CHAPTER FOUR
Tracing the Crown of Aragon’s efforts to recruit jenets across the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries reveals not only the broader scope of their ambitions but also the deeper history of their imperial ideals.1 As evidenced by Latin, Romance, and Arabic treaties in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon—which include the Cartas árabes, one of the most important and underexamined collections of medieval Arabic chancery material in the world—King Pere II and his successors recruited jenets not only from Granada but also from the rulers of North Africa. These new soldiers joined the ranks of the Marīnid Ghuzāh already in the service of the Aragonese kings. Beyond bringing more soldiers into the lands of the Crown of Aragon, however, these recruitment efforts demonstrate two significant facts. First, they show that the Aragonese kings’ efforts to rule Sicily were inextricable from their desire also to rule Tunis. While these kings claimed the legacy of the Holy Roman emperors to justify their conquest of Sicily, they invoked the memory of the Almohad caliphs to justify their authority in North Africa. In other words, they cast themselves as the heirs of not only the Hohenstaufens but also the Almohads. Second, these records show the recruitment of Muslim soldiers was not merely a curious parallel to but also developed out of the well-known and longer-standing use of Christian soldiers by Muslim rulers. In this period, Christian and Muslim troops were exchanged for one another through agreements by which Aragonese and North African rulers accepted limits upon the use of foreign soldiers that respected political and religious boundaries. As such, Christian militias in North Africa provide another important precedence for the jenets. These connections to the history of North Africa point to a deeper genealogy for the ideas that linked emperors to privileged servants, one that led beyond Sicily and into the ancient Mediterranean. These same ideas would also rattle forward into the modern world.
The Tunisian Matins
The wars between the Aragonese and Angevins over claim to the title of Holy Roman emperor—which framed the first part of this book—were also fought in North Africa. After the Angevin seizure of Sicily in 1266, Hohenstaufen loyalists, men like Federico Lancia, who was Conrad Lancia’s father, took refuge in Tunis.2 The Ḥafṣid sultan, al-Mustanṣir (r. 1249–1277), had been a tributary of Frederick II and refused to recognize the authority of the Angevins. It was in this context that King Louis IX decided to launch a crusade against Tunis in 1270. Louis, who supported the Angevin claim to Sicily, aimed to destroy the remaining Hohenstaufens.
As these events unfolded, King Jaume I watched cautiously from the margins. He tacitly offered support to the Hohenstaufen loyalists in Tunis by permitting Aragonese subjects abroad to participate in defense of the city. Pleading before the pope, Jaume even gained approval for the Christian militias in the service of the Ḥafṣids.3 To put this plainly, both French crusaders and Aragonese defenders of Tunis had papal permission for their opposing actions. In the end, however, the destructive effect of the French crusade convinced Tunis to pay both allegiance and annual tribute to the Angevins at Sicily. Many of the surviving Hohenstaufen loyalists thus fled to the Aragonese court, to the protection of Constanza, the wife of the future King Pere II.
Given Pere’s pretension to style himself the rightful heir to Frederick II, it is not surprising that he was more aggressive than his father on the matter of Tunis. A new sultan, al-Wāthiq (r. 1277–1279), was patently hostile to the Aragonese.4 Thus, in an effort to find a more pliable and predisposed ruler, Pere entered into an alliance with a Ḥafṣid prince named Abū Isḥāq, who was living in exile in Muslim Granada. Ten Aragonese galleys, under the command of Conrad Lancia, supported the coup that placed Abū Isḥāq (r. 1279–1283) on the Ḥafṣid throne.5 This sultan, however, was less of a puppet than Pere had hoped. In response, the king briefly contemplated imposing “Peter of Tunis,” a son of Abū Isḥāq who had converted to Christianity, on the Ḥafṣid throne but abandoned this prospect.6
The aggression against Tunis continued. In 1282, an Aragonese fleet landed at Collo (al-Qull) to support a rebellion against Abū Isḥāq.7 Although the rebellion failed, the Aragonese navy was perfectly placed to take advantage of a sudden uprising against Angevin rule in Sicily, the episode known as the Sicilian Vespers. Nevertheless, what is striking is that despite the fact that the conquest of Sicily had been the Crown of Aragon’s highest ambition for over a decade, the Aragonese navy immediately turned around, as if before the matins, and attacked North Africa once again. Tunis remained central to the Crown of Aragon’s unfolding ambitions in the Mediterranean.
