THE WESTERN MEDITERRA-NEAN KINGDOMS 1200-L~OOonce, and a further visit by James, now entitled also 'king of
Majorca', was necessary before the Muslim opposition was
flushed out of the mountainous cordillera, and before Min orca
accepted tributary status in 1231, subject to guarantees of
the right to practise Islam. The conquest of Ibiza was to be
the work of the see of Tarragona in conjunction with the
count of Roussillon and Prince Pedro of Portugal, in 1235,
and was essentially a private expedition licensed by James.~~
Pedro of Portugal was also entrusted with the government
of Majorca, but he spent little time on the island; the lack
of intensive government intervention perhaps helps explain
the extraordinary mushroom growth of the Catalan trading
community in Majorca, which was unfettered by heavy taxes
or complex regulations.
The invasion of the Balearics provides early clues to James's
attitude to the Spanish Muslims who were to fall under his
authority in increasing numbers in subsequent decades.
Rapid submission resulted, as in Minorca, in the offering
of a surrender treaty guaranteeing the virtual autonomy of
the subject territory, except for the right to conduct an
independent foreign policy.~'' Resistance resulted in a higher
price: those Majorcan Muslims who failed to accept James as
king faced loss of their lands and property, even enslave-
ment. The result was that Majorca gradually lost its Islamic
identity; indeed, the island was repopulated by Catalan,
Provenpl and Italian settlers, including Jews from Spain,
Languedoc and north Africa. There is no hard evidence
that the Muslims of Majorca even had their own community
organisation or aljama, as did the Jews, during the thirteenth
century; even the evidence for mosques is murky. The island
was heavily catalanised in speech, religion and personnel.
A few Mozarabs survived from pre-conquest days, and these
arabised Christians sometimes prospered under the new
regime. But many old Muslim communities were shattered
in pieces, often resettled on newly carved up estates, in
the hands of such absentee overseas lords as the count of
Roussillon; the Order of the Temple acquired handsome
estates, which - to papal alarm - were partly repopulated
- Fernandez-Armesto, Before Columbus, pp. 31-3.
- David Abulafia, A Mediterranean Emporium. The Catalan Kingdom of
Majorca (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 56-74.