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

128 chapter six

jurists continued to practice should be considered part of Islamic terri-

tory (dār al- Islām).^60 And to cite one example relevant to this discussion,

the Shāfi‘ī jurist Ibn Ḥajar al- Haytamī (d. 1566 ) urged Muslims to offer

military support to any territory that allowed Islam to be performed fully

and openly.^61 In other words, he argued that one might correctly fulfill

the obligation of jihād by defending a Christian territory. Could such dis-

tant opinions have influenced Muslims living in the Iberian Peninsula?

As van Koningsveld and Wiegers have shown, Mudéjares did not limit

themselves to the advice of Mālikī jurists.^62 Some Iberian Muslims trav-

eled as far as Egypt to seek legal opinions, which is to say that in practice,

not only jurists but also individuals pursued interpretations of the law to

suit their purposes.

In order to make moral determinations, Clifford Geertz argued, the

law inevitably leads to “the skeletonization of fact.”^63 Jurists must reduce

the complexities of the veridical to the clarity of the instrumental.^64 Nev-

ertheless, the tension between legal theory and legal practice helps to re-

veal how contested questions of legitimacy were. When examining the

Islamic legal traditions concerned with residence in Christian territories

or the performance of jihād, one cannot speak simply and clearly of licit

and illicit actions but rather competing norms and sensibilities. Thus, the

case of the jenets cannot be summarily dismissed from court. There may

be some room for them to stand on.

The treaties between Christian and Islamic rulers, which arranged for

the exchange of Christian and Muslim soldiers, are exceptionally relevant

in this regard.^65 Precisely because these agreements received the approval

of Islamic jurists who were trained the Mālikī tradition, they offer yet an-

other perspective on legal practice.^66 By regularly insisting that Muslim

soldiers could be used only against Christians, these treaties suggest that

jurists both responded and offered a creative solution to the repeated pro-

hibition of Muslim soldiers voluntarily serving in Christian armies against

other Muslims. These rulers and jurists attempted to accommodate the

exchange of soldiers to existing norms and rules. Given these limits upon

use, there is no reason to conclude that the jenets’ actions were illegiti-

mate or, so to speak, beyond belief.

Rebels

The case of al- ‘Abbās b. Raḥḥū offers us a closer look at the lives of the

jenets in the lands of the Crown of Aragon and demonstrates that not only