chapter five

The Unpaid Debt

I

n the summer of 1292 , several men arrived at the houses of Muça Al-

mentauri and Maymon Avenborayç, jenets in the service of the Crown

of Aragon.^1 They had come to settle a stunning debt of 900 solidi, money

that their wives had borrowed with usurious interest, and an amount that

each man might expect to earn as salary in half a year.^2 The angry credi-

tors threatened to seize what they could. A royal document listed some

examples in passing: household utensils, wine jugs, oxen, horses, tack,

weapons, and plows. The jenets were members of the king’s household, a

fact that helps to account for the appearance of this incident in the chan-

cery registers. But the list — household utensils, wine jugs, oxen, horses,

tack, weapons, and plows — also paves another path of inquiry. It suggests

a different story from that of privilege and exception, which was the per-

spective of power. While perhaps only a moment of scribal emphasis, this

list of mundane items spiders outward to the mess of living: eating, drink-

ing, and laboring. And the questions multiply: From whom did these Mus-

lims buy wine? Indeed, did Muslims drink wine?^3 Who tilled their fields?

Who lent their wives money at exorbitant interest? And so on.

These small but significant questions highlight the limits not only of

archival documents but also of an approach that overemphasizes sover-

eignty and therefore risks confusing a formal description of power with

its performance and effects. The lives of the jenets were not neatly con-

fined to the purview of the chancery registers or to their relationship

with the Crown. So what were the experiences of the jenets in the lands

of the Crown of Aragon beyond the royal court? How did these experi-

ences shape the lives of the jenets in ways the Aragonese kings did not

intend? Did these soldiers find a place, a sense of belonging on their own?

What challenges did they face? If the gift helped to reveal the sovereign