ethno-religious minorities 369
Islamic Sicily were brought under Christian rule. The Levant and parts of Ifriqiya
were temporarily occupied, and the Byzantine Empire was conquered and colonized
by Latin powers.
As rival Christian principalities in Iberia expanded southwards from the 1030s,
they absorbed communities of Jews and Mozarabs, who came also as refugees, fleeing
reactionary Islamic regimes. In locales like Toledo, these were each subject to distinct
law codes, as were the extra-peninsular Latin settlers (“Francos”), and the native
Muslims. Facing similar challenges to those of the early Arabs, Christian rulers in
Spain tempted and coerced native Muslim populations into accepting Christian over-
lordship in exchange for guarantees of security, religious freedom and communal
autonomy. In many areas the Christian conquest was preceded by a tributary phase,
in which local Muslim potentates became Christian vassals, but were not subject to
direct colonial domination. Although the Islamic elite tended to choose exile, the
bulk of the population stayed, and in some regions Muslims comprised the numerical
majority for some time after the conquest. Through agriculture, craft and the practice
of professions, these mudéjares (“stay-behinds”) provided an economic base for the
Christian kingdoms and produced revenue for the monarchs, nobility, Church and
municipalities. By the late-twelfth century the Mozarab minority had been pressured
into assimilation, but more Jews were arriving as a consequence of repression in
France (particularly after the annexation of Languedoc) and the Maghreb. These were
used as colonists and for a time dominated the fiscal administration in some of the
kingdoms, but Jews here (who comprised perhaps 5% of the population) also worked
in craft, trade and agriculture. The late-thirteenth century saw revolts on the part of
some Muslim communities: in the Crown of Castile the response tended to be expul-
sion or relocation, and in the Crown of Aragon, reconciliation and accommodation.
Even in the 1300s some Muslims emigrated from the dar al-Islam to the Christian
Crown of Aragon.
In a dynamic very similar to that of Spain, the Norman conquest of Sicily and
Byzantine Italy brought sizeable Muslim and Orthodox communities under Latin
rule—the latter considered heretical since the Schism of 1054. Here, as in Spain,
kings cultivated the minority communities and granted them broad autonomy to
counterbalance the power of their own nobility and the Church. A brief colonial
adventure brought tenuous Norman rule to Ifriqiya, with Roger II (1105–1154) rul-
ing over an almost entirely Muslim population as “King of Africa.” As a response to
their political activism and their declining economic utility, the remaining Muslims of
Sicily were transported to an enclave on the Italian mainland beginning in the 1220s,
and enslaved en masse in 1300. Concurrently, the Jewish minority in Sicily was culti-
vated, and on the Italian mainland communities grew and throve, although they
remained vulnerable to repression.
The conquest of the Holy Land brought significant populations of Muslims,
Jews and various eastern Christian denominations under Latin control. In the
Frankish Volkstaat, non-Latins, both Christian and Muslim, were subject to a sepa-
rate legal regime. After the massacres of the initial conquest the situation of Muslims
and Jews here remained stable until Salah al-Din effectively destroyed the Kingdom
of Jerusalem in 1187. At times, condominium arrangements were established with
local Muslim powers, including the Assassins, but native, eastern Christians were
the subject of systematic discrimination, especially the clergy. This trend reached its