THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN KINGDOMS 1200-1500Despite occasional tension on the Valencian-Murcian borders
between James I and Alfonso X of Castile, the king of Aragon
was anxious to foster good relations with Alfonso, to the
extent of responding vigorously to Alfonso's appeal for aid
against the rebellious Murcians. The conquest of Murcia in
1264-65, funded by the Catalans alone in view of Aragonese
hostility to Alfonso X, was a textbook exercise in the sub-
mission of Muslim territory, even to the extent of taking
care not immediately to dispossess the Banu Hud who had
ruled there by Castilian leave, and who for another dozen
years were able to exercise limited authority as 'kings of the
Moors of Murcia'. The invasion was followed by extensive
Catalan colonisation in an area which, nonetheless, James
had no intention of holding permanently. In Murcia City
nearly half of all known settlers at this time arrived from
Aragon-Catalonia, less than one-fifth from Castile, whose
own population had already been drained southwards to
Seville and Cordoba in the 1230s and 1240s. James had con-
quered Murcia for Alfonso, and to Alfonso he delivered it.
The advantage he could hope to gain was the closure of
easy access to southern Valencia by Muslim troublemakers
from Nasrid Granada; the conquest of Murcia was also an
act in the gradual subjugation of Valencia.Y'JAMES THE CONQUEROR AND FRANCE
James's successes in the south have to be set against a less
successful record in the north. On the death of James's uncle
Nunyo San~, Roussillon reverted to the king, helping James
to consolidate his influence in the Pyrenees. Yet despite a
viable claim to Navarre, James lost out there to the count of
Champagne (1243), and later to the royal house of France
(1274), with the long-term result that a spur of French-
dominated territory stuck into Spain.% The crucial issue
was the definition of the relationship between France and
Catalonia: the rights of the counts of Barcelona in southern
France and Provence, and the historic, though now barely
audible, rights of the house of Capet in Catalonia itself.
- Harvey, Islamic Spain, pp. 44-8.
- Hillgarth, Problem, p. 13.