The Mercenary Mediterranean_ Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon - Hussein Fancy

108 chapter five

the seizure of their property throughout all the kingdoms of the Crown of

Aragon.^56 One can safely say then that the frontiersmen were not acting in

their own best interest. So why would they take such individual risks and

openly challenge the king?

The Calatayud villagers’ actions are better approached from the history

of their previous encounters with these soldiers. Significantly, the earliest

recorded appearance of Muslim jenets in the region dates to 1287 , during

the rebellion of the Aragonese Unions against the Crown. King Alfons

employed the jenets to pacify the kingdom; thus, the residents of Calata-

yud would have known the jenets not only as foreign raiders but also as

agents of royal repression.^57 This ironic disjunction can only have resulted

in confusion and tension. On October 14 , 1287 , for example, the justice

of Calatayud — perhaps the same Petrus Sancii above — was reprimanded

for seizing and ordered to return several Christian captives that jenets

had brought back from a raid on the Aragonese village of Cutanda, near

Teruel.^58 Royal administrators, in other words, and not simply villagers

found themselves in conflict with the jenets. Significantly, these officials’

caution and suspicion was not unjustified. Just over a week later, jenets

operating from the villages of Alfamén and Almonacid were accused of

raiding a Christian village, Aguaro, which was under the protection of the

Crown of Aragon.^59 In this case, the Crown ordered the jenets to return

any goods or captives that they had seized, but otherwise, the soldiers

went unpunished. Whether resulting from the complex and ambiguous

political situation or the jenets’ obvious impunity, a climate of accusation

and recrimination had reigned on the Aragonese frontier. Tensions re-

mained high after the rebellion of the Unions. In October 1289 , several

villagers from Alfamén — the same village that hosted the Muslim raiders

above — decided to take some jenets captive, marking a new boldness and

daring in these villagers’ dealings with royal agents. King Alfons ordered

the justice of Calatayud — in all likelihood, now Petrus Sancii — to free

the jenets and to safeguard their journey out of the region.^60 The fact that

Alfons withdrew his jenets and insisted on their protection suggests that

the Crown not only saw the villagers as dangerous and unpredictable but

also the entire situation as untenable.

This pattern of conflict across various locations reveals two critical

things about the encounter between Abenadalil’s jenets and the Calatayud

villagers in 1290. First, these frontiersmen had challenged and attacked

the jenets before and had been rebuked by the king, suggesting that they

cannot have been innocent of the consequences of their assaults. These