88 chapter four
Valencia to the court of Abū Zayd. According to Jaume’s autobiography,
Blasco’s brother Giles converted to Islam, taking the name Muḥammad.^81
It is worth repeating in this context that Blasco’s son, Artal, had jenets
in his employ, underscoring that the family resemblance between these
Christian and Islamic military traditions was more than coincidence.^82 All
the same, during this second Ṭā’ifa period, the flow of soldiers was suf-
ficient such that Ibn Hūd, a rebel against Almohad rule, could maintain
a guard of two hundred Christian soldiers in his service.^83 This trading of
allegiances continued well into the rule of the last Islamic principality on
the Iberian Peninsula, the Naṣrids ( 1232 – 1492 ), who relied heavily upon
foreign soldiers, both Berber and European, to serve in their armies and
courts.^84
The use of Iberian Christian soldiers in Islamic armies was not limited
to the peninsula. The Almoravid ruler ‘Alī b. Yūsuf b. Tāshfīn (r. 1061 –
1106 ) was said to have first introduced the practice to North Africa.^85 Ac-
cording the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, the chronicle of the reign of
Alfonso VII of Léon (r. 1126 – 1157 ), these soldiers had been captives of
war, who eventually rose to a privileged position:
At that time, God granted His grace to the prisoners who were in the royal
court of their lord, King ‘Alī, and moved His heart toward them in order to
favor the Christians. ‘Alī regarded them above all of the men of his own east-
ern people, for he made some of them chamberlains of his private apartments,
and others captains of one thousand soldiers, five hundred soldiers, and one
hundred soldiers, who stood at the forefront of the army of his kingdom. He
furnished them with gold and silver, cities and strongly fortified castles, with
which they could have reinforcement in order to make war on the Muzmu-
tos [Almohads] and the king of the Assyrians, called Abdelnomen [‘Abd al-
Mu’min], who attacked his territories without interruption.^86