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

120 chapter six

exiled Marīnid princes who founded this corps, and across the late thir-

teenth and fourteenth centuries, numerous members of his family, the

Banū Raḥḥū, would serve both as leaders of the Marīnid Ghuzāh and as

Aragonese jenets. What then was the relationship of the Ghuzāh to the

jenets? In order to answer this question, it is worth standing back to con-

sider the history of these holy warriors.

While Aragonese archival sources tell us little about the origin and

nature of the Ghuzāh, the situation in Arabic chronicles is better but still

problematic. Only two historians spoke of these Marīnid soldiers in any

detail. The Andalusī polymath and politician Ibn al- Khaṭīb, who dealt di-

rectly with the leaders of the Ghuzāh at the Naṣrid court, left brief de-

scriptions and biographies of them in his works. More substantially, Ibn

Khaldūn devoted the final part of his Kitāb al- ‘ibar to an account of the lead-

ers of the Ghuzāh, whom he called “the princes (qarāba al- murashshaḥīn)

of the family of ‘Abd al- Ḥaqq [the founder of the Marīnid dynasty] among

the holy warriors (al- Ghuzāh al- Mujāhidūn) in al- Andalus who shared

power with the Naṣrid ruler and distinguished themselves in the leader-

ship of jihād.”^3 Ibn Khaldūn’s history of the Ghuzāh is the only systematic

record of them from their rise in 1262 to the imprisonment of their last

leader in 1369.^4 Thus, the limitations of Ibn Khaldūn’s history are also, to

a great extent, the limitations for understanding the Ghuzāh.

The Ghuzāh were born out of rebellion in North Africa. Their first

leaders, members of the Banū Idrīs and Banū Raḥḥū, two closely related

branches of the Marīnid royal family, arrived as men banished from their

homeland following an uprising against the Marīnid sultan Abū Yūsuf in

1262.^5 This was not their first or last rebellion in North Africa. Nine years

later, in 1271 , a second uprising pushed more members of these princely

families into al- Andalus. This second wave included Mūsā b. Raḥḥū, the

first to receive the title of commander (shaykh al- ghuzāh) from the Naṣrid

sultans and the man to whom Conrad Lancia and Samuel Abenmenassé

held letters of introduction.^6 In 1286 , a third princely branch, the Banū

Abī al- ‘Ulā, known as the Fijos de Ozmín in Castilian chronicles, joined

the Ghuzāh in exile.^7

The Naṣrid rulers of Granada greeted these North African exiles with

extensive privileges and placed them in command of the various soldiers

along their frontiers with the Crown of Aragon and Castile. Ibn Khaldūn

did question the motivations of the first Marīnid princes to arrive in the

Iberian Peninsula: “They entered al- Andalus under the pretense of per-

forming jihād (tawriyatan bi’l- jihād) but they were only seeking refuge,

fleeing from his [the Marīnid sultan’s] authority (maḥallihi).”^8 Neverthe-