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

14 introduction

and why did the Aragonese kings rely on soldiers who had and would

again threaten their lands to serve in their armies and, more stunningly, as

their personal protectors? What was the logic that bound Christian kings

and Muslim holy warriors?

Chapter 2 , “A Sovereign Crisis,” and chapter 3 , “Sovereigns and Slaves,”

work together to reveal the context and motivations for the Crown of Ara-

gon’s decision to ally itself with its former enemies, the Marīnid Ghuzāh,

and thus reconsider the narrative for the emergence of ideas of political

sovereignty in the later Middle Ages. Following in the steps of two ambas-

sadors on the first known mission to recruit jenets, chapter 2 argues that

an emergency, prompted by the Aragonese conquest of Sicily, first led the

Crown of Aragon to pursue a wider alliance with these soldiers. Chapter

3 traces earlier ways of accounting for the alliance between the jenets and

the Aragonese kings: rational pragmatism and cultural accommodation,

both of which suggest that something other than religious belief united

these figures. In contrast to these views, it contends that the Aragonese

kings’ alliance with jenets can be fully understood only within their politi-

cal and theological claims to be the heirs to the Holy Roman emperors.

The employment of the jenets drew upon the spectacular tradition of cam-

eral servitude at the court of Frederick II, in which both Jews and Muslims

were simultaneously spoken of in exceptional terms, as privileged agents

and slaves of the emperor. In this context, claims to political sovereignty

emerged not against religious authority but rather through legal and theo-

logical concepts that bound emperors and religious others. Rather than

seeing the emergence of sovereignty as a uniquely Christian and European

narrative, this history places religious interaction at its heart.

Chapter 4 , “A Mercenary Economy,” extends this analysis into the

wider scope of the medieval Mediterranean by examining the relation-

ship of the Crown of Aragon to North Africa, regions that are too often

studied apart. Through a study of Latin, Romance, and Arabic treaties as

well as records of negotiation, this chapter connects the employment of

the jenets to the more ancient service of Christian soldiers for the Muslim

rulers of al-Andalus and North Africa. Together, Christian and Muslim

rulers and soldiers developed norms and traditions for the use of foreign

armies that respected religious and political boundaries. The intersection

of these traditions also points to a deeper genealogy for the relationship

of sovereign claims to “infidel” soldiers, namely the tradition of mili-

tary slavery in the Islamic world. As such, the case of the jenets provides