró, Josep. El naixament d’una colònia. Dominació i resistència a la frontera valenciana (1238–1276). Valencia: Universitat de València, 1999. CHAPTER 11

Were Women Part of Convivencia?

Jessica Coope

Women were in their daily lives most certainly part of the convivencia among Muslims, Jews, and Christians that existed to a greater or lesser extent in medieval Spain. Like men, women interacted with people of different religions. Like men, they negotiated their way through the mixture of cooperation, prejudice, and cultural borrowing that made up convivencia.1 Even Muslim women, apart from members of elite families who could afford to enforce their seclusion, worked and moved around in public.2 For the purposes of this study, however, I am interested in the discourse of convivencia that took place at the level of law, religious writings, and literature, that is, in works authored almost exclusively by men. Those texts are generally what one might call anti-convivencia in the sense that they focus on the maintaining of religious and cultural boundaries in the

1 Thomas Glick discusses the various meanings of convivencia in his introductory note to Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Spain, ed. Vivian Mann, Thomas Glick, and Jerrilynn Dodds (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1992), 1–9. See also Kenneth Baxter Wolf, “Convivencia in Medieval Spain: A Brief History of an Idea,” Religion Compass, vol. 3 no. 1 (January 2009), 72–85. 2 Manuela Marín, Mujeres en al-Andalus (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2000), 253–311.

J. Coope (*) University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2019 297 M. T. Abate (ed.), Convivencia and Medieval Spain, Mediterranean Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96481-2_11 298 J. COOPE face of cultural processes that often pulled in the direction of assimilation. For example, the Christian religious polemic surrounding the ninth- century martyrs of Cordoba sought to enforce boundaries between Christians and Muslims.3 In the same way, the anti-Jewish and anti- Christian polemical works of Ibn Ḥ azm of Cordoba emphasized the incompatibility of Islamic belief and practice with that of non-Muslims.4 Texts seeking to fix religious identity often either ignore women altogether or express ambivalence about women’s place in their confessional community. Some authors write as though their religion did not include women. In other instances women emerge as members of the community, but ones whose identity and adherence to their religion are so weak and malleable that they can easily be converted. Two brief quotations, one from the thirteenth-century Castilian Christian law code the Siete partidas and one from the Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides, offer examples of the tendency to define religions as strictly communities of men. Near the beginning of its section on the proper legal status of Jews, the Siete partidas defines a Jew as follows: “He is called a Jew who believes and holds to the Law of Moses to the letter and is circumcised and does the other things that the law demands.”5 In his Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides writes in favor of circumcision:

[Circumcision] gives to all members of the faith, i.e. to all believers in the unity of God, a common bodily sign, so that it is impossible for anyone who is a stranger, to say that he belongs to them.6

Two things stand out about these quotations. Both suggest that circumcision was an important indicator of religious identity; while the Siete partidas’ introductory discussion of Jews also addresses Jewish beliefs, the

3 For the martyrs movement, see Edward Colbert, The Martyrs of Córdoba (850–859): A Study of the Sources (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1962); Jessica Coope, The Martyrs of Córdoba: Community and Family Conflict in an Age of Mass Conversion (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1995); and K. Wolf, Christian Martyrs in Muslim Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1988). 4 See for example his Al-Fasḷ fı ̄ al-milāl wa al-ahwā’ wa al-niḥal, ed. Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Karım̄ al-Sahrastānı ̄ (Beirut: Dār al-ma‘rifah, 1975), 3 vols. 3:188–259. 5 Las siete partidas del rey Don Alfonso El Sabio, ed. Gregorio López (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1972), 3 vols., partida 7, título 24, ley 1. 6 Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963), 609. WERE WOMEN PART OF CONVIVENCIA? 299 only practice it notes is circumcision. And, of course, both quotations disregard the fact that circumcision is not a practice which defines “all members of the faith,” but only half of them (both texts are talking about male circumcision, not so-called female circumcision). Christian and Jewish preoccupation with circumcision has a long history. The use of circumcision as a marker of group identity obviously goes back to the biblical period of Judaism, but its importance increased when Jews lived under gentile rule. In the Hellenistic period Jewish and gentile cultures came into conflict, for example, when Antiochus IV prohibited Jewish rituals, including circumcision. The prohibition helped make circumcision essential to Jewish identity,7 and Jewish scholars like Philo constructed elaborate philosophical, medical, and symbolic justifications for circumcision in response to gentile ridicule of the practice.8 In an article about early Christian communities, Joel Marcus says that Jewish and gentile Christians called each other “the circumcised penis” and “the fore- skin,” respectively, suggesting a somewhat androcentric way of defining Christian sub-communities. In Spain, the association between masculinity and religious identity can be found in Jewish and Muslim mystical literature. The Zohar, a Jewish mystical text written by Rabbi Moses de Leon (c. 1240–1305) and other authors,9 imagines a divinity with multiple aspects or emanations. At the center of the godhead is En-sof, “without limit.” En-sof is secret, hidden, and unknowable, like the transcendent God of Plotinus. Within En-sof a point develops which is the beginning of a divine will toward expression and movement; that movement results in ten divine presences emanating out of En-sof, the ten sefirot (singular sefirah). Each sefirah is the manifestation of one of God’s aspects, such as mercy, justice, or beauty.

7 John J. Collins, “A Symbol of Otherness: Circumcision and Salvation in the First Century,” in “To See Ourselves as Others See Us”: Christians, Jews, and “Others” in Late Antiquity, ed. Jacob Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs (Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1985), 163–186; Neil J. McEleney, “Conversion, Circumcision and the Law,” New Testament Studies 20 (1973), 319–341. 8 Robert D. Hecht, “The Exegetical Contexts of Philo’s Interpretation of Circumcision,” in Nourished with Peace: Studies in Hellenistic Judaism in Memory of Samuel Sandmel (Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1984), 52–79. 9 Isaiah Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar: an Anthology of Texts, trans. David Goldstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 3 vols. For a fuller discussion of circumcision in Kabbalah, see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Circumcision, Vision of God, and Textual Interpretation: From Midrashic Trope to Mystical Symbol,” History of Religions, vol. 27 no. 2 (November 1987), 189–215. 300 J. COOPE

While one of the sefirot is feminine and some are beyond classifications of gender, the Zohar describes six of the lower sefirot through the image of the male body.10 One is pictured as the torso, four others as the arms and legs, and one, called Yesod, as the penis. The author often uses the image of semen to describe the flow of divine influence from Yesod into the world. More exactly, Yesod is symbolized by the circumcised penis, thus denoting God’s covenant with Jewish men.11 According to the Zohar, masculinity and circumcision are also prereq- uisites for Torah study.12 Kabbalistic thought imagines a cosmos composed of words, specifically the Torah’s words; Torah corresponds to the Active Intellect or possibly the logos in Neo-platonic thought and provides a framework or blueprint on which God creates the cosmos. When one studies Torah, one studies not only a sacred scripture but the inner structure of the universe as well. Only someone who is circumcised, however, can understand Torah, placing women somewhere outside full membership in the community.13 The circumcised male, then, is strongly equated with the divine and with Torah study. The Zohar’s attitude toward the feminine is more ambivalent. The sefirah called Malkhut is the most clearly feminine of the sefirot and is depicted as the wife of Tiferet, or mercy.14 In her aspect as the diving presence among human beings, Malkhut is called the Shekinah and represents both positive and negative feminine characteristics. On the one hand she is the divine mother to believers and the bride to mystics who achieve union with her through Torah study. On the other hand, as the lowest of the sefirot, she can be influenced by the evils of the non-Jewish world, causing her to rage and bring bloodshed. The Shekinah’s dual nature parallels the Zohar’s ambivalent attitude toward women.15 A man is only half a human being without a wife; in the same way, the male aspects of the godhead are incomplete without the Shekhinah. At the same time, though, the Shekhinah can be wrathful and violent, just as, according to

10 Tishby, 3:1060–1063. 11 Tishby, 1:295–302. 12 See Wolfson’s article, cited above. 13 Tishby, 3:1123–1124. See also Moshe Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia, trans. Menahem Kallus (Albany: State University of New York, 1989), 29–81. 14 Tishby, 1:371–387 and 414–416. 15 Tishby, 3:1355–1379. WERE WOMEN PART OF CONVIVENCIA? 301 the Zohar, women not subject to social restraints would murder the entire world.16 Islamic mysticism in medieval Spain shows some parallels with Kabbalah.17 The Spanish Sufi master Ibn al-‘Arabı ̄ (1165–1240) shares with the Zohar authors a belief in the sacredness of the male body and a relationship between the male body and language. For Ibn al-‘Arabı,̄ as for the Zohar authors, the essence of God, which he calls al-Wujūd (that which exists) or al-Ḥ aqq (the real), is unknowable. Like En-sof, however, al-Wujūd longs to express itself and does so by means of speech. God speaks his names: the Merciful, the Compassionate, the Wrathful, the Victorious, and so on. As he speaks his names, the universe comes into being, just as En-sof creates the cosmos by speaking Torah.18 God’s word is inscribed on the universe by means of what he calls the Pen and the Tablet,19 images taken from the Quran.20 The Pen, or first intellect, was the first thing God created, and the Tablet emerged from the Pen as an emanation. The Pen writes God’s word on the Tablet, thus bringing the world into being. The Pen and Tablet are gendered; the human penis corresponds to the Pen, while the Tablet is parallel to the womb. Where the Pen is active, creating the Tablet and writing God’s word on her, the Tablet is passive and can only be acted upon. Ibn al-‘Arabı’s̄ writings suggest that he was more accepting of women as a part of religious life than the Zohar authors; he had Sufi teachers who were women,21 and he believed that women could achieve any spiritual

16 Tishby, 3:1358. 17 David S. Ariel, “‘The Eastern Dawn of Wisdom’: The Problem of the Relation Between Islamic and Jewish Mysticism,” in Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times, ed. David R. Blumenthal (Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1985), 149–167. 18 Ibn al-‘Arabı,̄ The Bezels of Wisdom, trans. R.W.J. Austin (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 172–186, 269–284; William C. Chittick, Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity (Albany: State University of New York, 1994), 15–29, 123–136; Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York, 1989), 33–76, 127–132. 19 Kitāb mawāqi‘al-nujūm (Cairo: Matba‘aḥ al-sa‘ādah, 1907), 123–130. See also his al-Futūḥāt al-makkıyah̄ , ed. ‘Uthmān Yaḥyā, 2 vols. (Cairo: al-Hay’ah al-misrı̣ yah̄ al-‘āmmah li al-kitāb, 1972–1983), 1:46–49, 2:182–183, 2:313–317, 2:350–351. 20 Q. 68:1 and 85:22. 21 Ibn al-‘Arabı,̄ Sufis of Andalusia: The Ruh al-quds and the Durrat al-fakhirah of Ibn al- Arabi, trans. R.W.J. Austin (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1971), 46, 108–110, 142–146, 154–155. See also Claude Addas, Quest for Red Sulphur: The Life of Ibn al-Arabi, trans. Peter Kingsley (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1993), 81–91, 146. 302 J. COOPE level short of prophethood.22 His mystical ideas do not seem to place women on the margins of his community in the same way the Zohar does. Still, like the Zohar authors, he associates masculinity with activity and intellect. This is not to say that either mystical tradition simply excludes the feminine altogether; both systems see the coming together of masculine and feminine as the foundation of the cosmos. In both cases, however, it is the masculine principle that enjoys the closer relationship with God. While some texts either ignore women or give them a subordinate role, others emphasize that women are the weaker members of the community whose religious identity can be easily changed. That concern about women’s malleability can be seen in Islamic and Christian regulations regarding marriage and sexual relationships across religious boundaries. Whichever group was in power gave the men in its own group sexual access to women of any faith while limiting women to sexual relations within their own confessional group.23 Women of the dominant group who strayed were punished, as were men from the subject religions who had relations with dominant group women.24 In areas of Christian rule, Christian men were not supposed to marry Jewish or Muslim women, but rarely suffered any penalty for sexual liaisons with them. Christian women and their non- Christian lovers, on the other hand, were harshly punished. Thus the Siete partidas mandates that a Jewish or Muslim man who sleeps with a Christian woman be put to death. If the Christian woman he has slept with is a virgin, she loses half her property for a first offense and is executed for a second, while a married woman is turned over to her husband to be dealt with in any way he sees fit. Death by burning is one of the suggested pun- ishments.25 Islamic law allows Muslim men to marry Christian or Jewish women, but for a Muslim woman to marry outside the faith is an act of apostasy.26 At the heart of those regulations was the assumption that women, even free women, were the property of their religious community, at least so far as their reproductive capacities were concerned. In addition, though, the

22 Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 177–181. 23 Simon Barton, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power in Medieval Iberia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2015), 14–33. 24 John Boswell, The Royal Treasure: Muslim Communities Under the Crown of Aragon in the Fourteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University, 1977), 343–353. 25 Partida 24, título 24, ley 9, and partida 7, título 25, ley 10. 26 Coope, Martyrs, 11–14. WERE WOMEN PART OF CONVIVENCIA? 303 rules suggest that women were not fully bearers of their religious identity and could be easily lost to their community. Men could sleep with women across confessional boundaries without it affecting their identity. The Siete partidas, however, states that a Christian woman who has sex with a Jewish man, and the man himself, are guilty of adultery even if the woman is single, because all Christian women are brides of Christ.27 The woman who had a relationship across religious boundaries fundamentally compromised her status as a Christian and her worthiness as a bride of Christ. For Muslims, a man who married outside the faith did no damage. Even if his Christian or Jewish wife did not convert to Islam—and she was not obliged to do so—the family would be part of the Muslim community and the children would by law be Muslims. A Muslim woman who married a Christian or a Jew would however be lost to the Muslim community, as would her children.28 Christian and Muslim law assumed that women had a passive legal status, but also a passive religious identity. They could be violated by outsiders so as to no longer be suitable brides of Christ, or lost to the community if an outsider took them away in marriage. They did not actively determine their own or their group’s identity; like Ibn al-‘Arabı’s̄ Tablet, their identity was written upon them by the male. This passive religious identity for women can be seen vividly in the thirteenth-century Cantigas de Santa Maria, a collection of songs in honor of the Virgin Mary from the court of Alfonso X El Sabio (who ruled from 1252 to 1284). Of the more than 400 songs which make up the Cantigas, 12 have to do with the conversion of Jews and Muslims to Christianity. The conversions of Jews and Muslims are treated quite differently in the songs, as are the conversions of men and women.29 It is not surprising that the theme of conversion should arise in this collection of miracle stories. Between the 1220s and the 1270s, Christian conquests reduced Muslim territory to the kingdom of Granada and incorporated hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Jews into the

27 Partida 7, título 24, ley 9. 28 All Muslim authorities in the period agreed that the child of a Muslim father was auto- matically Muslim; some maintained that the child of a prohibited union between a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man was also by Muslim, although that position was less consistently held. See Majid Khadduri, The Islamic Law of Nations (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1966), 195–229. 29 Connie Scarborough discusses the importance of religious conversion in the Cantigas in Women in Thirteenth-Century Spain as Portrayed in Alfonso X’s Cantigas de Santa Maria (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1993), 81–84. 304 J. COOPE

Christian kingdoms.30 The idea of a society containing subject religious groups was a familiar idea to Christians from earlier periods of the Reconquista. Spanish Christian rulers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries who conquered Muslim territory assumed that they would govern Jews and Muslims as subject peoples who, while not equal to Christians, would be entitled to legal protection, rather like the People of the Book (Christians and Jews) living in Islamic lands. When Alfonso VI conquered Toledo in 1085, he allowed Muslims freedom of worship.31 The conquest of Valencia by James I of Aragón in 1238 was violent and led to the expulsion of some Muslims, but James allowed most to remain in his territory and to continue practices like the call to prayer, teaching the Quran, and polygyny.32 James could, when it suited him, be sensitive to Muslim customs, as when he sent a live game bird as a gift to Muslims with whom he was negotiating, knowing that their food laws would not permit them to accept a dead bird.33 Despite this limited toleration, however, thirteenth- century Spanish Christian rulers were also influenced by the ideology of Christendom which had become increasingly dominant throughout Western Europe. The concept of Christendom held out as an ideal a religiously homogenous society, in which non-Christians had no legitimate place. One manifestation of that ideology was the Church’s increasingly harsh polemic against the Jews, which amounted to a shift from St. Augustine’s teaching that Jews must be protected and tolerated, to the position that all Jews should be converted or expelled.34 The Cantigas de Santa Maria depicts the latter ideal, of a united, homogenous Christendom. Jews and Muslims in the Cantigas are not tolerated. In the songs they are punished for their unbelief, or they are converted to Christianity, or both. Conversions do not happen easily, and only Mary’s miraculous interventions make them possible. The collection

30 Anthony Bonner, Selected Works of Ramón Llull, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University, 1985), 1:94–95. 31 Joseph F. O’Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1983), 204–207. 32 Robert I. Burns, Islam Under the Crusaders: Colonial Survival in the Thirteenth-Century Kingdom of Valencia (Princeton: Princeton University, 1973), 117–219. 33 Enrique Palau, Crónica historica o “Llibre dels fets” Jaime I, “El Conquistador,” (Barcelona: Iberia Diamante, 1958), 2 vols., 1:34–35. 34 Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1982), 13–76. See also R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford and New York: B. Blackwell, 1987), 26–41. WERE WOMEN PART OF CONVIVENCIA? 305 is nevertheless fairly optimistic about the possibility that Jews and Muslims can finally be persuaded or forced to convert and can as converts be integrated into Christian society. Not all characters in the songs, however, are equally amenable to conversion. Jewish men have more difficulty changing their identity than Muslim men do, while women of both religions convert easily. Although Mary always manages to convert Jewish men when she sets out to do so, they are the characters in the Cantigas who most often cling to their beliefs and whose conversion requires the most argument and coercion. In cantiga 108,35 a Christian in Scotland has been engaged in a long-term religious debate with a Jew, who is described as an alfaqui, or religious scholar (from the Arabic faqîh). Despite the Christian’s best efforts to present the case for Christianity, the Jew rejects his assertions and mounts a logical argument of his own against the Incarnation. Frustrated, the Christian abandons rational discourse and prays to the Virgin Mary, asking that the Jew’s wife give birth to a baby with its face in the back of its head. Mary hears his pleas, and the baby is born deformed as requested. The mother wants to kill it, but the Christian compels her to raise the child, which he uses to frighten Jews in his community into converting. In cantiga 85, a Jew is attacked and tied up by Christian robbers. Despairing of rescue, he falls asleep and dreams that a beautiful woman rescues him. He wakes and prays to be told her name. The Virgin then reveals herself in a vision. To this point it appears as though Mary is going to persuade the Jew to convert by rescuing him and thus demonstrating her capacity for mercy. Before freeing the Jew, however, she shows him a vision of heaven and hell. In this vision Jews are being grilled over fires in a valley of demons, while Christians sit on a mountain top with Christ surrounded by an angelic choir. Mary tells the Jew that he can avoid the fires of hell and share in the blessings of heaven if only he will abandon Jewish ritual—specifically, if he will eat pork and stop killing animals by decapita- tion (i.e., using kosher methods of butchering animals). Finally Mary releases him, and he promptly converts. The theme of Mary punishing Jews appears in other parts of the Cantigas as well, whether or not the punishment ends in conversion. Cantiga 286 relates the story of a Christian who is especially devoted to

35 All references are to Walter Mettmann, ed., Cantigas de Santa María, (Madrid: Castalia, 1986–1989), 3 vols. 306 J. COOPE

Mary and who likes to prostrate himself in prayer to her in the doorway of a church. One day as he lies in prayer, a dog approaches him and “treated him in such a way that he had to leave off his prayers (atal o adobou que ouv’ a leixar sas prezes),” possibly by urinating on him or trying to mount him, although the exact nature of the indignity is not made clear. The Christian leaps up and chases the dog, throwing stones at it. Looking back, he sees that a group of Jews are laughing and making fun of him, so he prays to Mary for justice, adding that in any event they are her enemies since they killed her son. Mary causes stones from a portal to fall on the Jews, stopping their laughter and throwing them into confusion. Jewish men are consistently depicted as a threat to Christian society. One Jew murders a Christian boy36; another tries to cheat a Christian out of a large sum of money37; and a third steals an image of the Virgin and is carried off by Satan.38 The Cantigas’ attitude toward Muslim men is more mixed, and Mary’s methods of converting them are varied. Cantiga 192 depicts a coerced conversion in which Mary treats a Muslim man as harshly as she treats Jewish men. A good Christian has a Muslim servant; he tries to convert the Muslim by reasoning with him, but the servant stubbornly remains Muslim. Finally the Christian traps him in a cellar or cave overnight. During the night the devil comes and torments the Muslim; once he has been thoroughly terrorized, Mary appears and says he must give up his belief in the dog Muhammad. In the morning the master returns and releases the Muslim, who asks to be baptized. By contrast, in cantiga 46, a Muslim soldier who has spent his life at war with Christians captures an especially beautiful image of the Virgin during a raid. He treats the image with great respect, keeping it wrapped in cloth of gold. The Muslim prays aloud, saying that he finds it difficult to believe in the Incarnation but would believe if he saw a miracle. The image’s breasts begin to spurt milk, and the Muslim converts to Christianity. While Mary often resorts to threats and coercion to convert Muslim and Jewish men, she treats Jewish and Muslim women relatively gently. They are easily converted and are never shown as stubborn in their beliefs or as a danger to Christians. Mary converts women by helping them out of desperate situations, usually ones posing a danger to the woman’s child

36 Cantiga 6. 37 Cantiga 25. 38 Cantiga 34. WERE WOMEN PART OF CONVIVENCIA? 307 as well as to herself. In cantiga 89 a Jewish woman in labor who is near death calls out to Mary for help. With Mary’s intervention, she delivers her baby safely and has herself and her two children baptized. Christians attack a Muslim castle and set fire to it in cantiga 205. The Christian soldiers see a Muslim woman on the tower, clutching her baby and trying to escape from the flames. Because the sight of mother and child remind the attacking Christians of the Virgin and Christ-child, they pray to Mary for her safety. The woman and her child fall to ground unharmed. Both are subsequently baptized. A dramatic example of the differences between depictions of Jewish men and Jewish women occurs in cantiga 4. Mary has converted a Jewish boy to Christianity. He goes home and relates what has happened; his father flies into a rage and pushes the boy into a furnace. The boy’s mother is terribly upset, running out into the street and attracting a crowd. When the furnace door is opened it becomes apparent that the Virgin has allowed the boy to survive the flames. The furious crowd throws the boy’s father into the furnace; the mother has herself baptized. Mary has rescued the Jewish woman and her child, who can easily be integrated into Christian society, from the evil Jewish man, who cannot. It is important not to exaggerate the degree to which the texts mentioned earlier represent the reality of women’s lives. Ibn al-‘Arabı,̄ as we have seen, gives the feminine principle a theoretically subordinate role in his cosmology, yet in referring to his own life talks about women Sufis whom he honors as teachers. Even some legal and literary texts present women as active, autonomous persons. The Muslim religious scholar and polemicist ‘Alı ̄ Ibn Ḥ azm (994–1064), mentioned earlier as a strict opponent of convivencia among religious groups, nevertheless afforded women rather greater autonomy than most scholars of his time. He disagreed, for example, with standard interpretations of Islamic marriage as a type of sale in which the man buys the woman, emphasizing instead that marriage is a union of two consenting individuals.39 In his treatise on love and friendship, Ṭawq al-ḥamāmah, Ibn Ḥ azm refers to women he has known who are stronger in their faith than men. He describes a slave girl his family owned with whom (according to him at least) he shared a strong sexual

39 Al-Muḥallā bi-al-āthār, ed. ‘Abd al-Ghaffār Sulaymān al-Busandārı ̄ (Beirut: Dār al- kutub al-‘ilmıyah,̄ 1988), 12 vols., 9:83–100. 308 J. COOPE attraction.40 While he was prepared to give into temptation, even though he believed doing so was wrong, she resisted, thus challenging her culture’s assumption that women were less able than men to adhere to a moral principle. In general, however, the literature, law, and religious texts of medieval Spain either ignore women or treat them as weak links in their religious communities. Although some texts, like Jewish and Christian mystical writings, recognize the importance of the feminine principle, they represent the masculine as the active, intellectual force in the cosmos. Legal sources assume that women are fluid in their beliefs and loyalties and therefore more subject than men to being polluted or even converted by contact with members of other religions, especially if that contact is sexual. The Cantigas de Santa Maria sees women’s malleability as a positive trait, since their flexibility allows Muslim and Jewish women to be converted to the true faith. Nevertheless, the songs portray women as weak and unreliable members of their confessional group. In the world of these texts, it is difficult to see women as part of convivencia, since they are not full members of their community.

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40 Ṭawq al-ḥamāmah fı ̄ al-ulfah wa-al-ullāf, ed. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Musṭ ạ ̄wı ̄ (Beirut: Dār al-ma‘rifah, 2004), 198–202. WERE WOMEN PART OF CONVIVENCIA? 309

Chittick, William C. The Sufi Path of Knowledge. Albany: State University of New York, 1989. ———, William C. Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity. Albany: State University of New York, 1994. Cohen, Jeremy. The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1982. Colbert, Edward. The Martyrs of Córdoba, 850–859: A Study of the Sources. Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1962. Collins, John J. “A Symbol of Otherness: Circumcision and Salvation in the First Century.” In “To See Ourselves as Others See Us”: Christians, Jews, and “Others” in Late Antiquity, edited by Jacob Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs, 163–186. Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1985. Coope, Jessica. The Martyrs of Córdoba: Community and Family Conflict in an Age of Mass Conversion. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1995. Hecht, Robert D. “The Exegetical Contexts of Philo’s Interpretation of Circumcision.” In Nourished with Peace: Studies in Hellenistic Judaism in Memory of Samuel Sandmel, edited by Frederick E. Greenspahn, Earle Hilgert and Burton L. Mack, 52–79. Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1984. Ibn al-‘Arabı.̄ The Bezels of Wisdom. Translated by R.W.J. Austin. New York: Paulist Press, 1980. ———. Kitāb mawāqi‘al-nujūm. Cairo: Matba‘aḥ al-sa‘ādah, 1907. ———. al-Futūḥāt al-makkıyah̄ . Edited by ‘Uthmān Yaḥyā, 2 vols. Cairo: al- Hay’ah al-misrı̣ yah̄ al-‘āmmah li al-kitāb, 1972–1983. ———. Sufis of Andalusia: The Ruh al-quds and the Durrat al-fakhirah of Ibn al- Arabi. Translated by R.W.J. Austin. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1971. Ibn Ḥ azm. Al-Fasḷ fı ̄ al-milāl wa al-ahwā’ wa al-niḥal. 3 vols. Edited by Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Karım̄ al-Sahrastānı ̄ Beirut: Dār al-ma‘rifah, 1975. Idel, Moshe. Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia, translated by Menahem Kallus. Albany: State University of New York, 1989. Khadduri, Majid. The Islamic Law of Nations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1966. López, Gregorio, ed. Las siete partidas del rey Don Alfonso El Sabio, 3 vols. Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1972. Mann, Vivian, Thomas Glick and Jerrilynn Dodds, ed. Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Spain. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1992. Marín, Manuela. Mujeres en al-Andalus. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2000. McEleney, Neil J. “Conversion, Circumcision and the Law.” New Testament Studies 20 (1973): 319–341. Mettmann, Walter, ed. Cantigas de Santa María. 3 vols. Madrid: Castalia, 1986–1989. 310 J. COOPE

Moore, R.I. The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250. Oxford and New York: B. Blackwell, 1987. Murata, Sachiko. The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. O’Callaghan, Joseph F. A History of Medieval Spain. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1983. Palau, Enrique. Crónica historica o “Llibre dels fets” Jaime I, “El Conquistador.” 2 vols. Barcelona: Iberia Diamante, 1958. Scarborough, Connie. Cantigas in Women in Thirteenth-Century Spain as Portrayed in Alfonso X’s Cantigas de Santa Maria. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1993. Ṭawq al-ḥamāmah fı ̄ al-ulfah wa-al-ullāf, ed. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Musṭ ạ ̄wı.̄ Beirut: Dār al-ma‘rifah, 2004. Tishby, Isaiah. The Wisdom of the Zohar: an Anthology of Texts, translated by David Goldstein, 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Wolf, Kenneth Baxter. Christian Martyrs in Muslim Spain. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1988. ———, Kenneth Baxter. “Convivencia in Medieval Spain: A Brief History of an Idea.” Religious Compass, vol. 3 no. 1 (January 2009): 72–85. Wolfson, Elliot R. “Circumcision, Vision of God, and Textual Interpretation: From Midrashic Trope to Mystical Symbol.” History of Religions 27, no. 2 (November 1987): 189–215. CHAPTER 12

Spain, Islam, and Thirteenth-Century Dominican Memory

Thomas E. Burman and Lydia M. Walker

When the Bollandist Fathers produced the Acta sanctorum’s eighteenth- century edition of Jordan of Saxony’s Libellus de principiis ordinis praedicatorum—the first account of the history of the Dominican Order written by a Dominican and completed in 1233/1234—they worked from a manuscript acquired from Burgo de Osma which they believed to have been copied before the mid-thirteenth century. At a key juncture in the text where Jordan is describing how Bishop Diego de Osma, Dominic’s mentor, and indeed the inspiration for his order, traveled to Rome to seek the pope’s permission to be released from his episcopal duties, their manuscript read as follows:

T. E. Burman (*) Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA Department of History, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Knoxville, TN, USA e-mail: [email protected] L. M. Walker Department of History, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Knoxville, TN, USA e-mail: [email protected]

[Diego] revealed to the pontiff that his heart’s intention was to undertake to work for the conversion of Muslims with all his might if [the pope] deigned to allow him to surrender [his office]. The pope did not consent to this urgent request, nor did [the pope] even allow him—although he was asking—to enter the territory of the Muslims for the purpose of preaching while remaining a bishop.1

That Diego should have wanted to put off the tiresome duties of bishop for the heady work of preaching to Muslims certainly appears to have modeled the goals of Dominic’s new order for, as Jordan tells us slightly later in his history, Dominic intended to send his brethren, “though few in number, throughout the world” as Christian preachers.2 Indeed, as is well known, within a couple of generations of their founding, the Order of Preachers had, in fact, established houses in the Islamic world and created schools to educate friars not only in Arabic but in Hebrew and Aramaic, ostensibly to train them for such preaching to Muslims and other infidels.3 And we need look no further than the treatise called On the Sect of Muhammad, written in the late 1250s by the astounding Aragónese Dominican linguist, Ramon Martí, for evidence of Dominican efforts to missionize among Muslims.4

1 “Revelavit quoque summo Pontifici sui cordis esse propositum conversioni Sarracenorum pro viribus operam adhibere, si cessionem ejus dignaretur admittere. Non acquievit Papa postulantis instantiæ; sed nec saltem ei; quamvis petenti, voluit indulgere, [vel in remissio- nem peccatorum injungere,] ut manens episcopus fines Sarracenorum ad prædicandum intraret, occulto sane consilio vel Dei nutu, qui ad alterius salutis uberem frugem tanti viri labores providerat” (“Vita Auctore B. Jordano synchrono ex Ordine Prædicatorum,” 14 [BHL: 2210], Acta sanctorum, August 1, 545B). See also the editors’ Commentarius praevius [in same volume] paragraphs 3 and 69, pp. 358d-e, 370b-c.; and the most recent edition: Jordan of Saxony, Libellus de principiis ordinis praedicatorum 17, ed. R. P. Walz, Monumenta ordinis fratrum praedicatorum historica [=MOPH] 16 (Rome, 1935), 8, 34–35. 2 “Et invocato sancto spiritu convocatisque fratribus dixit hoc esse sui propositum, ut omnes eos licet paucos per mundum transmitteret, nec iam ibi diutius insimul habitarent” (Jordan of Saxony, Libellus 47 [citing from here on the Walz edition, MOPH 16] p. 48). 3 B. Altaner, Die Dominikanermissionen des 13. Jahrhunderts: Forschungen zur Geschichte der kirchlichen Unionen und der Mohammedaner und Heidemission des Mittelalters (Habelschwerdt, 1924) passim; Robin Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 104–115. 4 On Martí and his works against Islam, see Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History (hereafter CMR), ed. David Thomas et al., (Leiden/Boston: E. J. Brill, 2009) vol. 4, 381–390, esp., 385–387 [art. Thomas E. Burman]. SPAIN, ISLAM, AND THIRTEENTH-CENTURY DOMINICAN MEMORY 313

Yet while the Bollandists followed their manuscript’s reading, we cannot help noticing, if we look carefully at the early twentieth-century edition of the same text by P. R. Walz, that in all the other surviving manuscripts of Jordan’s Libellus this passage reads differently: Diego de Osma had asked for permission to set aside his episcopal duties, not in order to work for the conversion of the Saraceni—presumably the many, many Muslims living in early twelfth-century Iberia—but of the Cumani, the Turkic people threatening the Balkans in this period.5 There is little doubt, moreover, that Cumani is the correct reading. Not only Diego but others in the Dominican order, including Dominic himself, wanted to travel to Southeast Europe to missionize among the pagan Cumani, and not a few eventually made their way there.6 Mistaking Cumani for Saraceni in any medieval Latin hand is rather unlikely, so writing the latter in place of the former must have been an intentional emendation by the copyist of the Bollandists’ manuscript from Burgo de Osma (which has been lost since the French Revolution). We can sympathize with his choice. If Diego had wanted to preach the Gospel to unbelievers, surely it made much better sense to direct his efforts at the abundant Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula. Why would a Spanish bishop want to travel more than 1000 miles to the lands of the Cumans just to find a mission field? A question well worth asking. Even more interesting is the question of why the Dominican order chose to remember this incident which turns up as well in two later Dominican accounts of their own history.7 These are especially intriguing questions when we pay heed to something else: despite Dominic’s desire to send his followers out into the whole world, Jordan of Saxony’s history and the handful of other Dominican histories of their order written before the mid-1260s have virtually nothing to say about Dominicans undertaking efforts to evangelize among Muslims. Indeed, neither Islam nor its closest homeland—Iberia— figure in any central way in thirteenth-century Dominican memory.

