112 chapter five
To say then that the jenets were above the law, exceptions to the law,
means little in practice to the unfolding of the events above. Circumstance
and practice brought the jenets into contact with royal officials, Christian
soldiers, and Christian villagers, each of whom understood law and legiti-
macy in their own terms. In other words, this contested territory was a zone
of overlapping and competing jurisdictions. But as the case above dem-
onstrates, the Aragonese kings were able to turn these complications to
their advantage. If, in the abstract, sovereignty is defined by coercion and
decision, then in practice, Aragonese royal power succeeded through de-
flection and indecision. If the Crown permitted the Muslim jenets to stand
outside the law, to be lawless, then it only partially enforced that privilege.
It tacitly legitimated violent attacks against its disposable agents, the jen-
ets. The overall effect of privileged exception and royal indecision were
the same: the Aragonese kings profited from the violence of these soldiers
while simultaneously disavowing them, marking them as outsiders and
non- Christians.
Blood and Belonging
In November 1290 , in the midst of Abenadalil’s struggles in Calatayud,
King Alfons wrote the following letter to the Mudéjar çalmedine (ṣāḥib
al- madīna), a community leader, of nearby Zaragoza:
We know that a certain Saracen named Mahumet Sugeray, a soldier of our
esteemed nobleman, Abenadalil, captain of the jenets, very much loves (diligit
multum) a certain Saracen woman of Zaragoza, named Fatima, daughter of
Abdullasis, whom he wants to lead into marriage. Therefore, we tell and order
you immediately to arrange that this Saracen man should have that Saracen
woman in marriage.^72