Casting a Wide Net: Mudejar Social and Economic Networks in Late Thirteenth-Century Spain

Royal chronicles spoke of Christian advances in Eastern Spain in the thirteenth century.  Royal scribes penned surrender treaties that aimed to classify and organize the newly acquired lands and their human resources, a large number of Muslims.  These sources, however, failed to register the experiences of the conquered Muslims or Mudejars and how they saw themselves as individuals and as members of a larger community that had for centuries brought them in contact with a rich, interconnected world.  This paper analyzes the social and economic networks that connected a group of Mudejars from the town of Cocentaina in eastern Spain to local, regional, and international markets—both in Christian lands such as Narbonne and Islamic lands.  In the 1290s, these Mudejar men became the new elite, after the old military leaders had fled to Islamic territory in the late 1270s.  These men appeared as witnesses for each other in court, bought and sold land, loaned money to Christians and to Muslims, and accumulated substantial wealth.  Their court appearances, as recorded in the Llibre de Cort del Justícia, chronicle their daily activities and how they functioned in a world that needed their skills and expertise.  Far from the textbook scenario described in the surrender treaties, these Mudejars crossed many boundaries and in doing so, redefined the “ideal” reality to which they had been assigned.