5 “Revelavit quoque summo pontifici, sui cordis esse propositum conversioni Comanorum pro viribus operam adhibere … Non acquievit papa postulantis instantie sed nec salterm ei quamvis petenti uoluit indulgere … ut manens episcopus fines Comanorum ad predicandum intraret” (Jordan of Saxony, Libellus 17; 34–35). 6 On the Cumans in southeast Europe, see István Vásáry, Cumans and Tatars: Oriental Military in the Pre-Ottoman Balkans, 1185–1365 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), passim, esp., 4–11, 57–68. 7 Peter of Ferrand, Legenda Sancti Dominici 12: MOPH XVI, 217; Constantine of Orvieto, Legenda Constantini Urbevetani 13: MOPH XVI, p. 295. 314 T. E. BURMAN AND L. M. WALKER

We do, of course, encounter a lot of infidels in these texts, but, as any reader will soon notice, the infidels are almost always “heretics” or “Albigensians”—both words used more or less interchangeably—and if we do find any desire to travel long distances to preach the Gospel, the journey is always east toward the Cumani, not south into the pluralistic lands of Spain and al-Andalus. Moreover, we find almost no mention of preaching to the Jews of either trans-Pyrannean Europe or Iberia. Indeed, from this point of view, the early Dominican accounts of Dominican history do not at all tell the story of an order sent into all the world to preach, as Jordan of Saxony has Dominic propose early in the Libellus; what they recount is the history of a band of friars sent “here and there throughout the diverse regions of the church of God,”8 the rather more limited goal that Jordan puts into Dominic’s mouth toward the end of the Libellus. In what follows we linger over Spain’s and Islam’s absence not only from the Dominican texts meant specifically to preserve the memory of that order’s development, but from another, rather different Dominican work as well—one intended to present the whole of human knowledge to Latin scholars. For if we browse through the hundreds of folios of the Speculum historiale (four massive codices long in most manuscript versions), the longest of the three sections of Dominican Friar Vincent of Beauvais’ (d. 1264) gargantuan, 6.5-million-word encyclopedia, the Speculum maius, we find that thirteenth-century Islam and the Iberian and North African lands where it dwelt in most intimate proximity to Latin Europe are likewise virtually absent. Even when attempting to narrate all of human history, this hugely influential Dominican scholar (fully 300 manuscripts of his great encyclopedia survive) was unable to bring into his own historical vision the Iberian Islam that cultivated the science and philosophy that so profoundly shaped his own order. Of course these five Dominican histories of the Order of Preachers, even when combined with Friar Vincent’s historical mirror, do not add up to the totality of Dominican memory in the thirteenth century, but the near non-existence of Iberia and Islam in this body of texts is as striking as it is unnoticed. While there is no way to address all its implications in the space of this chapter, we suggest that it is of a piece with the intriguing non-existence of contemporary Islam in many other parts of the Dominican

8 “Eratque uelut quoddam mirabile de servo Dei magistro Dominico, ut in mittendis huc illucque fratribus per diversas ecclesie Dei partes, quemadmodum supra memoratum est., sic omnia faceret confidenter et absque hesitationis ambiguo” (Ibid., 62). SPAIN, ISLAM, AND THIRTEENTH-CENTURY DOMINICAN MEMORY 315 cultural and religious world of that century and indeed its absence more generally from the scholastic culture Latin Europe. Friar Vincent made no attempt to hide the profound importance of Arab science and philosophy when he discussed those topics elsewhere in his storehouse of all knowledge, even though he averted his eyes entirely from the Iberian Islamic society that created and supplied it. In the same way the hugely dynamic scholastic movement at once embraced Iberian Arab-Aristotelianism yet almost entirely ignored what Marshall Hodgson called the “Islamdom” in which it flourished.9 The creation of Dominican memory began with Jordan of Saxony, the second Master of the Dominican Order, who composed the compact Libellus de principiis ordinis praedicatorum as a record of the formation and early activities of the Order. Jordan had joined up in 1219, and ten years later, while Dominic was still living, wrote this account of the origins of the Order of Preachers, later adding information about Dominic’s death and miracles (1233–1234).10 Since this work is not primarily a hagi- ography of the order’s founder, Dominic appears as but one of several key players in the order’s development. Indeed Bishop Diego de Osma, Dominic’s charismatic mentor, gets top billing in the Order’s formation (something later redactors worked to remedy), and he and Dominic share much of the limelight as early preachers against heresy in Southern France. While miracles appear in the text, they are not a dominant feature of the work. Rather the episodes that Jordan chooses to preserve memorialize the rise and purpose of the order noting its purpose, its status in the Church, and, above all, the urgent need it was meeting: combating the pernicious threat of heresy. Despite additions and revisions by the later Dominican historians, for the most part Jordan’s general narrative structure remained intact: Dominic’s beginnings in Spain as he adopted the ideal of poverty and conducted charitable works; Diego’s and Dominic’s diplomatic mission to Toulouse which unexpectedly involves them in preaching campaigns against the Albigensians; the foundation of houses for men and women in Prouille; Diego’s death; and the recruitment and later dispatch of the new

9 For Hodgson’s famous defense of his invention and use of this term, see his The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, vol. 1: The Classical Age of Islam (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1974), 57–60. 10 John Van Engen, “Dominic and the Brothers: Vitae as Life-forming exempla in the Order of Preachers,” in Kent Emery and Joseph Wawrykow, eds., Christ among the Medieval Dominicans (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), 7–25 at 11–12. 316 T. E. BURMAN AND L. M. WALKER order’s brothers. Although Jordan added it later on, his account of Dominic’s death and the translation of his body hint at the later, more hagiographical versions that would build on this account. As John Van Engen has shown, the later vitae of Dominic by Peter of Ferrand, Constantine of Orvieto, Humbert of Romans, and Gerard Frachet adapted this basic account for the changing needs and liturgical developments of the Dominican Order. He notes in particular the gradual transformation of Dominic from founder to saint, while exploring the parallel processes within the Franciscan Order.11 Collectively the Dominican histories bear witness to the development of what Van Engen calls a “highly effective corps of clerics” and a “guild of preachers” with a mission to go out into the world, but the direction that mission took them, those histories also overwhelmingly proclaim, was from the Pyrenees north and east, toward the dynamic towns and, especially, universities of non-Iberian Europe.12 Jordan recounts how Brother Matthew and Brother Bertrand were sent to Paris bearing papal letters so the “order may be known” (ut ordinem publicarent). This was not just a journey to publicize the new order, but, as Jordan explains, John of Navarre and Lawrence of England accompanied this group for the purpose of study, and, while in route, Lawrence received visions from God regarding the promising future of the brothers in Paris (¶51–53). On the heels of this initial group’s arrival in Paris, another pair of brothers was sent. It appears that Lawrence’s visions would see immediate fruition. Jordan portrays Paris and its surrounding areas as both a hive of intellectual activity and as a sort of Promised Land for this fledgling order. All the vectors of energy point away, therefore, from Spain and its Muslim population. Now it is true that there is some development in the role of Iberia and Islam in the successive accounts, but generally speaking, when given the opportunity to enhance the place of Spain in their histories or to portray Dominicans preaching to Muslims there (or anywhere else in the contemporary world), these authors abstained. Indeed, if we look at specific episodes relating to Spain and Islam as they appear across all the redactions, it becomes clear that in these texts the primary purpose of this highly effective corps of clerics is the pastoral care of Christians—preaching to and converting Muslims in Spain (or anywhere else) does not even register.

11 Van Engen, “Dominic and the Brothers,” 7–25. 12 Ibid., 8, 11, 16, 17, 20. SPAIN, ISLAM, AND THIRTEENTH-CENTURY DOMINICAN MEMORY 317

Of course Jordan could not really avoid portraying Spain as the place of origins, not exactly of the Dominicans as an order, but of Dominic and his mentor, Bishop Diego.13 We first meet Diego when he is already Osma’s bishop and famous for his excellent learning and moral qualities, while we follow Dominic off and on from his birth in Calaruega. The pluralistic character of Iberia, however, merits almost no attention. Certainly we hear nothing of the fact that, as the Primera crónica general, composed under the aegis of King Alfonso X of Castile (1252–1284), put it, the history of Spain has as much to do “with Moors as with Christians, and even with Jews if necessary.”14 We do learn from Jordan of Dominic’s compassion for the inhabitants of Iberia. While he was in school, Jordan tells us, a famine had spread across the region. Dominic sold his possessions, including his books, and established a relief center for the collection of alms to relieve the suffering of the destitute (¶10). These actions both exposed the laziness and stinginess of his peers and teachers and inspired others to give more liberally. Echoing tropes found in Jesus’ rebuking of the rabbis and the calling of the apostles (Lk 11:37–40, Mt. 4:18–22), Jordan here presents Dominic as pious and humble and therefore worthy of emulation and equipped for a position of leadership. In this case Spain is the proving ground upon which Dominic demonstrates himself fit to preach the Gospel, though that preaching will for the most part occur far from Spain and its religious pluralism. Indeed very quickly in Jordan’s account Spain becomes primarily a place of departure for the north—perhaps its most common role in these narratives. Bishop Diego and the newly ordained canon regular, Dominic, put Castile behind them, making their way to Denmark on a diplomatic mission to arrange a marriage for King Alfonso’s son Fernando (¶14). While the marriage negotiations failed, Dominic’s interaction with a Cathar in Toulouse resulted in his conversion (¶15), and so it was that

13 “In Hispaniarum partibus vir erat venerabilis vite Didacus nomine, ecclesie Oxomensis episcopus, quen sacrarum literarum notitia et secundum natalis ingenii, magis autem morum insignis decorabat honestas,” 26. And regarding Dominic: “Huius in temporibus fuit quidam adolescens nomine Dominicus, eadem oriundus diocesi, villa que dicitur Charlaroga” (Libellus, 4; 26–27). 14 Primera Crónica General de España—Estoria de España que mandó componer Alfonso el Sabio y se continuaba bajo Sancho IV en 1289, ch. 972, ed. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, 2 vols. (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1955) 2.653, as cited in J. N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms 1250–1516, vol. 1: 1250–1510: Precarious Balance (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1976), 161–162. 318 T. E. BURMAN AND L. M. WALKER

Southern France became the main theater in which the early Dominicans acted out their new apostolate. Not that we never return south of Pyrenees. Jordan recalls how Bishop Diego eventually traveled back to Osma so that it would not appear that he was neglecting his obligations to his own diocese (¶28). Yet Jordan makes explicit that this return was meant to brief— to sort out difficulties at a convent—after which Diego intended to head back to Southern France, the real center of action. Unfortunately Diego died while still in Castile (¶30), leaving Dominic to soldier on alone in the heartland of the heretics. Jordan also takes time to mention that Dominic did in fact send four brothers to Spain. Yet two of them had come back before the end of the sentence. “They were not,” he tells us “able to bear fruit in Spain as they desired.” Though the other two did stay and “were rather effective and were disseminating the Word of God,”15 the purpose of their mission is vague. While Jordan takes pains to tell us that both Dominic and his mentor wanted to preach to the Cumani, we are left to wonder to whom Dominicans were spreading the Gospel in Spain and what sort of fruit they anticipated. If potential Muslim (or Jewish) converts to Christianity were the targets, the Libellus provides no evidence of this. No such vagueness attends Jordan’s account of the actions of Dominic and his early brethren on the other side of the Pyrenees, where we see the early order doing battle repeatedly with “heretics.” Intriguingly, the arms they bear in this war are as often miracles as rational arguments, the two usually working in tandem. Among the Libellus’ most vivid scenes is Jordan’s account of a disputation between Dominic and heretics in Fanjeaux during which scholars on both sides wrote books in defense of their positions, and a panel of judges was charged with deciding which were the most persuasive. The judges, however, could not reach a decision, so a trial by fire ensued in which only Dominic’s book escaped the flames (¶24–26). Here divine miracle, rather than Dominican disputation, won the day, demonstrating the truth of Catholic belief. Brother Peter of Ferrand refashioned Jordan’s Libellus in 1239, five years after Dominic’s canonization, attempting to fashion a vita suitable to Dominic’s new saintly status. In this work, Legenda Sancti Dominici, he condensed some of Jordan’s narrative and added a last testament. Even though Peter was himself from Iberia, his treatment of Spain and Islam for

15 “[N]eque enim, sicut desideraverant, fructificare in Hispania poturerunt, reliquis duobus tamen abunde proficientibus et disseminantibus verbum dei” (Libellus, 49; 48). SPAIN, ISLAM, AND THIRTEENTH-CENTURY DOMINICAN MEMORY 319 the most part followed along the lines sketched out by Jordan, though there are a few notable additions. Two examples in particular show how Spain and Islam could be put to use to embellish Dominic’s holiness, though preaching to Muslims—or converting them—plays no role in either. The first episode emphasizes the Christ-like qualities of Dominic. While preaching against Albigensian heretics in Southern France, Peter notes that Dominic learned of a man who had been earning his living through his alliances with the heretics and faced destitution if he should do the proper thing and leave. Just like the Redeemer of all souls, Peter observes, Dominic sought to sell himself to save this man from the yoke of poverty. But God had different plans and provided other means to rescue him. Though Peter leaves us in the dark about those means, the incident reminds him of an earlier event in Dominic’s life:

Similarly it was discovered that the same thing had happened before when Dominic was dwelling in his homeland. For a certain woman complained to him that her brother was held captive by the Saracens. And because he was full of the spirit of piety, wounded inside by feelings of compassion, he offered himself to be sold for the redemption of the captive.16

Dominic once again is restrained from self-sacrifice by God himself who, Peter comments, had greater plans for him. Dominic, therefore, embraces in these paired events a Christ-like willingness to give up his life for his brothers (1 Jn 3:16), and in the latter a Muslim from his Iberian homeland plays a key role. But it is the role of kidnapper to be bought off, not infidel to be converted. His Spanish past was important to Dominic, we are reminded, but mostly because of the virtues he learned and first exercised there, virtues that would find their fullest and truest test among French Albigensians. If Islam is present, but very much off to one side in this account of the Saracen-held captive, it is similarly at once present and absent in a second key episode of Peter’s Legenda. The young order had little in the way of clear organization, of course, but Peter recounts that at one point Dominic asked the brothers to choose one from among them to serve as abbot

16 “Simile quidem prius decisse dignoscitur, cum adhuc in suis partibus moraretur. Quedam enim mulier conquest est. ei fratrem suum apud Sarracenos detineri captivum. At ille, ut erat plenus spiritu pietatis, intimo compassionis affect saucius, vendendum se optulit pro redemption captive,” (Legenda 21; 224–225). 320 T. E. BURMAN AND L. M. WALKER

(¶32). After they selected Matthew, Dominic then sent some of the brothers to Spain, Paris, and Bologna. The occasion for this administrative innovation (which did not, in fact, endure long) was that, Peter takes the time to tell us, Dominic himself had desired to go to the terra Saracenorum to preach, and was even preparing for departure by growing a beard “for a certain time”—aliquanto tempore.17 Here at last we would seem to have Dominic doing what the copyist of the Burgo de Osma manuscript of Jordan of Saxony’s Libellus really thought he should have been—taking the Gospel to the Muslims. Strikingly enough, however, for all we can tell from Peter of Ferrand’s account, Dominic abandoned that venture entirely, Peter describing him almost immediately afterwards as wending his way to Bologna—his scratchy new beard apparently shaved off. Eight years later, in 1246–1247, Brother Constantine of Orvieto wrote the Legenda Constantini Urbevetani, which added miracle stories to Peter’s work, enhancing and emphasizing Dominic’s saintly status. As Van Engen points out, although Constantine claimed only to add some miracle stories, and for the most part left Peter’s work unchanged, he nevertheless made subtle alterations of considerable importance.18 For Constantine, for example, Dominic was to a much greater degree the intentional, visionary founder of the Order of Preachers. He supplements, for example, Dominic’s dispatching of brothers from Toulouse with a vision of Peter and Paul who authorize this preaching mission (¶25), his sending forth of the brethren transformed into a far more deliberate act as a result. Yet this reconceptualization of Dominic’s role did not entail any significant transformation of the role of Spain and Islam in his life or the development of his order. This is clear in Constantine’s retelling of Dominic’s willingness to be sold into captivity. In his earlier version of this story, Peter of Ferrand had highlighted Dominic’s likeness here to Jesus (omnium Redemptoris exemplo), alluding to 1 John 3:16. Constantine instead reworks Dominic into a Pauline figure at this point by citing 2 Corinthians 12:15: “following the saying of Paul in Corinthians, ‘I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls.’”19 This aligns nicely with Constantine’s account of

17 “Hoc autem faciebat vir sanctus disponens adire terram Sarracenorum et eis verbum fidei predicare; unde etiam barbam aliquanto tempore nutriebat,” (Legenda 32; 232). 18 Van Engen, “Dominic and the Brothers,” 12. 19 “Paulum sequens dicentem Corinthiis, ‘Libentissime impendam et superimpendar ego ipse pro animabus vestris,’” (Legenda 17; 298–299). SPAIN, ISLAM, AND THIRTEENTH-CENTURY DOMINICAN MEMORY 321

Dominic’s vision of Peter and Paul exhorting him to preach.20 Nevertheless, in Constantine’s more condensed version of the captivity narrative, the substance is largely the same. Moreover, in both tellings the greater significance of the captivity story is essentially the same: Peter of Ferrand rounds out his version by observ- ing that “God did not allow this, who preserved Dominic for the richer fruits of justice and the conversion of numerous souls”;21 while Constantine commented that “God, who had provided him for the more necessary redemption of many captives, spiritually of course, did not allow it.”22 In both, God’s plans thwarted Dominic’s self-sacrifice so that Dominic could be free to do his great work of spiritual liberation. Spain and its large Muslim population, however, rather than being singled out as the (or an) obvious direction that this liberating mission should take, are merely colorful elements in the scene’s staging. In 1260 Humbert of Romans wove together the accounts of Peter of Ferrand and Constantine of Orvieto into his Legenda Humberti de Romanis, a version of Dominic’s vita that served the needs of increased liturgical commemoration of Dominic and emphasized the miraculous accounts of the latter. The general chapter declared it the authoritative biography of Dominic in 1263/1266. If we look at the same episode as it appears in Humbert’s account, his role as both selective compiler and author shines through. He preferred Peter’s version and format over Constantine’s more Pauline account. He retitled the episode—“For the redemption of a neighbor he wanted to sell himself ”—offering a more general description of the paired stories, but also emphasized Dominic’s imitation of Christ. In the conclusion, where Peter had explained that God had kept Dominic from self-sacrifice “for richer fruits of justice and the conversion of numerous souls,”23 Humbert adds:

For in this the Father meant, not only the fruit of disciples, but also that they ought to produce many fruits, and he wanted for them to be just like the servants rendering money entrusted to them with the additional profit of

20 Van Engen, “Dominic and the Brothers,” 12. 21 “Sed non permisit hoc Dominus, qui eum sibi ad uberiores fructus iustitie et animarum quamplurimarum conversionem servabat,” (Legenda 21; 225). 22 “Sed Deus, qui ipsum ad multorum necessariorem redemptionem spiritualiter scilicet captivorum providerat, non promisit,” (Legenda 18; 299). 23 See Footnote 19. 322 T. E. BURMAN AND L. M. WALKER

interest. And therefore he regains by lesser good works those things which he provides with heavenly gifts for the greater good works.24

Here Humbert decided to elaborate on the “fruits of justice,” thus allowing him to exhort the brothers to good works, rather than expound on the promise of numerous conversions. This elaboration alludes to the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:27, likening the brothers to the faithful servants. While discipleship remains the priority for Humbert, therefore, his account continues to present mixed messages. God prevents Dominic from offering practical help to rescue one man from heresy and another from Saracen captivity. He is willing to sacrifice himself for others, therefore, but never actually does so. In like manner, Humbert exhorts his followers to work for the “richer fruits of justice and the conversion of numerous souls,” but never explains how this might be done. This places the burden on the new generation of brothers to interpret and fulfill this message. Humbert, therefore, altered the format and added commentary to this episode to highlight discipleship, but he once again left Spain and Islam in the inconsequential background. While Humbert was at work on his Legenda, Friar Gerard of Frachet was compiling the Vitae fratrum (1256–1259), a work lacking the official standing of Humbert’s history within the order, though it was widely available in its convents.25 Resulting from an open request issued throughout the Order at the general chapter in 1255 for any miracle stories, Gerard’s history is much more than a vita of Dominic, since it describes the rise and spread of the Order in general and reveals more concern with the hardships of the preachers’ mission. He pointed out, for example, that not all the brothers were eager to follow this new path:

Around the beginning of the Order a brother was commanded to go to the Cumani for the sake of their conversion. Seriously upset with this assign- ment, he asked a hermit friend of his, who was a true friend of God, to pray

24 “Clarificatur enim in hoc pater, ut discipuli non solum fructum, sed et fructum plurimum afferant, et vult ut servi sui pecuniam sibi traditam cum multo reportent denore usura- rum. Et ideo revocat interdum a bonis minoribus, quos dotavit donis celestibus ad maiora,” Humbert of Romans, Legenda Humberti de Romanis 25, MOPH 30, p. 386. 25 Van Engen, “Dominic and the Brothers,” p. 14. SPAIN, ISLAM, AND THIRTEENTH-CENTURY DOMINICAN MEMORY 323

to the Lord for him, because he could hardly believe obeying such an assign- ment would be useful for him.26

Gerard went on to report that this brother was encouraged by a vision of the Virgin Mary and came to the realization “that for brothers pursuing the salvation of men, their work is more arduous than those religious men who work only to save themselves, but the brothers’ work is more fruitful and it is full of ineffable joy, and for these brothers the Blessed Virgin is their special helper.”27 Even with its more collective focus, however, Gerard does portray Dominic’s desire to minister to the Cumani as inspirational for friars who “suffered hunger, thirst, lack of clothing and persecutions; some of them were led into captivity and two were killed by the infidels, others nevertheless continually persevered in the preaching mission they had begun.”28 Given its much broader scope, it is not surprising that Gerard’s account does include a few conversion stories involving Muslims. Peter of Sezanne, Gerard tells us, for example, reported that “In the time of the most pious emperor John, I had arrived in Constantinople with some brothers, sent by the Pope to settle, if possible, our differences with the modern Greeks.”29 Yet he soon encountered “a monk of the Saracens, a most strict model of his ancestral traditions with savvy political skills, I marveled at his outer appearance: very poor dress, a modest walk, and reserved, but inside

26 “Circa principium ordinis cuidam fratri iniunctum fuit, quod iret ad cumanos cause conversionis eorum. Qui ex hac obediencia graviter perturbatus, quendam heremitam sibi familiarem et verum Dei amicum rogavit, ut dominum pro se deprecaretur, quia vix credebat dictam obedienciam utilem sibi fore,” Gerard of Frachet, Vitae fratrum 1.6.1, MOPH I, p. 38. 27 “[F]ratribus pro salute hominum graviores aliis religiosis, qui sinigulariter salvant, instare labores, sed fructuosiores et gaudio plenos ineffibili, et in hiis beatam virginem specialem ad intricem,” (Vitae fratrum 1.6.1; 39). 28 “Sed spiritu sancti inflammante et zelo animarum urgente, secundo ad dictam gentem redierunt et per multa viarum discrimina pervenerunt ad eos, iuxta quendam fluvium, qui dicitur Deneper, ubi frequenter fame et siti et nudiate ac varia persecucione afflicti, alii ex ipsis in captivatem sunt ducti, duo ab infidelibus sunt interempti, alii nichilominus in incepto predicacionis officio constanter permanebant,” (Vitae fratrum 6.1; 306). 29 “Vir religiosus et verax, frater Petrus de Sezana, Gallicus, qui fuit prior et lector in ordine, conversionem cuiusdam Saraceni scripsit et retulit in hec verba: Tempore, inquit, piissimi imperatoris Ioannis veneram Constantinopolim cum fratribus aliis a domino papa missis pro sedanda, si fieri posset, modernorum contradiccione Grecorum,” (Vitae fratrum 4.24.13; 218). 324 T. E. BURMAN AND L. M. WALKER he was empty.”30 Like the heretics in Southern France then, this Muslim’s false piety is portrayed as masking doctrinal error.31 Peter debated with this Saracen “monk” (perhaps a Sufi?) and had him imprisoned for blaspheming Christ. While in his cell, however, the Muslim dreamt that whereas his shaykh had brought him a moldy piece of bread, Peter offered him a fresh loaf. The next day Peter interprets this dream for the Muslim: the moldy bread is Islam, but Christianity is the life-giving bread. The Muslim “monk” converts, takes the name of Paul, and is instructed by the Franciscans. Here Gerard has incorporated Islam—and preaching to it and conversion from it—into the landscape of Dominican memory. Yet the Muslims both within the boundaries of the Latin West and most proximate to it in Iberia and North Africa are for the most part as absent from his Vitae fratrum as they are from the other thirteenth-century Dominican histories. For Gerard Islam is a distant problem solved more easily by miraculous dreams than by Dominican disputation, though its presence in his narrative also serves to magnify the miraculous here and there. Among accounts gathered from the brothers in Spain regarding miracles related to the tomb of Brother Pelagius, Gerard reports that two Muslim women in Coimbra were miraculously healed, but not converted. They had, Gerard tells us, “very high fevers,” so “they took some dirt from the tomb of Brother Pelagius of Spain and by divine mercy they were immediately healed.”32 The power of the relic is the crux of the story and the fact that the women were Muslims only increases our amazement. Another miracle recounted by Gerard of Frachet centers on the order’s primary calling: preaching. He explains that Dominic and a fellow brother Bertrand met German pilgrims while traveling from Toulouse to Paris (¶2.10). After these pilgrims had provided for the brothers for four days, Dominic confided to Bertrand that he was troubled by the imbalance of this arrangement since they could offer nothing in return for the material support. Then he prayed to God and the brothers were miraculously able

30 “Eo tempore venit illuc quidam saracenorum monachus, paternarum suarum tradicio- num vehementissimus emulator, virtutibus quidem politicis miro modo extrinsecus adorna- tus, simplicissimo aspectu, vilissimo habitu, modesto incessu, sermone raro; sed intus vacuus erat,” Ibid. 31 Jordan of Saxony, Libellus 20; 36. 32 “Item quod mirabilis fuit, due Saracene habebant febres apud Columbriam vehementes; que acceperunt de terra tumuli fratris Pelagii et statim divina misercordia sunt curate,” (Vitae fratrum 5.9.1; 296). SPAIN, ISLAM, AND THIRTEENTH-CENTURY DOMINICAN MEMORY 325 to speak in German. They therefore were able to share their spiritual goods, edifying the pilgrims with the word of God. The greater meaning of this miracle clearly has to do with the fair exchange of goods and the value of preaching—Gerard echoing here 1 Timothy 5:18 (“a worker is worthy of their wages”), the linguistic miracle enabling the brothers thus to merit the material support of the pilgrims. But what is striking in this context is that we encounter no such miraculous mastery of Arabic, or any other language in which one might preach to Muslims. As far as we can tell from Gerard’s account, God only interceded supernaturally on behalf of Christian languages. Gerard rounds out his Vitae fratrum by quoting several letters concerned with the missions to the Cumani, including missives from King Bela and Queen Mary of Hungary. Wedged between these positive reports is a letter supposedly by Raymond of Peñafort giving an account of Dominican efforts in Iberia and North Africa (¶6.3). While the reports on the missions to the Cumani and the royal letters highlight the successes of the Dominicans as missionaries and arbitrators, Raymond’s letter focuses primarily on what has yet to be accomplished and on the unique challenges facing the brothers of Africa and Spain. The hurdles of learning the Arabic language (no miraculous intervention here!) and thorny theological discrepancies have especially dogged their efforts. He notes that the Armenians enslaved by Muslims only understand Arabic, and both Muslims and some Christians believe the veneration of images in churches amounts to idolatry. Raymond does hold out slivers of hope when he mentions that soldiers are eager to hear the word of God, some apostates have been led back to the faith, and, most importantly, a few Muslim princes show signs of possible conversion. But Raymond makes clear that success will only come about in this region with sufficient resources and dogged persistence: “the gate seems open for incalculable fruit, as long as the harvesters do not cease.”33 He echoes here Matthew 9:37 but makes an important distinction: it is not that the workers are few, but that the tasks are uniquely trying. Positioned between reports of miracles and conversions among the Cumani, therefore, this rather bleak account of Dominican activity in Iberia and Africa at the very end of Gerard’s Vitae fratrum seems a fitting conclusion to an evolving Dominican memory of the Dominican Order in

33 “[Q]uod ianua videtur aperta quasi ad inestimabilem fructum, dum tamen messores non desinunt,” (Vitae fratrum 6.3; 310). 326 T. E. BURMAN AND L. M. WALKER which those regions, and the Islam that flourished there, played virtually no role. From Jordan to Gerard there were many opportunities to alter the basic narrative of the foundation and development of the Order of Preachers, and this did in fact happen. Acts originally ascribed to Diego, like the founding of the house in Prouille, were later attributed to Dominic, and Dominic’s own deeds were made to conform to his later sainthood.34 When the Order’s needs changed, each author reworked the older versions. Yet the fundamental place of Spain and Islam in this evolving Dominican memory of the Order changed scarcely at all. Iberia’s role was to produce Diego de Osma who nurtured the sainted founder, Dominic; Islam lurked here and there in the background, but both Diego and Dominic resolutely turned away from it toward both the Albigensian heretics and the dynamic Latin Church beyond it to the north and east. It is perhaps conceivable that the relative silence about Spain and Islam in these Dominican histories of their own Order is a result of their function—that for the purposes both of portraying their founder as a saint and of legitimizing their order in the eyes of the Latin-Christian culture, a focus on the homelands of Latin Christianity made best sense. Yet strikingly enough, we find much the same silence in an historical work of a very different sort likewise produced within the Order of Preachers: Friar Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum historiale, issued in its final form in the late 1250s.35 Neither the vita of a single saint, nor the vitae of a guild of preachers, the Speculum historiale is a universal history, tracing the history of humanity from creation to Vincent’s lifetime. Yet despite embracing the whole world and all of history as his subject matter, this Dominican also could not bring Spain or contemporary Iberian Islam within his field of view either. Of course Vincent does make room, among the myriad other events he narrates, to describe the origins of his order, doing so in widely scattered chapters of books 29 through 31 of his historical mirror. His account, though, is derived directly from those of Peter Ferrand and Constantine of

34 As Van Engen points out (“Dominic and the Brothers,” 13); compare Jordan of Saxony, Libellus 27; 39 and Peter of Ferrand, Legenda 16; 221, with Humbert of Romans, Legenda 18; 382. 35 The bibliography on this immense work is itself immense (though in many ways it only scratches the surface of this remarkable compilation), but an excellent overview and introduction to the Speculum, which cites a broad range of relevant scholarship, can be found in Monique Paulmier-Foucart’s and Marie-Christine Duchenne’s Vincent de Beauvais et le Grand miroir du monde (Turnhout, Brepols, 2004), passim. SPAIN, ISLAM, AND THIRTEENTH-CENTURY DOMINICAN MEMORY 327

Orvieto36 and gives us very nearly the same portrayal of its development. Diego de Osma once again appears as the inspiration for the Dominican apostolate. In 29:93—“On the Legation of the Twelve Abbots against the Albigensians and on the Bishop, Saint Diego”37—he persuades a convoca- tion of prelates that in order to effectively preach to the heretics, they needed to cast aside the pomp of expensive retinues and vestments, and “hold themselves forth in true evangelical poverty.” Moreover, while the others merely made solemn promises to do this, he immediately acted, sending all his retinue back to Osma together with their elaborate accou- terments, retaining only a few clerics, including, of course, Brother Dominic.38 In the following chapter Vincent recounts Diego’s attempt to be relieved of his office in order to devote himself to the conversion of the Cumani, though in a single sentence.39 Predictably, Vincent’s biography of Dominic emphasizes its miraculous qualities, including an infant prophecy of his destiny as enlightener of the whole world: his mother had a vision at his baptism of Dominic with a star

36 See Johannes B. Voorbij, “Les mises à jour de la matière dominicaine dans le Speculum historiale,” in Serge Lusignan et al. eds., Lector et compilator: Vincent de Beauvais, frère prêcheur: un intellectuel et son milieu au XIIIe (Grâne, France: Editions Créaphis, 1997), 153–168 at 162. 37 “De legatione xii. Abbatum contra Albigenses & de Sancto Didaco Episcopo” (Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale 29:93, ed. Balthazar Bellère as vol. 4 of Bibliotheca Mundi. Vincentii Burgundi, ex ordine Praedicatorum venerabilis episcopi Bellovacensis, Speculum Quadruplex, Naturale, Doctrinale, Morale, Historiale, 4 volumes, [Douai, 1624], 1217a). Here and in the following I cite both the book and chapter numbers as they appear in this edition and the page and column as well. In cases where I cite specific manuscripts, I give the book number as it appears in that manuscript. 38 “Hoc autem fuit eius spiritu diuino suggerente consilium, vt abiecta pompa superflui apparatus. … veramque atque euangelicam in se praetenderant paupertatem: & fidem Christi non verbis tantum et labiis personarent, sed rebus et manibus demonstrarent. … Faventque omnes eius consilio, et iuxta verbum eius se facere pollicentur. Ipse vero primis dictis suis facta compensans, caepit facere quod aliis suadebat, statimque misit suos Oxoniam cum equi- taturis, et supellectili, et diuerso que secum tulerat apparatu. Retinuit tamen sibi paucos ex clericis, et frater Domininicum” (ibid.). 39 Speculum historiale 29:95; 1218a. The Douai edition reads “Romanorum conversio” rather than “Cumanorum conversio,” as we would both expect and find in the manuscripts. See, for example, Lucern, Zentral-und Hochschulbibliothek, MS P 13 fol.:4 (available at http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/fr/list/one/zhl/P0013-2-4), fol. 259r (this a mid-fourteenth-century MS, on which see Charlotte Bretscher-Gisiger, et al., Katalog der mittelalterlichen Handschriften des Klosters St. Urban [Zürich, 2013], 102–103). Another case, seemingly, of a puzzled reader of a later generation baffled by the desire to preach to the Cumani! 328 T. E. BURMAN AND L. M. WALKER on his forehead which illuminated and purified the whole earth, a divine prediction, we are told, that “he was being given as a light to the nations.”40 And indeed, as in Peter of Ferrand’s account, we learn that early in the life of his new order, he set seriously about the work of growing a beard so that he could “go to the land of the Muslims and preach the word of God to them.”41 We see something, moreover, of the global reach of his vision when Vincent, like Jordan of Saxony before him, describes how Dominic intended for “his sons” to be dispersed throughout the whole world, two by two, preaching the word of God.42 But of course Dominic himself never made it to the Islamic world, and, while the first teams of Dominicans, according to Vincent, were dispatched to Spain as well as Paris and Bologna,43 neither Spain nor Islam really figure again as sites of Dominican activity in the Speculum historiale. Vincent does relate the story of Dominic offering himself as ransom for a captive held by Muslims,44 and he describes the first Dominican and Franciscan missions to the Mongols,45 but both the religion of Islam and the broader world beyond it are mostly absent from the sections of his historical mirror dealing with Dominic and the Dominicans—this mirror in which the reader is invited to a personally transformative examination of all of God’s creation.46

40 “stellam habens in fronte, que totam terram suo lumine perlustrabat. Quo utique Deo monstrante futurorum praescio dabatur intellegi, quod in lucem gentium dandus erat” (Speculum historiale 29:94; 1217b). 41 “Hoc autem faciebat vir sanctus disponens adire terram Saracenorum, & eis verbum Domini praedicare, propter quod etiam barbam aliquanto tempore nutriebat” (Speculum historiale 30:67, 1257a). 42 “Moxque in momento temporis videbatur ei, quod filios suos per totum mundum dis- persos aspiceret, incedentes binos et binos, et verbum Domini populis praedicantes” (ibid.). 43 “Inuocato igitur Spiritu sancto dispersit fidelis dispensator et prudens seruus Dei Dominicus suos gratres et quosdam quidem in Hispaniam; quosdam Parisios, alios autem Bononiam destinauit” (Ibid.). 44 Speculum historiale 29:94; 1220b–1221a. 45 For example, in 31:2 (“De prima missione praedicatorum et minorum at Tartaros”) and 31:40 (“Qualiter fratres Praedicatores apud Bayothnoy Tartarorum Principem admissi fuerunt”) Speculum historiale, 1286b, 1299a. 46 On the Speculum’s purpose see Einar Már Jonsson, “Le sens du titre ‘Speculum’ aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles et son utilisation par Vincent de Beauvais,” in M. Paulmier-Foucart, S. Lusignan, and A. Nadeau, eds., Vincent de Beauvais: intentions et réceptions d’une oeuvre encyclopédique au Moyen Age. Actes du XIVe Colloque de l’Institut d’études médiévales, organ- isé conjointement par l’Atelier Vincent de Beauvais … et l’Institut d’études médiévales … 27–30 avril 1988, Saint-Laurent/Paris 1990 (Cahiers d’études médiévales. Cahier spécial 4), pp. 11–32, esp. 31. SPAIN, ISLAM, AND THIRTEENTH-CENTURY DOMINICAN MEMORY 329

Rather, Vincent’s account of Dominic’s life is focused almost entirely on the holy acts of that saint performed among the Albigensians. Just as in the Dominican histories, moreover, while Dominic is often portrayed presenting the Gospel persuasively to the heretics, it is generally miracles that do the convincing. Thus we hear once more of Dominic’s learned book written for the disputation at Fanjeaux, which only wins the day when, in an ordeal by fire, the competing Albigensian treatise went up in flames, while Dominic’s tract leaped unsinged from the fire miraculously and repeatedly (having been tossed back in twice for good measure). Thus, Vincent concludes, what once happened to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Dan 1–3) “proved by divine power both the holiness of [the book’s] author and the truth of the orthodox faith.”47 On another occasion, after “demonstrating the perfidy of the heretics in many ways, and thus proving the Catholic faith in a certain sermon,” Dominic went off in his customary way to pray. Nine noble ladies intruded, however, saying, “servant of God, help us: if the things you preached today are true, then the spirit of error has blinded our minds.”48 They had considered, they said, the men he had called heretics to be good men, but now they were uncertain. God “will show you,” Dominic told them, “what sort of lord you have followed till now.”49 At that moment they saw a terrifying cat, the size of dog, leap in to middle of them, with great flaming eyes and a long, thick tongue. Turning itself around, and raising its tail, it exposed its hinder parts, from which a faetor intollerabilis issued forth. After it paced back and forth among them, and then escaped up the bell rope and disappeared, Dominic admonished the matronly ladies: “here you can see what sort of one you have served so far in following the heretics. But they, giving thanks to God, were entirely converted from that moment to the Catholic faith.”50 If Vincent’s account of Dominic and the Dominicans is like the Dominican histories in the way miracles give preaching its full probative thrust, his version of these events goes beyond those histories in its even

