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

50 chapter two

Finally, Conrad arrived in Granada, where he met the chief minister of

the Naṣrid sultan as well as man named Muça Abenrrohh, who was the

well- known figure, Mūsā b. Raḥḥū. The fact that Conrad met both ‘Īsā b.

Idrīs and Mūsā b. Raḥḥū is extremely revealing. These men were the sons

and nephews of the three Marīnid princes — Muḥammad b. Idrīs, ‘Āmir b.

Idrīs, and Raḥḥū b. ‘Abd Allāh — who had crossed into Spain in 1262 at the

head of three- thousand Marīnid cavalry to become the first commanders

of al- Ghuzāh al- Mujāhidūn, the Holy Warriors. According to Ibn Khaldūn,

Mūsā b. Raḥḥū was commander of these soldiers (shaykh al- ghuzāh) on

three occasions.^80 His brother al- ‘Abbās b. Raḥḥū would later serve the

Aragonese kings as commanders of their jenets.^81 In other words, from the

outset, Conrad and Samuel aimed to recruit the Marīnid Ghuzāh, a band

of holy warriors who only a few months earlier had served alongside the

armies of Abū Yūsuf’s fourth and final jihād against Castile and the Crown

of Aragon.

The Arrivals

Conrad received his final letters of introduction to three jenet corporals

(cabos) named “Çahit Azanach, Çahim Abebaguen, and Tunart.” While

of lower rank than Mūsā b. Raḥḥū, they nevertheless found themselves in

the company of rather prominent men. Their names appear on a short

list of dignitaries whom Conrad and Samuel met, including two Marīnid

princes and the chief minister (wazīr) of Granada. None of these three

names — muddled in transliteration to Romance — are identifiable in Ar-

abic sources. By chance, however, these soldiers left an imprint elsewhere,

confirming once again the source of the soldiers whom Pere had chosen

to recruit.

Sometime after the arrival of the Ghuzāh in 1262 , a monk named Pero

Marín at the monastery of St. Dominic of Silos near Burgos began to re-

cord the testimonies of Christian villagers, who claimed to have escaped

from the hands of these North African raiders.^82 His Miraculos roman-

zados provides important evidence about captivity and slave markets, as

well as the effects of Ghuzāh raids on the Murcian frontier. The economy

and demography of regions like Lorca, for example, would not recover

for more than a century.^83 But miraculously for the historian, across sev-

eral of these accounts, we hear of two captains, named “Zahem and Zahet

Azenet,” who in 1283 raided the Murcian frontier with 1 , 000 jenet soldiers,

killing 200 men and taking many captives.^84 If these were the same men as