When the French crusade against the Crown of Aragon was announced, however, Pere halted these raids along the Tunisian coast.8 In 1285, at Coll de Panissars, where he was preparing his scant armies to face a massive French invasion and where he was awaiting the arrival of the five jenets, riding mules borrowed from a Jew in Granada, Pere also met ambassadors from Tunis. These ambassadors agreed to peace and agreed to pay an annual tribute to the Crown of Aragon.9
Before his death a few months later, Pere stipulated the division of the lands of the Crown between his sons, Alfons and Jaume. Jaume, who would later become King Jaume II (r. 1291–1327), inherited the island of Sicily, while Alfons II (r. 1285–1291), his elder son, inherited the remaining kingdoms and the crown itself. The purpose of this division was to free Sicily from the prying hands of Catalan and Aragonese noblemen, who had threatened Pere’s authority with rebellion. But this division had little effect on the dangers that Alfons and later Jaume would face. The Crown of Aragon remained under threat from the Unions within and the Papacy, the French, and the Castilians without. Thus, for his part, King Alfons responded to these threats just as his father had. He turned to the jenets. And as three interlocking missions to recruit these soldiers from North Africa in 1286 reveal, in the midst of crisis, he also held on to his father’s ambition of mastering North Africa. Pere’s early attempts at asserting his authority over Tunis foreshadowed Alfons’ own.
Three Missions
In December 1286, two ambassadors, Pere de Deo and Abrahim Abengalel, a Jew, were issued instructions for a mission to the court of the Marīnid sultan Abū Ya‘qūb.10 The first half of their negotiations was intended to deal with the recruitment of jenets. Alfons instructed his ambassadors to convey two sentiments to Abū Ya‘qūb: first, that “from Pere, his father, and Jaume, his grandfather, he has learned of the good will of the sultan,” and second, that “from his father, Pere, he also has learned of the aid (valença) of his [the sultan’s] knights (companya sua de cavalers) that profited the king in his war against the French.” Significantly, this document reveals that the Marīnids had acknowledged if not authorized the participation of their cavalry in the defense of the Crown of Aragon against the French crusade in 1285. Alfons further instructed his ambassadors to tell Abū Ya‘qūb that “he [Alfons] has learned that the sultan can offer him 2,000 jenets for his mission (II mile janets ab sa messio).” He therefore authorized Pere and Abrahim to conclude a peace treaty with the Marīnids. According to its terms, Abū Ya‘qūb would initially provide Alfons with 500 jenets, and Alfons, in turn, would provide the sultan with five galleys or more if required.11 The rulers also agreed to place restrictions on the use of these troops and navies: Alfons promised only to assist the sultan against Muslims, and the sultan would only aid Alfons against Christians.12
The deeper purpose of this exchange of troops was revealed by the remaining instructions, namely a proposed joint invasion of Tunis. First, Alfons promised to release into Marīnid custody a captive referred to only as “Margam” in this document as well as others in the registers of the Archive of the Crown of Aragon. “Margam” was undoubtedly Murghim b. Ṣābir, whose captivity in Barcelona was noted by Ibn Khaldūn.13 Murghim was also a chief of the Banū Dabbāb, an Arab tribe, and more importantly, a prominent enemy of the Ḥafṣids. Second, Alfons instructed his ambassadors to tell Abū Ya‘qūb that any ships supplied by the Crown of Aragon must immediately be employed against Tunis. Third and last, in the event the Marīnids captured Tunis, the annual tributes and other rights (els los tributz els altres dretz) of the Aragonese kings would be maintained.14 The importance of these negotiations to understanding the Aragonese king’s goals is not mitigated by the fact that a signed agreement with the Marīnids never followed.15