47 “vt sic diuina potentia quod olim in tribus pueris gestum cognouimus … orthodoxae fidei veritatem, & sui comprobaret auctoris sanctitatem” (Speculum historiale 29:96, 1218a). 48 “serue Dei adiuua nos, si vera sunt haec quae hodie predicasti,̨ iam diu mentes nostras erroris spiritus exaecauit” (Speculum historiale 30:76, 1259b). 49 “ipse qui neminem uult perire, iam ostendet vobis quali Domino hactenus adhaesistis” (ibid.). 50 “ecce, inquit, per hoc quod coram oculis, faciente Deo. … potestis aduertere qualis est. ille, cui hactenus sequentes haerecticos seruistis. Illae vero Deo gratias referentes, ab illa hora ad fidem catholicam perfectissime sunt conuersae” (Ibid.). 330 T. E. BURMAN AND L. M. WALKER greater neglect of Spain, and this is true not only of the portions that relate Dominican history but of the vast Speculum historiale in general. While Osma is mentioned here and there in connection of Diego and Dominic, the word “Hispania” is rare, at least in the hundreds of pages that deal with the period from the Early Middle Ages to the mid-thirteenth century where Vincent brings his narrative to a close. We read of Charlemagne’s alleged capture of Cordoba and subjection of all of Spain to the Church of Santiago in 24:17, and the battle of Roncesvalles in 24:18–21.51 Much later Vincent describes the conversion of Petrus Alfonsi in 25:118,52 while 27:15 refers to a French count who went on pilgrimage to Santiago and died there,53 and 29:27 is entitled “On the Peace Miraculously Effected between the King of Aragon and the Count of St. Giles.”54 The battle of Alarcos at which the King of Castile’s armies were destroyed by the Almohads in 1195 gets brief treatment in 29:57,55 and 30:2 has a short paragraph about the great Christian victory at Las Navas de Tolosa.56 Compared to the long sections of the Speculum historiale devoted to the Crusades, these passages on Spain are insignificant.57 Indeed, Vincent devotes fully 12 chapters of the Speculum historicale’s final book to events in the Middle East in the thirteenth century and to a detailed discussion of the Holy Land’s geography (31:54–66). The same is true when we compare the treatment of Spain with that of France, England, and the Holy Roman Empire, or indeed with the attention Vincent lavishes on the Mongols throughout most of book 31.58 We read nothing, therefore, of such momentous moments in Iberian history—at least as it is usually told—as the invasions of the Almoravids and Almohads, the conquest of Toledo in 1086, or the rapid conquests of Andalusı ̄ territory after the Battle of Las Navas. At times this neglect of Spain seems beyond comprehension: with such lavish attention paid to Louis IX’s disastrous

51 Speculum historiale, 968b–970a. 52 Speculum historiale, 1043b. 53 Speculum historiale, 1101b. 54 “De pace inter Regem Arragonensem, et Comitem sancti Aegidii miraculosa facta” (Speculum historiale 29:27; 1195a). 55 Speculum historiale, 1205a. 56 Speculum historiale, 1237b. 57 See, for example, 25:91–104 (First Crusade), 29:43–54 (Third), and 30:79–104 (Fifth). 58 On which, see Claude Kappler, “L’image des Mongols dans le ‘Speculum historiale’ de Vincent de Beauvais,” in Paulmier-Foucart et al., eds., Vincent de Beauvais: intentions et réceptions d’une oeuvre encyclopédique au Moyen Age, 219–240. SPAIN, ISLAM, AND THIRTEENTH-CENTURY DOMINICAN MEMORY 331 crusades (31:89–102), would not the more-or-less contemporary, and completely successful Spanish campaigns that captured Seville in 1236 and Cordoba in 1248 merit at least a sentence? This vision of Medieval European history, foreshadowing so strikingly the twentieth-century American textbook account—France, England, and the Empire, with a lot of crusading—owes something to Vincent’s decision to organize the Speculum historiale chronologically around empires.59 It was difficult to fit the messy Iberian boundary between Christianity and Islam into a presentation of history written in France and arranged according to the reigns of German emperors. But if Vincent outdoes the Dominican historians in his neglect of Spain and its history, the same cannot be said of Islam. It is true that Islam, like Spain, scarcely turns up in connection with Vincent’s telling of Dominic’s and the Dominicans’ history. But it is very much on Vincent’s mind elsewhere in his vast repository of knowledge. To start with, nearly 30 chapters of book 23 (23:39–68) are devoted to Muhammad and his religion. This section, well known to scholars of Christian images of Islam, is based heavily on well-known Latin sources, such as the twelfth-century translation of the Apology of al-Kindi, and is as ample a presentation of Islam as could be found in thirteenth-century Europe.60 But Islam figures significantly elsewhere as well. While it is striking that we might conclude that Muslims had no role in the First Crusade from Vincent’s telling of it—the enemies are mostly referred to as “pagans” or described only in ethnic terms as Turks or Arabs—he is much clearer that crusaders are fighting followers of Islam when he describes the later crusades: the painful account of the fiasco at Damiatta during the Fifth Crusade is presented entirely as a war between Christians and Muslims (Saraceni) (30:79–104). Moreover, Vincent returns more than once to describe Muhammad’s life and Islamic beliefs, most notably in 25:140–145 where he repeats much of what Petrus Alfonsi had said about the Prophet and his religion in the fifth of his Dialogues against the Jews. But he even stops to summarize the Islamic beliefs in the middle of retelling the events at Damiatta (30:86).61

59 Mireille Schmidt-Chazan, “L’idée d’Empire dans le Speculum historiale de Vincent de Beauvais,” in Paulmier-Foucart et al., eds., Vincent de Beauvais: intentions et réceptions d’une oeuvre encyclopédique au Moyen Age, 253–284. 60 See most recently Emilio Platti, “L’image de l’Islam chez le dominicain Vincent de Beauvais (m. 1264),” Mideo: Mélanges de l’Institut dominicain d’études orientales du Caire 25–26 (2004), 65–139. 61 Speculum historiale, 1262b–1263a. 332 T. E. BURMAN AND L. M. WALKER

Now it is true that the massive scale of Vincent’s encyclopedia makes it difficult to work out the relative importance of any one topic. By comparison, Vincent devoted all 128 chapters of book 28 to the Flores Beati Bernarndi—an anthology, that is, of selections from St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s writings. Yet if we set his treatment of Islam alongside how he handles the other great enemies of Catholic belief, it becomes clear that Vincent sees it as especially troubling. Arianism, for example, merits only seven chapters’ worth of attention (13.62, 14.1–6), and Manicheeism gets only two (18:62–63) in the midst of a long florilegium of Augustine’s works. Even the beliefs of the Albigensian heretics, without whom the Dominicans would not exist, are never really described, and certainly we learn nothing meaningful about their history. Indeed, a key theme of Vincent’s narrative of the history of the Church is that heretics and unbelievers do arise from time to time, but their beliefs and history require only minimal description, for they are quickly and utterly slapped down by the holy lives and powerful teaching of great Christian saints—Augustine in the case of the Manichees, for example, Dominic in the case of Albigensians. Judaism is, of course, an exception to this, Vincent summarizing at great length Petrus Alfonsi’s account of its errors in chapters 25:19–39, which even include a discussion of the errors of the Talmud, and no great saint emerges to put an end to their perfidy. But Islam even more dramatically subverts this triumphal account. Most importantly, however, the philosophic and scientific culture of Islam looms large in Vincent’s encyclopedia, not in the historical section, but in the Speculum naturale that lavishly describes the created order.62 Organized according to the genera of the natural world—with chapters “On Minerals,” “On Birds,” “On Fish,” and so on—this section of Vincent’s encyclopedia was as dependent on Arab thought as scholastic learning in general, and Vincent does not hide this fact. Indeed, Vincent, good scholar that he was, insists always on identifying his sources. In many sections of the Speculum naturale, therefore, Arab-Muslim names litter the text. Indeed in most manuscripts the names of Vincent’s authorities are written in bright red ink or underlined in red, so that they jump off the

62 Arab philosophy and science are also conspicuously present in the third part of Vincent’s encyclopedia, the Speculum doctrinale, on which see Adam Fijalkowski, “The Arabic Authors in the Works of Vincent of Beauvaise,” in Andreas Speer and Lydia Wegener, eds., Wissen über Grenzen: arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter (Berlin, New York: De Gruyter 2006), 483–495. SPAIN, ISLAM, AND THIRTEENTH-CENTURY DOMINICAN MEMORY 333 page. On folio 44r of Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale MS 18466—a copy of the Speculum naturale dating from the fourteenth century63—we are part way through book 19 on “Beasts of Burden” (De iumentis). Toward the bottom of the column, a handsome rubric announces chapter “XXVI. On Remedies Made from the Camel.” Immediately following this title Vincent inserted the name of his first authority, inscribed here in the same lustrous red: “Avicenna.” The flesh of the camel, according to that great Muslim philosopher and physician, “calls forth” urine, we then learn, and its brains, dried and mixed with oil, treat epilepsy, while its blood could be helpfully prescribed for several purposes.64 Vincent then begins a new section of camel-derived medicaments by announcing the same authority, “Avicenna,” once again in bright red in this manuscript (presumably he has taken the next list of remedies from a different Avicennan work). Indeed, alongside vivid red citations of Aristotle, Pliny, and Isidore, we find two other citations of Middle Eastern authorities in the two columns of this same folio: “Haly” (i.e., the Persian Physician, ‘Ali ibn al-‘Abbas al-Majusi, d. 982–994), and “Constantinus” (i.e., the North-African born Constantine the African, translator of Arabic medical and scientific texts who died before 1098/1099 as a monk at Monte Cassino).65 So if we page through this large codex, fully 242 folios in length, we find our eyes drawn over and over again to the names of the great Arab thinkers, the Latin versions of whose works had so enriched European thought during the first century of the Dominican Order. We encounter a very telling paradox, then, when we contemplate the overall place of Islam in Vincent’s great encyclopedia. While Christian redemption is dependent, he tells us near the beginning of the third part of his encyclopedia, the Speculum doctrinale, in part on the study of philosophy,66 much of it acquired through translation from the Arab-

63 On this manuscript, see J. van den Gheyn, S. J., Catalogue des manuscits de la biblio- thèque royale de Belgique, vol. 3: Théologie (Brussels: Henri Lamertin, 1903), 297. For a list of manuscripts of the Speculum naturale, go to http://www.arlima.net/uz/vincent_de_ beauvais.html#nat 64 “XXVI. De medicinalibus ex camelo. Avicenna. Caro cameli prouocat urinam. … Cameli cerebrum exiccatum et cum aceto bibitum confert epẏlensie. Ad idem ualet eius sanguis quie etiam exiccatus et frixus retinet fluxum. … Item Avicenna.” (Vincent of Beauvais,Speculum naturale 19.26, Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale MS 18466, fol. 44ra). 65 Ibid. For another example of this passage with the same mise-en-page, see Paris, BnF MS lat. 6428 (A2), fol. 28va, another fourteenth-century manuscript of the Speculum naturale. 66 This appears just before the long list of capitula at the beginning of the Speculum naturale: “Liber secundus epylogo pretermisso de lapsu hominis agit uniuersaliter de ipsius reper- 334 T. E. BURMAN AND L. M. WALKER

Muslim world, not only is the specific site of all that translation—Medieval Spain—almost entirely left out of Vincent’s presentation of world history but the religion of those Arab Philosophers, Islam, is portrayed as something only in the past, or something that has bearing on Crusades, Crusaders, and all that bother in the East. That most of the great Arab philosophers were Muslims is never made clear, and the place, means, and mechanism by which Latin Christendom acquired their vital intellectual tradition are hidden entirely from our eyes. In thirteenth-century Dominican memory—at least as it is preserved in both the Dominican histories of their own order and in Friar Vincent of Beauvais’ great mirror of all knowledge—neither Dominic’s homeland, Spain, nor its huge Muslim population are anything more than a slightly exotic place of origin from which one leaves, like Abraham putting Ur of the Chaldees behind him, to travel to the Promised Land of Southern France and points beyond where the Order of Preachers could take up its real work. Of course this is not really true. Dominicans were thick on the ground in Iberia by the mid-thirteenth century, with 23 convents throughout the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands by 1250 (with another 12 established by 1275 including four new convents in Castile, four in Aragón, two in Andalusia, one in Navarre, and one in Portugal).67 By about the time that Vincent’s Speculum maius achieved its final form in the late 1250s, a number of Spanish Dominicans had been sent to language studia where they grappled intensely with the Arabic language, and at least one, Ramon Martí (fl. 1250–1284) had utterly mastered it and written against Islam.68 Moreover, Friar William of Tripoli (fl. 1260–1273), a Dominican who lived his whole life in the Crusader States, would go on to write learned works about and against Islam in the early 1270s,69 and the Italian Dominican and intrepid Middle Eastern traveler, Riccoldo da Monte di Croce (d. 1320) would study the Qur’an in Arabic obsessively and write his highly influential Contra legem saracenorum a generation

atione per doctrinam et studium philosophie,” (Bruges, 251. 8ra). In the seventeenth-century Douai edition (see above, note 37) this passage and the list of capitula appear at the end of the volume containing the Naturale (1593a). 67 Francisco García-Serrano, Preachers of the City: The Expansion of the Dominican Order in Castile (1217–1348) (New Orleans: University Press of the South, 1997), 28. 68 Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews, 104–115. 69 For bibliography on him see CMR 4: 515–520 [art. Thomas E. Burman]. SPAIN, ISLAM, AND THIRTEENTH-CENTURY DOMINICAN MEMORY 335 later.70 Dominicans, therefore, were in Spain and were encountering Islam by the time these Dominican memories were compiled and would go on to even more intensive encounters in the following decades. There may, of course, be some rather prosaic reasons for this amnesia. Friar Vincent, for example, must have depended mostly on sources that were readily to hand as he compiled his encyclopedia and may well have had no relevant works in his library, while the Dominican historians clearly followed the outline of their founder’s life and the genesis of their order laid down by Jordan of Saxony, a revered, first-generation Dominican whose experience of Dominic was entirely in Southern France. Yet in some respects this forgetfulness in Dominican memory seems, in fact, a quite accurate depiction of Dominican and, more broadly, scholastic culture in the thirteenth century. While it is true that a handful of preachers—Martí, William of Tripoli, and Riccoldo—engaged Islam with great learning and energy, such scholars were marginal exceptions. The rule among Dominican and scholastic theologians and philosophers was, in fact, nearly the opposite. While leading high-medieval Muslim theologians such as al-Ghazālı ̄ (d. 1111) and Ibn Taymıyah̄ (d. 1328) combed minutely through the Christian scriptures and expounded the errors of Christian belief systematically and, in the latter’s case, at vast length,71 no prominent scholastic theologian, with the partial exception of William of Auvergne (d. 1249),72 ever bothered to address Islam as a religion or to come to grips with its Holy Book. While we know that the Qur’an circulated in Latin and Arabic among some Dominicans,73 and that Aquinas himself implies that he had read it,74 the fourteenth-century rumor claiming that he

70 For bibliography on Riccoldo see CMR 4:678–691 [art. Thomas E. Burman], and my “How an Italian Friar Read his Arabic Qurʾān,” Dante Studies 125 (2007):93–109, reprinted in Jan M. Ziolkowski, ed., Dante and Islam (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 78–91. 71 On their works against Christianity, see CMR 3 [art. Maha El Kaisy-Friemuth] and 4:824–878 [art. Jon Hoover]. 72 See CMR 4 [art. Sean Murphy], and Winston Black, “William of Auvergne on the Dangers of Paradise: Biblical Exegesis between Natural Philosophy and Anti-Islamic Polemic,” Traditio 68 (2013): 233–258. 73 See Thomas E. Burman, Reading the Qurʾān in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 91–98, and id., “How an Italian Friar Read his Arabic Qurʾān,” passim. 74 See his very brief comments on Islam in his Summa contra gentiles 1.6.41 (“quin potius quasi omnia Veteris et Novi Testamenti documenta fabulosa narratione depravat, ut patet eius legem inspicienti”): S. Thomae Aquinatis, Liber de veritate catholicae Fidei contra errores 336 T. E. BURMAN AND L. M. WALKER wrote the Summa contra gentiles, at Friar Ramon de Penyafort’s request, as a handbook for Dominican missionaries is almost certainly false.75 Certainly nothing in it, or in any other of that great theologian’s works, demonstrates any meaningful engagement with Islam. While some prominent Dominican scholars such as Penyafort and Humbert of Romans did engage with Islam through the lens of canon-law or geo-political considerations, Dominican theologians and philosophers—the thirteenth- century Latin thinkers most dependent on Arab thought—were, like the Dominican historians and Vincent of Beauvais’ great encyclopedia, virtually silent about the Islam in which that thought thrived. Moreover, as Robin Vose has observed, there is remarkably little evidence of any real Dominican attempt to preach to Muslims in Spain itself, despite the establishment of language schools seemingly meant to train friars for that purpose. While King James I would preside over the Disputation of Barcelona in 1263 forcing Rabbi Nahmanides to respond to Dominican attempts to demonstrate that the Messiah had already come using only the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish sources, we have no record of royally sponsored disputations between Dominicans, or any other Christian scholars, and Muslims in Iberia. As Vose has shown, in fact, overwhelmingly the Order of Preachers in thirteenth-century Spain was preoccupied not with preaching to Muslims (or Jews), but with ministering to its Christian population.76 There is plenty of evidence that in some sense, as Robert Chazan said 25 years ago, “As Christian society looked outside itself,” in the high Middle Ages, “the most obvious and pervasive danger was that posed by the world of Islam.”77 Certainly if we, with 700 years of hindsight, tot up the threats—religious, political, demographic, and intellectual—to Latin Christendom in the thirteenth century we would come to that conclusion. But if Islam was a huge threat to thirteenth-century Latin scholastic culture as exemplified by the Dominicans, and even if some contemporary Dominicans in this period would have agreed, the remarkable absence of infidelium seu Summa contra Gentiles, vol. 2, ed. P. Marc, C. Pera, P. Caramello (Turin, Rome: Marrietti, 1961), 10. 75 As René-Antoine Gauthier, O.P. has argued trenchantly and, I believe, irrefutably in his Saint Thomas d’Aquin: Somme contre les gentils: Introduction (Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1993), passim, esp. 119–127. 76 Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews, passim, esp. 133–135, 139–155, 161–164. 77 Robert Chazan, Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 28. SPAIN, ISLAM, AND THIRTEENTH-CENTURY DOMINICAN MEMORY 337 both Spain and contemporary Islam in Dominican memory is a vivid sign that this truth was often (and perhaps usually) systematically ignored. If we began this chapter by pondering a thirteenth-century scribe’s incredulity over Diego de Osma’s desire to preach to the distant Cumani rather than the nearby Saraceni, we conclude by going back to Peter of Ferrand’s story, repeated by Vincent of Beauvais, about Dominic’s erst- while beard. It is striking that, just as in the case of his willingness to sacrifice himself for captives, Dominic actually took steps—growing a beard—to prepare himself for a preaching mission in the terra Saracenorum, but in both cases God put a definitive stop to these inchoate apostolic acts, for Dominic had a “greater calling.” Islam may have been “an obvious and pervasive danger” to Christianity, these Dominican historians seem to tell us, and perhaps one day Dominicans really should grow flowing beards and preach the Gospel among Muslims, but, for the moment, that greater calling—to minister to the Christian population of Latin Europe, to root out Albengensian heresy, and, perhaps, to evangelize among Turkic Cumans in the Balkans—was responsibility enough. Like contemporary scholastic culture more broadly, thirteenth-century Dominican memory was not yet ready to include the world of Islam in its gaze.

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Constantine of Orvieto. “Legenda Constantini Urbevetani 13.” In Monumenta ordinis fratrum praedicatorum historica Vol. 16: 295. Rome, 1935. García-Serrano, Francisco. Preachers of the City: The Expansion of the Dominican Order in Castile (1217–1348). New Orleans: University Press of the South, 1997. Gauthier, René-Antoine O.P. Introduction to: Saint Thomas d’Aquin: Somme contre les gentils. Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1993. Gerard of Frachet. “Vitae fratrum.” In Monumenta ordinis fratrum praedicatorum historica. Vol. I: 38. Rome, 1935. Hillgarth, J.N. The Spanish Kingdoms 1250–1516, vol. 1: 1250–1510: Precarious Balance. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. Hodgson, Marshall. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, vol. 1: The Classical Age of Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Humbert of Romans. “Legenda Humberti de Romanis 25.” In Monumenta ordinis fratrum praedicatorum historica. Vol. 30: 386. Rome, 1935. Jonsson, Einar Már. “Le sens du titre ‘Speculum’ aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles et son utilisation par Vincent de Beauvais.” In Vincent de Beauvais: intentions et récep- tions d’une oeuvre encyclopédique au Moyen Age, edited by Paulmier-Foucart et al., 11–32. Jordan of Saxony. “Libellus de principiis ordinis praedicatorum.” In Monumenta ordinis fratrum praedicatorum historica, Vol. 16: 8, 34–35. Rome, 1935. Kappler, Claude. “L’image des Mongols dans le ‘Speculum historiale’ de Vincent de Beauvais.” In Vincent de Beauvais: intentions et réceptions d’une oeuvre ency- clopédique au Moyen Age, edited by Paulmier-Foucart et al., 219–240. Menéndez Pidal, Ramón, ed. Primera Crónica General de España – Estoria de España que mandó componer Alfonso el Sabio y se continuaba bajo Sancho IV en 1289. 2 vols. Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1955. Monumenta ordinis fratrum praedicatorum historica. Rome, 1935. Paulmier-Foucart, Monique, S. Lusignan, and A. Nadeau, eds. Vincent de Beauvais: intentions et réceptions d’une oeuvre encyclopédique au Moyen Age. Actes du XIVe Colloque de l’Institut d’études médiévales, organisé conjointement par l’Atelier Vincent de Beauvais … et l’Institut d’études médiévales … 27–30 avril 1988, (Cahiers d’études médiévales. Cahier spécial 4). Saint-Laurent/Paris: Bellarmin. Paulmier-Foucart, Monique and Marie-Christine Duchenne. Vincent de Beauvais et le Grand miroir du monde. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2004. Peter of Ferrand. “Legenda Sancti Dominici 12.” In Monumenta ordinis fratrum praedicatorum historica Vol. 16: 217. Rome, 1935. Platti, Emilio. “L’image de l’Islam chez le dominicain Vincent de Beauvais (m. 1264).” Mideo: Mélanges de l’Institut dominicain d’études orientales du Caire 25–26 (2004): 65–139. SPAIN, ISLAM, AND THIRTEENTH-CENTURY DOMINICAN MEMORY 339

Schmidt-Chazan, Mireille. “L’idée d’Empire dans le Speculum historiale de Vincent de Beauvais.” In Vincent de Beauvais: intentions et réceptions d’une oeuvre encyclopédique au Moyen Age, edited by Paulmier-Foucart et al., 253–84. Thomas Aquinas, Saint. Liber de veritate catholicae Fidei contra errores infidelium seu Summa contra Gentiles. vol. 2. Edited by Petrus Marc, Ceslao Pera and Pietro Caramello. Turin, Rome: Marrietti, 1961. Thomas, David, et al., ed. Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History. 9 vols. Leiden/Boston: E. J. Brill, 2009–2018. Van Engen, John. “Dominic and the Brothers: Vitae as Life-forming exempla in the Order of Preachers.” In Christ among the Medieval Dominicans, edited by Kent Emery and Joseph Wawrykow, 7–25. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987. Vásáry, István. Cumans and Tatars: Oriental Military in the Pre-Ottoman Balkans, 1185–1365. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Voorbij, Johannes B. “Les mises à jour de la matière dominicaine dans le Speculum historiale.” In Lector et compilator: Vincent de Beauvais, frère prêcheur: un intellectuel et son milieu au XIIIe, edited by Serge Lusignan et al., 153–168. Grâne, France: Editions Créaphis, 1997. Vose, Robin. Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. CHAPTER 13

“Although He Sinned”: Spanish Conversos Between Law, Theology, and Jewish Popular Perception

Jonathan Ray

Traditionally, scholarship on the Converso communities of late medieval Iberia has been dedicated toward discussions of their “true” religious identity, that is, whether they were essentially and predominantly crypto-Jews or beleaguered Catholics attempting to integrate into Hispano-Christian society.1 Pioneering voices in the field of Converso history emphasized

1 For the first point of view, see Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1966), vol. 2; and Haim Beinart, Conversos on Trial: The Inquisition in Ciudad Real, (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1981). For the arguments that the Conversos were fundamentally Christian, see Benzion Netanyahu, “On the Historical Meaning of the Hebrew Sources Related to the Marranos. A Reply to Critics,” in Hispania Judaica, Studies on the History, Language and Literature of the Jews in the Hispanic World, 2 Vols., ed. Josep M. Solá-Solé, Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman (Barcelona: Biblioteca universitaria Puvill, 1980), 1:79–102; and António José Saraiva, The Marrano Factory; The Portuguese Inquisition and its New Christians, 1536–1765, trans. H. P. Salomon and I. S. D. Sassoon (Leiden: Brill, 2001).

J. Ray (*) Theology Department, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2019 341 M. T. Abate (ed.), Convivencia and Medieval Spain, Mediterranean Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96481-2_13 342 J. RAY their fidelity to their fellow Jews and Judaism and thereciprocal support they received from their former coreligionists.2 And yet, this modern concern seems to be marginal to, if not wholly absent from, much of the evidence we have regarding the apprehensions of late medieval Jews themselves. Rather than wade back into old historiographic debates on the authenticity of Converso religious identity, I would like to focus on the popular perception of early Converso religious status from the contemporary Jewish point of view.3 At times, the prevailing attitudes among late medieval Jews do appear to echo the much discussed rabbinic arguments that sought to categorize the converts and their offspring as ‘anusim, that is, Jews who converted under duress and whose conversions were thus rejected by Jewish law as invalid. The notion plays upon a longstanding rabbinic principle regarding forced converts that recognizes their trans- gressive behavior, without recognizing a concomitant change in essential religious status or identity. As the Talmudic dictum states: “A Jew, although he sinned, is still considered a Jew.”4 Often, however, popular Jewish suspicion of Converso “Jewishness” countered the official stance of leading scholars and militated against the integration of Conversos and former Conversos into the daily life of professing Jewish communities. By drawing attention to attitudes of average Jews, it is my hope to afford some insight into the ways in which theological and legal concepts regarding sin and religious status played out in the social spaces of Jewish communities at the dawn of the Converso era.

2 See Haim Beinart, who wrote: “As a matter of fact, the Jewish population looked upon the Conversos as brethren in calamity, always accepted them in their society, and joined them in prayers and keeping Mitzvoth.” Haim Beinart, “Jewish Witnesses for the Prosecution of the Spanish Inquisition,” Acta Judaica 1976 (1978), 38. Another presentation of Jewish attitudes toward the Conversos as relatively unified is Shaul Regev, “The Attitude Towards the Conversos in 15th and 16th Century Jewish Thought,” Revue des Etudes Juives 156 (1997): 117–134. 3 On popular Christian perceptions of Conversos, see Philippe Wolff, “The 1391 Pogrom in Spain: Social Crisis or Not?” Past and Present, 50 (1971): 4–18; and José María Monsalvo Antón, “Mentalidad antijudía en la Castilla medieval: cultura clerical y cultura popular en la gestación y difusión de un ideario medieval,” in Xudeus e conversos na historia, vol. I, ed. Carlos Barros (Santiago: Deputación Ourense, 1994), 21–84. Scholars such as Mercedes Garcia Arenal have sought to break out of the older historiography on the Conversos and offer new avenues of thought. Much of their focus, however, has been on Hispano Christians, both “Old” and “New,” with much less emphasis on the Jewish roots of Converso attitudes. Mercedes García-Arenal, “Creating Conversos: Genealogy and Identity as Historiographical Problems,” Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies 38 (2013): 1–18. 4 TB Sanhedrin, 44a. “ALTHOUGH HE SINNED”: SPANISH CONVERSOS BETWEEN LAW… 343

Conversion and the Destabilization of Religious Categories Throughout most of their residence in the Christian territories of medieval Iberia, Jewish life was marked by royal protection, but also by increasing popular antagonism. The Christian reform movements that swept across the region during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries often included preaching to the Jews as part of their activities, while various monarchs, and even many of the region’s most powerful bishops, sought to control such religious fervor and to protect Jewish rights. But the mounting anti-Jewish pressure eventually proved too much for those who sought to maintain the status quo among the different religious groups. Finally, in the summer of 1391, the tide turned—suddenly, violently, and on a scale that was previously unimaginable. Years of civil unrest exacer- bated by economic troubles sparked rioting against the privileged classes and against the Jews who were seen as royal lackeys, as well as religious outsiders. It started in Seville, where an archdeacon named Ferrand Martinez helped incite an angry mob to attack the local Jewish quarter. The neighborhood was destroyed, with many of its inhabitants killed, and others who saved themselves only by accepting baptism. The rioting was not limited to Seville, but quickly spread to Cordoba, Toledo, Valencia, and Barcelona—even as far as Mallorca in the Balearic Islands. Friars and members of the nobility joined the mobs. The kings of Castile and Aragon did their best to protect the Jews, but often to little avail. And by the time the dust had settled that winter, most of the major Jewish centers in Spain had been destroyed, and a new a new socio-religious element, that of the Conversos or “New Christians,” had been added to the complex matrix of Iberian society.5 Much like the modern historiographical debate on Converso religious identity, attitudes of late medieval Jews on the same subject also reflect a spectrum of positions and responses. In order to gain greater insight into Jewish attitudes toward the first generations of Spanish Conversos, it is necessary to resist the temptation to privilege the ready-made theological and legal categories regarding religious identities that prevailed throughout

5 Philippe Wolff, “The 1391 Pogrom in Spain: Social crisis or not?”; and Benjamin R. Gampel, “‘Unless the Lord watches over the city…’: Joan of Aragon and his Jews, June– October 1391,” in New Perspectives on Jewish-Christian Relations, ed. Elisheva Carlebach and Jacob J. Schachter (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 65–89. 344 J. RAY the Middle Ages. While such definitions may represent the opinions of theologians and exponents of religious law, they were not universally accepted by the rest of medieval society. This is particularly true in late medieval and early modern Iberia with regard to the complex religious questions surrounding Jewish converts to Christianity (Conversos). Indeed, it was the reticence of Christians and Jews to accept these categories as normative and absolute that gave rise to the most entrenched social problems surrounding the Converso phenomenon. In the following discussion, I argue that helpful insight on the nature of Converso religious identity can be derived from considering the matter from the perspective of the contemporary Jewish community—a perspective that reaches beyond normative theological claims and legal categories of leading Jewish scholars.6 Throughout the Middle Ages, religious conversion—especially mass conversion—brought to light the various complexities with regard to the regnant legal and theological postures of the day. In medieval Judaism and Christianity, as well as in Islam, attitudes and laws regarding religious identity were predicated upon a social system in which clear boundaries separated their religious communities. Social, economic, and cultural collaboration and exchange between members of these different religious communities, while perhaps frowned upon in certain precincts, was a generally accepted aspect of medieval society. Interaction was acceptable, so long as clear social and communal lines were maintained. To this end, all three religious communities stood firmly against the blurring of those boundaries and sought to prevent intermarriage or the religiously composite families or kinship groups. In medieval Iberia, where large populations of Christians, Muslim, and Jews lived in close proximity for centuries, anxiety over the effective ability to maintain religious boundaries was a permanent, if often latent, social factor. The potential for religious border crossing, and the attendant need to reinforce those borders, was a recurring theme in the history of medieval Iberia and one that increasingly permeated public discourse on religious law, theology, and social organization in the late medieval and early

6 Here, I echo the assessment of Ram Ben Shalom, who writes: “Instead of focusing on the formal position delineated by halakhic rulings, we should first attempt to reconstruct the nature of social relations that actually prevailed between Jews and Conversos.” He suggests this as a better way of getting at “popular opinion within Jewish society in relation to the Conversos.” Ram Ben Shalom, “Conflict between Jews and Converts in Aragon,”Sefarad 73 (2013): 97–131, at 120–121. “ALTHOUGH HE SINNED”: SPANISH CONVERSOS BETWEEN LAW… 345 modern periods.7 Moments of large-scale conversion, such as those resulting from the riots that swept over much of Iberia in 1391, famously complicated efforts to uphold the normative situation. The mass conversions of Jews during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries were, among other things, fundamentally disorienting in that they succeeded in destroying much of Spanish Judaism, yet failed to convince contemporary Christians and Jews that the religious transformation that took place was actually genuine and complete. The guardians of each theological tradition responded to the collapsing of religious boundaries in their own way. Since Christianity was the dominant religious culture in Christian Iberia, Christian jurists expected minority groups to accommodate themselves to Christian theological positions.8 For Iberian Jews, the situation relevant to conversion was more problematic. Although cognizant of the Jews’ minority status, rabbinic authorities nonetheless sought to assert that Jewish tradition was inviolate in much the same way that their Christian and Muslim counterparts championed their own laws and theological standards. Complicating matters further, religious leaders of the same theological tradition also differed from one another on the religious status of the Conversos. The official position of the Church was to defend its longstanding support for the efficacy of baptism to irrevocably alter religious identity. From the point of view of Catholic theology, there was no doubt that these Conversos were now Christians—even if they were “New” Christians in need of guidance and education. Still, others among the Christian populace remained wary, and far less patient than their leaders, choosing instead to believe that even voluntary baptism could not counteract the Jews’ inherent difference. The argument that would gradually become articulated within these ranks was that the Conversos, no matter what they did, would always be fundamentally Jewish. This sentiment was eventually given expression in anti-Converso riots, such as those that erupted in Toledo in 1449, and by the subsequent promulgation of municipal statutes regarding the so-called purity of blood (Estatutos de limpieza de sangre) aimed at excluding Conversos from public office on the basis of their Jewish bloodlines. Throughout the sixteenth century, and long thereafter, popular assertions of Judaism’s enduring hold on

7 Jarbel Rodriguez, “Conversion Anxieties in the Crown of Aragon in the Later Middle Ages,” al-Masaq 22 (2010): 315–324. 8 The same, of course, held true for Muslim jurists in dar-al-Islam. 346 J. RAY

New Christians continued to challenge Christian theological and legal position with regard to the Conversos and their integration within Hispano-Christian society.9 Contemporary Christian literature contained a variety of criticisms and shades of understanding surrounding the phenomenon of conversions that belied the established constructs of Christian theology and law. Converts from Judaism were often referred to as tornadizos (traitors), a term that emphasizes their disloyalty to Judaism, rather than their desire for salvation that Jewish conversion should have exemplified. Likewise, Christian polemical literature employed terminology such as Cristianos de natura (Natural Christians) that emphasized ethnic and genealogical distinctions between types of Spanish Christians.10 If we can delineate a general rabbinic position regarding the Conversos of the late fourteenth through fifteenth centuries, it was that these scholars attempted to hold fast to the longstanding tradition of seeing any wide- scale Jewish conversions as forced and its victims as ‘anusim. This formulation placed the converts and their offspring within a ready-made legal category that asserted that they were still to be considered as Jews. Yet, there did exist a measure of nuance here as well. While most Jewish authors viewed the matter differently than Christian leaders, they nonetheless shared the tendency to debate the matter among themselves. Jewish legal sources, for instance, tended to present this phenomenon in terms of transgression, not conversion.11 Indeed, late medieval rabbis held fast to a more strictly “religious” definition of the Conversos—or what we might

9 Albert A. Sicroff, Les controverses des statuts de “pureté du sang” en Espagne du XVe au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Didier, 1960). For similar tensions in Portugal following the mass conversions of 1497, see François Soyer, The Persecution of the Jews and Muslims in Portugal: King Manuel I and the End of Religious Tolerance (1496–1497) (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 10 García-Arenal, “Creating Conversos” and David Nirenberg, “Jews and Christians in Fifteenth-Century Spain Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities,” Past and Present 74 (2002): 3–41. 11 Conversely, the formal abandonment of Judaism during the Middle Ages was, indeed, seen as conversion by theologians and legal scholars of the majority faith that the Jews came to join. See the example of Muslim sources that treat the Jewish embrace of Islam as a conversion to the true faith. Maria Ángeles Gallego, “The Calamities that Followed the Death of Joseph Ibn Migash: Jewish Views on the Almohad Conquest,” in Judaeo-Arabic Culture in al-Andalus, ed. Amir Ashur (Cordoba: Oriens Academics, 2013) 79–98, at 90. The practice of Christians labeling converts from Judaism as “transgressives” or “turncoats” (tornadizos) gained popularity in Iberia over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a growing chorus of popular voices rejected their change of religion as a true conversion. “ALTHOUGH HE SINNED”: SPANISH CONVERSOS BETWEEN LAW… 347 call a religio-legal definition—than many Christian authors of the day, as well as many non-scholarly Jews. In general, discussions of the Conversos that can be found in the late medieval and early modern rabbinic responsa literature present them as Jews, or at least a people for whom the observance of Jewish law (halakha) is still incumbent. Questions of ethnicity, and the practice of distinguishing between Conversos who might be religiously Christian but ethnically (or “racially”) Jewish, while common in Christian responses to the Converso phenomenon, are not prevalent in contemporary Jewish literature.12 Moreover, the leading Spanish rabbis who wrote on the question of Converso religious status often approached the issue with the sort of careful and detailed attention to categories and contexts one would expect of legal authorities. Rather than categorize Converso religiosity holistically, most rabbis addressed the question of their status as being contingent upon a particular legal question. For instance, Rabbi Isaac ben Sheshet Perfet, one of the early rabbinic authorities to offer opinions on the Spanish Conversos and whose decisions helped to establish a framework for succeeding generations of scholars, tended to avoid addressing the issue of their essential religious character head on. Rather, he evaluated Converso identity according to the fulfillment of particular religious duties incumbent upon a Jew. With this approach, the same Converso could retain the status of a Jew in some cases (testi- fying before a Jewish court, handling kosher wine, etc.), but not in others. Thus, we can observe that what mattered to rabbis about the Conversos was slightly different than what mattered to their Christian counterparts.13

