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

a mercenary logic 9

rights against the Aragonese kings’ claims to supreme authority, forcing

these kings repeatedly to capitulate, to surrender their sovereignty. These

internal and external conflicts over the expansion of Aragonese royal

power form the broader context for the alliance between the Crown of

Aragon and the Muslim jenets. From the reign of Pere II to that of Pere III,

across a century, every Aragonese ruler employed jenets in his courts

and armies, in battles against external and internal enemies, against the

French, the Castilians, and the Unions.

Who were these soldiers and where did they come from? The evidence

for the jenets comes principally from the chancery registers in the Archive

of the Crown of Aragon. These documents are summaries of royal corre-

spondence and orders, a product of the administrative reforms begun by

King Jaume I. The registers place two major obstacles before any study of

the jenets. First, these mostly uncatalogued records constitute one of the

largest medieval archives in the world. For the reign of King Alfons III

(r. 1327 – 1336 ) alone, there are 1 , 240 registers, each holding thou sands of

documents. Second, beyond the overwhelming quantity of documentation,

the nature of the evidence concerning the jenets is partial and fragmentary.

Across hundreds of pay registers, dispatch and requisition orders, letters,

reports, and court cases that refer to jenets, the royal officials of the Crown

of Aragon say little to nothing about the origin or organization of these

soldiers.

A full account of the Crown of Aragon’s relationship with the jenets

therefore demands a different approach, a view from the south. If impe-

rial desires drew the Aragonese kings into the Mediterranean, then they

also drew them into the affairs of North Africa. Thus, we need to tell the

story again, beginning on the other side of the sea. In the same period

that the Aragonese kings were consolidating their authority over the ter-

ritories of northeastern Spain, North Africa and al- Andalus underwent

radical transformation as a result of the collapse of the Almohad Caliph-

ate ( 1121 – 1269 ) (map 3 ).

Sometime after 1120 , the Berber religious scholar Ibn Tūmart (ca. 1080 –

1130 ) claimed for himself the title of al- Mahdī, the divinely guided one,

and began preaching in the vernacular to the tribes of southern Morocco.^23

This was the beginning of the last of three successive revolutions that

swept across North Africa, each led by a Muslim prophet appealing to the

Berber population, each opposed to the one before. Blending Sunnī and

Shī‘ī theological and mystical traditions, Ibn Tūmart espoused a seemingly

simple monotheism, one that emphasized the unity (tawḥīd) of divinity

and criticized what he perceived to be the anthropomorphist or polytheist