At the same time that Pere and Abrahim traveled to Fez, an Aragonese ambassador named Pedro Garcia succeeded in signing a treaty with the ‘Abd al-Wādid ruler, Abū Sa‘īd ‘Uthmān b. Yaghmurāsan (r. 1283–1304), for the exchange of troops.16 In this case, however, the Christian soldiers in question were already in the service of Abū Sa‘īd. They were members of a militia under the command of Jaume Pere, an illegitimate son of King Pere II.17 Alfons’ instructions to Pedro Garcia began by asking the ambassador to “express his desire to be friends with him [the sultan] just as his father, King Pere, and grandfather, Jaume, were.”18 The focus of these negotiations, however, was the treatment of Christian soldiers in Tlemcen. Alfons requested that all these Christian troops, regardless of origin, be placed under Aragonese law (fuero d’Aragon) and under the command of an alcaidus or alcayt, nominated by the Aragonese king. (The Arabic al-qā’id comes into Latin as alcaidus or alcaldus and into Romance as alcayt or other similar variants. Although the Arabic simply means leader, in the context of Christian militias these terms specifically meant captain.)19 Alfons also stipulated the amount of these soldiers’ salaries, the manner in which they would be housed, that they should be properly provisioned with horses, camels, and mules, and finally, that they should have a priest accompanying them.20 In short, Alfons was aiming to gain control over all aspects of the soldiers’ physical, legal, and liturgical lives. He sought to mark these soldiers out not only as Aragonese subjects in North Africa but also as Christians.21 In return for the service of these Christian mercenaries, Alfons requested that Abū Sa‘īd supply the Crown with Muslim troops whenever their help was required (cada que mester oviere su aiuda).22 Thus, again, the jenets were linked to soldiers of the other faith, moving in the other direction.
At the same time as the embassies to Fez and Tlemcen, Alfons order another mission under the leadership of Conrad Lancia to travel to the Ḥafṣid court.23 Lancia’s instructions were short and his purpose narrow. He was meant to renew and enlarge the parts of the treaty signed by King Pere at Coll de Panissars, particularly those parts related to the treatment of Christian soldiers in the service of the sultan. As with Garcia’s mission to Tlemcen, Alfons requested that all Christian soldiers, regardless of origin, should be placed under the jurisdiction of an Aragonese alcayt.24 Provisions were also made for salaries and housing.25 But Lancia’s instructions make no mention of recruiting jenets. These final negotiations merely aimed at maintaining the status quo, and the fact that no treaty followed them meant little to the Aragonese king. Lancia’s mission to Tunis masked the most fascinating part of Alfons’ Mediterranean strategy.
The Last Almohad
In order to understand what followed, what grander plan lay behind these three missions, one must step back fifteen years to the collapse of the Almohad Empire. On August 31, 1269, as the Marīnid cavalry approached the rose walls of Marrakesh, the last Almohad caliph, Abū Dabbūs (r. 1266–1269), rode into battle, fell from his charger, and was killed.26 His family fled high into the Atlas Mountains, the sacred center of the Almohads, where their mission began, and hid until Marīnid troops finally captured them in 1276, putting an end to their rule in North Africa.27 In his account of the empire’s fall, the historian Ibn Khaldūn added the following detail:
[Abū Dabbūs’] sons scattered and were overthrown in the land. One of them, ‘Uthmān, fled to eastern al-Andalus and settled with the tyrant of Barcelona (ṭāghiyat Barshilūna) and was treated well. There, he found the sons of his uncle (a‘qāb ‘ammihi), the Almohad lord (al-sayyid) Abū Zayd, the false convert (al-mutanaṣṣir; this may be translated as “convert” or “impostor”), brother of Abū Dabbūs, living in the lands of the enemy. They [the sons] held an esteemed position (makān wajāh) on account of the flight (nuzū‘) of their father from his religion [Islam] (dīnihi) to theirs [Christianity].28
Abū Dabbūs’ son, ‘Uthmān, had chosen exile in Iberia, where he sought the protection of his cousins. These were the sons of the Almohad governor of Valencia, Abū Zayd, who had converted to Christianity after the kingdom’s conquest by the Crown of Aragon.29 But from this moment, Ibn Khaldūn said nothing more about ‘Uthmān until his sudden reappearance in North Africa in 1289. What became of this Almohad prince during the twenty years when he disappeared from the Arabic record? Although Elena Lourie noted the presence of not one but several “Almohad princes” living in Valencia in 1285, she dropped the matter, unaware of the larger context.30
Between 1262 and 1285, there is also no evidence of ‘Uthman in the records of the Archive of the Crown of Aragon. We cannot confirm whether he did indeed seek refuge with the sons of Abū Zayd, but the history of Abū Zayd himself provides an important precedent for Alfons’ later dealing with ‘Uthmān.