12 On Christian notions of Jewish “race,” see John Edwards, “The Beginnings of a Scientific Theory of Race?,” in From Iberia to Diaspora: Studies in Sephardic History and Culture, ed. Norman A. Stillman and Yedida Kalfon Stillman (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 179–196; and David Nirenberg, “Was There Race before Modernity? The Example of ‘Jewish’ Blood in Late Medieval Spain,” in Origins of Racism in the West, ed. Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac and Joseph Ziegler (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 232–264. 13 On Ribash, see Abraham M. Hershman, Rabbi Isaac ben Sheshet Perfet and His Times (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1943), and Dora Zsom, Conversos in the Responsa of Sephardic Halakhic Authorities in the 15th Century (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2013). 348 J. RAY

The Roots of Popular Jewish Attitudes One of the conceptual hurdles to a fuller understanding of early Converso society and its place within the larger religious landscape of late medieval Iberia and North Africa has been the assumption of a somewhat homogenous Jewish society prior to the mass conversions. The discourse on Converso identity often imagines Jews to be a relatively clear and straightforward category that only becomes rendered problematic when the lines between Jewish and Christian identity are blurred via conversion.14 José Faur expanded the parameters of the debate slightly by classifying four types of Conversos: those who were truly Jews, those who were truly Christians, those who attempted to be both, and those who desired to be neither.15 Yet any attempts to determine the “true nature” of Converso religious identity must include the evidence about Jewish society in medieval Spain that indicates a highly ramified and internally complex society characterized by the same range of social, political, and intellectual tensions that were found in any part of the medieval world. When seen from this perspective, it becomes easier to note that, in many ways, anti-Converso sentiment can be seen as an extension and transfer of the increasingly virulent anti-Judaism that had taken root in various sectors of Hispano-Christian society over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and that had played a significant role in creating the charged atmosphere in which the riots of 1391 took place. What is perhaps not as obvious is that many of the internal tensions within Jewish society also carried over from the period prior to 1391 and colored Jewish attitudes toward the Conversos. Indeed, scholars have long noted that religious nonconformity was commonplace among Jews of late medieval Spain, a fact lamented by their religious leaders and often labeled as

14 A review of the classic historiographic discussion can be found in Kevin Ingram, “Historiography, Historicity, and the Conversos,” in Converso and Moriscos in Late Medieval Spain and Beyond, ed. Kevin Ingram (Leiden: Bill, 2009), 335–356; and Yosef Kaplan, “Haim Beinart and the Historiography of the Conversos in Spain,” in Exile and Diaspora: Studies in the History of the Jewish People, ed. Avraham Grossman, Yosef Kaplan, and Aharon Mirsky (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1991). 11–16. For an updated discussion of the historiography on Converso identity, see Claude Stuczynski, “Harmonizing Identities: The Problem of the Integration of the Portuguese Conversos in Early Modern Iberian Corporate Polities,” Jewish History 25 (2011): 229–257. 15 José Faur, “Four Classes of Conversos: A Typological Study,” Revue des Etudes Juives 149 (1990): 113–124. “ALTHOUGH HE SINNED”: SPANISH CONVERSOS BETWEEN LAW… 349 heresy.16 Evidence of the social tensions among the Conversos suggests a certain continuation of conflicts and debates that had existed between them when they had formed part of their local Jewish communities.17 One example can be seen in a rabbinic responsum from North Africa, where a Mallorcan Converso who escaped to Algiers sought to block other Conversos fleeing Iberia from joining the Jewish community there. He also appears to have attempted to oust Rabbi Isaac ben Sheshet Perfet (Ribash) from his privileged position as leader of the community in Algiers. The latter, himself a victim of the forced conversions of 1391 who eventually returned to Judaism in North Africa, was enraged by this challenge and sought to excommunicate his rival.18 In light of such events, it is perhaps not surprising that Ribash’s statements on the religious status of the Conversos sometimes reflect a certain degree of bitterness and suspicion with regard to their relationship to what he deems to be good, upstanding Jews. This appears to be less of a commentary on their theological or legal status, than a more visceral response from someone who has engaged in personal conflicts with fellow Conversos/Jews. In one text, Ribash juxta- poses different types of Conversos—those who have fully embraced Christianity to the point that they have become persecutors of their former coreligionists—and those that bear their conversion as an unwelcome but unavoidable reality. He condemns the former, noting:

Since they converted, even if initially by force, they later cast off the yoke of Heaven and severed the bonds of the Torah from them, and of their own will follow the laws of idolaters and transgress all of the precepts of the Torah, and what is more persecute the unfortunate Jews among them, to accuse them falsely and eradicate them as a people, that the name Israel shall be remembered no more.19

16 Ram Ben Shalom, “The Converso as Subversive: Jewish Traditions or Christian Libel?” Journal of Jewish Studies 50 (1999), 260. Even at the best of times, rabbinic opinions did not represent popular opinion on any given subject. See Rabbinic Culture and its Critics, ed. Daniel Frank and Matt Goldish (Detroit: Wayne State University Press: 2007). 17 On the internecine violence among Jews, see Yom Tov Assis, The Golden Age of Aragonese Jewry: Community and Society in the Crown of Aragon, 1213–1327 (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1997), 288–296. 18 Isaac ben Sheshet Perfet, She’elot u-Teshuvot, ed. Moshe Sobel (Jerusalem: Mekhon Or ha-Mizrah, 1993), no. 61. 19 Perfet, She’elot u-Teshuvot, no. 10. 350 J. RAY

Here, the scholar strays somewhat from the normal line of legal reasoning to offer a more emotional assessment of the situation in which he was living, contrasting predatory Conversos with those who would “gladly abandon apostasy,” if only they could do so safely, and adding: “Meanwhile, they are careful not to defile and pollute themselves with transgressions, except at times and in places of [unavoidable] danger.”20 The prevalence of internal social conflict and factionalism within Hispano-Jewish society even before the mass conversions took place makes it is exceedingly difficult to identify Jewish motivation for anti-Converso attitudes in the decades following 1391. These clashes and the enduring enmity among Jewish factions continued even after many of those involved formally embraced Christianity. Thus, although abandonment of Judaism could certainly exacerbate pre-existing tensions among Jewish rivals, the conflicts between Jews and former Jews might also be continuations of personal and family enmities that date to before the rise of Converso society. In the small Aragónese hill town of Montalbán, for instance, Jews complained of harassment by Old and New Christians alike.21 While it is certainly possible that these Jews saw themselves as victims of a relatively undifferentiated Christian society—that is, that their former coreligionists had changed sides and were now to be counted among their social and spiritual enemies—it is more likely that conversion merely amplified pre- existing tensions that had existed among neighbors in this relatively tight- knit community.22 Nor were these communal entanglements easily dissolved. Continued bonds between Jews and Conversos through marriage and sexual relations offer an indication of the ways in which the new social realities of Conversos society could challenge standard Jewish law. Although treated as a question of possible adultery by legal authorities, discussions of such cases also reveal an array of popular responses to the conversion of friends and family members. Evidence of the ongoing sociability between Jews and Conversos

20 Ibid. 21 Ram Ben Shalom, “Conflict between Jews and Converts in Aragon,” 103–104. Ben Shalom notes that such incidents were quite common in Montalban and it is fair to assume in other locales as well. 22 On recent Conversos oppressing Jews to prove themselves to their new coreligionists, see Baer, History of the Jews in Christian Spain, vol. 2, 133. Paola Tartakoff notes that Jewish converts throughout Medieval Europe were known to persecute their former coreligionists once they left Jewish society. Paola Tartakof, “Testing Boundaries: Jewish Conversion and Cultural Fluidity in Medieval Europe, c. 1200–1391,” Speculum 90 (2015): 728–762. “ALTHOUGH HE SINNED”: SPANISH CONVERSOS BETWEEN LAW… 351 suggests that members of both communities were willing to ignore theological and legal boundaries meant to organize religious communities in medieval Iberia in favor of continuing social bonds with people they considered to be within their community. Records of legal questions about the permissibility of such interaction, including in matters such as Converso handling of kosher wine, also point to the diversity of Jewish attitudes to this sociability and whether or not religious lines were, indeed, being crossed.23 Socializing among Jews and Conversos challenged the Christian notion that baptism altered one’s religious category by maintaining family ties, and even forging new marriages, across religious divides. The length of time that average Jews and Conversos might straddle the line between Judaism and Christianity for what appear to be social, rather than theological reasons, is not to be underestimated. As late as 1417, Converts were living in the same quarter in Girona as professing Jews. In other instances, Conversos still had openly Jewish spouses and were even granted formal permission to live with Jewish family members as long as they promised to use their situation as an opportunity to convert their Jewish relatives to Christianity. Such permission, although it can be seen as running counter to the spirit of medieval Christian theology and cannon law, represents an example of the social strictures within which Christian doctrine was now forced to operate. The scale of the Jewish conversions to Christianity in late medieval Spain pushed theologians and jurists to find accommodations to, or excuses for, new social realities.24 Family loyalties and demands represent a key stumbling block for the neat implementation of the theological and legal standards upon which religious boundaries had long been maintained. An illustration can be found in a rabbinic exposition of one such case, which records that, in Algiers, a Converso merchant from Mallorca settled in the region and entered into a relationship with a local Jewish woman. The case is presented as one of adultery, but the details raise a number of questions as to the popular notion of permitted and forbidden unions at

23 Isaac ben Sheshet Perfet, She’elot u-Teshuvot, no. 40. On wine as a problematic arena of interfaith sociability, see Mark D Meyerson, A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth-Century Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 110–119. 24 María Cinta Mañé and Gemma Escribà, eds. The Jews in The Crown of Aragon, Regesta of the Cartas Reales in the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1995), introduction, xxiii–v, and 291, no. 1336. 352 J. RAY this time.25 The rabbinic assertion that the sin of “adultery” was committed hinges on the classification of the women as married. However, the responsum notes that her husband had been absent for years, thus raising the possibility that this was in fact one of many Jewish women who remained legally tethered to husbands who had essentially abandoned, or become estranged from them, through conversion. Rabbinic authorities still viewed these marriages as binding, but the people in question—especially the Jewish women—faced a social reality that made the acceptance of such legal considerations difficult, if not impossible.26 The rabbinic account reveals that the Converso merchant moved in with the woman in question, and that they lived together openly for years, building a family together. While the responsum presents the Jews of the community as indignant at this arrangement, it is more likely that some were and some were not (hence the appeal to an eminent rabbinic authority). It is hard to imagine that the couple would maintain so public a living situation without gaining at least some communal support. The rabbinic text attributes the couples’ ability to evade public censure to the wealth and power of the merchant who, it is said, bribed the Muslim ruler of the city for protection against the morally outraged Jews. Such editorial assertions notwithstanding, there is still much to be gleaned from the text regarding the way in which local Jews alternately accepted or rejected the Conversos as members of Jewish society. In his response, Rabbi Semah ben Solomon Duran furnishes some intriguing details about the couple whose story originated in Christian Toledo:

You asked me about a Jewish woman who was married [to a Jewish man] in Toledo, but who then converted and married a forced convert, and they had five children. After eighteen years of marriage they came to Malaga and returned to Judaism, and a marriage document was written for them, as was customary for those [Conversos] returning to Judaism.27

25 Semah ben Solomon Duran, Sefer Yakhin u-Voaz, (Jerusalem: Mekhon ha-Ketav, 1995), 1:75. 26 On the issue of the Conversos and agunot, see Hannah Davidson, “Exile, Apostasy and Jewish Women in the Early Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean,” Hispania Judaica Bulletin 6 (2008): 133–162; and Renée Levine Melammed, “Sephardi Women in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods,” in Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, ed. Judith R. Baskin (Detroit: Wayne State university Press, 1998): 128–149. 27 Semah ben Solomon Duran, Sefer Yakhin u-Voaz, (Jerusalem: Mekhon ha-Ketav, 1995), 1:107. “ALTHOUGH HE SINNED”: SPANISH CONVERSOS BETWEEN LAW… 353

If we accept that this woman converted voluntarily, we see an example of Jewish women using conversion as a means of divorce, rather than going through the formal process of a Jewish divorce (which would require the husband’s consent) before then converting and marrying a (nominal) Christian.28 This would show awareness on the part of average Jews (and Conversos?) of the religious and legal categories at play and a willingness to exploit loopholes within them in ways that were personally advantageous. The fact that the couple reverted to Judaism together— after 18 years of marriage as Christians—is also interesting. It suggests that the woman married a Converso who, if not a crypto-Jew, certainly maintained sufficient connections to Jewish society to consider reverting openly to Judaism in the Muslim city of Malaga and maintaining an openly Jewish religious identity in Algiers despite apparent criticism by elements of the local Jewish community. News of the woman’s first marriage appears to have reached Malaga, where members of the Jewish community raised questions about the validity of her second marriage, since she had never been formally divorced according to Jewish law. This reaction, even if it was by a small faction of legally minded scholars within the Jewish community, demonstrates the continued importance of halakha as a means of defining and maintaining Jewish communal boundaries. Likewise, the couple in question appears to have recognized the need to acquiesce to such demands for halakhic observance. The responsum tells us that they appealed to her husband in Toledo, eventually obtaining a proper Jewish writ of divorce. However, since the couple had already been living in sin, according to Jewish law, for some 18 years, this late divorce did not satisfy the critics within Malaga’s Jewish community. Again, the couple seems to have had defenders within the community who were willing to accept the writ of divorce, and with it, their status as husband and wife. But when the various factions were not able to come to an agreement as to the marital status of the reverted Jews, they eventually appealed to religious scholars for judgment. What is so intriguing here, at least from the point of view of social history, is that this couple’s marital status seems to have caused such a stir in the small Jewish community of Malaga, splitting public opinion, and then (and perhaps only then) leading to the involvement of religious authorities.

28 Since Christian law forbade intermarriage, once a married Jew converted to Christianity, his or her marriage was immediately voided. 354 J. RAY

The case emphasizes the divided nature of Jewish opinion with regard to how and where religious boundaries were to be drawn and signals a social reality in which Jews and Conversos lived together in various states of social acceptance and religious ambiguity while these questions were addressed. Moreover, we also learn that the Conversos began to create rituals that responded to such issues of ambiguity in their own way. For instance, we read in one responsum that certain Conversos had established the following custom when they married:

Before they go to the [Christian] priest, they bring two Jews to their house and the groom betroths the bride in front of them, saying the [standard Jewish] blessings of the betrothal, and after that they go to the priest and marry in the manner of the Christians.29

In the early decades of the Converso phenomenon in Spain, the family continued to function as an even deeper, more essential social component than that of the clearly defined religious or doctrinal community. Writing from North Africa, where Jewish patience with Conversos who did not flee Iberia was apparently wearing thin, the great rabbinic authority, Ribash, reasoned that many Conversos chose to remain as professing Christians in Spain rather than immigrate to Muslim lands where they might return openly to Judaism out of a sense of familial duty. He defended these Conversos, explaining that:

Perhaps they might extricate themselves, but fear that if they leave members of their household among the idolaters, they will intermingle with them and learn from their deeds and will never depart. Therefore, they choose to tarry there in order to bring the members of their household within the restrain- ing bonds of the Torah and its precepts, until Heaven may have mercy on them.30

Naturally, we cannot say for sure how Conversos and Jews mediated the painful question of family and religious loyalties when the two were placed at odds with one another. Like Ribash, it is easy to imagine that members of families divided between religious communities might privilege kinship ties and the potential for future religious observance without coercion over their own, current, religious status. “Although we might sin, we are

29 Simeon ben Solomon Duran, Sefer Yakhin u-Voaz, 2:19. 30 Perfet, She’elot u-Teshuvot, no. 10. “ALTHOUGH HE SINNED”: SPANISH CONVERSOS BETWEEN LAW… 355 still Jews,” they might have argued, as they bided their time waiting for the day that they might openly profess their inherent religion, together with their rest of their family. And yet, it is similarly easy to imagine a rejection of the premise altogether and to continue to promote family heritage as proof of religious purity, even superiority. Indeed, in the years following the conversions of 1391, the emphasis on family lineage (Hebrew yihus) began to intensify among Spanish Jews and Conversos, a phenomenon that paralleled a similar process among so-called Old Christians. Shem Tov ben Joseph, a Jewish preacher active in the 1480s, notes that for a man to be considered noble, he needed “to be of pure blood, to be associated with noble people and not [be associated with] the poor.”31 Some Conversos promoted their Jewish heritage as evidence of their family’s nobility, arguing that it was a factor that transcended religion and thus was retained despite baptism. These Conversos claimed to have brought with them into Christianity the force and honor of the elevated status they enjoyed in the Jewish world.32

Jewish Rejection of ‘anusim as an Operative Category If some Jews questioned the underlying reasons and religious consequences of fellow Jews who accepted baptism in 1391, the motivation for those that converted during the remainder of the fourteenth century and through the first quarter of the fifteenth century were even murkier. Jews of this period witnessed the exuberant preaching career of Fra Vicente Ferrer, the promulgation of the Laws of Valladolid and Cifuentes (c. 1412), which sought to isolate the Conversos from Jewish contact and influence, and the protracted public disputation held at Tortosa over the course of 1413 and 1414, all of which prompted a continual stream of Jewish conversions to Christianity. While a sense of fear and coercion certainly pervaded the atmosphere in which these events took place, many Jews who remained steadfast throughout this period understood these

31 Shem Tov ben Joseph, Derashot ha-Torah (Jerusalem: Makor, 1974), 45b, as well as 14a, where he explains in greater detail how, as with the question of inherited nobility, those converts who come from tainted lineage will remain tainted, despite baptism. 32 Eleazar Gutwirth, “Lineage in XVth c. Hispano-Jewish Thought,” Miscelanéa de estudios Árabes y Hebraicos 34 (1985), 87; and Nirenberg, “Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities.” 356 J. RAY subsequent conversions as considerably more voluntary than those that had taken place amid the riots of 1391.33 Unlike Christian ecclesiastical and rabbinic authorities, the opinions of most Jews vis-à-vis the Conversos rarely appeared to turn on questions of theological argument or legal precedent. The average Jew was not a theologian and tended to see the complex issues surrounding religious status in more prosaic terms.34 While we have no records of outright rejection of the standard rabbinic argument that the Converts and their offspring were ‘anusim, and thus still Jews, the queries sent to these rabbis reflect a certain level of hesitancy among Jews that was not unlike that which prevailed in Christian society with regard to Converso religious status. If the Conversos were still Jews, many unconverted Jews still wondered, were they Jewish enough to marry into their families? Could an uncircumcised “Jew” handle kosher wine without rendering it unfit? For those able to escape to Muslim lands, would they need to undergo any public ritual in order to rejoin the Jewish community in full? Were they Jewish enough, without undergoing any formal process of reconversion, to be granted the same honors at synagogues services as other Jews? Could they count as witnesses? The contemporary rabbinic responsa literature records evidence of widespread unease among Jews who balked at the notion of accepting Conversos into their communities as equals. Some questioned openly how men who were uncircumcised, or women who did not follow the laws of ritual purity (niddah) that were required of Jewish women in order to render their marriages valid, could be fully Jewish and produce Jewish offspring. Much like the legal opinions of their rabbis, then, popular Jewish concern often seems to have been focused on the ritual status of the individual in the moment, regardless of the underlying category of being ‘anusim that absolved the Conversos from fulfilling such requirements due to their coercive surroundings.35 In contrast to their religious authorities, however,

33 On 1412 see Baer, History of the Jews in Christian Spain, vol. 2, 169. On Tortosa, see ibid., 2:138–158; 232–243. 34 Even Profayt Duran’s great anti-Converso polemic, “Be Not Like unto Thy Fathers,” which does indeed mock Converso ideology on religious and philosophical grounds, is infused with the sort of emotional anger and sense of personal abandonment that must have been typical of popular Jewish attitudes of the time. See Maud Kozodoy, The Secret Faith of Maestre Honoratus: Profayt Duran and Jewish Identity in Late Medieval Iberia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), 115–142. 35 Simeon ben Solomon Duran, Sefer Yakhin u-Vo‘az, 2:3 and 2:19. “ALTHOUGH HE SINNED”: SPANISH CONVERSOS BETWEEN LAW… 357 the religious classification of the Conversos was, for most Jews, greatly determined by personal factors. Thus, those Jews who maintained close ties to friends, relatives, or business associates who became Conversos had to consider just how much this conversion changed their emotional and professional relationships with these former Jews. Some might have found it practical, or even noble, to consider these conversions null and void and to approach the Conversos in their lives with the spirit of the rabbinic dictum “although he sinned, he is still a Jew.” Furthermore, it was always important to Jews that they have access to Christians that they could trust—Christians they could count on for reasons of business and for the political connections they could provide.36 Others, meanwhile, might have reacted in quite the opposite manner, seeing conversion as treason—a rejection of Judaism and of the Jews with whom they had heretofore had such important bonds. Indeed, there is considerable evidence of popular Jewish rejection of the rabbinic notion of ‘anusim as an operative category, and in this regard we cannot discount the importance of the very human emotions of fear, jealousy, and suspicion when it comes to assessing Jewish notions of religious communities and their boundaries. Spanish Jews who succeeded in avoiding conversion offered an array of reasons meant to explain the motivation behind the conversions of their former coreligionists. The tension between Jewish sympathy for the plight of the Conversos and Jewish feelings of jealousy and suspicion for what they saw as willful abandonment of Judaism appears to have increased in the decades following 1391, as more Jews accepted baptism under conditions that were less obviously coercive. In a public letter from the early fifteenth century, Rabbi Joshua Halorki gives voice to a generation of Jews for whom the ongoing defections to Christianity appeared to have been evidence of Jewish opportunism, rather than missionary pressure. In his reflections upon why his teacher, Rabbi Solomon Halevi, voluntarily chose to embrace Christianity, Halorki rejects the popular notion that Halevi (and, we must read, others of the era) converted in order to exchange the more demanding and socially restricted life of a Jew for the many opportunities that existed among the Christian majority. In his open letter on

36 See the debate among Aragónese Jews regarding the permissibility of deriving benefit from Converso courtiers who could (and apparently did) intervene with the crown on behalf of their former coreligionists. Fritz Baer, Die Juden im Christlichen Spanien (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1929), vol. 1, 757–758. In Mallorca, Jews continued to petition wealthy Conversos to interfere in the communal affairs of the Jewish community. Simeon ben Semah Duran, Sefer ha-Tashbets (Amsterdam: Naphtali Hirts Levi, 1741), 3: 227. 358 J. RAY the subject, Halorki articulates the popular characterization of Christian life as one of material pleasures, marked by a far greater access to earthly pleasures of food, women, wealth, and power.37 Although he carefully rejects such enticements as the motivating force behind Halevi’s conversion, his letter presents a summa of popular Jewish suspicions of what really motivated ongoing conversion to Christianity in the period between 1391 and 1415. This characterization of Converso life as being intrinsically easier than that of a professing Jew continued as a common Jewish critique even after the expulsion of 1492. As Jews of Iberian origin settled throughout the Mediterranean, the status of the Conversos—both those who escaped Iberia and sought to return to Judaism and those who remained professing Christians in Spain, Portugal, and Italy—remained an important topic for debate among rabbinic authorities. Benjamin Ze‘ev, a sixteenth- century Ottoman rabbi, reasserted that life as a Christian allowed for a more hedonistic lifestyle than life as a Jew, since it allowed for the convert access to all the material pleasures forbidden by Jewish law.38 Ze‘ev’s harsh assessment of Converso impulses is a somewhat rare example of a rabbinic authority channeling the sort of popular resentment of many Jews. It stands in contrast to the majority of rabbinic discussions of Converso status in which their motivations for delaying their abandonment of Christian lands and open return to Jewish observance are often explained away by hypothetical presumptions that support standard legal precedents. A related sentiment expressed in Jewish polemical literature of the day can be seen in the suggestion that becoming Christian represented something other than a true religious conversion, as classically understood by both Christian and Jewish doctrine. Indeed, a theme in the Jewish polemical literature aimed at the Conversos was the implicit rejection of Christianity as a religion, or at least as a viable religious alternative to Judaism. For some authors of this literature, passage from Judaism to

37 Benjamin R. Gampel, “A Letter to a Wayward Teacher: The Transformation of Sephardic Culture in Christian Iberia,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken, 2002), 389–347. 38 Part of his argument against the need for a formal act of contrition on the part of return- ees to Judaism is that the acceptance of the rigors of daily life of an observant Jew was, in itself, sufficient proof of dedication/contrition. “he has to abstain from all those pleasures which are permitted to Gentiles, and were thus formerly permitted to him.” Benjamin Ze‘ev ben Mattathias, Sefer Binyamin Ze‘ev, ed. Meir Benayahu (Jerusalem: Yad ha-Rav Nisim, 1988), no. 72. “ALTHOUGH HE SINNED”: SPANISH CONVERSOS BETWEEN LAW… 359

Christianity did not represent conversion from one faith community or “Law” to another but abandonment of faith in God in the pursuit of material possessions. Other Jewish polemicists began to present Conversos not as lost sheep, but dedicated Christians, and thus as heretics and willing rejecters of Judaism.39 Here we have Jewish echoes of contemporary Christian arguments that these conversions were somehow illegitimate, and that although they followed the rules laid down by Jewish and Christian theologians alike for the formal transfer from one religious community to another, those rules did not apply. Thus, medieval Spanish Jews shared with their Old Christian neighbors a negative assessment of Conversos as dangerous elements within their respective religious communities—infidels that had been rendered heretics through social circumstance and thus more dangerous.40 Suspicion of Converso commitment to Judaism was sufficiently widespread among professing Jews that it provoked some Conversos to assume a defensive posture. Making reference to a Talmudic passage about debat- ing ritual purity with the ignorant, one rabbinic authority observed that a similar stubbornness and pride could be found among the Conversos of his day, noting that “if the forced convert asks you whether he is a valid [witness], and you say to him that he is unfit [lit. ‘un-kosher’], he will not listen to you. On the contrary, he will respond by saying that you are the one who is unfit, and that he is kosher, since his heart is directed towards Heaven!”41 Once again, we are given evidence that popular attitudes regarding religious devotion and the degree to which these attitudes were bound up with a sense of personal honor challenged legal and theological dictates concerning religious Jewish status. Jewish reticence at accepting the rabbinic notion that although these Conversos may have sinned (and may continue to do so) they were still to

39 Like the halakhic literature of the day, Jewish polemical literature drew upon existing and longstanding traditions of seeing converts in this light. Benzion Netanyahu, The Marranos of Spain: From the 14th to the Early 16th Century, According to Contemporary Hebrew Sources (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1966), 88–94. See also the poem by Yom Tov ben Hannah, translated and analyzed by Ram Ben Shalom, “Conflict between Jews and Converts in Aragon,” 110–117. 40 See the analysis of the poem by Yom Tov ben Hannah in Ben Shalom, “Conflict between Jews and Converts in Aragon,” 116–117, and the dirge discussed in Joseph Yahalom, “Come Back to the Fold, My Beloved One: A Fifteenth-Century Hebrew Dirge on the Fate of Spanish Jewry,” Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 36 (2010): 69–83. 41 Simeon ben Semah Duran, Sefer ha-Tashbets, 3: 47. See also Zsom, Conversos in the Responsa, 65. 360 J. RAY be considered Jews grew within those Jewish communities as they became further removed from the mass conversions of 1391 in both time and space. To many Jews, including many former Conversos, the status of those Conversos who remained in Christian Iberia began to look increasingly like voluntary accommodation to their new faith and to the social and economic advantages it offered.42 If this was true among Iberia’s surviving Jewish communities, it was all the more so from the perspective of those who fled to Muslim cities in North Africa, suffering the dangers of displacement and relocation in order to live as Jews. Simeon ben Semach Duran (Tashbets) was a rabbi of Mallorcan origin who lived through the conversions of 1391 and fled to Algiers where he joined and eventually succeeded Ribash as the principle Jewish legal authority. Over the course of his life, Tashbets’ attitudes toward the Conversos hardened as he appears to have become dismayed that so many seemed to voluntarily remain in Iberia as Christians.43 By the late fifteenth century declining confidence in the Jewishness of the Conversos had taken hold among rabbinic authorities that had relocated to North Africa. This suspicion of the religious motives of the Conversos, and thus their religious status as ‘anusim, is reflected in the work of Rabbi Solomon ben Simeon Duran (Rashbash), the son of Tashbets, who wrote:

It happened some ninety years ago or more, in the land of the Christians, that because of frequent persecutions and forced conversions, many men, women and children converted. And this generation, which converted, although they could have fled to the land of Ishmael, which is close to them, in order to return to their original faith, they did not flee but remained as Gentiles, and begot sons and daughters who were Gentiles.44

Tashbets further underscores the distinction between the characterization of earlier converts as ‘anusim and latter day Conversos as something

42 Benzion Netanyahu asserted that the responsa literature shows a gradual evolution in Jewish attitudes from seeing Conversos as anusim to seeing them as meshumadim (apostates), and in some cases, as fully non-Jewish. The Marranos of Spain, 75–76. Dora Zsom has recently rejected this argument, noting that these attitudes existed simultaneously, rather than diachronically. Dora Zsom, Conversos in the Responsa, 13. 43 Zsom, Conversos in the Responsa, 19. 44 Solomon ben Simeon Duran, Sefer ha-Rashbash: She’elot u-Teshuvot, (Jerusalem: Mekhon Or ha-Mizrah, 1998), no. 553, and Zsom, Conversos in the Responsa, 167. “ALTHOUGH HE SINNED”: SPANISH CONVERSOS BETWEEN LAW… 361

substantially different, legally speaking. He explains his departure from the legal position held by his predecessors in the following manner:

Although it is written in the responsa of Rabbi Isaac ben Sheshet, and in that of my master, my father [Simeon ben Semach Duran] that they are to be trusted concerning the possession of someone else, this only referred to the early converts, who did not desecrate the Sabbath in public. But today, since all of them desecrate the Sabbath publicly, they are not to be trusted at all. [emphasis added]45

As rabbinic authorities began to retreat from the legal principle that succeeding generations of Conversos were still to be regarded as “forced” converts, and thus still Jewish, they seem to reflect a popular mood within the North African Jewish communities where many converts sought refuge. Some, at least, among the Jews of Fez, argued that the Iberian Conversos were, in fact, Christian, and that those arriving in North Africa and seeking to practice Judaism openly needed to engage in a process of reconverting (lehitgayyer) to Judaism in order to be accepted as part of the Jewish community. In a letter responding to this practice, Rabbi Semah ben Solomon Duran carefully and forcefully corrected the rabbis of Fez regarding the notion that these Conversos are apostates (gerim), inform- ing his interlocutors that they were to be treated as Jewish penitents (am baalei teshuvah).46 The juxtaposition of the two policies regarding the Conversos who sought to practice Judaism in Muslim lands gives us a sense of the tensions between legal and popular notions of how to delineate and maintain proper boundaries between religious groups in this tumultuous era. The frustration and ambivalent feelings among Jews over Converso reluctance to leave the so-called lands of idolatry and openly commit themselves to Judaism and the Jewish community even bubbled over into the rabbinic discussions among those authorities who generally sought to uphold the basic precedent that the Conversos were to be considered

45 Ibid. 46 Here, he seems to pull back from the harsh position assumed by his father, Tashbets. Semah ben Solomon Duran, Yakhin u-Voaz: II: 3. Duran upholds the notion that the Conversos were ‘anusim, citing Mishna Nedarim 3:11, chapter Ha-Noder, 31b, and arguing that a Jew, even if uncircumcised, is still a Jew. 362 J. RAY

Jewish.47 A responsum by Benjamin Ze‘ev illustrates this sort of tension between the upholding of religious precepts with regard to Conversos’ religious status and personal exasperation with their perceived lack of dedication to Jewish practice.

