a sovereign crisis 41
reference to the jenets— demonstrates the problem. Dated October 13 ,
1265 , during the reign of King Jaume I, twenty years before the mission of
Conrad Lancia and Samuel Abenmenassé, this document is brief — a list
of expenses, copied into the registers:
Also, for the expenses of the jenets, 6 denarii....
Also, for the clothes of [i.e., given to] the jenets — 903 solidi
Also, for the clothes of the representatives of the jenets— 86 solidi
Also, for the cloth (pannus) of the jenets— 35 solidi
Also, 140 solidi, 6 denarii for cloth, tunics (aflabays), and thread
Also, for the shoes of the jenets— 15 solidi
Also, for the shirts (camisis) of the jenets — 35 solidi
Also, for thread — 8 solidi, 8 denarii
Also, for the shirts of the representatives of the jenets— 5 solidi, 8 denarii
Also, for tunics and thread — 9 solidi, 8 denarii.^10
While desultory, this list of accounts, recorded three years after the es-
tablishment of the Ghuzāh in al- Andalus and well before the first Marīnid
incursion into the Iberian Peninsula, is the earliest proof of an encounter
between the Muslim jenets and the Crown of Aragon. What was happen-
ing here? A payment was made for expenses to jenets. Cloth and clothes
were distributed to the representatives (nuncii) of the jenets as well as the
jenets themselves. As we shall see, payments for travel expenses and gifts
were typical of later negotiations for recruitment. The presence of an Ar-
abic translator at this encounter also suggests that these are the traces of a
negotiation.^11 Clothing was generally given to soldiers who had agreed to
enter the service of the Crown, and thus one might contend that this was
also a successful recruitment effort. The terse language — the fact that the
scribe did not explain who or what the jenets were — may also imply that
this was also not the Crown’s first encounter with these soldiers. One can
push further. These expenses appear in the account books of Prince Pere.
In fact, there is no evidence that King Jaume ever employed jenets, sug-
gesting that Pere may have been the first to show an interest in these sol-
diers, a claim that is borne out by the story told below. Additionally, these
records appear tucked among the expenses of the prince’s household —
his personal expenses — including, for instance, 11 solidi, 7 denarii to buy
a tunic for “a Saracen of the Lord Prince,” perhaps, a domestic slave.^12
Pere as well as later Aragonese and Castilian kings did employ Muslim
soldiers in their households — as members of their entourage and as their
personal protectors.^13 And although these shreds of evidence cannot give