Decades earlier, in 1225, facing rebellions against Almohad rule in al-Andalus, Abū Zayd fled to the court of King Jaume I. In exile and with the hope of regaining Valencia, he signed a series of agreements with the Crown of Aragon, each one progressively eroding his authority.31 On the eve of Jaume’s conquest of Valencia in 1238, Abū Zayd became a vassal of the king, and as a single charter of donation to the Bishop of Segorbe betrays, Abū Zayd also converted to Christianity. What is striking, however, is that he would keep this conversion a secret for another twenty-eight years.32
In his relationship with Abū Zayd, the secret convert, Jaume established a pattern that later Aragonese kings would follow, one in which they would assert their authority over Muslims through the legacy of the Almohads rather than against it. After his conquest of Valencia, Jaume faced both challenges and opportunities. On the one hand, he now ruled over a majority-Muslim population, one that would remain restive for decades to come. One the other hand, the conquest of Valencia allowed Jaume and his advisors to experiment with new ideas of royal authority.33 In Valencia, Jaume invoked the Roman principle of absolute jurisdiction (merum imperium) and established the first fully Romanized law code in Europe. These traditions marked a profound shift in Christian political theology, which is to say, ideas and claims about the relationship of divine to earthly authority. Enthusiastic legists tried to recast the Aragonese king as a divinely inspired lawmaker and judge over all his subjects, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim.
Recently and provocatively, Maribel Fierro has also argued that these ideas bear more than a passing resemblance to Almohad concepts of universal sovereignty.34 The revolutionary ambitions of the Almohads had been grounded in the theological doctrine of tawḥīd, radical monotheism or unitarianism. And although earlier historiography saw this fervent belief as a source of intolerance, Fierro has argued that Almohad policies toward Jews and Christians aspired less toward their conversion than the reversion of all believers, above all Muslims, to an uncorrupted monotheism.35 Ibn Tūmart, the founder of the Almohads, had developed a messianic and universalist political theology that aimed at the integration of all Muslims, Christians, and Jews into one community under the leadership of the caliph.36 Far from blind adherence to dogma, the Almohads argued for the supremacy of knowledge and reason as an instrument for this social, moral, and political transformation.37 They developed high degrees of legal and administrative centralization.38 And most famously, they patronized the rationalist political philosophy of Ibn Rushd (Averroes), whose works would have a profound impact on Europe.39 Within all these ideas, the Almohads saw the caliph as a divinely inspired and sovereign lawmaker. Although North Africa and al-Andalus eventually rejected the Almohads, their ideas arrived in Latin Christendom through the translation of key texts.40 In the figure of Abū Zayd, a Muslim before Muslims and a Christian before Christians, these overlapping and competing political theological traditions, Aragonese and Almohad, intersected.
When ‘Uthmān finally appears in the chancery registers in 1285, we find him living in the kingdom of Valencia. In addition to ‘Uthman, who is called “Açmon,” we find his brothers, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān (Abderamen), Muḥammad (Mahomet), and ‘Abd al-Wāḥid (Abdeluaheyt). The presence of ‘Abd al-Wāḥid is significant. The eldest of Abū Dabbūs’ sons, he was technically the last Almohad caliph because he held the title for five days after his father’s death.41 As these records show, the Aragonese kings had been providing houses and living expenses for these men and their families, in essence treating them as dependents and dignitaries.42 What is more, from 1285 to 1288, during the period that Pere II and Alfons II were facing a French crusade and the Unions, these four brothers also served as leaders of jenet companies, which is to say, they served as leaders of the very same Marīnid cavalry that had overrun the Almohads a generation earlier.43 For this service, the Almohad princes were paid twice what the average jenet received. The Aragonese kings, however, had a different purpose in mind for these men.