We consider them to be Jews so that they may return [to our community], lest we close the doors of repentance before them. But in the strict sense of the law, we should penalize them for staying there [in Christian lands] and not returning [to Judaism], and not being concerned about dying there as Gentiles.48

The tension between legal and popular demands with regard to establishing one’s religious status is also reflected in discussions over the need for formal ceremonies to mark the open return of ‘anusim to the Jewish community. Solomon ben Abraham Ibn Adret (d. 1310), one of the leading rabbinic authorities in medieval Iberia, denied the need for an immersion ceremony for converts seeking to revert to open profession of Judaism. Adret, who wrote in an era prior to the mass conversions of 1391, follows an old Geonic line of thought that prescribes public whip- ping of the penitent reverting to Judaism, but not immersion. Elsewhere, he explains that only a proselyte—who had never been a Jew—was in need of such ritual immersion “to lift him/raise him up from his Gentile status, as his conception and birth were not Jewish.”49 Yet even this position, articulated by a towering scholar of the age and based on longstanding normative Jewish legal traditions, was not sufficient to resolve the issue within Jewish society. Other Jews may well have disagreed, hence the question. Indeed, Adret’s student, Yom Tov ben Abraham Ishbili (Ritva), argues that: “Although according to the letter of the law and all authorities, he does not require immersion (tebila), but only acceptance of rab-

47 That is, Spain, Portugal, and in some cases, other areas of Christian Europe. Yosef Kaplan, “The Travels of Portuguese Jews from Amsterdam to the Lands of Idolatry (1644–1724),” in Jews and Conversos: Studies in Society and the Inquisition, ed. Yosef Kaplan (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1981), 197–211. 48 Benjamin Ze‘ev ben Mattathias, Sefer Binyamin Ze‘ev, no. 70. 49 Solomon ben Abraham Ibn Adret, She’elot u-Teshuvot, vol. 7 (Warsaw, 1868), no. 411; and vol. 5 (Leghorn, 1886), no. 66. See also Joseph Shatzmiller, “Converts and Judaizers in the Early Fourteenth Century,” Harvard Theological Review 74 (1981): 63–77, at 64–65. “ALTHOUGH HE SINNED”: SPANISH CONVERSOS BETWEEN LAW… 363 binic discipline before a court, he immerses nevertheless on the basis of rabbinic enactment for the sake of perfection.”50 In the wake of the mass conversions of 1391–1415 and the subsequent influx of former Conversos into professing Jewish communities in North Africa and beyond, Jewish legal authorities tended to reject the need for a formal rite of purification or rededication to Judaism in order for former converts to reenter the Jewish community. Nonetheless, their discussions of the subject allude to popular calls for just such public acts of contrition and transition. In North Africa, the situation prompted one rabbinic authority to propose that former Conversos make a public and ritual avowal of their commitment to Judaism in order to aid in their reintegration into local Jewish society. In his Treatise about the Forced Converts (Ma’amar ha-anusim), Rabbi Solomon ben Simeon Duran (Rashbash) stated openly that: “The children of the apostates, called anusim, who are uncircumcised, when they come to return to Judaism it is necessary to clarify the laws regarding their reintegration, circumcision and ritual immersion.”51 Once again, Jewish religious concerns (circumcision, ritual immersion) take precedence here over Christian practices and beliefs and even over Jewish theological concepts. The community on behalf of which Rashbash wrote appears to have been less concerned with what the Conversos may have thought or did as professing Christians than with their ability to meet specifically Jewish requirements for the proper fulfillment of the commandments. For rabbis and other Jews alike, questions of being ritually fit to carry out the life of a professing Jew were inextricably bound up with communal acceptance. Circumcision was the primary issue, rather than professions of faith, per se. But Rashbash’s treatise also refers to a short pronouncement to be made by those wishing to formally return to Judaism that recognizes popular Jewish desire for reassurance as to their religious motivations. On behalf of the returnee, it asks God to “plant your love and your fear into his heart and open his heart to the Law, and lead him in the path of your commandments, so that he may find grace before you.”52

50 Yom Tov ben Abraham Ishbili, Sefer hidushe ha-Ritva ‘al masakhet Yevamot (Zikhron Ya’akov: ha-Merkaz le-hinunkh Torani Zikhron Ya’akov, 1994), 29a. 51 Solomon ben Simeon Duran, Sefer ha-Rashbash: She’elot u-Teshuvot, no. 89. See also Netanyahu, Marranos of Spain, 45–48; and Zsom, Conversos in the Responsa, 199–202. 52 Ibid. 364 J. RAY

It is very difficult to say just how widely used this, or similar pronounce- ments, may have been. However, they signal that, in at least some communities, there arose a need for former Conversos to make some sort of public display of commitment to Judaism in order for professing Jews to fully accept them. Such ad hoc ceremonies or declarations of faith came in response to popular unease with the religious status of these Conversos and mark a reticence of some Jews to accept the rabbinic argument “although he sinned” as applicable to these nominal Christians of Jewish heritage. The mass conversions from Judaism to Christianity that took place from 1391 to 1415 were, in many ways, just the beginning of the long and complicated saga of the Conversos and their relationship to their neighboring communities of “old” Christians and professing Jews. Nonetheless, the reactions of Spanish Jews during that first period provide a template for much of that later history and a reminder to look beyond theological and legal positions in order to gauge the religious values of those communities. Consideration of Jewish popular perception and responses to the religious status of the Conversos alert us to the variety of factors in play at this time and the way in which they shaped attitudes of religious identity beyond the more standard notion of fixed, and relatively homogeneous, religious communities (i.e., Jews and Christians). The way in which individual members of these broader communities dealt with the matter of religious identity reveals that they began to openly reconsider, and at times counter, longstanding theological and legal positions. Most Jews wanted to know whether converts could marry other Jews, handle their wine, and testify in legal cases with them. Converso views on God rarely appear to have been an issue, nor was their adherence to any Christian principles, unless these caused them to violate Jewish law. Thus, a great deal of insight into Jewish responses to the early Converso phenomenon can be found in a nuanced understanding of the composition of Jewish societies from which these converts came. The same factors that governed the functioning of Hispano- Jewish society, such as social and intellectual factionalism, the importance of family ties over as a factor of communal loyalties, and the partial disconnect between popular and legal ideology with regard to proper religious behavior all continued to color Jewish attitudes toward the Conversos. Recognition of these continuities, and of popular Jewish responses to Converso religiosity, raises important questions of how Jews of this period perceived and articulated their concerns regarding “sin,” as well as their evolving relationship to their own religious leaders, sacred texts, and traditions. “ALTHOUGH HE SINNED”: SPANISH CONVERSOS BETWEEN LAW… 365

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———. The Marranos of Spain: From the 14th to the Early 16th Century, According to Contemporary Hebrew Sources. New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1966. David Nirenberg, “Was There Race before Modernity? The Example of ‘Jewish’ Blood in Late Medieval Spain.” In Origins of Racism in the West, edited by Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac and Joseph Ziegler, 232–64. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. David Nirenberg. “Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities: Jews and Christians in Fifteenth-century Spain.” Past and Present 74 (2002): 3–41. Perfet, Isaac ben Sheshet. She’elot u-Teshuvot. Edited by Moshe Sobel. Jerusalem: Mekhon Or ha-Mizrah, 1993. Regev, Shaul. “The Attitude Towards the Conversos in 15th and 16th Century Jewish Thought.” Revue des Etudes Juives 156 (1997): 117–34. Rodriguez, Jarbel. “Conversion Anxieties in the Crown of Aragon in the Later Middle Ages.” al-Masaq 22 (2010): 315–24. Saraiva, António José. The Marrano Factory; The Portuguese Inquisition and its New Christians, 1536–1765, Translated by H. P. Salomon and I. S. D. Sassoon. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Shatzmiller, Joseph. “Converts and Judaizers in the Early Fourteenth Century.” Harvard Theological Review 74 (1981): 63–77. Sicroff, Albert A. Les controverses des statuts de “pureté du sang” en Espagne du XVe au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Didier, 1960. Soyer, François. The Persecution of the Jews and Muslims in Portugal: King Manuel I and the End of Religious Tolerance (1496–7). Leiden: Brill, 2007. Stuczynski, Claude. “Harmonizing Identities: The Problem of the Integration of the Portuguese Conversos in Early Modern Iberian Corporate Polities.” Jewish History 25 (2011): 229–57. Tartakof, Paola. “Testing Boundaries: Jewish Conversion and Cultural Fluidity in Medieval Europe, c. 1200–1391.” Speculum 90 (2015): 728–62. Wolff, Philippe. “The 1391 Pogrom in Spain: Social Crisis or Not?” Past and Present, 50 (1971): 4–18. Yahalom, Joseph. “Come Back to the Fold, My Beloved One: A Fifteenth-Century Hebrew Dirge on the Fate of Spanish Jewry.” Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 36 (2010): 69–83. Zsom, Dora. Conversos in the Responsa of Sephardic Halakhic Authorities in the 15th Century. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2013. PART IV

Science CHAPTER 14

The Astronomical Background of Abraham Bar Ḥ iyya’s Astrological History

Julio Samsó

Introduction: Astrological History in Eastern Islam Indian and Iranian astronomical and astrological materials were fully assimilated in Eastern Islamic lands throughout the eighth century. They introduced the idea of cyclically recurrent cosmic disasters and historical phenomena which formed the basis of collections of historical horoscopes quite common in Islamic astrology from the end of the seventh century. Shortly after 60 H./679, an unknown astrologer computed a set of horoscopes illustrating the early history of Islam.1 This kind of historical astrology became politically important in the early Abbasid period because it presented the Abbasid revolt as the result of a decree of the stars and legiti- mated the new dynasty as the legal successor of the Sassanian Empire.2 According to the theory underlying historical horoscopes, history is governed by a series of cycles, the starting point of which is the great conjunction of all the mean planets, their apogees, and their nodes at Aries 0°,

1 David Pingree, The Thousands of Abū Ma‘shar. London, 1968, pp. 114–121. 2 Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture. Routledge, London, 1998, pp. 45–47.

J. Samsó (*) University of Barcelona (Emeritus), Barcelona, Spain

© The Author(s) 2019 371 M. T. Abate (ed.), Convivencia and Medieval Spain, Mediterranean Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96481-2_14 372 J. SAMSÓ which took place, according to the system known by the Arabs as that of the Sindhind, at the vernal equinox of year –1,972,947,101. This phenomenon will take place again every 4,320,000,000 years, a period that was called a kalpa and was used in some Indian astronomical systems. The Arabic zījes (sets of astronomical tables) directly or indirectly related to Iranian culture used shorter periods the starting point of which was 180,000 years before the Flood (midnight between February 17 and 18, –3101),3 a moment in which a grand conjunction of the mean planets took place at Aries 0° (beginning of the Indian cycle of the kaliyuga). Among these periods we find thetasy īrs of which there are “mighty” (360,000 years), “big” (36,000 years), “middle” (3600 years), and “small” (360 years) tasyīrs; the intihā’s, also classified into “mighty” (12,000 years), “big” (1200 years), “middle” (120 years), and small (12 years) intihā’s; and the fardārs which have a more complicated structure. Note that the longest of these periods was the mighty tasyīr of 360,000 years, equivalent to one Persian World-Year.4 Works on historical astrology are, however, commonly based on Saturn- Jupiter conjunctions. In order to understand the underlying theory I should remind here the standard classification of the zodiacal signs into four triplicities which are, in their turn, related to the four elements:

–– fire (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius), –– earth (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn), –– air (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius), and –– water (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces).

A Saturn-Jupiter conjunction takes place, approximately, every 20 years and each conjunction advances two-thirds of a revolution (240°): Saturn’s period of revolution is about 30 years, while Jupiter’s amounts to some 12 years. In 20 years, Saturn will have moved approximately 240°, while Jupiter will have made a complete revolution (12 years) and 2/3 of a

3 See, for example, E.S. Kennedy, “Two topics from an astrological manuscript: Sindhind days and planetary latitudes.” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften 6 (1990), 167–168. Repr. in Kennedy, Astronomy and Astrology in the Medieval Islamic World. Variorum, Aldershot, 1998, No. II. 4 E.S. Kennedy & B.L. van der Waerden, “The World Year of the Persians.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 83 (1963), 315–327, reprinted in E.S. Kennedy et al. Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences. Beirut, 1983, pp. 338–350; E.S. Kennedy, “The World-Year Concept in Islamic Astrology,” in Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences pp. 360–371. THE ASTRONOMICAL BACKGROUND OF ABRAHAM BAR Ḥ IYYA’S… 373

second one (8 years). This is why conjunctions tend to stay in the same triplicity, although the second conjunction will take place in a position placed slightly forward, in its zodiacal sign, in respect to the previous one. The displacement progresses slowly until the conjunction takes place in a different triplicity. The whole history of the world can thus be explained by Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions which preside or announce important political or religious events. If the conjunction takes place together with a change of triplicity, the event will have a much more dramatic character. In Māshā’allāh’s astrological history a conjunction with a change of triplicity, from air into water, took place in –3380 indicating the Flood that actually occurred 20 years later (in –3360), in which there was another (small) conjunction. A similar conjunction in –45 indicated the birth of Christ, who was actually born in –12. Finally (I insist on that later in this chapter), the conjunction of AD 571, with a shift from the triplicity of air to that of water, announced the rise of Islam. The theory of conjunctions is clearly explained in Abū Ma‘shar’s Kitāb al-Milal wa l-duwal (“On religions and states”), also entitled Kitāb al-qirānāt (“On conjunctions”),5 and astrological histories authored by Māshā’allāh (d. ca. 815),6 Abū Ma‘shar (ca. 786–886),7 al-Battānī (ca. 850–929),8 and Ibn Nawbakht (fl. ca. 860–940)9 have been properly analyzed during the last 50 years, mainly by David Pingree and Edward Kennedy. al-Battānī’s astrological history of the origins of Islam and early caliphate shows the influence of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos as it is not only based on Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions but also introduces the influence of solar and lunar eclipses.

5 Keiji Yamamoto & Charles Burnett, Abū Ma‘shar on Historical Astrology. The Book of Religions and Dynasties (On the Great Conjunctions). Edited and translated by … 2 vols. Brill, Leiden-Boston-Köln, 2000. 6 E.S. Kennedy and David Pingree, The astrological history of Māshā’allāh. Cambridge, Mass., 1971. 7 David Pingree, Thousands. 8 E.S. Kennedy et al., “Al-Battānī’s astrological history of the Prophet and the Early Caliphate.” Suhayl 9 (2009–2010), 13–148. 9 Ana Labarta, Mūsà ibn Nawbajt, al-Kitāb al-Kāmil. Horóscopos históricos. Madrid- Bellaterra, 1982; Ana Labarta & Angel Mestres, Mūsā ibn Nawbajt, Kitāb al-azmina wa-l- duhūr. Tratado de astrología mundial. Valencia, 2005. On this collection of horoscopes see also G. van Brummelen, “The Astronomical System in Mūsā ibn Nawbakht Astrological Treatise, the Kitāb al-Kāmil.” Centaurus 41 (1999), 213–243. 374 J. SAMSÓ

Astrological History in al-Andalus and the Maghrib This kind of astrology was introduced into Western Islam during the first half of the tenth century at the latest. This dating is based on the Latin translation by Johannes Hispalensis of the Liber Universus of ‘Umar b. al-Farrukhān al-Ṭabarī (fl. 762–812). This is a short text in which the author discusses the “mighty” fardārs and it includes the mention of the twelfth of these fardārs from the starting point of the author’s chronological system (February 11, –3380). This twelfth fardār started between March 20 and 21, 329/940 at 2;52h a.m. in the center of the world (Arin) and 10;40h p.m. in Cordoba. This is followed in the text by a reference to a horoscope that was cast in Cordoba for that date and hour using al-Khwārizmī’s zīj.10 All this implies that Ibn Farrukhān’s original Arabic text had been revised by a Córdoban scholar who, ca. 329/940 was using al-Khwārizmī’s zīj, a text known in al-Andalus since the middle of the ninth century. Almost one century later Maslama al-Majrīṭī (d. 1007) was to be seen casting the horoscope of the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter which took place in 398/1007 and which implied a shift from the triplicity of fire to the triplicity of earth. Several astrological interpretations of this conjunction are extant and they all agree in considering the astronomical event as an announcement of the end of the Umayyad caliphate in al-Andalus and the beginning of a period of anarchy (fitna) and civil wars.11 These predictions were fulfilled: the period of anarchy actually started in 400 H./1009 but the caliphate was not abolished until 1031. About a century later (before 1068), the astronomer Abū Marwān al-Istijī dedicated to the famous qāḍī of Toledo Ṣā‘id al-Andalusī a book on tasyīr in which this kind of astrology was discussed.12 In spite of all this information, not a single Western Islamic astrological history seems to have been written or, at least, survived. In the Maghrib,

10 David Pingree, “The ‘Liber Universus’ of ‘Umar b. al-Farrukhān al-Ṭabarī,” Journal for the History of Arabic Science 1 (1977), 8–12. 11 J. Samsó, “Cuatro horóscopos sobre muertes violentas en al-Andalus y el Magrib.” In Maribel Fierro (ed.), De muerte violenta. Política, religión y violencia en al-Andalus. Estudios Onomástico-Biográficos de al-Andalus, vol. 14. Madrid, 2004, pp. 479–519 (see pp. 488–496). Repr. in Samsó, Astrometeorología y astrología medievales. Barcelona, 2008, No. XIII. 12 J. Samsó & Hamid Berrani, World Astrology in Eleventh Century al-Andalus: the Epistle on Tasyīr and the Projection of Rays by al-Istijjī, Journal of Islamic Studies (Oxford) 10.3 (1999), 293–312; Samsó & Berrani, The Epistle on Tasyīr and the Projection of Rays by Abū Marwān al-Istijī. “Suhayl” 5 (2005), 163–242. THE ASTRONOMICAL BACKGROUND OF ABRAHAM BAR Ḥ IYYA’S… 375

I am only aware of the horoscopes cast by Ibn ‘Azzūz in relation to the battle of El Salado (Faḥṣ Ṭarīf, 1340)13—which are based on the middle conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter which took place in 1305, or by Ibn Qunfudh’s collection of 11 horoscopes—which do not use the cycles of Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions—illustrating the history of Marinid Morocco between 1348 and 1372, and give an astrological explanation to the dynastic crisis that took place in the country after the murder of sultan Abū ‘Inān (1348–1352).14

Abraham Bar Ḥ iyya’s Astrological History of the Nation of Israel An entirely different, and extremely interesting, case is what we find in the Megillat ha-Megalleh by Abraham Bar Ḥ iyya (ca. 1065–ca. 1145)15: an attempt to interpret the history of mankind and, more specifically, that of the Jewish nation, and of predicting the date of the advent of the Messiah, using both rabbinical texts and astrology. In spite of the fact that his starting point is that the years of the world are 6000, which should be divided into the six days of Creation, he uses a series of cycles having different origins (Indian, Persian, and Jewish)16:

13 J. Samsó, “Horoscopes and history: Ibn ‘Azzūz and his retrospective horoscopes related to the battle of El Salado (1340).” L. Nauta & A. Vanderjagt (eds.), Between Demonstration and Imagination. Essays in the History of Science and Philosophy Presented to John D. North. Leiden, 1999, pp. 101–124. Reprinted in Samsó, Astronomy and Astrology in al-Andalus and the Maghrib, Variorum, Aldershot, 2007, no. X. 14 J. Samsó, “Cuatro horóscopos sobre muertes violentas en al-Andalus y el Magrib.” Maribel Fierro (ed.), De muerte violenta. Política, religión y violencia en al-Andalus, Estudios Onomástico-Biográficos de al-Andalus vol. 14, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid, 2004, pp. 479–519; Samsó, “LaUr ŷūza de Ibn Abī l-Riŷāl y su comentario por Ibn Qunfud: Astrología e Historia en el Magrib en los siglos XI y XIV.” Al-Qanṭara 30 (2009), 7–39, 321–360. 15 On this work of Bar Ḥ iyya, see Shlomo Sela, “Abraham bar Ḥ iyya’s astrological works and thought.” Jewish Studies Quarterly 12 (2005), 128–158 (see pp. 131–136); Josefina Rodríguez Arribas, El cielo de Sefarad. Los judíos y los astros (Siglos XII y XIV). Córdoba, 2011, pp. 55–120; Rodríguez Arribas, “Terminology for Historical Astrology According to Bar Ḥ iyya and Ibn Ezra,” Aleph 11 (2011), 11–40. 16 Abraham Bar Ḥ iyya, Sefer Megillat ha-Megalle von Abraham bar Chija, published by A. Poznanski with introduction and notes by J. Guttman (Berlin, 1924). The account of the cycles is on pp. 10–13. Due to my incapacity to read Hebrew, I am using Millás Vallicrosa’s Catalan translation: J. Millàs i Vallicrosa, Abraham bar Hiia, Llibre revelador. Barcelona, 1929. On cycles see Millàs pp. 19–23. 376 J. SAMSÓ

• 4,320,000,000 years which derive from Brahmagupta’s Brahmasphutasiddhānta.17 • 4,320,000 years (mahāyuga, used in the astronomical system of Āryabhaṭa, ca. 499 AD). This number is the result of multiplying 360 x 12,000. • 36,000 years (33,000 years in Millàs’ Catalan translation p. 20). • 360,000 years, which is the world-year of the Persians, used by Abū Ma‘shar. It is equivalent to the twelfth part of the mahāyuga and it is frequently used in Islamic astrology where it is named “mighty world tasyīr.”18 • 12,000 years, corresponding to the “mighty world intihā’”19: it is clear that Bar Ḥ iyya is mixing two different systems (tasyīr and intihā’). • 49,000 years. • 7000 years.

These two last cycles seem to have a Jewish origin and to be related to the ideas of the sabbatical and jubilar year. Interestingly, these cycles were used by the Jewish astronomers of Alfonso X, as the Alfonsine model for precession is based on the combination of constant precession, with a cycle of 49,000 years, and a trepidation model which uses a cycle of 7000 years. Chapter 5 of the Megillat ha-megalleh 20 contains an astrological history based on Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions.21 As a result of their progressive displacement, Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions are classified into the following groups:

• small conjunctions: every 20 years. The precise parameter given by Bar Ḥ iyya is 20 years – 1/8 of a year = 19:52,30 years.

17 E.S. Kennedy & B.L. van der Waerden, “The World-Year of the Persians,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 83 (1963), 315–327 (see pp. 320–321). Reprinted in Kennedy et al., Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences, Beirut, 1983. 18 Kennedy and van der Waerden, “World-Year,” p. 355. 19 Kennedy and van der Waerden, “World-Year,” p. 356. 20 Megillat ha-Megalleh ed. Poznanski pp. 111–155; Millàs, Llibre revelador pp. 183–252. 21 Linking Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions with the advent of the Messiah was also favored by Solomon ibn Gabirol (ca. 1021–1058) and severely criticized by Abraham ibn ‘Ezra (ca. 1089–ca. 1161). See Shlomo Sela, Abraham Ibn Ezra: The Book of the World. Brill, Leiden- Boston, 2010, pp. 9–11. THE ASTRONOMICAL BACKGROUND OF ABRAHAM BAR Ḥ IYYA’S… 377

• middle conjunctions (characterized by a change of the triplicity), which take place, approximately, every 240 years, after 12 small conjunctions. Bar Ḥ iyya’s parameter is 238 years + 1/3 of a year (238;20y). Obviously this value is not coherent with the previous one as 19;52,30y × 12 = 238;30y. • great conjunctions (with return to the original sign, after passing through the four triplicities): approximately every thousand years. Bar Ḥ iyya does not give a specific parameter for this period but, as the big conjunction takes place after four middle conjunctions, we can easily calculate 238;20y × 4 = 953;20y. • To these three groups, Abraham Bar Ḥ iyya adds a fourth one: the mighty conjunction, which implies a return of the conjunction to the same degree as in the first one. This happens after three great conjunctions and the period is 2859 years, according to Bar Ḥ iyya, although 953;20y × 3 = 2860y. This kind of conjunction was already used in Eastern Islamic astrology.22

Bar Ḥ iyya also considers a period of 60 years (three small conjunctions), in which the conjunction returns to the same sign (within the same triplicity) as in the first one. The same period appears also in al-Baqqār’s al-Adwār fī tasyīr al-anwār.23 An analysis of the horoscopes cast by Bar Ḥ iyya may give us some more precise information on the parameters used by the author, who divides the history of Israel into periods of 238 years, marked by conjunctions with shift in the triplicity and, within each of these cycles, he gives information about small conjunctions or about eclipses having a special relevance. His horoscopes do not correspond to the moment of the conjunction but, in most cases, to the spring equinox of the year of the conjunction, which allows us to obtain the kind of solar year he is using. His starting point (which I call conjunction 0) is the “maximum conjunction of the kingdom of Israel,” with a shift to the triplicity of water (Aquarius) and took place on the 25th Adar of year 2365 of Creation/March 23, 1396 BC. This was the year of the birth of Aaron and, three years later, of Moses. The list of

22 E.S. Kennedy, “The Sasanian astronomical handbook Zīj al-Shāh and the astrological doctrine of ‘transit’ (mamarr).” Journal of the American Oriental Society 78 (1958), 246–262. Reprinted in Kennedy et al., Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences pp. 319–335. See pp. 259/332. 23 I am using Montse Díaz Fajardo’s unpublished edition of this work. 378 J. SAMSÓ spring equinoxes of the years of mean middle conjunctions given in the text is the following one24:

• No. 12, fire (Aries): 16th Adar II 2603/23.3.1158 BC • No. 24, earth (Taurus): 8th Nisan 2841/22.3.920 BC (period of the kings of Israel) • No. 36, air (Gemini): the text translated by Millàs25 does not give any date, but it should correspond to year 3079/682 BC. • No. 48, water (Cancer): 27th Adar 3318/20.3.443 BC (instead of 3317/442). Reign of Nebuchadnezzar. • No. 60, fire (Leo): 19th Adar 3556/19.3.205 BC. • No. 72, earth (Virgo): 11th Nisan 3794/19.3.34 AD. Jesus died in the previous year. 34 years after this conjunction the “exile of the second temple took place, decreed by Titus.” • No. 84, air (Libra): 11th Nisan 4033/18.3.273 AD. During the period of this conjunction, reign of Constantine, who converted to Christianism, and Manes began to preach Mazdeism. • No. 96, water (Scorpio): 1st Nisan 4271/17.3.511 AD (Millàs’ translation has 4471/711). Within this cycle Bar Ḥ iyya mentions a small conjunction of year 4331/571, which was the year of the birth of Prophet Muḥammad. The power of Islam lasted for 584 years. • No. 108, fire (Sagittarius): 21st Adar II 4509/16.3.749. Fall of the Umayyads and beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate. • No. 120, earth (Capricorn): 14th Nisan 4747/16.3.987. During this cycle we find the fall of the Umayyads of al-Andalus, the period of the petty kingdoms (ṭawā’if ) (1031), and the invasion of the Almoravids (1086). The sixth small conjunction of this triplicity (No 125) took place in the year which began the 9th Nisan 4847/17.3.1087 and, after 12 years (1099), the Crusades began. [The first crusade was preached in 1095 and it lasted from 1096 until 1099].26

24 See a complete list of conjunctions in Rodríguez Arribas, El cielo de Sefarad pp. 97–101. 25 Millàs, Llibre revelador pp. 213–215. 26 An Andalusian Jew, exiled in some locality of the Crown of Aragón as a result of the Almohad invasion, is the author of a prognostication (dated in 4914/1153–1154) based on the middle conjunction 129 (not mentioned by Bar Ḥ iyya) which took place on Monday 1 Shawwāl 561H / Sunday July 31, 1166. Goldstein has shown that he uses al-Khwārizmī’s zīj for his computation. See B.R. Goldstein, “A Prognostication Based on the Conjunction of THE ASTRONOMICAL BACKGROUND OF ABRAHAM BAR Ḥ IYYA’S… 379

• No. 132, air (Aquarius): 14th Adar II 4986/15.3.1226. This conjunction announced the end of Islamic power: in conjunction no 96 Bar Ḥ iyya said that this power would last 584 years, which corresponds to 1155 (from 571) or to 1206 (from the beginning of the Hijra in 622). Within this period he mentions the conjunction no 138 (the year begins the 10th Nisan 5105/14.3.1345) for which he prognosticates a period of great wars which is a basic nucleus of his messianic speculation.27 • No. 144, water (Pisces): 5th Nisan 5224 (5214 in Millàs’ translation)/14.3.1464. This conjunction completes the great cycle of the “maximum” conjunction. As 1396 BC = –1395,

1395 + 1464 = 2859.

The beginning of the solar year (spring equinox) coincides with the Saturn-Jupiter conjunction in Aquarius 25°, while the true conjunction of both planets in no. 0 was in Aquarius 24°.28 This cycle corresponds, approximately, to the year in which Bar Ḥ iyya expects the arrival of the Messiah (1448 or 1468).29

This list contains precise chronological data which allows us to obtain some parameters used by Bar Ḥ iyya. It is easy to calculate that the period between two middle conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter is 86,929 days minus about 7 hours (the information about hours is, generally, not very

Saturn and Jupiter in 1166 [561 AH].” C. Burnett et al. (eds.), Studies in the History of the Exact Sciences in Honour of David Pingree. Brill, Leiden, 2004, pp. 735–757. 27 This conjunction was considered to be the cause of the Black Death of 1348: see B.R. Goldstein and D. Pingree, “Levi ben Gerson’s Prognostication for the Conjunction of 1345.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia) vol. 80, part 6 (1990) (see especially p. 52). See also J. Samsó, Las Ciencias de los Antiguos en al-Andalus, 2nd ed., Almería, 2011, p. 435: the Granadan physicians al-Shaqūrī and Ibn Khātima considered that the Black Death was caused by the conjunction of three planets. Computing with the Alfonsine Tables we can see that there was a conjunction of Jupiter and Mars in Aquarius 14;32° the 1.3.1345; another one of Mars and Saturn in Aquarius 17° the 4.3.1345; a third one of Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius 18;45° the 21.3.1345. Properly speaking, one cannot say that there was a conjunction of the three planets but it is clear that Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter were very near to each other in March 1345. 28 Millàs, Llibre revelador p. 197. 29 Millàs, Llibre revelador pp. 250–251; Sela, “Astrological works” p. 133; Rodríguez Arribas, El cielo de Sefarad p. 110. 380 J. SAMSÓ reliable). Our basic period will be 86,928.292 days which correspond to 238 years. We can, therefore, calculate, approximately, the length of the solar year used by Bar Ḥ iyya:

86,928.292 : 238 = 365;14,41,43...d or 365; 14,52,26 if weuseaperiood of 86,929.

Obviously Bar Ḥ iyya is using a tropical year which is slightly longer than the one used by al-Battānī (365;14,26,0d),30 in spite of the fact that Bar Ḥ iyya’s astronomical tables are based on al-Battānī’s zīj.31 Bar Ḥ iyya’s value is not very far from Ptolemy’s tropical year (365;14,48d),32 something which agrees with his remark saying that all his computations are based on Ptolemy’s theories.33 It is also near the value used by Bar Ḥ iyya himself, in his Sefer ha-‘Ibbur, and by Maimonides, in his Sanctification of the New Moon, who speak of a year having 365d + 5h + (977/1080)h + [48/ (1080 × 78)]h, which equals 365;14,45,47d.34 Besides, Abraham ibn ‘Ezra attributes to Jewish authors a tropical year of 365d + 1/4 – 1/320, equivalent to 365;14,48,45d and we know of other similar parameters.35 All this evidence does not identify with certitude the year length used by Bar Ḥ iyya and the only thing we know for sure is that he is using a tropical year, not a sidereal one.

30 C.A. Nallino, Al-Battānī sive Albatenii Opus Astronomicum. I (Mediolani Insubrum, 1903), p. 42. 31 J.M. Millás Vallicrosa, La obra Séfer Ḥ ešbón mahlekot ha-kokabim de E. Abraham bar- Ḥ iyya ha-Bargeloni. Edición crítica con traducción, introducción y notas. Barcelona, 1959. 32 Almagest III,1; translation G.J. Toomer, New York, Berlin, Heidelberg, Tokyo, 1984, p. 140. 33 Millàs, Llibre revelador p. 196. 34 S. Gandz, J. Obermann and O. Neugebauer, The Code of Maimonides. Book Three. Treatise Eight. Sanctification of the New Moon. Yale University Press. New Haven-London, 1956, p. 97. 35 J.M. Millás Vallicrosa, El libro de los fundamentos de las tablas astronómicas de R. Abraham ibn ‘Ezra. Barcelona, 1947, pp. 75–76 and 100. Al-Khwārizmī gives, for the solar year of the Jewish calendar, 365d + 5h + 3791 / 4104 (365;14,48,33,35d): see E.S. Kennedy, “Al-Khwārizmī on the Jewish Calendar” in Scripta Mathematica 27 (1964), 55–59 (reprinted in Kennedy et al., Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences pp. 661–665). The same parameter is mentioned by al-Bīrūnī (Gandz, Obermann & Neugebauer, Code p. 97). Ṣā‘id of Toledo gives a different value: 365;14,58,45d (Ṣā‘id, Ṭabaqāt al-umam. French translation by Régis Blachère, Paris, 1935, p. 156). THE ASTRONOMICAL BACKGROUND OF ABRAHAM BAR Ḥ IYYA’S… 381

We can continue with the comparison between Bar Ḥ iyya’s data and the Ptolemaic parameters. In the Almagest36 we find the following values of the mean motion per day of Saturn (Ms) and Jupiter (Mj):

M = 0;2,0,33,31,28,51° s M = 04; ,59,14,26,46,31° j and

MM–;= 02,58,40,55,17,40° js

From this value we can calculate the interval of days (n) corresponding to a small conjunction:

nM×+360° =×nM sj nM= 360° /;− Md= 7253 6,28,6,58 ays ()js 7253;/ 6,28,6,58 365;, 14 48= 19; 51,29,11,21,41years

This result is not far from the 19:52,30 years that we have obtained from Abraham Bar Ḥ iyya himself. The period corresponding to a middle conjunction with shift in the triplicity will be:

19;; 51,29,11,21,41×= 12 238 17,50,16,20 years which is near the 238;20 years given by Bar Ḥ iyya. Finally, these parameters are coherent with the cycle of 144 small conjunctions at the end of which the Saturn-Jupiter conjunction will occur in the same degree and sign of the first one:

7253;; 6,28,6,58days×× 144 02,58,40,55,17,40° ° =+143revolutions 55959;, 59…

We may try to obtain some more information from the horoscopes themselves. Concerning the mean motion of Saturn and Jupiter, we can

36 Almagest IX, 3; translation Toomer p. 126. 382 J. SAMSÓ easily see that their mean position in conjunction 0 (JDN 1,211,616) is 324° and 325° in conjunction 144 (JDN 2,255,857). The interval of time between both dates is 1,044,241 days, during which Saturn makes 97 rotations and Jupiter 241. We can, therefore, calculate the mean motion per day of both planets as well as the difference between them:

M =+97r 11° /;,044,241 = 02,0,23,22,1° s () M =+241r 11°°/;,044,241 = 04,59,6,24,32 j () MM–;= 02,58,43,2,31° js

These parameters do not seem to be related to those of Ptolemy (Ms = 0;2,0,33,31,28,51° and Mj = 0;4,59,14,26,46,31°) or to al-Battānī’s 37 (Ms = 0;2,0,35,50,27,26° and Mj = 0;4,59,16,54,58,16°), while they are 38 nearer to al-Khwārizmī’s (Ms = 0;2,0,22,57° and Mj = 0;4,59,9,8°) or to those used in the astrological history of Māshā’allāh (Ms = 0;2,0,22,17° 39 and Mj = 0;4,59,7,18°). This seems to point to Bar Ḥ iyya’s use of sidereal mean motion parameters in spite of the fact that his solar year was tropical. With the parameter obtained for the difference between mean motions per day, we can calculate that the interval of time between two small conjunctions is 7251;40,25 days, equivalent to 19;51,15,23 years (19y 312d 0;28,54h): the Zīj al-Shāh, used by Māshā’allāh to compute his horoscopes gives an interval of 19y 311d.40 In Bar Ḥ iyya’s system each small conjunction advances toward the shift in the triplicity 2;30,25° (2;25° in the Zīj al-Shāh and Māshā’allāh; 2;25,17° in Abū Ma‘shar’s horoscopes; 2;53,49° according to the Almagest).41 For a middle conjunction we will need:

19;; 51,15,23×= 12 238 15, 5years

37 Parameters squeezed by E.S. Kennedy for his program BATLN. 38 Otto Neugebauer, The Astronomical Tables of al-Khwārizmī. Translation with Commentaries of the Latin Version edited by H. Suter supplemented by Corpus Christi College MS 282. Copenhaguen, 1962, p. 93. 39 Kennedy & Pingree, Astrological history p. 79. 40 Kennedy & van der Waerden, “The World-Year of the Persians” p. 324. 41 E.S. Kennedy, “The World-Year Concept” p. 359. THE ASTRONOMICAL BACKGROUND OF ABRAHAM BAR Ḥ IYYA’S… 383 a value which seems a little bit too low if we compare it to the 238;20 years mentioned in the Megillat ha-Megalleh. A good check of this parameter can, however, be obtained computing with it the interval between two maximum conjunctions:

238;, 15 51×=2 2859; 1

A cursory study of the collection of horoscopes in the Megillat ha- megalleh shows, as we have seen, that they are cast, in most cases, for the spring equinox of the year in which a Saturn-Jupiter conjunction occurred.42 Obviously, the true conjunction very rarely coincides with the spring equinox and, in many horoscopes, the positions of Saturn and Jupiter are near to each other but not the same. Surprisingly in eight cases the same position is given for the two planets as if the conjunction had taken place the day of the equinox. These are:

Conjunction 0 (25 Adar 2365/23.3.1396 BC): 324°.43 Conjunction 7 (22 Adar II 2484/23.3.1277 BC): 337°.44 Conjunction 99 (6 Nisan 4331/17.3.571): 228°.45 Conjunction 125 (9 Nisan 4847/17.3.1087): 38°.46 Conjunction 132 (14 Adar II 3986/15.3.1226): 303°.47 Conjunction 138 (10 Nisan 5105/14.3.1345): 315°.48 Conjunction 141 (2 Nisan 5164/14.3.1404): Aquarius.49 Conjunction 144 (5 Nisan 5224/14.3.1464): 325°.50

42 This is an astrological commonplace. See, for example, the following quotation from Abraham ibn ‘Ezra’s Book of the World: “Dorotheus the king said that he found in the Book of Secrets by Enoch that he enjoined that at the revolution of the year in which a Saturn- Jupiter conjunction takes place, whether a great, a middle or a small conjunction, one should always observe the location of the planets when the Sun first enters Aries” (Sela, Book of the World p. 73). 43 Millàs, Llibre revelador p. 197. 44 Millàs, Llibre revelador p. 203. 45 Millàs, Llibre revelador p. 229. 46 Millàs, Llibre revelador p. 234. 47 Millàs, Llibre revelador pp. 241–242. 48 Millàs, Llibre revelador p. 246. 49 Millàs, Llibre revelador p. 247. 50 Millàs, Llibre revelador p. 248. 384 J. SAMSÓ

It is, obviously, difficult to accept that, in the aforementioned eight conjunctions, the astronomical event takes place precisely in the day of the spring equinox, but it is difficult for me to find an explanation for this coincidence, as I do not know which kind of tables were used by Abraham Bar Ḥ iyya. One of these conjunctions, no. 132 is particularly interesting because Bar Ḥ iyya gives details (longitudes of the 12 houses51 and diagram of the horoscope) which we only find in another horoscope of the collection: that of conjunction 0. Besides, this is the only horoscope for which the positions, calculated with al-Battānī’s zīj,52 give results which can be considered approximate to those of the text. Bar Ḥ iyya says that the division of the houses has been calculated for the latitude of Israel, which is 32°,53 in agreement with al-Battānī’s geographical table which gives 31;50° for the latitude of Jerusalem54 and 31° for Palestine.55 Surprisingly, Bar Ḥ iyya adds that the horoscope has also been calculated for the geographical longitude of the center of the world: the “cupola” (qubba) of Islamic tradition, placed at 90° of distance from the extreme Western and Eastern limits of the inhabited world (al-ma‘mūra). As Bar Ḥ iyya does not use the corresponding latitude of the qubba, 0°, which is supposed to lie on the equator, he is probably referring to another “center of the world” which he identifies with Jerusalem. The hour of the horoscope is “a quarter after the beginning of the tenth hour of the night”: as the horoscope is cast for a date very near the spring equinox, the sunset takes place at about 6h p.m. and the hour will be a quarter of an hour after 3h a.m. The same hour and near latitude are obtained by entering the longitudes of houses I-VI in John North’s HOROSC program.56 I suspect that Bar Ḥ iyya used al-Battānī’s zīj to divide the houses of this horoscope and to calculate the planetary longitudes for the astronomical date March 14 (March 15 civil date) 1226 at 3h in the morning. The data of the horoscope and the recomputation of the planetary longitudes are shown below:

51 Usually Bar Ḥ iyya only mentions the longitude of the ascendent and that of midheaven. 52 I am using the computer program BATLN prepared by Prof. E.S. Kennedy, during one of his visits to Barcelona, and later revised by Honorino Mielgo. 53 36° in Millàs, Llibre revelador p. 241. 54 Nallino, Battānī II, 54. 55 Nallino, Battānī II, 35. 56 John D. North, Horoscopes and History. The Warburg Institute. London, 1986. THE ASTRONOMICAL BACKGROUND OF ABRAHAM BAR Ḥ IYYA’S… 385

Houses Divided according to the standard method. The calculated latitude is 34;37° (± 2°) and the hour 3;3h a.m. In parenthesis I note the difference between the values given in the text and the recomputation with HOROSC.

