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

114 chapter five

they alternately employed against and in aid of the Crown of Aragon.^75

These Mudéjar strongholds also received support from the North African

arrivistes and holy warriors, the Ghuzāh, whom the Aragonese called jen-

ets. Nevertheless, the overall tendency in Valencia was toward disunion.

Muslim resistance to the Aragonese peaked during the second revolt of

al- Azraq, from 1275 to 1277 , when Pere finally wrested control of the last

independent Muslim castles and pushed the jenets from his territory.

This brief recapitulation of Islamic Valencia’s history was meant to say

two prefatory things about the relationship of the jenets to the Mudéjares.

First, these soldiers had surrendered Valencia less than a decade before

Pere’s efforts to recruit them in 1285.^76 Their arrival, in other words, was

more properly a return. Second, at the time the jenets abandoned Valencia,

they were still newcomers. Thus, while they were not outsiders, they were

also not insiders — not interchangeable with the Mudéjares. Their re turn

was not a homecoming, and their journey cannot be considered simply in

terms of an encounter between Islam and Christianity.

Despite the loss of Muslim control, the Valencia to which the jenets re-

turned would have appeared mostly unchanged. Muslims still dominated

the landscape, above all, the agrarian landscape, and possessed a degree

of autonomy.^77 Indeed, throughout the lands of the Crown of Aragon, the

Mudéjares maintained their own mosques,^78 merchant hostels,^79 commu-

nity leaders,^80 l aw,^81 and language.^82 The adhān, the call to prayer, could

still be heard, marking not only a familiar time but also space.^83 In these re-

spects, as Burns has argued, the Mudéjares represented a “species of state

within a state.”^84 Muslim life was enfolded within a Christian kingdom —

simultaneously included and excluded.

Earlier, it was demonstrated that the Mudéjares played a role in re-

cruiting the jenets. They not only participated in negotiations but also

helped to pay for the jenets who served in the defense of Valencia.^85 But

these groups were not simply connected through the questions of military

service. Some jenets sought to live alongside the Mudéjares. For example,

although operating in the Christian- dominated kingdom of Aragon, the

jenets raiding from Alfamén and Almonacid in 1287 were in fact residing

with local Mudéjares, not Christians.^86 In addition to their taking up tem-

porary residence, there is also evidence that jenets and their families settled

permanently among Mudéjar communities. Muçe Hivanface, a jenet, and

his wife Axone owned several houses in the morería of Valencia.^87 When

he retired from the king’s service, a jenet named Daut settled in the city

of Valencia.^88 And after more than a decade of service, Muça Almentauri,