THE EMERGENCE OF ARAGON-CATALONL".the fall ofValencia. To a large extent, the monarchy simply
perpetuated existing Arab administration, more obviously in
Valencia than in Majorca; James had become the Christian
king of a Muslim society, one which would retain a sizeable
Moorish population right through to 1610. Yet it was also a
society which could never cohere: the Christian minority
came to form a small ruling elite, and cross-cultural fertilisa-
tion was impeded by what have been seen as fundamental
psychological barriers: the audible contrast between Arabic-
speaking Muslim and predominantly Catalan-speaking Chris-
tians; the visible contrast between Gothic church-tower and
Islamic minaret, that between dean-shaven pork-eating Chris-
tian and bearded Jew or Muslim bound by dietary laws
and subject to the maximum possible degree to their own
separate courts oflaw.^33 For the Muslims, demoralisation was
expressed in the gradual exodus of the traditional Valencian
leadership, imams and noblemen, to north-west Mrica or to
Granada, strengthening the Islamic identity of the last Mus-
lim state in Spain, but weakening the powers of resistance of
those who remained, the mudijares, a Spanish word of Arabic
derivation which originally connoted domestic animals. It is
thus not really surprising that significant numbers of con-
versions occurred here, as also in Majorca; for instance a
large group in Valencia City in 1275. Moreover, there is still
some uncertainty about the ability of the old Muslim elite to
survive the upheavals of conquest, rebellion and reconquest
which marked the reign of James 1.^34
James had title (of sorts) to Valencia under past agree-
ments with the king of Castile to carve up Moorish Spain
between themselves; more difficult was the question of
Murcia further to the south, which had been assigned in
these agreements variously to Aragon and to Castile. Mter
the fall of Valencia James possessed a frontier with Murcia,
which, however, was from 1243 a Muslim tributary of Castile.
Alacant (Alicante) was willing to accept Aragonese lordship
(1240), butJames indicated that he could not take the city
under his wing without denying Castile its legitimate rights.
- R.I. Burns, 'Muslims in the thirteenth-century realms of Aragon:
interaction and reaction', in J.M. Powell, ed., Muslims under Latin
rule (Princeton, NJ, 1990), pp. 57-102, especially pp. 76-8. - Guichard, Les musulmans, vol. 2, pp. 476-7.