I – 303° VII – [123°]a II – 338° VIII – 15[8]°b III – 16° IX – 196° IV – 52° X – 23[2]°c V – 74° (−2°) XI – 254° VI – 99° XII – 279° a 148° in Millàs, Llibre revelador p. 242 b 151° in Millàs, Llibre revelador p. 242 c 235° in Millàs, Llibre revelador pp. 241–242

Planetary Longitudes See Table 14.1. The aforementioned horoscope deserves a few comments. First of all, I wonder why a horoscope which is, in principle, calculated for the spring equinox gives a solar longitude of 4°. It is obvious that the date does not correspond to al-Battānī’s equinox (the 12.3.1226 at about 3h a.m.), but the position of the Moon is in agreement with the date and the hour. I also wonder whether the longitude of the Sun is the result of a corruption in

Table 14.1 Planetary positions for the conjunction of 1326

Planets Longitudes (text) Recomputation 14.3.1226, 3h a.m.

Sun 4° 1;56° Moon 175° 174;6° Saturn 303° 302;34° Jupiter 303° 307;18° Mars 218° R 218;21° Venus 321° 323;6° Mercury 8° 355;54° Ascending node 328° 331;7°

R means retrograde motion of the planet 386 J. SAMSÓ the manuscript transmission. It is obvious that the longitudes of Venus and the node have a difference of 2° and 3° and that Mercury’s longitude is much worse. I should also remark that Mars is not in retrograde motion according to al-Battānī’s zīj. The most interesting thing is, however, that Saturn’s position agrees with the presumed source, but such is not the case of Jupiter. Interestingly, the date chosen corresponds to that of al-Battānī’s mean Saturn-Jupiter conjunction at about 302°. The mean longitudes of the two planets at the hour of the horoscope are:

Saturn 302;29° Jupiter 302;12°

The true conjunction had taken place more than a month before, not in the sign of Aquarius but in Capricorn. The true longitudes of both planets were the 30th Shebat 4986/30.1.1226 at midday:

Saturn 298;4° Jupiter 298;3°

This is clearly an explanation for the coincidence between the conjunction and the equinox in year 1326, as Bar Ḥ iyya seems to acknowledge when he says57 that the two planets in conjunction will be in the sign of Aquarius, if computed with their regular motion, while, according to their irregular motion, they will be in that sign in the beginning of that year.58 It does not work, however, for the rest of the cases. The only thing I can suggest is that, in the aforementioned eight cases, Bar Ḥ iyya is including in each one of these equinox-horoscopes the mean or true position of Saturn and Jupiter at the moment of the conjunction. The analysis of the horoscope of 1326 shows that, at least in this case, Abraham Bar Ḥ iyya has cast a tropical, not sidereal, horoscope, something which disagrees with the common practice in al-Andalus and the Maghrib as well as with the collections of Eastern Islamic historical horoscopes compiled by Māshā’allāh, Abū Ma‘shar or Mūsā b. Nawbakht. This hypothesis is confirmed by what we have found about the length of the

57 Millàs, Llibre revelador p. 241. 58 I do not understand the meaning of “the beginning of the year.” It cannot be the astronomical beginning (spring equinox) or the beginning of the Jewish year, as the 1st Tishri 4986/4.9.1225 both planets were in Capricorn, not in Aquarius. THE ASTRONOMICAL BACKGROUND OF ABRAHAM BAR Ḥ IYYA’S… 387 solar year. In spite of this, it is not at all clear that Bar Ḥ iyya uses al-Battānī’s zīj to compute his horoscopes. I have tried to recompute the horoscopes of the middle conjunctions after the Christian era (numbers 72–144) with negative results: the differences increase as we move back in time. We must, therefore, consider the possibility that Bar Ḥ iyya could be following a tradition entirely different from that of al-Battānī and could have copied some of the horoscopes, at least, from another source.59 He might also have used a different set of astronomical tables which I have been unable to identify in spite of having done many attempts to recompute Bar Ḥ iyya’s horoscopes using al-Khwārizmī’s zīj, Yaḥyā ibn Abī Manṣūr’s Mumtaḥan tables, the Toledan Tables and, of course, those of al-Battānī. The comparison with the planetary longitudes obtained with al-Khwārizmī’s sidereal tables makes me think that, in spite of the fact that the calculated parameters for the mean motion of Saturn and Jupiter seem to be sidereal, the positions in the horoscopes for the rest of the planets have probably been corrected to obtain tropical longitudes. Finally, five conjunctions of dates after the beginning of the Christian era, computed using al-Battānī’s zīj (1226 and 1464 are the exceptions) do not agree with Bar Ḥ iyya’s shifts in the triplicity, which are the base of his argumentation (Table 14.2). This table shows that, in five cases, the zodiacal signs of both the mean and true conjunctions, calculated with al-Battānī’s zīj, do not coincide with those of Bar Ḥ iyya. This is important if we have in mind our author’s historical analysis and shows a clear difference with the evidence we find in Islamic astrological histories, all of which consider that the conjunction of 571 (no. 99 in Bar Ḥ iyya’s series), the qirān al-Milla al-Islāmiyya which announced the advent of Islam, coincided with the shift to the triplicity of water in the sign of Scorpio. Interestingly, Bar Ḥ iyya considers that the change in triplicity took place in conjunction no. 96 in 511 and, therefore, the conjunction of 571 is only a small conjunction, thus diminishing the importance of the event. One has to bear in mind that Bar Ḥ iyya is well informed about the chronology of the Prophet’s life and dates his birth in the month of Yiar of year 4331, which began on April 11, 571, his

59 According to Sela (“Astrological works” p. 136 fn. 34), the positions of planets and nodes are similar, though not identical, to those of horoscopes calculated for the same date by Māshā’allāh, Abū Ma‘shar and al-Sijzī, although I have not been able to find such similar- ity. See D. Pingree, “Historical Horoscopes” in Journal of the American Oriental Society 82 (1962), pp. 488 and 494. 388 J. SAMSÓ

Table 14.2 Bar Ḥ iyya’s conjunctions calculated with al-Battānī’s zīj No of the Mean middle True middle Sign of the conjunction conjunction conjunction (Battānī) conjunction (Battānī) (Bar Ḥ iyya)

72 4.10.34 (124°, Leo) 12.10.34 (136°, Leo) Virgo (true conj. in April, 163°) 84 20.1.273 (160°, 10.8.273 (169°, Libra Virgo) Virgo) 96 8.5.511 (196°, Libra) 12.10.511 (204°, Scorpio Libra) 108 20.8.749 (231°, 25.11.749 (236°, Sagittarius Scorpio) Scorpio) 120 1.12.987 (267°, 31.12.987 (267°, Capricorn Sagittarius) Sagittarius) 132 14.3.1226 (302°, 30.1.1226 (298°, Aquarius Aquarius) Capricorn) 144 4.7.1464 (338°, 4.3.1464 (330°, Pisces Pisces) Pisces) death in year 4392/632, and knows that in the middle of the month of Yiar 4331 there was a lunar eclipse in the sign of Scorpio.60 It has a certain interest to compare Bar Ḥ iyya’s horoscope, calculated for the 6th of Nisan 4331/17.3.571 not only with al-Battānī’s recomputation but also with other horoscopes for the same event in the astrological histories of Māshā’allāh, Abū Ma‘shar and Mūsā ibn Nawbakht. When comparing these four horoscopes we should not consider the lunar positions because of the different dates involved and the fast motion of the Moon. As for the rest, we can easily see that the differences are much greater for Saturn and Jupiter than for the other planets. I believe, therefore, that Bar Ḥ iyya’s horoscopes are based on Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions cleverly handled in order to obtain adequate results (Table 14.3).

Conclusions A historical horoscope is an excellent tool historians can use to determine a date and, if the lunar position is given, also an hour. For obtaining adequate results we need, however, to know which astronomical tables were

60 Millàs, Llibre revelador pp. 229–231. In al-Battānī’s astrological history both the birth of the Prophet and the lunar eclipse occurred the 25.4.571. See Kennedy et al., “al-Battānī’s astrological history” p. 89. THE ASTRONOMICAL BACKGROUND OF ABRAHAM BAR Ḥ IYYA’S… 389

Table 14.3 Horoscope of the advent of Islam according to Bar H. iyya and early Islamic astrological sources

Planets Longitudes Recomputation Māshā’allāh Abū Ibn a (Bar H. iyya) (Battānī) 19.3.571 Ma‘shar Nawbakht 17.3.571, 1h a.m. 19.3.571b 15.3.571c

Sun [0°] 357;57° 0;1° 0° 0° Moon 67° 63;26° 91;10° 91;45° 81;9° Saturn 228° R 215;15° 216;13° R 217;26° 219° Jupiter 228° R 216;23° 214;26° R 213;32° 216;26° Mars 79° 73;40° 72;15° 73;14° 72;26° Venus 5° 0;7° 2;16° 2;18° 3;40° Mercury 11° 9;58° 18;26° R 6;17° R 8;3° Ascending 41° 38;55° 37;53° – 38;45° node aKennedy & Pingree, Astrological History p. 49, 98 bPingree, Thousands p. 95 cLabarta, Kāmil p. 78 used by the computer of the horoscope. Such is not the case of the series of horoscopes given by Bar Ḥ iyya in his Megillat ha-Megalleh and I have to acknowledge the failure of all my attempts to identify the tables used by the author. The only clear result obtained in this chapter is that Bar Ḥ iyya is casting tropical horoscopes, not sidereal ones, contradicting the common practice of Andalusī and Maghribī astrologers. I suspect that the introduction of tropical astrology in the Western Islamicate world—which is the source of Bar Ḥ iyya’s scientific knowledge—is due to Jewish scientists,61 but I will not insist here in this topic as there is no scholarly agreement on it. A second general remark should also be made: historical astrology is never innocent. A Saturn-Jupiter conjunction with a shift in the triplicity is usually associated to important historical events, like the rise of Islam or the birth of Jesus. The fact that the conjunction of 571 does not correspond to such a shift, added to the fact that the difference in the positions of Saturn and Jupiter between Bar Ḥ iyya’s horoscope and the horoscopes for that year computed by early Islamic astrologers is much greater than the differences corresponding to the other planets, seems to point to a

61 “‘Dixit Abraham Iudeus’: algunas observaciones sobre los textos astronómicos latinos de Abraham ibn ‘Ezra.” Iberia Judaica 4 (2012), 171–200. 390 J. SAMSÓ manipulation made by our author in his computation of the longitudes of both planets. In this way he obtains a conjunction that does not imply a change in the triplicity and, consequently, he diminishes the importance of the historical event.

Acknowledgments A draft of this chapter was revised by Bernard R. Goldstein and Shlomo Sela. Both made useful suggestions and corrected some of my mis- takes. My deepest gratitude to them.

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Kennedy, E.S., and David Pingree, eds. The astrological history of Māshā’allāh. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Kennedy, E.S. and B.L. van der Waerden. “The World Year of the Persians.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 83 (1963): 315–327. Labarta, Ana. Mūsà ibn Nawbajt, al-Kitāb al-Kāmil. Horóscopos históricos. Madrid: Bellaterra, 1982. Labarta, Ana, and Angel Mestres. Mūsā ibn Nawbajt, Kitāb al-azmina wa-l-duhūr. Tratado de astrología mundial. Valencia, 2005. Millàs i Vallicrosa, J.M. Abraham bar Hiia, Llibre revelador. Barcelona: Alpha, 1929. ———. El libro de los fundamentos de las tablas astronómicas de R. Abraham ibn ʽEzra. Barcelona, 1947. ———. La obra Séfer Ḥ ešbón mahlekot ha-kokabim de R. Abraham bar-Ḥ iyya ha- Bargeloni. Edición crítica con traducción, introducción y notas. Barcelona, 1959. Nallino, C.A. Al-Battānı ̄ sive Albatenii Opus Astronomicum I. Mediolani Insubrum, 1903. Neugebauer, Otto. The Astronomical Tables of al-Khwārizmı.̄ Translation with Commentaries of the Latin Version edited by H. Suter supplemented by Corpus Christi College MS 282. Copenhagen, 1962. Pingree, David. “Historical Horoscopes,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 82 (1962): 487–502. ———. The Thousands of Abý Maʽshar. London, 1968. ———. “The ‘Liber Universus’ of ʽUmar b. al-Farrukhān al-Ṭabarı,”̄ Journal for the History of Arabic Science 1 (1977): 8–12. Rodríguez Arribas, Josefina.El cielo de Sefarad. Los judíos y los astros (Siglos XII y XIV). Córdoba: El Almendro, 2011. ———. “Terminology for Historical Astrology According to Bar Ḥ iyya and Ibn Ezra,” Aleph 11 (2011): 11–40. Toomer, G.J. trans. Ptolemy’s Almagest. New York, Berlin, Heidelberg, Tokyo, 1984. Samsó, J. “Horoscopes and history: Ibn ʽAzzūz and his retrospective horoscopes related to the battle of El Salado (1340).” In Between Demonstration and Imagination. Essays in the History of Science and Philosophy Presented to John D. North. Edited by L. Nauta and A. Vanderjagt, 101–124. Leiden, 1999. Reprinted in Samsó. Astronomy and Astrology in al-Andalus and the Maghrib no. 10. Variorum, Aldershot, 2007. ———. “Cuatro horóscopos sobre muertes violentas en al-Andalus y el Magrib.” In De muerte violenta. Política, religión y violencia en al-Andalus, Estudios Onomástico-Biográficos de al-Andalus Vol. 14. Edited by Maribel Fierro, 479–519. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2004. ———. “La Urŷūza de Ibn Abı̄ l-Riŷāl y su comentario por Ibn Qunfuḏ: Astrología e Historia en el Magrib en los siglos XI y XIV.” Al-Qanṭara 30 (2009): 7–39, 321–360. 392 J. SAMSÓ

———. Las Ciencias de los Antiguos en al-Andalus, 2nd ed. Almería: Fundacion Ibn Tufayl, 2011. ———. “‘Dixit Abraham Iudeus’: algunas observaciones sobre los textos astronómicos latinos de Abraham ibn ʽEzra.” Iberia Judaica 4 (2012): 171–200. Samsó, J. and Hamid Berrani. “World Astrology in Eleventh Century al-Andalus: the Epistle on Tasyır̄ and the Projection of Rays by al-Istijjı.”̄ Journal of Islamic Studies 10, 3 (Oxford, 1999): 293–312. Samsó, J. and Hamid Berrani. “The Epistle on Tasyır̄ and the Projection of Rays by Abū Marwān al-Istijı.”̄ Suhayl 5 (2005): 163–242. Sela, Shlomo. “Abraham bar Ḥ iyya’s astrological works and thought.” Jewish Studies Quarterly 12 (2005): 128–158. ———. Abraham Ibn Ezra: The Book of the World. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2010. Van Brummelen, G. “The Astronomical System in Mūsa ̄ ibn Nawbakht Astrological Treatise, the Kitāb al-Kāmil.” Centaurus 41 (1999): 213–243. Yamamoto, Keiji and Charles Burnett, eds. and trans. Abū Maʽšar on Historical Astrology. The Book of Religions and Dynasties (On the Great Conjunctions), 2 Vols. Leiden-Boston-Köln: Brill, 2000. CHAPTER 15

A Muslim’s Book and Its Christian and Jewish Readers: The Way al-Farabi’s Enumeration of the Sciences Came to Influence Western European Scholars

Michael C. Weber

The world of magistri in Latin Europe in the twelfth century had become completely bounded. Teachers were either Masters of Arts or Masters of Theology. The curriculum had been set nearly 700 years earlier when Cassiodorus demarcated the limits of divine and human letters and Boethius settled the latter into the divisions of Trivium and Quadrivium. Slowly, as this educational system created in the late Empire coursed through the early Middle Ages—when nearly all teaching was private— masters with special founts of knowledge and especially effective teaching manners (like Alcuin of York and Gerbert of Aurillac) began to be valued by political leaders and had what amounted to “public” schools which attracted students from beyond the immediate vicinity. The locus of teaching became the precinct of a Cathedral; however, the curriculum did not

Independent Scholar

M. C. Weber (*) Lovettsville, VA, USA

© The Author(s) 2019 393 M. T. Abate (ed.), Convivencia and Medieval Spain, Mediterranean Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96481-2_15 394 M. C. WEBER change and the authoritative texts did not change. Could a master from, say, 1120 CE been magically transported to a sixth-century classroom studying grammar, rhetoric, or dialectic, everything in front of him would have been recognizable. Masters of the twelfth-century schools were becoming aware that some additional, valuable texts did still exist, which were not currently in use. Abelard saw a copy of Aristotle’s Sophistice Elenchi and tells us he read it.1 However, as Clancy contextualizes Abelard’s attitude toward that book, such “new books were of no use unless the Masters in the West already knew why they wanted them. … Abelard was unsure how to fit it into his syllabus of lectures.”2 All scholars were bound by the existing divisions of scientia, passing on to their students an established tradition of knowing “what books to read, in which order to read them.”3 Some scholars were beginning to consult authorities outside their familiar texts and fraternity of magistri, but with one or two notable exceptions there does not seem to have been a passion for expanding the limits of the arts curriculum among the masters of the most prestigious schools in northern Europe. Consequently, it is all the more surprising that there came to be any interest in the “new” sciences that were becoming available in the Latin West, emerging from Iberia and Sicily. Change did come and it requires explanation. If this process was not “demand driven” by institutional representatives, how can we understand the eventual implementation of these subjects? How can we explain the generation of interest in them? How do we grasp the factors that drove men to seek this new knowledge and bring it back to the schools? This phenomenon was in every sense external to the educational system I have outlined here. First, it was occasioned by a very different set of social circumstances than what prevailed in northern Europe. Second, the men who participated in it do not appear to have been magistri, but men dedicated to translating and writing. And there seems to have been among these men a shared attitude of curiosity coupled with determination to find anything which could lead to a more substantial body of knowledge. As one of these scholars put it, he labored so hard in this foreign world so that others like him could read what he “made available to the Latin world so that the faithful, who toil assiduously for the good of their souls, may know what to think about it, no longer through faith alone but also

1 Michael T. Clancy, Abelard: A Medieval Life (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), 98. 2 Clancy, 99. 3 Clancy, 32; here is referring to Hugh of St. Victor. A MUSLIM’S BOOK AND ITS CHRISTIAN AND JEWISH READERS: THE WAY… 395 through reason.”4 Finally, it developed into a society with a history of different institutions for education in the arts and a different set of authorities which came to be highly valued. This movement grew inside a society where for close to 400 years Muslims, Jews, and Christians were in daily contact with each other, and translation occurred within areas recently brought under Christian political control. At the outset, we need to recognize just how difficult this process would have been for the northern Europeans who came south to discover scientia. While they shared a common Latin language and were good enough scholares to have some sense of what they sought, they were not natives and were not familiar with interacting with other ethnic groups on a regular basis. Most of them do not appear to have learned Arabic before coming south. This has always been known. Finding intellectual collaborators could not have been simple but previous generations of scholars could get away with characterizing such contact as “natural.”5 This is much too facile an explanation, assuming an anachronistic, easy familiarity between scholars of differing ethnic communities and does not address any mechanisms for explaining just how such contacts might occur. Américo Castro defined the social interactions in medieval Iberia as a Convivencia, a theory which attempted to describe the “normal” character of people living in those lands but which is now also considered too idealized. Moreover, the society these men entered was one in a process of rebuilding and restructuring after prolonged conflict for nearly a century or so. Groups that had been in power were now subjected and new overlords reigned. While wars are large-scale affairs, they are generally experienced locally, in the immediate community. Within a community people understood this as moving from domination to being dominated and vice versa, generally along ethnic lines.6 There was a need to develop this new society as peacefully as possible. What recent scholarship on peace and conflict resolution has demonstrated is that enduring peaceful societies are built by relationships across ethnic conflict boundaries and the most

4 Dominicus Gundisalvus, preface to his de Anima; quoted in and translated by Jean Jolivet, “The Arabic Inheritance”: in A History of Twelfth Century Philosophy, ed. Peter Dronke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 142. 5 Charles Homer Haskins, Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1927), 52. 6 Here I am following John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997), 12 f. 396 M. C. WEBER

successful mechanisms for that are contacts between “mid-level leadership” persons who are important but not political figures.7 Scholars and clergy are important members of that social level. Utilizing theories of cross-cultural contact developed in sociology and anthropology, Thomas Glick not only made new paradigms available for historians’ use but also assembled hundreds of historical texts which demonstrated the ways medieval intellectuals—those mid-level leaders—crossed boundaries.8 The result is a nuanced depiction of the mechanisms of such contact between scholars of the three religions. It is fundamental to note that in places where people encounter and are aware of cross-cultural differences, the norm is for contacts to occur. Such cross-cultural borrowing is an important force in history: William McNeill, the father of World History study in the United States, regarded such borrowing as the “principle stimulus to innovation” in the recipient cultures.9 These translators’ curiosity exemplifies a general motivation for borrowing, which McNeill also noted: once civilizational groups were in contact, he surmised, “leaders of one culture [were able] to borrow or adapt items from other civilizations which happened to interest them … such borrowings were always voluntary, spontaneous, never forced.”10 It is this latter characteristic that must not be lost sight of. What we call allusively the “Toledo School of Translators” was rather an aggregation of effort based upon dozens of individual choices and diverse opportunities. While Daniel of Morley sought the vague Doctrina Arabum and Gerard of Cremona was specifically looking for Ptolemy’s Almagest (curiously, neither ever says how he knew these works might be found in Toledo), each was driven by his own agenda. The unified character of translation that appears is the result of the common intellectual tradition within which these men were formed, the relationships which they had with other translators pursuing the same goals, and the shared intellectual tradition of the “others” who

7 Lederach, 41. 8 Beginning with an article with Oriel Pi-Sunyer, “Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History,” Comparative Studies in Society and History vol. 11 no. 2 (1969): 136 f., through “My Master, the Jew: Observations on Interfaith Scholarly Interaction in the Middle Ages,” in Jews, Muslims, and Christians in and around the medieval Crown of Aragon: Studies in Honor of Elena Lourie, ed. Harvey J. Hames (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 157, he has built a convincing case for the usefulness of such a theoretical orientation. 9 William H. McNeill, A World History, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 127 in the introduction to Sect. 2. 10 McNeill, 127, emphasis added. A MUSLIM’S BOOK AND ITS CHRISTIAN AND JEWISH READERS: THE WAY… 397 helped them across religio-ethnic boundaries. This explains the sometimes striking, idiosyncratic choices of texts translated within a seemingly ordered enterprise. Our understanding of this movement is also incomplete if we do not recognize the overwhelming problem all these men faced: they may have had more than a passing acquaintance with the quadrivial sciences; they knew little or no Greek or Hebrew and virtually no Arabic. As a consequence of this lack, they could not have gained unmediated access to the body of work they sought: they would not have been able to read so much as an incipit in the languages they needed. The names of the scholars they sought and even the titles of many of the originally Greek books had been changed and were unrecognizable. But they not only gained access to these works and managed to make Latin translations of them but also came to read other texts written by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, literate in Arabic, which had expanded the ancient curriculum beyond the bounds of the classical tradition they inherited. Ibn Gabriol, al-Khwarizmi, Thabit̄ ibn Qurra became known; what’s more, entirely new sciences like algebra were introduced by their efforts. This would have been impossible if these northern- ers had not had numerous people and texts to point them in the right direction. Mozarabs were the preponderant Christian group. They have been characterized as “monolingual Arabic speakers” by 1085 CE.11 These men began to populate the cathedral chapter by the mid-eleventh century. They, too, would have been available as aides in reading difficult texts. From a close reading of the two translated texts made from al-Farabi’s Arabic original Book of the Enumeration of the Sciences, I was able to conclude that as Gundisalvus and Gerard translated, it is clear that both of these men had the assistance of a member of one of the two other Abrahamic faiths and it is unlikely that such an assistant was a Muslim; so it is likely that they accepted guidance in text selections from such a person as well.12 In fact, they would have had to. Even if we assume that the libraries of the Islamic capital and its mosque had been taken over along with the buildings when Toledo or Saragossa were conquered, how would a Latin reader even be able to peruse the contents of the manuscripts? Ptolemy,

11 Thomas Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages: Comparative Perspectives on Social and Cultural Formation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 177. 12 See my dissertation: “The Translating and Adapting of al-Farabi’s Kitab ‘Ihsa al-‘ulum in Spain,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Boston University, 1996, 76 f. 398 M. C. WEBER whom Gerard was said to have to come to Toledo to find, would not have been identified as such in any manuscript. He was instead Butalmyus. In addition, translation of everyday texts is difficult enough, but these men sought to translate texts with highly specialized vocabulary, philosophical, astronomical, mathematical, musical, political, and theological. Had they possessed a glossary of some sort, it would not have served their needs. The only one which has come to light is simply an alphabetical word list with equivalents, designed for Arabic speakers needing to learn Latin terminology.13 While others have pointed out the role that Arabaphone scholars must have played in this process, I want to focus upon the role of curricular texts—in particular, al-Farabi’s Book of the Enumeration of the Sciences—in enabling this process. Despite its title, al-Farabi’s Book of the Enumeration of the Sciences (Kitāb Ihsā’ al-culūm)14 is primarily an education text. In it he says that he is describing the parts of all the “well-known sciences” of his day so that anyone can pick up the book and put it to good use. In the twelfth century it was felt to be the key to the science of the Arabs, was twice translated into Latin, at least once into Hebrew, and thus provided a guide to the ancient philosophical works which scholars from the Latin West had come seeking. The Enumeration had been valued in Andalusi intellectual circles and Sa’id al-Andalusi said of it, “there had never been a book like it and no one has tried to imitate it. The students of any of the sciences cannot do without it or proceed without its guidance.”15 Sa’id does not go on to say exactly what there is in this text that makes it indispensable; as the overall discussion of al-Farabi makes clear, however, Sa’id regarded him as the premier philosopher among those who had studied science in the East. In his discussion of another two of al-Farabi’s works, Sa’id emphasizes that

13 Pieter S. van Konigsveld, The Arabic-Latin Glossary of the Leiden University Library (Leiden, 1977) 1, notes the purpose of one such contemporary glossary was only to provide basic words (in this case, Latin) for Arabic-speaking Mozarabs. 14 Currently there is no English translation of the text available; the most accessible edition is that of Angel González Palencia, Catalogo de las Ciencias (Madrid, 1953) which contains the Arabic text based upon the Escorial manuscript, a Spanish translation, Gerard of Cremona’s Latin translation, and Dominicus Gundisalvus’ version according to its first published edition. The two Latin translations are not in critical editions. For a “critical” reconstructed edition of Gundisalvus, see M. M. Alonso, De Scientiis (Madrid, 1954) which also includes as an appendix the passages reproduced by Vincent of Beauvais in his Speculum Doctrinale. 15 Sa’id al-Andalusi, Science in the Medieval World: Book of the Categories of Nations, tr. by Sema’an I. Salem and Alok Kumar, (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1991), 50. A MUSLIM’S BOOK AND ITS CHRISTIAN AND JEWISH READERS: THE WAY… 399 al-Farabi had generally provided exceptionally clear descriptions of the individual parts of whatever he wrote about. But it was not simply his status as a philosopher, but as a teacher, that Sa’id recognized. He was known as the “Second Teacher,” second only to Aristotle in importance. Jewish scholars as well regarded him as essential; Maimonides wrote “His arguments enable one to understand and comprehend, for he was very great in wisdom.”16 The book’s value comes from its clear exposition and its contents: it contains a straightforward description of what makes up each individual field of knowledge. However, one should not think of it as a textbook. Rather, it is more like a syllabus or curriculum: al-Farabi tells the student-reader what all the subjects are that make up the “well-known sciences”; then he presents the topics (the parts) within those subjects that one will need to study in order to be introduced to a given subject. For example, he does not discuss each grammatical point as a teaching grammar would. Unlike a modern course syllabus, he does not indicate all the books he would recommend in order to study each subject in his classification; in fact, he assumes that his readers will already have studied grammar and logic and makes no recommendations for texts in those chapters. Usually reference is made to the known books of Aristotle (some of which we now know to be written by someone other than the Stagirite) or another ancient authority, like Euclid. The result is a curriculum which, if it is followed, will introduce the student to all the parts of classical philosophy and those additional sciences which had come to be inside the Islamic world. Such a text was invaluable to Muslim intellectuals and they utilized it as such. Interestingly, the Christians who sought the new scientia were in a somewhat similar position to the students for whom al-Farabi produced this book. When Abu Nasr al-Farabi was flourishing in Baghdad (first half of the tenth century CE) and when he presumably prepared this text, Islamic society was in the heyday of the integration of Greek science and philosophy into Muslim culture. The new knowledge called for some kind of integration into the educational system. These texts grew out of a curious problem of Islamic scholars who needed to master the tools of philosophical study in order to make decisions in jurisprudence, but they had no place in which to learn them. The developing educational institutions did not teach any but the religious sciences. Like most of the history in the

16 Quoted by Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi in Medieval Political Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 31. 400 M. C. WEBER medieval West, education as it was practiced had primarily a religious function, training young men to serve as functionaries in religious institutions, particularly the courts. Legal reasoning required logical training but this was beyond the curriculum that had developed to date. It was only through contact with the Byzantine Empire (the Rum) and Persian Empire that the phenomenon of education outside of religious subjects was encountered by the Muslims. Conceptually, this was entering a different world. There was not even a native, Arabic term for philosophy, so they had to borrow the Greek, falsafah. Similarly, there was no real equivalent for the kind of study of natural and mathematical sciences; they came to be called the “ancient” or, more pejoratively by some scholars, “foreign sciences.” However, the usefulness of a classical education was obvious to thinkers like al-Kindi and al-Farabi despite its “foreignness.” Over the course of time some scholars who taught the accepted subjects also began, more informally, to offer instruction in the philosophical and mathematical sciences. This was often in a non-institutional setting, often in a kind of “salon,” which went by the general term majlis. Young men were also invited to more advanced discussions in these settings, but only after they had mastered the basics. In order to come up to speed, they were often given al-Farabi’s text (or one of the several similar ones available) to guide their reading. At a glance one can see how the Christian scholars coming to places like Saragossa and Toledo were in much the same situation as their Muslim counterparts. In an attempt to procure some students of “France” to study astronomical subjects with him, Petrus Alfonsi—a Jewish convert who had been educated within this Islamic system—tells his prospective students that while they are very good in the sciences of the Trivium they know next to nothing about the Quadrivium.17 He could have said the same thing about graduates of mosque schools. It was difficult to come to know this material. It is highly probable that someone like Alfonsi actually pointed the two Christian scholars who translated this seminal text to it. Neither Dominicus Gundisalvus nor Gerard of Cremona would have had access to an institution, but it is reasonable to suspect that in Toledo many of the scholars who had formerly taught in the mosque schools—and who may have taken private pupils as Sa’id did—were still living in the city. At least some of these men seem to have been willing to accept Christians

17 See the text of “Letter to the Peripatetics of France” in John Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1993). A MUSLIM’S BOOK AND ITS CHRISTIAN AND JEWISH READERS: THE WAY… 401 into the “circles of affinity.”18 Such behavior would appear to have been the norm, not the exception. So what did al-Farabi’s book offer them that was new? As Gundisalvus translated it:

In this book our intent is to touch briefly upon the well-known sciences and what is taught in every one of them and how the parts of each of them are designated. We propose to investigate this in five chapters: the first of these is about the Science of Language and its parts; second is about the Science of Logic and its parts; third are the Mathematical Sciences, which are Arithmetic, Geometry, the science of Optics, the science of the teaching about the stars, the science of weights, and the science of the Making of Mechanical Devices; the fourth is about the Natural Science and its parts and also about Divine Science; the fifth is about the Science of Civics and its parts, including both the science of Jurisprudence and the science of Eloquence.19

I have intentionally left the last word of this passage as Gundisalvus translated it to illustrate something of his difficulties as a translator. In Arabic the word is kalam, which in everyday use means “speech.” However, here it is a technical, religious term that means “theology.” Any Muslim would have understood the proper sense to use here, but Gundisalvus and (presumably) his assistant did not. This tendency can be observed in several places in the translation of the fifth division of al- Farabi’s text when religious expressions are used, even common, everyday ones. But this point aside, the prologue seems like a laundry list of just what the Christian Latins were seeking. Beginning with the expanded Quadrivium, sciences like optics, weights, the Making of Mechanical Devices, and Natural Sciences were exactly what they wanted. Divine science they would have understood as referring to Metaphysics. These were all the things they did not know. As they got into the sections on each science, they would find even more, like Algebra and the scholars who knew about such things. The names, of course in Arabic, of the books of Aristotle they did not previously have were there. This was quite simply a gold mine of scientia.

