the unpaid debt 103
which, intriguingly, had been confiscated by the Crown from someone
else.^31 Were these selfless acts on the part of the Aragonese kings? Or
were they merely efforts to play the part of the good employer, to ensure
the jenets’ loyalty? To put the matter in different terms, did the king care
for his jenets? Can one detect an intimacy between the Christian kings
and their Muslim soldiers based on a shared sense of humanity?
Perhaps a final example will suffice to lay bare the problem of appeal-
ing to an essential and universal humanity as the basis for understanding
the relationship between the Crown and its Muslim mercenaries. In 1289 ,
King Alfons II intervened on behalf of the wife of Abdalla Abençiça, a
jenet in his service. Alfons explained his actions in a promissory note di-
rected to Arnaldus de Bastida, his royal treasurer:
Since Ali Amari bought at our command in Jaca the horse of Abdalla Aben-
çiça, a certain jenet of ours, who died in Jaca, for the price of 55 duplas that we
ordered him to give, we order you, immediately, to pay Ali [back] for the said
duplas, which he gave to the wife of Abdalla.^32
While still on the field of battle at Jaca, King Alfons had ordered a Mus-
lim named Ali Amari to pay a fixed price for the horse of a jenet, Abdalla
Abençiça, who had just died in battle, and give that money immediately
to Abdalla’s widow. Was this command an act of compassion? Perhaps, in
this moment, one can glimpse a connection between the Christian kings
and their Muslim soldiers beyond religion or politics. If not grounded in a
shared military ethos or even a shared understanding of family, then per-
haps one can speak here of a genuine sense of human community grounded
on a small outcrop of suffering. Then again, perhaps, it was nothing of the
sort, merely an order to get on with the battle and put the horse back to
use. For the historian holding this faded and age- worn document, it can
only remain an open question.^33
Lawless
The jenets were principally raiders and bandits both before and after they
entered the service of the Crown. The Aragonese kings let these soldiers
loose along the frontiers of their lands and turned them against their Chris-
tian enemies: the French, the Navarrese, the Castilians, and even their own
rebellious noblemen. Raiding, occasionally alongside Christian soldiers,