On July 29, 1287, in the city of Jaca, near the border with France, ‘Abd al-Wāḥid, the eldest of the Almohad princes, signed a treaty, written in Latin and Arabic (bi’l-‘ajamī wa’l-‘arabī), agreeing to a lifelong alliance with the Crown of Aragon in return for financial and military support for the conquest of Ḥafṣid Tunis and the restoration of the Almohad Caliphate in North Africa.44
The treaty was wide-ranging. ‘Abd al-Wāḥid promised to welcome and protect Aragonese merchants as long as they respected the rights and customs of Tunis.45 He agreed to pay annual tributes to King Alfons and his brother King Jaume of Sicily of 33,333⅓ silver (fiḍḍa/argenti) dīnārs and 16,000 silver dīnārs respectively, the former the traditional tribute paid by the Ḥafṣids to the Holy Roman emperor. The remainder of the treaty concentrated on matters related to Christian soldiers serving in Tunis. The Almohad prince agreed to transfer all of these Christian soldiers, regardless of their origin, to the jurisdiction (ṭā‘a wa-ḥukm/jurisdiccione et dominacioni) of the Crown of Aragon and its royal captain (al-qā’id/alcaldus), who alone would adjudicate all civil and criminal law cases.46 ‘Abd al-Wāḥid agreed to maintain the customs established “during the time of Guillem de Moncada,” a captain appointed by Alfons’ grandfather, King Jaume I.47 He also agreed to provide these soldiers with regular salaries, armed horses, mules, and other necessary provisions, mirroring the treatment of jenets by the Crown of Aragon.48 Differently than for the jenets, he promised to make alcohol available, one wine barrel (barīl [sic] al-sharāb/barrile vini) every five days for a knight and every seven days for a squire.49 In addition to matters of jurisdiction, pastoral concerns were also addressed. ‘Abd al-Wāḥid authorized the Aragonese soldiers to establish a merchant hostel (funduq/alfundicum) with the customary right to possess a church, celebrate rituals such as “[raising] the body of Jesus Christ (jāshū qarīsit/Iehsu Cristi) while ringing bells,” receive communion, and use a censer (mibkhara/turibula) for burial services.50 Finally, the prince promised to aid the Aragonese against all their enemies, whether Christian or Muslim:
Moreover, we promise you upon our word (‘alā ‘ahdinā/bona fide) that whenever you call upon us (nuṭlabu ‘ankum/a vobis fuerimus requisiti) by letter or messenger, we will help you with all our might to oppose anyone, whether Christian, Muslim, or otherwise, of whatever community (umma/condicionis legis), religion or creed (dīn aw i‘tiqād/fidei), and we will do this without deceptions, malice, or treachery (khudu‘ wa-khubth wa-ghadr/dolo, malo, et fraude).
The imbalance between the parties of this contract is underscored by the fact that Alfons, in turn, only promised to offer ‘Abd al-Wāḥid support against his Muslim enemies.51 Finally but rather typically for such interreligious agreements, the Almohad prince and Aragonese king swore on the Qur’ān and Bible respectively.52
In this treaty, Alfons asserted his dominion not only over Tunis but also over the Christian troops living there, who served in the armies and courts of the Ḥafṣids. Like his predecessors, Alfons was attempting to place a puppet on the throne at Tunis. This desire to ventriloquize, to speak through Almohad authority, is most obvious in the fact that the Arabic of this charter is a slavish copy of the Latin. The script is Maghribī but written unsteadily and riddled with errors, unusual word choices, and curious vocalization marks. All the witnesses to the charter are, moreover, Christians. In other words, this treaty was most likely the product of the Aragonese chancery, an agreement thrust upon ‘Abd al-Wāḥid. One might even be tempted to conclude that the whole document was a forgery if not for the events that followed.