18 See Thomas Glick, “My Master, the Jew: Observations on Interfaith Scholarly Interaction in the Middle Ages,” in Jews, Muslims, and Christians in and around the medieval Crown of Aragon: Studies in Honor of Elena Lourie, ed. Harvey J. Hames (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 162f. 19 Translation is mine, Weber, 206–207. 402 M. C. WEBER

The Enumeration then had the potential to become a replacement for the older curricular texts like Capella and Donatus and Aratus because along with being encyclopedic it was respectful of revealed religion (being the product of a scholar reared within the Abrahamic tradition) and it need not be shorn of its classical paganism to be useful. Most importantly, it was not an old book—by their standards, another guide from the Roman past. Surely Donatus and Priscian and Capella were useful, but they were the products of an era very different than the twelfth century—an era when classical libraries and schoolmasters had thrived. Those had been accurate guides for their day. But these scholars were hodierni, “today’s men”20 and al-Farabi’s book was new, written by a philosopher, not a grammarian; it was the product of a sophisticated civilization which still existed and this book was being currently used among Muslims and Jews as a guide to the various books of Aristotle and others mentioned in the text. Intriguingly, it contained new and interesting “sciences” like those for inventions and politics. Members of those two competing civilizations in the major cities of al-Andalus and the Christian North found it a trust- worthy and even indispensable text. Muslim scholars like Ibn Ṭumlūs would still depend heavily upon the original Arabic text 50 years after it was translated and circulated among Latin Christians.21 Of course the Latin text that was produced was flawed. Gerard of Cremona, the most prolific translator of Arabic texts in the twelfth century had limited ability. His translations have been characterized as “Arabic in Latin characters.”22 In fairness to Gerard, this seems to have been the preferred method in Iberian translating, especially of scientific texts. However, his Latin could be nearly incomprehensible. It was one thing to find such a text and quite another to make it useful. Translating is an art, which takes into account the recipients as well as the author. For whatever reason—intentionality or ability—Gerard failed somewhat at this. On the other hand, Gundisalvus’ text, which is not literal, is easily read in Latin. It is probably for this reason that it had very wide circulation. There are only 11 total manuscripts of the translations extant in Europe. For Gerard’s

20 Clancy, 33. 21 He copied major portions of al-Farabi’s Enumeration wholesale into his book, Introduction to the Art of Logic. For a text and Spanish translation, see Miguel Asín Palacios, Introducción al arte de la lógica (Madrid: Ibérica E. Maestre, 1916). 22 Paul Kunitzsch, “Gerard’s translations of astronomical texts, especially the Almagest,” in Gerardo da Cremona, ed. Pierluigi Pizzamiglio (Cremona: Libreria del Convegno editrice, 1992), 75. A MUSLIM’S BOOK AND ITS CHRISTIAN AND JEWISH READERS: THE WAY… 403 less useful version there are only three, one each in Paris, Graz, and Brugge. All are thirteenth- and fourteenth-century manuscripts.23 For Gundisalvus’ De Scientiis there are eight manuscripts and one early printed edition. They, too, are mostly thirteenth- and fourteenth-century copies: two are in Vienna, a very interesting one is in Worchester Cathedral, England, and others are in London, Oxford, Erfurt, and Lisbon.24 However, Gundisalvus’ work was copied in Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum Doctrinale which had extensive circulation, with 23 manuscripts still in existence in most of the major medieval university cities.25 In short, Gundisalvus achieved what he intended, as expressed in his Prologue. And it worked. Having established this direct influence (which always presented this book as being from the pen of al-Farabi, even when it had been severely altered and existed in two different forms) we must turn to the question of wider influence under two headings: first, its immediate influence in the circles of translators in Spain and, second, its influence on other writers concerned with the problem of establishing curricular texts for scholars seeking to become philosophers, men like Daniel of Morley and the addressees of Petrus Alfonsi’s letter. If one looks carefully at the Peripatetic curriculum contained in the De Scientiis, one notices that few of the works recommended in it were available in the Latin West at the time it was translated. Some had been recently translated elsewhere—like those by James of Venice26—and may not have been widely known or disseminated yet. However, in the course of the latter twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the lack of these books was rectified by the availability of new translations of the missing texts. As Burnett has observed, the Enumeration “provided a template for Gerard on which to

23 Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale MS Latin 9335; Graz, Universitäts Bibliothek MS II 482; and Brugge, Openbare Bibliothek, MS 486 For the dating of Paris manuscripts, Leopold DeLisle, Inventaire de MSS Latin (Paris, 1871) and for Brugge, Catologue des MSS de la Bibliotheque Publique de Bruge (Brugge, 1859) 24 Vienna, Dominikanerklauster MS 121; Vienna, Bibliothek National MS 2473; Worchester, Library of the Cathedral MS Q 81; London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B-X; Oxford, Merton College MS 230; Erfurt, Wissenschaftlich Allegemein Bibliothek Erfurt, MS Amplonia F32; Idem, MS Amplonia, Q 295; and Lisbon, Fondo Generale, MS 2299. 25 See the listing in Hans Voorbij, Het “Speculum Historiale” van Vincent van Beauvais, Groningen 1991, Appendix 2.2, pp. 335–337. 26 L. Minio-Paluello, “Jacobus Veneticus Grecus: Canonist and translator of Aristotle,” Tradition 8 (1952): 265 f. 404 M. C. WEBER pattern the programme of his own translations.”27 For example, if we follow just the philosophical curriculum, the De Scientiis recommends that the Categories, De Interpretatione, Analytical Prior, and Posterior be read. Now the Categories and the De Interpretatione were available in the Boethian tradition. Remembering the special weight al-Farabi puts on “Demonstration” (and Gundisalvus in his rewriting of that passage seems to even increase that emphasis), we should not be surprised to find that Gerard translated both the Posterior Analytics and Themistius’ commentary upon it. When we turn to consider mathematics and geometry, al- Farabi had recommended Euclid’s Elements and books the Latins called al-muchabala, properly al-mucamalat in Arabic, or practical mathematics, and Nichomachus’ Arithmetic; Gerard translated the first two.28 In natural science, the text recommends the Meteorology, De auditu naturalis (Books IV to VII of the Physics), De caelo et de mundi, De generatione et corrup- tione, De impressionis superibus, De Vegetalia (De Plantis), De Animalia, De Anima, and the Physics. Gerard translated the Physics, De Caelo, De Generatione, and the Meteorology. Now the De Scientiis, in the section on Divine Science, also had recommended the reading of the Metaphysics and the De Anima. What is really interesting is what comes after this: around 1200, after Gerard’s death, Michael Scot not only copies extensive portions of the De Divisione Philosophae and the De Scientiis in his own work but also translated the Liber animalium, De Caelo, parts of the De Anima, De Generatione, the parva naturalia, and portions of the Metaphysics. He was also a significant figure in the discussions later about the banning of the “New Books of Aristotle” in the early thirteenth century. His near contemporary, Alfred of Sareshel, translated the Meteorology and the De Plantis29 In short, there seems to have been a program of translating at work bringing not all of the Aristotelian corpus to Latin but those parts mentioned in the De Scientiis. Later, other scholars would translate the

27 Charles S. F. Burnett, Preprint 78: The Coherence of the Arabic-Latin translation Programme in Toledo in the Twelfth Century (Berlin: Max-Planck-Institut fϋr Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 1997) 10; Burnett plausibly shows how Gerard and his associates are probably following al-Farabi’s guidelines. 28 See Richard Lemay’s expanded list of Gerard’s translations in DSB XVI, 176–190. 29 There are comprehensive lists in Burnett, Coherence, G. Hourani, “The Medieval Translations from Arabic to Latin made in Spain,” Muslim World 62 (1972), 110–113 and David Lindberg, “The Transmission of Greek and Arabic Learning to the West,” in his Science in the Middle Ages, 65–67. A MUSLIM’S BOOK AND ITS CHRISTIAN AND JEWISH READERS: THE WAY… 405 remainder of Aristotle’s works. That a good many of this first group of translators worked at or near Toledo indicates a concentrated effort that we might term a “school” in the loosest sense of the term. It appears clear to me that the De Scientiis certainly played a role in helping select what to translate: texts it recommends were translated earlier than other texts of Aristotle. It is equally important to compare this list with what was being translated prior to the availability of the Enumeration (and here Gerard’s own motivation in coming to Spain to find astronomical texts is but one example); translators were primarily interested in astronomical and astrological texts, in discovering secrets and the secret science. Hugh of Santalla (one of the earliest known translators), John of Seville, Herman of Carinthia, Robert of Ketton, and Petrus Alfonsi were all primarily interested in these subjects. It is only after Gundisalvus and Gerard put the philosophical curriculum before the scholars that an interest in pure philosophy and natural science is awakened. Of course some other factor could be responsible for this; however, I find the sequence and the geographical tie to Toledo to be very strong evidence. The strength of this influence spreads quickly beyond Christian Spain. We know that some translators and scholars returned north of the Pyrenees and that others corresponded with friends in the schools. Gundisalvus dedicates one work to Thierry of Chartres, and Alfred of Sarashal was a friend of Alexander Neckam, who taught in the earliest days of the University of Paris.30 The importance of these contacts is difficult to document. Texts, though, continue to reflect a major influence and are easier to trace. Vincent of Beauvais was but one example; Robert Kilwardby was another. Robert Kilwardby’s De Ortu Scientiarum owes nothing to the Latin translation of an Arabic opusculum of the same name. This text, written in 1247–1248, has been called the “greatest example of the genre” of divisions of the sciences and is credited with bringing the production of such texts to a halt.31 Interestingly, the very first quotation—which is the very first sentence—is a précis of Gundisalvus’ prologue to theDe Divisione Philosophae, which itself is loosely modeled upon his own prologue of the

30 Haskins, “A List of Text Books from the close of the Twelfth Century,” in History of Medieval Science, 360. 31 Nancy Spatz, “Divisions of the Sciences in University Master’s Inception Speeches,” unpublished paper delivered at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting, January 1994, San Francisco, 2. 406 M. C. WEBER

De Scientiis. This quotation even preserves the exemplum Gundisalvus had used, though it does not acknowledge him as the source. This indicates to me that Kilwardby had Gundisalvus’ text in front of him as he began his own work. At several points in his text, Kilwardby quotes Gundisalvus’ definitions or distinction in the purposes or boundaries of the sciences. These citations run the gamut, but are particularly used for the sciences of the Quadrivium (Music, Geometry, and Astronomy in particular) but also for the Aristotelian sciences of grammar, topics, poetics, and rhetoric. Kilwardby often approved of Gundisalvus’ definition in distinction to the other authorities he had utilized. Thus, by the time Kilwardby was writing, when the whole Aristotelian corpus is available and Aristotle’s “new” texts had already been banned and reinstated at the University of Paris, Gundisalvus/Al-Farabi was still an authority on the organization and definitions of the sciences, perhaps the first authority a very good scholar would turn to. The new universities were not immune to this influx of knowledge. The exact history of curricular changes is uncertain even though the trajecto- ries are clear. As Weisheipl noted, “It is not easy to obtain a full picture of the normal course of studies in the medieval university. Our information is particularly meagre concerning the faculty of arts.”32 In general, at least as early as 1309, the arts faculty of Toulouse had a set curriculum which put the study of the libri logicales prior to the libri naturales which in turn preceded the Metaphysics. To be graduated from Oxford, a student had to have read not only the old canon, but also the logica novus, the Peri her- menias, Aristotle’s Politics, De Animalibus, the Metheorica, and the other libri naturalis, Ethica, the six books of Euclid’s Elements, the Algorismus (i.e., al-Khwarizmi), the Computus, and the De Sphaera of Sacrobosco, which was derived from Arabic texts. These were considered as accepted standards in 1268. For our purposes, though, the expanded arts of the quadrivium—optics, statics, tracts on quadrants and the astrolabe, and the Alfonsine Tables—were represented at Oxford as an important part of the quadrivium that everyone needed to master.33 When one turns to consider these new branches of the quadrivium—the truly new elements of

32 James Weisheipl, “Curriculum of the faculty of Arts at Oxford in the early fourteenth century” Mediaeval Studies 26 (1961): 145. 33 Weisheipl, 168–176, provides an extensive listing of subjects and the texts derived from the Ancient Statutes of the University of Oxford. He does not say what text of al-Khwarizmi was being referred to. A MUSLIM’S BOOK AND ITS CHRISTIAN AND JEWISH READERS: THE WAY… 407 the curriculum without roots in the Latin West—the readings called for are as if they were read straight out of the De Scientiis: the Physics, the De Caelo, the De Generatione, the Metheorica, the De mineralibus, the De Anima, the De Animalibus, and the De Plantis. Certainly the subdivisions of the “mathematical sciences” as learned from Muslim intermediaries are being followed here thoroughly. What had been a relatively static arts curriculum in Western Latin Europe changed remarkably in less than 150 years. As with all historical change, there were many reasons (most undiscussed here) for the need for a better educated group of scholars. Despite however many desires there were for change, there needed to be some directing force. I have tried to show that one small Arabic text, certainly not the most important one its author ever produced, played a major role in bringing about such change. The acquisition of this text was only possible because of the socio-cultural situation in the north of the Iberian Peninsula after the Christian Conquest. At base, a curiosity—the “hunger” that Gundisalvus describes—drove men to the courage to seek and find and disseminate ideas which could help them be better philosophi.

Bibliography al-Andalusi, Sa’id. Science in the Medieval World: Book of the Categories of Nations. Translated by Sema’an I. Salem and Alok Kumar. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991. Asín Palacios, Miguel. Introducción al arte de la lógica. Madrid: Ibérica E. Maestre, 1916. Burnett, Charles S. F. Preprint 78: The Coherence of the Arabic-Latin translation Programme in Toledo in the Twelfth Century. Berlin: Max-Planck-Institut fϋr Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 1997, 10. (This is also available on line …. https:// is.muni.cz/el/1421/podzim2008/MED01/um/Burnett_Charles_2001.pdf) Clancy, Michael T. Abelard: a Medieval Life. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997. Glick, Thomas. Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages: Comparative Perspectives on Social and Cultural Formation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Glick, Thomas F. “My Master, the Jew: Observations on Interfaith Scholarly Interaction in the Middle Ages.” In Jews, Muslims, and Christians in and around the medieval Crown of Aragon: Studies in Honor of Elena Lourie, edited by Harvey J. Hames, 157–182. Leiden: Brill, 2004. 408 M. C. WEBER

Glick, Thomas and Oriel Pi-Sunyer. “Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History.” Comparative Studies in Society and History vol. 11 n. 2 (1969): 136–154. Haskins, Charles H. “A List of Text Books from the close of the Twelfth Century.” In History of Medieval Science, 360. Haskins, Charles H. Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927. Jolivet, Jean. “The Arabic Inheritance.” In A History of Twelfth Century Philosophy, edited by Peter Dronke, 113. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Kunitzsch, Paul. “Gerard’s translations of astronomical texts, especially the Almagest,” In Gerardo da Cremona, Edited by Pierluigi Pizzamiglio. Cremona: Libreria del Convegno editrice, 1992. Lederach, John Paul. Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997. Lerner, Ralph and Muhsin Mahdi. Medieval Political Philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978. McNeill, William H. A World History, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971 Minio-Paluello, Lorenzo. “Jacobus Veneticus Grecus: Canonist and translator of Aristotle,” In Tradition 8 (1952): 265–304. Spatz, Nancy. “Divisions of the Sciences in University Master’s Inception Speeches,” unpublished paper delivered at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting, January 1994, San Francisco. Tolan, John. Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1993. Van Konigsveld, Pieter S. The Arabic-Latin Glossary of the Leiden University Library. Leiden, 1977. Voorbij, J. B. Het ‘Speculum Historiale’ van Vincent van Beauvais, Groningen 1991, Appendix 2.2, pp. 335–337. Weber, Michael. “The Translating and Adapting of al-Farabi’s Kitab ‘Ihsa al-‘ulum in Spain,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Boston University, 1996, 76f. Weisheipl, James. “Curriculum of the Faculty of Arts at Oxford in the early fourteenth Century.” in Mediaeval Studies 26 (1961): 143–185. CHAPTER 16

Reading Averroes

Michael McVaugh

The diffusion of Arabic medical texts into Medieval Europe is a process much better known in broad outline than in close detail. We can talk knowledgeably about their translation in the twelfth century, many by Gerard of Cremona, and their gradual appearance in Latin medical writings of the mid-thirteenth century, but we can say nothing precise about the route and pace by which a particular work passed into European circulation. Of Avicenna’s Canon, for example, perhaps the most important of all those Arabic texts, we can say only that it was translated by Gerard in the 1170s or thereabouts and began to be cited by Latins about 1230: no further detail or precision seems possible. There are nevertheless a few cases where we can sharpen our focus and look closely at the time and place in which a particular Arabic text began its unique process of diffusion in Western circles. I have described elsewhere how Averroes’ two great medical works became part of Western knowledge.1 His commentary on Avicenna’s Cantica (Urjuza fı al-tibb) ¯ ¯ ˙

1 Michael McVaugh, “Averroes Comes to Montpellier,” in De l’homme, de la nature et du monde: Mélanges d’histoire des sciences médiévales offerts à Danielle Jacquart (Droz, forthcoming).

M. McVaugh (*) University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2019 409 M. T. Abate (ed.), Convivencia and Medieval Spain, Mediterranean Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96481-2_16 410 M. MCVAUGH was translated into Latin at Montpellier in 1284 by Armengaud Blaise, and his encyclopedic Colliget (Kitāb al-kulliyāt) was Latinized at Padua by Bonacosa the next year. Armengaud showed his translation to his uncle Arnau de Vilanova when the latter came to Montpellier to teach in 1291. Arnau soon acquired a copy of the Colliget too and found things to disagree with in both. He composed a series of “anti-Averroist” treatises in the 1290s, and these drew his colleagues’ attention to Averroes’ writings. They studied them, found them entirely uncontroversial, and began to draw on them for their own purposes. By 1310 or so Averroes’ Colliget and Cantica commentary had become regular staples of medical discourse in Montpellier’s medical faculty, as they continued to be for the rest of the century. Though a close-grained case history like this one is virtually unique, it at least allows us to imagine similar ways in which other Arabic texts might have moved from translation to citation and become assimilated into medieval Latin medicine. Yet thinking about this concrete and rather specific case only further problematizes the nature of assimilation as part of the process of diffusion. The Colliget was a big book, if not as big as the Canon: its 7 books comprised a total of about 130,000 words surveying the whole of medicine. Say that copies were accessible at Montpellier by 1295: how, in a mere 20 years or so, had the school’s teachers managed to bring that verbiage under control to the point that they could draw apposite quotations from it to illuminate a very broad range of problems, as they did? The seven books had chapter divisions with titles, but that was a reader’s only finding guide—there was no index, no concordance to the Colliget. It was surely too big to memorize in so short a time, so how did they make it their own? The answer—or at least part of the answer—becomes apparent in a Latin codex in the Munich Staatsbibliothek, CLM 534.2 The works it contains are all copied in what appears to be the same early fourteenth- century hand; the first half deals with astronomical or physical subjects, the second (and for our purposes more interesting) half with medical ones. Included among these medical works are scholastic dubitata on no fewer than five of the Galenic or Hippocratic writings that were becoming basic to medical instruction at the beginning of the fourteenth century; they seem to be the writer’s collection of his former master’s epitomes of the

2 I have given a fuller account of this fascinating manuscript in “A Miscellany? Or the Evolution of a Mind? MS Munich CLM 534,” a paper presently under consideration for publication in Micrologus. READING AVERROES 411 standard school texts, a master who appears to be the late (quondam) Bernard de Angarra. Bernard is believed to have taught at Montpellier in the years 1290–1320, and the collection is thus likely to have been assembled no later than about 1325. In addition to copying out his old teacher’s introductions to school texts, the writer has also included two more epitomes of the new Galenic material in his codex, but epitomes of a different kind. Rather than report a master’s teaching, these present the author’s own summary of what he thinks matters in two further Galenic works, De simplici medicina and De interioribus. In each case we find him proceeding through the work from beginning to end, arranging it by its individual books and lemmata within each book, and selecting passages to quote in detail or to paraphrase closely. Some sections of the work have been excerpted densely, others only spottily. The result is a distinctly personal précis of each work that obviously reflects what most impressed the author as he read through it, rather than a continuous balanced summary of its content—though one can certainly still recognize that most of Galen’s original themes have been picked up. Marginal annotations show that the author recognized after the fact that he had left out things that he wanted to remember and inserted them at the correct point. There is a second personalized aspect to these summaries, too: their author has sometimes inserted into them brief references to other medical authorities, allusions that were evidently meant to remind him of connections between these works and other medical literature. They are thus not collections of mechanical excerpts from a text, they are the product of an active organizing mind that is trying to make sense of and assimilate that text to his own understanding. Taken as a whole, one might characterize these seven medical texts as amounting to a kind of personal aide-mémoire put together so as to allow their writer-compiler easy continuing reference to the major texts both of the basic curricular authorities of the old ars medicine and of the “new Galen” that was becoming so important as an object of study. Some of the new Galen had been formally explicated by his master, but not perhaps all, so that he found it important to read and extract others for himself. This might have been his way of preparing for a forthcoming examination for his license to teach, but it seems to me more likely that we have here the work of a young master who is in effect taking notes on the literature that he can use in his own lectiones and questiones. In either case, it seems to me, these texts reveal the range of materials that were at the center of medical study and discussion at Montpellier in the years before 1325. 412 M. MCVAUGH

All these study guides were requirements in Montpellier’s medical curriculum of 1309, but they are followed in the Munich codex by something different, an epitome of exactly the same sort as Aristotle’s De animalibus, which was not required or even optional reading for medical students. The guide proceeds from beginning to end through the 21 books of Michael Scot’s century-old Arabic-Latin translation of De animalibus, now quoting verbatim, now closely paraphrasing sentences that caught the author’s attention: book XI, for example, is encapsulated in 7 extracts that range from 8 to 212 words in length. The result is a personalized digest of Aristotle’s whole work (or, more accurately, of the three works that make it up). Given its character, given its position in the codex, I think we must accept that our author felt that a thorough knowledge of the structure and content of De animalibus was going to be essential to his development as an academic physician, even if for the moment we have no idea of how he thought it would be useful.

II Once he had written out his summarized version of the De animalibus, our scholar had pretty well filled up his manuscript, except for odd pages at its beginning and end. But he did not want to waste that space, and he filled in these pages with what appear to be odd scraps of notes. The Munich cataloguers of MS 534 did not even mention that the two first leaves have anything written on them, but they do, and when looked at closely they prove to be the scholar’s attempt to make sense, not of an author who had been a staple of scientific discussion in the schools for 100 years or so, a Galen or an Aristotle, but a newcomer on the intellectual scene: Averroes. Squeezed into empty spaces on leaves at the beginning, middle, and end of our manuscript is the student’s epitome of the Colliget, which had been known to the faculty for no more than a couple of decades. How did he approach the text? We should begin by pointing out that his reading of Averroes’ great work was vastly more selective than his reading of Galen or Hippocrates. The Colliget is divided into seven books: (I) on anatomy (preceded by a brief definition of medicine); (II) on physiology and health; (III) on illness; (IV) on symptoms; (V) on foods and medicines; (VI) on a healthful regimen; and (VII) on therapeutics. The first four books together take up about a half of the whole work, and from them our student has found just 9 scattered passages worth making note of, fewer than 500 words in total, READING AVERROES 413 all set down one after another on the recto of the first flyleaf in two columns. Four passages are from the beginning of book I, where Averroes defines medicine and discusses its relation to scientia; two are from the beginning of book II, in a general discussion of complexions and humors; three are from III.3, where Averroes is discussing diseases that are hot and dry, including fevers. From book IV there is nothing, though half a column is left vacant in which something could have been written. But book V is a far different story. On the reverse of that first flyleaf, and on 11 more columns scattered through the book, our scholar has jotted down information about 100 or more individual foods and drugs that he has selected from Averroes’ much longer lists in V.31–56. There was no space left in the manuscript for excerpts from books VI and VII, but we might guess that the scholar would have had no more interest in them than in the early books.3 What can this outline tell us about how our scholar went about reading the Colliget, or, perhaps more exactly, what he thought might be important to him from it? Obviously he did not think that he needed to maintain a general sense of its organization and contents; he judged that it would be of less general importance to him than the works of Galen or Aristotle’s De animalibus. But this must mean that the ten passages he bothered to transcribe from the early books had some particular interest for him, and by looking at them individually we can sometimes guess what that interest was if we set them against the very little that is known about the intellectual issues that were being debated in early fourteenth-century Montpellier. (These early passages, set in parallel with the corresponding text of the Colliget to illustrate the limited degree to which the notes reworked the original, are printed here in an Appendix.) The first four passages, from Colliget I.1.1, record Averroes’ observations on the nature of medicine as an art ultimately derived from true principles, constituted of both a speculative side drawn from scientia naturalis and dealing with the causes of health and illness and a practical side comprising medicinal therapy and anatomy. The artifex scientie naturalis,

3 The notes on the Colliget are distributed as follows in the Munich manuscript, which is foliated I–II, 1–75. On fol. Ira there are notes on Colliget I.1.1 and II.1.1; on Irb, Colliget III.3; on Iva, Colliget V.31–35; on IIra, Colliget V.36; on IIrb, Colliget V.40–42; on IIva–b, Colliget V.42; on 49vb–50vb, Colliget V.42; on 50vb and 74vb, portions of Colliget V.43; on 74vb, Colliget V.48, 49, 52; on 75ra, Colliget V.55, 56. I have used the text of the Colliget as printed in Aristoteles opera Averrois in ea opera commentariis, vol. X (Venice, 1562; rpt. Frankfurt: Minerva, 1962). 414 M. MCVAUGH the natural philosopher, tries to understand sickness and health as natural phenomena; the physician, simply as states to be corrected or conserved. This question of how medicine and philosophy were related, what the status of medicine was between science and art, was being explored in every European medical faculty at the beginning of the fourteenth century by physicians anxious to establish demarcation criteria between their studies and the studies of Aristotelian natural philosophers.4 At Montpellier, Arnau de Vilanova had composed a work in the early 1290s (De intentione medicorum) that focused on exactly this question and that seems to have been aimed particularly at refuting Averroes’ statements in his commentary on Avicenna’s Cantica (translated into Latin only a year before the Colliget) that medicine should be recognized as a science, something that could be learned demonstratively and perfectly, but his work is unlikely to have ended the faculty’s discussion of the question.5 It is easy to see why our scholar might have noted down the relevant statements from the Colliget for possible use in his own contribution to an ongoing debate. The two passages set down next by our writer have been selected from Colliget II.1, where Averroes is introducing his readers to the ideas of complexion and composition and bear directly on another subject of contemporary interest at Montpellier. When medicines are mixed together, do they form a new substance, with its own new properties, or do the properties of the ingredients still persist in some way in the mixture? Knowing the answer is obviously of great importance to the physician, but the evidence seemed to cut both ways. It was again Arnau de Vilanova who set out the problem clearly in his Speculum medicine of 1308, concluding in the end that it depended on the way in which the individual ingredients had been processed, but the discussion widened, as can be seen in the questiones on De malitia complexione of Bernard de Angarra, copied out by our scholar in this very manuscript!6 The two Averroistic passages would

4 On this subject, see Per-Gunnar Ottosson, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1984), esp. 65–98; and Jole Agrimi and Chiara Crisciani, Edocere medicos: Medicina scolastica nei secoli XIII–XV (Naples: Guerini, 1988), esp. 21–49. 5 Arnau de Vilanova, “De intentione medicorum,” in Arnaldi de Villanova Opera Medica Omnia V.1, ed. Michael McVaugh (Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona-Fundacio Noguera, 2000), esp. 139–143. 6 Michael McVaugh, “In a Montpellier Classroom,” in Professors, Physicians and Practices in the History of Medicine: Essays in Honor of Nancy Siraisi, ed. Gideon Manning and Cynthia Klestinec (Berlin: Springer, 2017), 29–48; the student’s notes are given on pp. 45–47. READING AVERROES 415 have provided our writer with grist for his scholastic determination of the question should the occasion ever have arisen. Among the final cluster of passages on hot and dry illnesses set down by our scholar from Colliget III.3, one immediately stands out, that “the heat of a fever is a compound of natural and extraneous heats.” Luis García- Ballester argued 30 years ago that Averroes’ conception of feverish heat as a compound of two distinct heats rather than an intensification of a single heat was at the heart of a debate within the Montpellier faculty over the nature of fever, with Bernard de Gordon espousing the former position, Arnau de Vilanova the latter.7 Bernard de Angarra’s questiones tend to confirm García-Ballester’s suggestion, for in one of them Bernard adopts the idea of fever as a compound heat in order to resolve a related question. Once again our scholar seems to have chosen to record an Averroistic passage with particular relevance to Montpellier’s discourse, and, taken all in all, it is easy to imagine that as he began to read through the book he made notes of passages that he could foresee being useful to him in his future teaching. But the notes stop in book three of the Colliget, and our writer leaves a long empty space in the column, beginning afresh with a new set of notes on the page’s verso, these all drawn from Averroes’ accounts of individual medicines in Book V. The Latin version divides those medicines into categories: after a series of chapters on foodstuffs come grains, fruits, vegetables, medicines from plants, medicines from minerals, animal products, and miscellaneous medicines. The last sections, which our writer summarized under the heading “De medicinis absolute,” enumerated some 250 medicines, of which he transcribed 90 in whole or in part; judging from the amount of space he gave them, this is what interested him most about the Colliget. Here it is virtually impossible to guess at his principles of selection. Why transcribe pulegium and capparis but skip cardamomum, carui, cassia lignea, and cubebe before continuing with pinea? Many of his other decisions are equally mysterious. The Colliget’s translator often gave the Arabic name of a medicine before giving the Latin equivalent: why

7 He made the case in two very similar publications: Luis García-Ballester and Pedro Gil- Sotres, Teorías sobre la fiebre y Averroismo médico en Montpellier: Bernardo de Gordon y Arnau de Vilanova (Cuadernos de Historia de la Medicina) (Santander-Pamplona: Universidad de Navarra, 1986); and Luis García-Ballester, “La recepción del Colliget de Averroes en Montpellier (c. 1285) y su influencia en las polémicas sobre la naturaleza de la fiebre,” in Homenaje al profesor Dario Cabanelas Rodríguez, O.F.M, con motivo de su LXX aniversario, vol. 2 (1987), 317–332. 416 M. MCVAUGH only in certain cases, not all, does our writer supply both names (“thitma- crum .i. terra sigillata”), and sometimes indeed only the Arabic (“darseni…”) and not the Latin that follows (“… .i. canella subtilis”)? For each medicine, Averroes described its qualitative nature and its medicinal properties: why does our writer choose to copy out 75 of the 140 words Averroes used to characterize balsamus, but only 27 of the 135 he devoted to iuniperus, immediately following? Apparently some medicines were of more interest to contemporary Montpellier than others, but we are unlikely ever to understand the reasons why.

* * *

A few years ago Pierre Bayard published an extended essay explaining “how to talk about books that we haven’t read”—books that we do not know at all, or have only heard about from others, or have simply skimmed, or have read but have now forgotten.8 We may never have opened a page of Swann’s Way, or we may have looked at five pages in the work and put it down again immediately, but in either case we can still carry on a meaningful conversation about it as long as we know something about where it (or its author) belongs in the intellectual library, so to speak, of our culture: how it relates to other books and other authors on its shelves. The essay is offered, with gentle facetiousness, as a paradox, but of course there is real truth in it. Bayard describes the ways in which we can be said not to have read (ne pas lire), but not, I think, the opposite, what it means really to read; in fact, he hints that it is an impossibility, questioning whether a book that has been “read” is a category that still has a meaning.9 Nor have I found him explicitly pointing out what seems to me to follow from his analysis, that while one can talk meaningfully about a book that one has not read, one cannot do so if no one else has ever read it either. I suggest that Bayard is approaching my notion of “assimilation” from another direction. As my Montpellier masters began hesitantly to acquaint themselves with Averroes’ Colliget, they tried to relate it to other works already on their intellectual shelves—to compare its structure and organization with other medical encyclopedias like Avicenna’s Canon, perhaps,

8 Pierre Bayard, Comment parler des livres que l’on n’a pas lus? (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 2007); English translation by Jeffrey Mehlman, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read (New York: Bloomsbury, 2007). 9 Bayard, Comment, 55. READING AVERROES 417 or to contrast its rationalizing, almost deterministic view of medical science with Galen’s more empiricist and occasionalist approach. And once that process reached a certain stage, Montpellier had assimilated the Colliget: a master could now deploy it intelligently in his lectures or writings after having dipped into it here or there, or even after simply hearing his colleagues’ debates, but without having read it closely—whatever “read closely” might mean. These reading notes show beyond any question that their author had “read” the Colliget as we ordinarily use the word, but also, in Bayard’s sense, that he had not read it. I suppose it is conceivable that he had read all seven books from beginning to end, but it seems to me more likely that he had dipped into the text here and there; in either case, however, he was clearly mining it selectively, looking for topics of interest and jotting down occasional passages that struck his attention. In this way he was able to assimilate it sufficiently to satisfy his own immediate ends; he would no doubt have read it differently had it been a school text assigned for formal study. We have no other such reading notes by which to judge, but the insertion of telling passages from the Colliget by other early fourteenth- century Montpellier authors into their works suggests that they too may have read it in the same way, gleaning sentences from it that they anticipated (correctly) might prove useful. In any event, the notes are a useful reminder, if we need it, that the medieval diffusion and assimilation of medical knowledge came in many different forms.

Appendix: A Montpellier Scholar’s Epitome of Averroes’ Colliget, c. 1325 The left-hand column gives the text of the first portion of the student’s epitome, as copied in MS Munich, CLM 534, fols. 1ra–rb; the right-hand column contains the corresponding passages from the Colliget (extracts from its books I–III) as printed in Aristoteles opera Averrois in ea opera commentariis, vol. X (Venice, 1562; rpt. Frankfurt: Minerva, 1962).

MS CLM 534, fols. 1ra–rb In principio nominat Aristotelem patrem philosophie. In executione dicit quod medicina est ars operativa exiens ex principiis veris in qua queritur conservatio sanitatis corporis humani et remotio sue egritudinis secundum 418 M. MCVAUGH quod [possibile fuerit] in quolibet. Quod est quia finis artis istius non est ad sanandum omnia sed ad faciendum id quod potest fieri et in quantitate convenienti et tempore convenienti. Et postea expectari debet finis sicut est in arte nautarum et regimine exercituum. Aliquid huius artis est speculativum et illud est scientia naturalis. Et pars practicalis est ars medicinarum experimentalis et ars anathomie. Theoricalis plurimum accepta est a causis sanitatis et egritudinis et maxime a causis multum remotis sicut ab elementis et similibus. Artifex scientie naturalis communicat medico ea quod corpus humanum est una partium locorum sibi naturalis, sed diversificantur abinvicem, quia iste considerat sanitatem et egritudinem in quantum sunt entia naturalia, et medicus considerat ea in quantum vult conservare unde et removere aliud. Medicus quando est sollicitus in operationibus istius artis erit firmata in corde ipsius principia experimentalia per que poterit invenire in materiis illas summas sicut et in artibus mechanicis et cogitativis. Et Arist. appropriat hanc artem inter mechanicas in virtute. Impossibile est invenire duo corpora communia in calore et quod unum est siccius alio sicut opinatus fuit G. in parvo et iuvene. Sed scias in summa quod mensura duarum qualitatum activarum sumitur a mensuris duarum qualitatum passivarum, ideo quod forme proprie habent materias proprias sub eis.

