chapter six

The Worst Men in the World

F

or a period of seven months, from December 1303 to July 1304 , the

Marīnid prince and Ghuzāh leader al- ‘Abbās b. Raḥḥū served as com-

mander of the Aragonese jenets, leaving in his wake a lengthy trail of

Latin, Romance, and Arabic evidence in both archives and chronicles.

Not only the paper chase that he initiated but also the moment that he

chose to cross make al- ‘Abbās the ideal case for understanding the mo-

tivations of the Aragonese jenets and their relationship to the Marīnid

Ghuzāh. In March 1304 , just after al- ‘Abbās’ entry into its service, the

Crown of Aragon entered into negotiations with Castile that would lead

to the signing of the Treaty of Agreda. For the first time in two decades,

since the emergency that first led King Pere II to recruit jenets in 1285 ,

the Crown of Aragon and Castile entered into an alliance and called for a

crusade against Muslim Granada.^1 Although in earlier periods, as during

the War of the Jenets (Guerra Jenetorum), jenets served the Aragonese

kings while Ghuzāh raided Aragonese lands, where would the loyalties of

the jenets fall in this moment?^2

Born in Rebellion

In the century of collaboration between the kings of the Crown of Aragon

and the Muslim jenets, it is the fact that these soldiers were recruited from

and commanded by members of the Marīnid al- Ghuzah al- Mujāhidūn —

holy warriors who had come to the Iberian Peninsula to defend Muslims

and raiders who terrorized Christian villagers and incited Mudéjares to

revolt — that is the hardest of swallow. Al- ‘Abbās b. Raḥḥū was not a mar-

ginal figure among the Ghuzāh. In fact, he was a son of one of the three