104 chapter five
the jenets terrorized local populations, laying waste to their villages, and
ransacking houses for everything of worth: goods, weapons, animals, and
captives (fig. 5 ). But unlike Christian soldiers, many, if not all, jenets had
the privilege of retaining their spoils without paying a customary fifth
(quinta) to the Aragonese kings, a fact that highlighted the unique rela-
tionship between the Aragonese kings and the jenets.^34 Paradoxically, the
law permitted the jenets to remain lawless, to remain bandits. But just like
the unpaid debt with which this chapter began, these spoils — household
goods, weapons, animals, and captives — point to the material limits of this
privilege of exception. Selling these goods meant finding markets and de-
pending upon local Christians and royal officials. How did these kinds of
men react to the arrival of the uniquely privileged jenets? And how did the
jenets, in turn, deal with them?
An episode from the career of Mahomet Abenadalil provides a dra-
matic example of what the privilege of raiding meant in practice. Abena-
figure 5. Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria (no. 165 ) (ca. 1284 ) (detail, top- left panel).
Muslim raiders with Christian captives, Syria. Monasterio- Biblioteca- Colección, San Lorenzo
de El Escorial, Madrid. Photograph: Album / Art Resource, New York.