Averroes, Colliget, I.1.1 Et dicimus quod ars Medicinae est ars operativa exiens ex principiis veris, in qua quaeritiur conservatio sanitatis corporis humani, et remotio suae aegritudinis, secundum quod possibile fuerit in quolibet corpore, quod est, quia finis artis istius non est ad sanandum omnino, sed ad faciendum illud, quod potest fieri, et in quantitate convenienti, et tempore convenienti, et postea expectari debet finis, sicut est in arte nautarum, et in regimine exercituum. (3rbF) Et dicamus quod aliquid huius artis est speculativum, et illud est eius scientia Naturalis, et aliquid eius est practicale. Et pars practicalis est ars medicinarum experimentalis, et etiam illius est ars anatomiae. Sed theoricalis est accepta a causis sanitatis et aegritudinis, et maxime a causis multum remota, sicut sunt elementa, et similia. (3vbL) Et debes scire quod artifex scientia Naturalis communicat Medico, eo quod corpus humanum est una partium locorum subiecti naturalis. sed READING AVERROES 419 diversificantur adinvicem in hoc, quia iste consyderat sanitatem et aegritu- dinem, in quantum sunt entia naturalia, et Medicus consyderat ea, inquan- tum appetit conservare unum, et removere aliud. Et ideo necessarium est Medico, postquam sciverit summas, quae aggregatae sunt in hac arte, studium longum, et postea poterit in ipsa invenire accidentia in materiis, quae sunt impossibilia scribi. Et Medicus, quando fuerit solicitus in operationibus istius artis, erunt firmata in ipso principia experimentalia, per quae poterit invenire in materiis illas summas, sicut est in artibus Mechanicis, et cogitativis. Et Aristoteles appropriat hanc artem inter artes Mechanicas in virtute. (4raA–B)

II.1.1 Ab illis regulis est probatum … quod est impossibile duo corpora invenire, quae sint communia in caliditate, quod unum sit siccius alio, sicut opina- tur Galenus in puero et iuvene, et iam declaravimus istud in alio loco melius. Et scias in summa quod mensurae duarum qualitatum activarum sumuntur a mensuris duarum qualitatum passivarum, eo quod formae propriae habent materias proprias sub eis. (13vaG) Melancolia colera et flegma non sunt materia membrorum consimilium nisi per viam per quam sunt sanguis, ideo quod res que generantur plus quam ex una re non completur nisi quando misceantur ille res se invicem et faciunt unum corpus, sicut in secaniabin mel et acetum et aqua, quorum stabat quodlibet per se in actu. Et in vulva non est colera nec flegma nec melancolia in actu que miscentur postea in sanguine ad hoc ut sit pars membri, sed sunt ex certis iuvamentis que nos festinamus declarare. Flegma est materia remota, sed due colere non propinqua nec remota, quia impossibile est ipsas converti in sanguinem sed ipse … quando corrumpitur multotiens convertitur ad eas per accidens, et non sicut yle? cibus istorum sed sicut yle materia eis. Et ideo non dicitur quod fex et spuma est elementum vini, sed completur istis ab eo separatis, sicut … et ita sunt due colere. In tractatu egritudinum calidarum et siccarum. Quando colera egreditur a sua natura in caliditate et siccitate propter sparsione illius ad stomachum, tunc miscetur cum aliquibus humiditatibus et proprie cum melancolia recipit aliquam speciem putrefactionis [et pervenit ad] complexionem per quam assimilantur veneno et maxime eruginosa et fiunt ex eis egritudines incurabiles. 420 M. MCVAUGH

unde per se non generatur in stomaco, quia quod generat naturalem generat non naturalem, unde … prassina et eruginosa habeant hoc nomen equivoce. Nec etiam melancholia, cholera, et phlegma sunt elementa membrorum consimilium per viam, secundum quam est sanguis. Ideo quod res, quae generantur plus quam ex una re, non complentur, nisi quando miscentur illae res adinvicem, et faciunt unum corpus, sicut est squinzibin, quod fit ex commixtione mellis cum aceto et aqua, quorum quodlibet stabat per se in actu, et in vulva non inveniuntur melancholia nec cholera in actu, quae misceantur cum sanguine ad hoc ut sint postea pars membri, sed cholera et melancholia sunt in corpore hominis ex certis iuvamentis, quae nos festinamus declarare. Sed phlegma est materia remota, ideo quod ex ipso non generantur membra, nisi quando fit sanguis. Et duae cholerae non sunt materiae membri nec propinquae nec remotae, ideo quia est impossibile ipsas converti in sanguinem. sed ipsae sunt in eo in potentia, quia quando corrumpitur, multoties convertitur ad eas. Et non fecit eos errore in hoc, nisi locus consequentis, ideo quod viderunt, quod elementa non inveniuntur in composito ex eis nisi in potentia, cum dixerunt hoc. Sed et non convertitur, quod res, quae invenitur in alia re in potentia, sit eius elementum; sed sanguis est materia transibilis, vel mutabilis ad aliam re per accedens, non sicut est materia cibus istorum per accidens, sed sicut vita est materia mortis. Et ideo non dicitiur quod fex et spuma sit elementum vini, sed dicitur quod vinum est completum existentibus separatis istis ab eo, ideo quia sunt eius superfluitates separatas ab eo, quando digeritur ita sunt verae duae cholerae cum sanguine. (14raA)

III.3 Et stomachus per suam naturam non habet generare choleram naturalem, nec non naturalem, quia quod generat naturalem, generat non naturalem, quando corrumpitur ipsius complexio, quia ipsius complexio intenditur aut remittitur, ergo prassina et aeruginosa non habent hoc nomen, nisi aequivoce. Et videtur quod causa istarum generationum est quod quando cholera egreditur a sua natura in caliditate et siccitate, propter sparsionem ipsius ad stomachum, tunc remiscetur cum aliis humoribus, et proprie cum melancholia, et ibi recipit aliquam speciem putrefactionis, et pervenit ad talem complexionem, et propterea assimilatur isti humores veneno, et proprie aeruginosa. Et aegritudines, que proveniunt ab his, sunt incurabiles. (34vaG–H) READING AVERROES 421

Bibliography Agrimi, Jole, and Chiara Crisciani. Edocere medicos: Medicina scolastica nei secoli XIII–XV. Naples: Guerini, 1988. Anonymous. A Montpellier Scholar’s Epitome of Averroes’ Colliget, c. 1325, Manuscript CLM 534. Munich Staatsbibliothek. Averroes. Aristoteles opera Averrois in ea opera commentariis, vol. X. Venice, 1562; rpt. Frankfurt: Minerva, 1962. Bayard, Pierre. Comment parler des livres que l’on n’a pas lus? Paris: Editions de Minuit, 2007. English translation by Jeffrey Mehlman, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. New York: Bloomsbury, 2007. García-Ballester, Luis. “La recepción del Colliget de Averroes en Montpellier (c. 1285) y su influencia en las polémicas sobre la naturaleza de la fiebre.” In Homenaje al professor Darío Cabanelas Rodríguez, O.F.M., con motivo de su LXX aniversario, vol. 2, 317–332. Granada: University of Granada. 1987. García-Ballester, Luis and Pedro Gil-Sotres. Teorías sobre la fiebre y Averroismo médico en Montpellier: Bernardo de Gordon y Arnau de Vilanova. Cuadernos de Historia de la Medicina, Santander-Pamplona: Universidad de Navarra, 1986. McVaugh, Michael. “In a Montpellier Classroom,” in Professors, Physicians and Practices in the History of Medicine: Essays in Honor of Nancy Siraisi, edited by Cynthia Klestinec and Gideon Manning, 29–48. Springer International Publishing, 2017. ———. in press. “Averroes Comes to Montpellier.” Forthcoming in De l’homme, de la nature et du monde: Mélanges d’histoire des sciences médiévales offerts à Danielle Jacquart (Droz). ———. in press. Averroes Comes to Montpellier. Forthcoming in Mélanges in honor of Danielle Jacquart. Ottosson, Per-Gunnar. Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy. Naples: Bibliopolis, 1984. Vilanova, Arnau de. “De intentione medicorum.” in Arnaldi de Villanova Opera Medica Omnia V.1 edited by Michael McVaugh, 139–143. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona-Fundacio Noguera, 2000. PART V

Epilogue CHAPTER 17

Boston Through Arab Eyes: A Brief Memoir of Studying Under Ustaaz Thomas F. Glick

Abdalghafour Ismail al-Rozi

As I collected my memories to write this short memoir of studying under Professor Thomas F. Glick, my mind returned to an old Yamani song that goes: “I loved you before I knew you.” I explain why at the end when the meaning should be clear. The year 1970 was a turning point in my life. That year my long-awaited and much-delayed hope and dream came true. I earned my B.A. in History from the Faculty of Arts at King Saud University. The morning after my exam was over, I and my other half—my best friend Ahmad al-Shanbary— had planned for a few days of relaxation. We were going to do things and go places, yet somehow found ourselves on our way to the university after we woke up, even though the pressure of the exam period had lifted. As we entered the department, everybody told us that Abdullah was looking for us. Abdullah worked for the Dean of the Faculty of Arts. As soon as we found him, he shouted: “Where have you been? The dean has been looking for you all morning!” Apprehensive, we ran to his office. The door was open and there was no secretary, the person who makes you

A. I. al-Rozi (*) King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

© The Author(s) 2019 425 M. T. Abate (ed.), Convivencia and Medieval Spain, Mediterranean Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96481-2_17 426 A. I. AL-ROZI wait for an hour to meet with whatever official has asked to see you. As we entered the Dean shouted: “Where have you been? Dr. al-Khuwaiter wants to see you both.” Dr. al-Khuwaiter was the President of the University. He also earned the first Saudi Ph.D. in History under the supervision of Bernard Lewis and taught us the history of Saudi Arabia. Our fears doubled as we walked toward his office. We must be in big trouble, we thought, and Dr. Khuwaiter was known for his strictness. His office door was also open. Again, there was no secretary. As we entered we were reassured by his warm smile. He signaled for us to sit, greeted us courteously, then looked at us and said: “I know the graduates are in a hurry to seek employment, buy cars, and get married.” Then after a pause he said: “I don’t want you to think about any of that. Last night I called Sheikh Hassan asking for his permission to let both of you work at the university.” Sheikh Hassan al-Sheikh was the Minister of Education. Stunned, I still found the courage to ask: “But Dr. Khuwaiter, we still do not know if we passed our exams.” He smiled and said: “Things went very well. Go to Taif and enjoy the cool weather. Leave your address, you will receive a letter from me.” Two weeks later we received the letters in the doctor’s handwriting (I still have that precious letter in my files). Upon our return to Riyadh, we were appointed graduate assistants— “Muaid” in Arabic. During these weeks al-Shanbary and I also both received letters from The First National Bank of Riyadh inviting us to interviews. On the tenth floor of the bank’s headquarters, the vice chairman of the bank offered us positions. We turned down the offers with confidence saying that we were historians, not accountants. As for me, I am glad I had the chance to make that choice: had I chosen to be a banker I would have missed the chance to know Professor Glick. My title Muaid was indeed an open invitation for me to pursue higher education abroad. As for how I came to focus on my preferred field, Andalusi history, this is how it happened. On short notice, the Chairman of the History Department, an Iraqi named Dr. Mahmmud al-Amin, invited all the graduate assistants to a meeting. In the order of seating, I was third in line to answer the Chairman’s question: “What do you want to specialize in?” The first student chose the Umayyads. The second chose the history of Iran. When it was my turn, I said al-Andalus. If one of the two before me had said al-Andalus, I am not sure what I would be specializing in today. Now I needed to apply for admission to graduate school. Ahmad and I turned our room into a bustling workshop. We borrowed a typewriter as in those days there was no such thing as a copy machine. We BOSTON THROUGH ARAB EYES: A BRIEF MEMOIR OF STUDYING… 427 had to type each letter individually on the high-quality paper used by engineers and architects. The few pages in each envelope were so heavy it felt as if we were shipping out dead cats. After we sent inquiries to several universities in the US and England, our English teacher in Taif, William Blackburn Royer, handed us a guidebook that listed American universities offering degrees in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies. Royer was then working at the US Information Center in Riyadh and was associated with the American embassy in Tehran. As I went through the guidebook, I saw the name of Professor Thomas F. Glick at the University in Texas at Austin, listing his specialty in Medieval Islamic Spain; he was probably the only such professor in all the American universities. The following day I wrote a letter to him and in a short time received a reply. He was the only one who wrote back to me out of all those letters I had sent. In his letter, Professor Glick asked me to correspond with him at the University of Texas but informed me that he would be moving to Boston University (BU). He had already asked BU to send me an application form. That was not all. Professor Glick added that my scholarship privileges included access to Harvard University’s Widener Library. I showed the letter to the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Prof. Abdulrahman al-Ansary, a historian and a notably caring man. He read the letter carefully and said: “You are lucky to have a supervisor like him, may God be with him.” He then quoted a proverb: “When there is a portent peace will follow.” By late summer of 1972, I was ready to leave for Boston. As my departure drew nearer, my mother (God bless her) came to me with her eyes filled with tears. She was worried and apprehensive about America, the land I was going to, because the cowboy films she watched on Saudi TV (Bonanza was one, as I recall) gave her the idea that America was a country of guns and fighting. As for me, my expectations were different—my dream was that I would be living in an apartment in a skyscraper looking down at the clouds. In Boston my dream was shattered. Al-Shanbary and I had planned to live in a university dormitory but we missed the deadline. Miraculously we were able to find an apartment on Newbury Street in a red brick house. We had to look up through our window to see clouds. It took us a long time to understand why, when we told others that we lived on Newbury Street, we would be met with the word “wow!” Later we understood. It is in the Back Bay, one of the most affluent neighborhoods of Boston. Newbury Street is indeed “the street,” unique in its restaurants, cafes, bookshops, and art galleries. Near where we lived there were world famous places: the New England School of Architecture, the Boston Common, 428 A. I. AL-ROZI and a gallery specializing in Picasso’s paintings. I still wonder why the Orson Welles cinema was not located there instead of in Cambridge. My first meeting with Professor Thomas F. Glick was at his office in the history department. I had a lot to say to him. He listened attentively but, as if my halting English was not bad enough, I kept calling him “Professor” in every sentence. Finally, he gave me “that look” (the look I am sure all who have studied with him knows) and said: “I’ll call you Abdu, and you can call me Tom.” We smiled at each other. Frankly, I never dared to call him “Tom” except in private. The early years were devoted to satisfying course requirements for the graduate degree. I signed up for courses in Islamic history and Medieval Europe so as not to stray too far from al-Andalus. The coursework cli- maxed in 1978 with Professor Glick’s seminar on Fernand Braudel’s “The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II.” The book had just come out in English and we were, I should say, a highly enthusiastic group. Because the Mediterranean as covered by Braudel was so extensive, each student concentrated on a part of the text. Nothing remained of Islamic Spain except for the Moriscos by this time, so I chose North Africa, that is, the Maghrib. Braudel is well known for breaking geographical boundaries and, as I learned from reading my sections of his work, he dealt with the desert of North Africa as if it extended as far as China and the Red Sea border of Arabia as being much like the Seine dividing the two banks of Paris. Writing about Mecca in the sixteenth century, Braudel, to my great surprise, claimed that coffee was forbidden in the holy city. This was a great break for me. I found something significant to say in response to a historian who, if a Nobel Prize in history were ever to be awarded, would be a deserving winner. In class I began by opining that “Coffee was never, insofar as I know, forbidden. We drink it in our mosques.” Professor Glick examined our faces, gave “that look” of his once again, and said: “Abdu, before you pass judgment, be sure.” It is now almost eight years since I began my book on the history of coffee. Braudel, of course, had been right: coffee was not only forbidden in Mecca but also everywhere else when it was first introduced, including Europe and America. Braudel’s spirit is very much alive in my book. My graduate career as well as my family life entered new phases late in 1978. I passed my qualifying exams and became a Ph.D. candidate. That summer I returned to my home town of Taif in Saudi Arabia to be married. It was time to begin the last phase of my studies in settling on a BOSTON THROUGH ARAB EYES: A BRIEF MEMOIR OF STUDYING… 429

dissertation topic. Professor Glick gave me some time to spend with my wife so I could be a proper newlywed, but this was cut somewhat short when he provided some details of a dissertation topic he had in mind. He suggested that I investigate the rich store of biographical dictionaries written by medieval Andalusi scholars. As a graduate student himself, he had written a paper on the topic for Professor Leon Carl Brown, so he knew that the sources were massive in scope and easily obtained. So the relaxing newlywed days granted to me by Professor Glick passed into a time for puzzling out the topic. The hard beginning soon began to relieve itself. As I furthered my steps, I saw that the road was attainable. Rather than delving into the details of the biographical dictionaries, I will try to give a brief account of the sources and how Professor Glick as a supervisor, and myself as a dissertation writer, dealt with these materials. Tabaqat (biographical dictionaries) are a distinctive form of historical literature. They consist of compilations of short biographies of ulama (scholars) and particularly fuqaha (legal scholars) whose function was to provide certification of each scholar’s probity and intellectual worth. In describing and assessing the scholars, the biographers provided a wide array of incidental information and historically interesting details which could be subjected to statistical analysis. The three biographical dictionaries we agreed upon were not so much choices as default options—that is, there were copies easily available at Harvard: (1) Ibn al-Faradi, the History of the Ulama of al-Andalus; (2) Ibn Bashkuwal, the book of continuation (Kitab as-silah, book of the junction or continuation); and (3) Ibn al- Zubair, Silat as-silah (meaning the continuation of the continuation). In all, the number of the biographies totaled 4611. The three works provide an uninterrupted line of biographical listings covering the history of the ulama class from the very beginning in 711 until a few years after 1236, when Cordoba fell into Christian hands. These works, besides providing a panoramic view of al-Andalus’ cultural history, follow one another con- secutively with no overlap of information. I was particularly interested in the social role of scholars as intermediaries between the lower and upper social classes. I started working with the data manually. Although this proved to be very time consuming, it was, as I recall, manageable. A single biography can tell many things but collective biographies have a captivating power. As more biographies are added the wider the list of variables for statistical analysis becomes. Eventually I had identified about 50 variables (e.g., personal and family data, ethnicity, circumstances of education, scholarly fields cultivated, city or province of 430 A. I. AL-ROZI origin, government posts held or declined, and secondary professions such as physician or merchant).Once I felt satisfied with the work I had done, I took it to Professor Glick. We reviewed it and without giving me “that look” he said: “Abdu, I think we should feed your material to a computer.” Somehow I was expecting this suggestion. He had already mentioned the need for computers in studying the Fuqaha of al-Andalus in his old paper for Professor Brown. The idea sounded to me as if he were suggesting that I take the thesis to outer space and complete it there. This was before the age of personal computers much less laptops. The only place to find computers then was at computer centers where mainframes were housed. I ran to the computer center at BU, a building I frequently passed by, to get help and access time on a computer. I got neither, just a promise for a call back that never came. For help, I went to a friend from the Harvard Islamic Society, Habib al-Rahman, who was a graduate student from Bangladesh at Harvard business school and a man well-versed in computers. I found all the help I needed from him. I added new words to my vocabulary such as punch card, pie chart, and floppy disk. The only inconvenience was the time assigned to us to access their computers. It was often late evening. I did not have a car, so I had to walk through Harvard Square, brave the cold and hidden surprises, cross the Charles, and return with heavy loads of printouts. The nights of finalizing my dissertation were times to remember. Our family had grown. Khaldun and Hayyan (both named after great Andalusi historians) joined us and Ismail was on his way. The family had to share the two rooms in our apartment, my wife and the boys in one, and the other room for me and my books, papers, and the typewriter. In the acknowledgments of my dissertation, I apologized to my boys, saying that they only knew a busy father. Finally, the big day arrived. The readers approved my dissertation.1 The usual tension leading up to it was expected, the state of mind that every student in my position has experienced. But a complete surprise awaited me. The very evening before my defense, Ismail, our newcomer to the family, decided to come into the world. I was up all night with my wife in the hospital. The following morning I appeared sleepless at the biggest event of my life. What I went through, however, in its own way helped lessen what otherwise would have been a very tense night.

1 “The Social Role of Scholars (ulama) in Islamic Spain. A Study of Medieval Biographical Dictionaries.” Boston University, 1983. BOSTON THROUGH ARAB EYES: A BRIEF MEMOIR OF STUDYING… 431

The defense itself was uneventful. After its conclusion the committee sent me out for coffee. When I returned, they asked me back into the room. Professor Glick, looking at me, said: “Well Abdu, I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is you passed your defense, the bad news is the Egyptian professor in your department will lose his job” (because each department had a fixed number of positions). We all smiled, mine being one of relief. After paper signing formalities, we walked out of the room. Professor Glick then noticed how tired I looked and, with a fatherly smile, he said: “Things as you saw went fine, nothing to worry about.” When I told him the news of the previous night, he looked at me and said: “You should have informed me, we could have delayed the defense!” He asked how my wife Halima and the baby were and what we named him. They were fine. We did not name the baby yet. That evening we named the baby Ismail, after my father, as suggested by his mother. The time for me to leave Boston was approaching. I often heard Boston was a city that many newcomers do not like at first but it grows on people. Indeed, the city had grown on me. The morning of my last day, I took a farewell tour around Harvard Square. I bought a few books and had a cup of tea at Café Algiers (a coffee house next to the Brattle Theater). This was my most frequented spot. I remember Shanbary and I often deciding to go out to anyplace but Algiers, yet somehow we always ended up there. Among the free pieces of advice exchanged between all of us foreign students in Boston was: “Don’t leave Boston in the spring or in the summer and certainly not in the fall. If you must leave then do so in the winter.” We left Boston in winter. As we passed by places we knew so well on our way to Logan Airport, the feeling that I was seeing them for the last time was discomforting. During my new life in Riyadh as a university professor, the bond con- necting me with my mentor deepened. I often hear from my colleagues who studied abroad that their relationships with former advisors became almost non-existent after earning their degrees. Among the lucky exceptions to this is the bond between Professor Glick and myself. We continued our contact through letters and phone calls, through the new arrival of social media, and, by God’s will, his two visits to Saudi Arabia and mine to Boston. In 1993, Professor Glick came to Riyadh to attend the international symposium “Al-Andalus, Centuries of Vicissitudes and Accomplishments” sponsored by the King Abdul-Aziz Public Library. He was among the 80 guests who constituted a veritable Who’s Who in Andalusi studies. The 432 A. I. AL-ROZI proceedings, which were published by the Library in five volumes in 1996, are still regarded as a highly respected reference source for Andalusi studies in its various branches.2 One day during the Congress, Professor Glick and I gave a memorable lecture in my course on Islamic Spain. He would write a Spanish word of Arabic derivation on the blackboard and then I would write the Arabic word. Then we switched to place names, he writing the Spanish name and I the source word in Arabic. After the class, he asked me “Have you ever taught this well?” I said, “No, have you?” And he said, “No!” Although the symposium had a hectic schedule, I had the opportunity to drive Professor Glick around Riyadh. In one city square he caught sight of a comic bookshop named the Dar al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) and he laughingly said: “So this is how it ends!” The original Dar al-Hikma, the famous library in ninth-century Baghdad where the classics of Greek science and philosophy were translated into Arabic, was a favorite topic of Professor Glick’s and he found a modern comic bookshop bearing its name very amusing. Later, after he returned to the US, I received a letter from him in which he wrote: “my mind is full of images of Riyadh.” Ranking high among these memorable images was the rather lowly end for the “Dar al-Hikma.” In 1995, during my sabbatical leave, I visited Boston with my whole family and we spent time with all the Glicks—except for his son Amos who was working as a clown in Las Vegas at the time. Our first two reunions in 1993 and 1995 were very rewarding. The third, in 2010, was truly memorable. Professor Glick returned to Riyadh as a Visiting Professor in the History Department at King Saud University. The welcoming party this time was doubled as it included, in addition to me, Professor Torki Fahad al-Saud who had also been a student of Professor Glick at BU. This made the visit particularly memorable. Torki and I managed to steal some time now and then to take Professor Glick beyond the city limits of Riyadh. During one of those times, Torki drove us to “Geddiyah Heights” (Haddabah), an old high-climbing pass on the caravan routes which now has a road cut through it. I drove past it count- less times previously, while traveling back and forth between Riyadh and my home town of Taif, never knowing it was there. It was a breathtaking sight. Another highlight of this visit was at my house. During a gathering Professor Glick asked for a photo to be taken of him with Torki and me in

2 Proceedings of the Seminar Al-Andalus, Centuries of Vicissitudes and Accomplishments, 5 vols. (Riyadh: King Abd al-Aziz Public Library, 1996). BOSTON THROUGH ARAB EYES: A BRIEF MEMOIR OF STUDYING… 433

Saudi dress. He declared that the snapshot would capture a scholarly isnad or “chain of transmission” according to the well-held tradition of the ulama. In the final moments of the visit, just before he walked to the gate, Professor Glick took my hand, and with his look, he looked at my face and said: “Abdu, you are the brother I never had.” The look was deep and meaningful. As for the expression on my face I am certain it was indescrib- able, such was the surprise I felt. This is why my mind goes back to that old Yamani song, “I loved you before I knew you,” when thinking about being a student of Professor Thomas F. Glick. Index1

A Al-Andalus, 17, 18, 50, 66, 71, 75, Abbadid, 256–258, 262, 266, 81–83, 81n60, 81n61, 88, 99, 271, 273 200, 230, 255, 256, 266, 270, Abbasid, 74, 76, 138, 265, 371, 378 272, 273, 314, 374–375, 378, Abd al-Jabbar Ibn Hamdis, 386, 402, 426, 428, 429, 431 255, 256, 273 Al-Azraq, 193–196, 201–203, Abdulnabi b. Mahdi. Ali b. Mahdi 207n45, 209, 211, 213, 216, al-Himyari, 137 220, 223 Abraham bar Ḥiyya, 54 Al-Battānī, 373, 380, 382, Abū ‘Abd Allāh b. Hudhayl, 193 384–388, 388n60 Abu Hanifah, 133n7 Albigensian, 314, 315, 319, 326, 327, Abū Yaḥyá b. Abī Isḥāq, 194, 196 329, 332 Abū Zayd, 195, 199–207, 208n47, Al-Farabi, 20, 55, 393–407 209, 210, 214–216, 215n71, Alfonse VI, 255, 259, 270, 272 220, 222, 223 Alfonsi, Petrus, 15, 330–332, 400, Acculturation, xi, 22, 25, 26, 31, 45, 403, 405 48, 51, 224 Alfonso of Castile, 203, 205, 208 Acequia, 85, 86, 86n82, 105, 107, Alfred of Sarashel, 404, 405 109, 113, 116, 120 Al-Hasan al-Basri, 136 Acequiero, 111, 115–118, 120, 122 Ali b. Abi Talib, 132 Adab, 257, 265, 269–272 ‘Ali b. Mahdi al-Himyari,’ 137 Agoranomos, 230 Al-Jahiz, 135

1 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

Al-Khwārizmī, 18, 397, 406 C Almagest, 381, 382, 396 Calendar reform, 82, 105 Almoravid, 52, 256, 259, 260, 272, Caliph, 74, 75, 77, 132, 138, 139 273, 330, 378 Candles, 233, 242–244 Almotacen, 230 Canon, 410, 416 Al-Mu‘tamid Ibn ‘Abbad, 255, 258, 272 Cantica, 410, 414 Altevicí, Eiximén Jaume, 217, 218, 222 Cantigas de Santa Maria, 303, 304, 308 Al-Wujūd, 301 Cardinal Hugolino, 162 Al-Zallaqa, 265, 267, 268, 270, 274 Castro, Américo, 8, 9, 22, 27, 31, 34, Amarah al-Hakami, 137 35, 41–48, 270, 395 Anti-Judaism, 348 Cathar, 317 Anusim, 342, 346, 355–364 Circumcision, 298–300, 363 Aqueduct, 67, 67n2, 68, 73, 75, 76 Clash of civilizations, ix Arabist, 2, 8, 14–17, 17n16, 19, 24, Cohen, I. Bernard, 4n3, 5, 6, 6n4, 13, 40, 41 14, 16 Archeology, 2 Colliget, 55, 410, 412–417 Aristotle, 333, 399, 401, 402, 405, Commune, 108, 109, 112–118, 120–122 406, 412 Computus, 406 Armengaud Blaise, 410 Conflict theory, 26, 30 Arnau de Vilanova, 9, 410, 414, 415 Constantine of Orvieto, 313n7, 316, Aromes, atronii, 164–166, 176, 187 320, 321, 326 Artifex scientie naturalis, 413 Contra legem saracenorum, 334 Assimilation, 18–20, 25, 48, 51, 52, Converso 55, 222–224, 298, 410, 416, 417 Christian theological opinion, 346 Astrolabe, 18, 406 4 types, 348, 349 Astronomy, 17, 18, 49, 54, 55, 406 Jewish Law, 342, 347, 350, 364 Astynomos, 230 popular opinion, 344n6 Averroes, 55, 409–420 Convivencia, ix–xii, 2–56, 145–156, Avicenna, 333, 409, 414, 416 297–308, 395 Ayyubid, 138 Convivencia wars, viii, ix, 42, 43, 46 Córdoban Martyrs, 146 Cristianos de natura, 346 B Cross-cultural borrowing, 396 Basalla, George, 27, 27–28n25 Cross-cultural intellectual contact, 396 Battle of Zallaqa, 52, 253–274 Crypto-Jew, 353 Bedouin, 135, 260, 269, 270, Cultural crystallization, 25 281n9, 285n19 Cumani, 313, 314, 318, 322, 323, Berber, 29, 32, 81, 83, 256, 260, 266, 325, 327, 337 272, 273 Bernard de Angarra, 411, 414, 415 Bollandists, 311, 313 D Book of the Enumeration of the Sciences, 398 De animalibus, 406, 407, 412, 413 Brahmagupta, 376 Decretal, 159, 160 Burgo de Osma, 311, 313, 320 Decretum, 164, 166 INDEX 437

De intentione medicorum, 414 Fatwā, 139 De interioribus, 411 Ferrand Martinez, 343 De malitia complexione, 414 Feuding, 53, 278–283, 291, 295 De Ortu Scientiarum, 405 Fines, 114, 232, 233, 243, 244, 246 De Scientiis, 403–407 Fitna, 374 De simplici medicina, 411 Foggaras, 79 Dhimma, 32, 50, 51, 140, 151, Franciscan, 51, 160, 162, 169, 316, 153, 155 324, 328 Dhimmi, 50, 51, 131–140, 145, 147, Franco, viii, 15 151–156, 165 Funduq, 161 Dialogues against the Jews, 331 Furs i privilegis, 231 Diego de Osma, Bishop, 311, 313, 315, 326, 327, 337 Diffusion, 3, 10–12, 14, 16–23, G 25–28, 33, 34, 37–41, 43, 45, Galen, 411–413, 417 48, 49, 52, 55, 230, 254, 409, Gerard of Cremona, 18, 396, 410, 417 400, 402 Dissemination of plants, 81 Gerard of Frachet, 322, 324 Dominic, 159, 162, 312–322, Glasnost, ix 324, 326–330, 332, Gregorian Reform, 162 335, 337 Gregory IX, 51, 159, 162, 167, 170 Dubitabilia, 167, 170–192 Guide for the Perplexed, 298 Dubitata, 410 Gundisalvus, Dominicus, 395n4, 397, Duran, Semah ben Solomon, 400–407 352, 357n36, 361 Duran, Simeon ben Semach, (Tashbets), 360 H Duran, Solomon ben Simeon, Hadith, 132n2, 261, 265 (Rashbash), 360, 363 Halakha, 347, 353 Hillgarth, J. N., 47, 317n14 Hippocrates, 412 E Hisba, 20 English, Paul, 24, 28 Huerta, 12, 23, 81n60, 83, 85, 86, En-sof, 299, 301 86n81, 87n83, 88, 102, 104, Equinox, 372, 377–379, 383–386 108, 109, 112–115, 117, 121, Eternal Spaniard, viii, 46 122, 196, 198, 206, 217, 220, Eulogius, 51, 145–156 221, 224 Humbert of Romans, 53, 316, 321, 322n24, 336 F Hydraulics, 50, 66, 68–89 Faqih, 135, 264, 282, 288, 305 Hydraulic systems, 66, 71–74, Fardārs, 372, 374 76–78, 80, 81n61, 83, 84, 87, Fatimid, 138 102, 105n20 438 INDEX

I 207n44, 207n45, 208–212, 214, Iberia, vii, xn8, 16, 17, 19, 25, 27, 33, 216, 216n72, 217, 220, 221, 45, 46, 48, 50, 54, 224, 313, 314, 229, 231, 232, 277, 304, 336 316–318, 324–326, 334, 336, Jaume I, see James I 341, 343–345, 346n11, 348, 349, Jihad, 257, 259, 266, 268, 269, 273 351, 354, 358, 360, 362, 394, 395 Jizya, jizyah, 132n2, 134, 152, 269, 272 Ibn al-‘Arabī, 301, 301n18, Jordan of Saxony, 311, 312n1, 312n2, 301n21, 307 313–315, 313n5, 320, 335 Ibn al-Qayyim, 132n2, 133 Ifrīqiya, 161, 165, 197n8 In Praise of al-Mu‘tamid on the K occasion of his defeat of Alfonse VI Kabbalah, 299n9, 301 at [the Battle of] al-Zallaqa, Kalpa, 372 257, 261 Kharijite, 137, 138 Intihā, 372, 376 Kitab al-Rawd al-mi‘tar fi khabar Irrigation systems al-aqtar, 264, 264n12 early medieval, 67–69 Kranzberg, Melvin, 10, 11, 11n10, 41 feudal, 66, 70 Islamic, 22, 66, 78 monarch and city council, 70 L monasteries, 71 Legenda Constantini Urbevetani, 320 peasant-built, 73 Legenda Humberti de Romanis, Roman, 67–69, 83 321, 322n24 sizes, 84, 88, 102 Legenda Sancti Dominici, 318 state-promoted, 73 Libellus de principiis ordinis Islam, 16, 21, 31, 33, 45, 53–55, 76, praedicatorum, 311, 312n1, 315 87, 131, 132n2, 134, 135, 138, Liber apologeticus martyrum, 146, 153 139, 145, 146, 149, 152, 161, Liber Universus, 374 163–166, 185n149, 254, 255, Libre del la Mustaçaffía, 232 259, 260, 266, 269, 270, 272, 273, 279, 303, 311–337, 344, 346n11, 371–374, 378, 387, 389 M Islamic educational system, 399 Madhhab, 133 Islamic Empire, 269 Maghrib, 166, 374–375, 386, 389, 428 Isma’ili Shiite School, 134 Magistri, 393, 394 Isnad, 20, 57, 433 Mahāyuga, 376 Mahdi, 29, 137–139, 165 Maimonides, 138, 139, 298, 380, 399 J Majlis, 400 Jahiliyah, 131 Maliki School, 133, 140 James I, 51, 52, 99, 100n1, 160, Mascarosa, 215–218, 215n70, 193–196, 198–203, 206, 220, 221 INDEX 439

Māshā’allāh, 373, 382, 386, O 387n59, 388 On the Occasion of al-Mu‘tamid’s Maslama al-Majrīṭī, see Maslama of return to Seville from the Battle of Madrid Zallaqa, 259 Maslama of Madrid, 18 On the Sect of Muhammad, 312 Medievalist, vii, 2, 5, 8, 24, 36, 37, 40 Order of Preachers, 159, 183, 312, Megillat ha-megalleh, 375, 376, 314, 315, 315n10, 320, 326, 383, 389 334, 336 Memoriale sanctorum, 146, 149, 151, Order of Santiago, 206–210, 212 152, 154n21 Orientalization, 10 Meseta, 4 Messurador, 242 Mills, 13, 119, 236–239, 241 P Montpellier, 55, 410, 411, Pact of Umar, 152, 153 413–420, 415n7 Penstock, 78 Morisco, 18, 26, 31, 224, 279n6, People of the Book, see Dhimmi 294n49, 348n14, 428 Perfectus, 154, 155 Moses de Leon, Rabbi, 299 Peripatetic, 403 Mozarab, 397 Peter of Ferrand, 313n7, 316, 318, Mu’ahidun, 135 320, 321, 326n34, 328, 337 Mudejar, 26, 53, 106–108, 119, 121, Pi-Sunyer, Oriol, xin10, 22, 23, 199n14, 202n25, 277–280, 30, 30n26, 41, 46, 47n43, 281n9, 282, 282n11, 285, 293 224n84, 396n8 Muftī, 133, 139, 166 Polemic of Spanish History, 9, 43, 46 Muhammad, 44, 146, 147, 149, 150, Prose/poetry–importance in Arabic 154, 154n22, 155, 213, 214, and Islamic culture, 52, 255 261, 268, 306, 331 Ptolemy, 18, 373, 380, 382, 396, 397 Muḥammad al-Tābisī, 198, 220 Muhammad I, 152, 153 Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Mu’min Q al-Himyari, 255, 264 Qadi, 135, 139, 206, 286 Muhtasib, 20–22, 52, 229–231 Qanât, 75, 79, 81, 86n82 Mustassaf, 52 Quadrivium, 55, 393, 400, 401, 406 Mythos/logos in ancient Greece, 254 Qubba, 384 Quran, 7, 19, 21n19, 45, 254, 266, 268, 269, 301, 304 N Natural Christians, 346 New Christian, 100, 103, 166, 193, R 229–248, 343, 345, 346, 350 Rabbi Joshua Halorki, 357 New Humanism, 6, 7, 16, 17, 40, 41 Rabbi Solomon Halevi, 357 Nilometer, 77 Ramon Martí, 312, 334 440 INDEX

Rashbash Scientia, 394, 395, 399, 401, 413 Solomon ben Simeon Duran, 360, Scientia naturalis, 413, 418 360n44, 363, 363n51 Scot, Michael, 404, 412 Raymond of Peñafort, see Raymond of Sefirah, plural sefirot, 299 Penyafort Sequiatge, 105 Raymond of Penyafort, 159, 164n7 Sexual relationships across religious Reconquista, xxiii, 304 boundaries, 302 Religious boundaries, 302, 303, 344, Shaduf, 76, 79 345, 351, 354 Shafi’i School, 134 Religious identity, 145, 298, 299, 302, Siete partidas, 298, 302, 303 303, 341–345, 348, 353, 364 Sindhind, 372, 372n3 Repartimiento, 209, 209n50 Solomon be Abraham Ibn Adret, Repopulation, 100, 112, 117 362, 362n49 Responsiones, 161–163, 161n3, Speculum doctrinale, 332n62, 333, 165, 168 398n14, 403 Responsiones ad dubitabilia circa Speculum historiale, 314, 326, 327n36, communicationem christianorum 327n37, 327n39, 328, 328n40, cum sarracenis, 160 328n41, 328n44, 328n45, 329n47, Rex pacificus, 160 329n48, 330, 331, 403n25 Ribash Speculum maius, 314, 334 Sheshst Perfet, 347n13, 349 Speculum medicine, 414 Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, 53, 334 Speculum naturale, 332, 333, 333n63, Ritual immersion, 362, 363 333n64, 333n65, 333n66 Sufi, 45, 137, 301, 324

S Sabian, 133, 139, 140 T Sa’id al-Andalusi, 398, 398n15 Tābisa, 196, 197n8, 198, 200n20 Sánchez Albornoz, Claudio, viii, Taghlib, 132, 132n3 viiin2, xn7, 9, 9n9 Taifa, 18, 31, 32 Saraceni, 159–192, 212, 216, 224, Tanning, 244–246 313, 319, 322–324, 323n29, Tashbets 331, 337 Simeon ben Semach Duran, 360 Sarton, George, 3–14, 4n3, 6n4, 6n5, Tasyīrs, 372, 374, 376 7n6, 16, 17, 17n16, 18n17, 40, 41 Tevicino, 194–201, 212 Sassanian, 371 Textiles, 71, 72, 233, 246–247 Sayyid, 199–210, 200n18, 202n22, Time, kinds of 204n31, 208n47, 216 relative, 43 Schools of Islamic Law solar, 387 Isma’ili Shiite School, 134 Time, usages of Maliki School, 133 intellectual, 255 Shafi’i School, 134 practical, 7, 23, 138, 240, 258 Zahiri School, 134 theological, 7 INDEX 441

Toledo School of Translators, 55, 396 Vitae fratrum, 165n9, 322, 323n26, Torah, 139, 300, 300n13, 301, 349, 354 323n27, 323n28, 323n29, 324, Tornadizos, 346, 346n11 324n32, 325, 325n33 Trivium, 55, 393, 400

W U Wadi, 74 Umar b. Abi Umar al-Azdi, 140 Water management, 24, 49, 50, ʽUmar b. al-Farrukhān al-Ṭabarī, 65–89, 109–111, 115, 116, 122 374, 374n10 Watermills, 67–71, 78, 85, 104, 111, Umayyads, 74–76, 78, 271, 374, 119 378, 426 Water wheels, 68 University of Paris, 162, 405, 406 Wazīr, 135, 202, 207 Weights and measures, 230, 231, 233, 235–242, 248 V Wine, 54, 133, 184, 187, 234, 257, Valencia, Kingdom of 262, 347, 351, 356, 364 agricultural regimes, 104 honor cultures, 279 management of water, 103–106 Y Mediterranean climate, 101 Yusuf Ibn Tashufin, 256–259, 266 natural features, 101–103 Van den Berghe, Pierre, 26, 27n24, 32 Veedores, 231 Z Veterinarians, 247–248, 248n46 Zahiri School, 134 Vincent of Beauvais, 314, 326, Z īj, 374, 378n26, 380, 384, 386–388 327n37, 332n62, 333n64, 334, Zohar, 299–302 336, 337, 398n14, 403, 405 Zoroastrians, 131, 132n2, 134