After signing this agreement, it took some time for ‘Abd al-Wāḥid to depart for North Africa. In October 1287, Alfons transferred 2,000 solidi to ‘Abd al-Wāḥid for his journey.53 But as late as April 1288, the Almohad princes were still in Valencia, attempting to settle the debts owed to them for their service as jenets. In the meantime, in 1287, an Aragonese fleet, under the command of Roger de Lauria, had captured the Kerkenna (Qarqana) islands, an archipelago off the coast of Tunis, from which they terrorized the North African coast, carrying off Muslim captives, whose last traces can be found in the receipts of slave markets in Italy.54
From this point, Ibn Khaldūn picked up the narrative thread again, offering more detail than can be found in the chancery registers. Speaking not of ‘Abd al-Wāḥid but rather his younger brother, ‘Uthmān, Ibn Khaldūn explained that this Almohad prince had long maintained the hope of restoring the caliphate. And in an Aragonese captive by the name of Murghim b. Ṣābir, whom Ibn Khaldūn called the chief of the Dabbāb tribe in Tripoli, ‘Uthmān saw his opportunity to secure a foothold in North Africa.55 Using his influence at the Aragonese court, ‘Uthmān secured the release of Murghim and arranged to hire ships and soldiers with the promise to reimburse the Crown. The two conspirators, ‘Uthmān and Murghim, made landfall in 1289 in North Africa where, with the aid of Murghim’s tribe and the Aragonese fleet, they undertook the siege of Tripoli, just beyond the grasp of the Ḥafṣid sultan. According to Ibn Khaldūn, the siege lasted only three days before the coalition began to unravel. The historian al-Nuwayrī (d. 1333) clarified, moreover, that ‘Abd al-Wāḥid died in these early battles, leaving ‘Uthmān in command, a fact that may explain ‘Abd al-Wāḥid’s total elision from Ibn Khaldūn’s later account.56
Perhaps seeing the mission as failed, the Aragonese chose to leave the fight. Alfons was facing an emerging Castilian alliance with the French and decided reluctantly to reestablish diplomatic ties with the Ḥafṣid sultan. In December 1290, an Aragonese ambassador was dispatched to Tunis to renew the terms of Pere’s treaty at Panissars.57 Abandoned by the Aragonese, ‘Uthmān decided to take refuge with the Dabbāb tribe.58 But at some point, the Almohad prince must have fallen out with his Arab allies as well. According to Ibn Khaldūn, ‘Uthmān died on the Aragonese-controlled island of Jerba (Jarba).59 His last gasp in exile was also that of the Almohad Caliphate.
Das ist der doux commerce!60
Mapping Alfons’ effort to recruit jenets reveals a broad network of Christian-Islamic interaction, of which Conrad Lancia and Samuel Abenmenassé’s mission to Granada in 1285 was only a part. The Crown of Aragon regularly sent ambassadors to each of the major kingdoms of North Africa in order to recruit jenets for decades to come.61 The three interlocking missions above also formed part of an ambition to control Tunis, the last representative of Almohad authority in North Africa and the great rival of the Marīnids. The jenets were not disconnected from this ambition. As the accounts of Roger de Lauria held in the Cathedral of Valencia reveal, several jenet companies served aboard Aragonese ships, alongside both Mudéjar oarsmen and Christian knights from Rhodes and Lucera, as they raided the Tunisian coast.62 The strategy of the Aragonese kings in Tunis, however, was never to rule directly but rather over and through representatives of Almohad authority. Indeed, this policy continued well after the death of ‘Uthmān b. Abī Dabbūs, the last Almohad. Following repeated attacks by Roger de Lauria’s fleet along the Tunisian coast in 1313, Jaume II reprised this strategy with the sultan Abū Yaḥyā al-Liḥyānī (r. 1311–1317), a latter day Abū Zayd, who may have also been convinced to convert to Christianity.63 This was not mere politics. Just as the Aragonese kings cast themselves as heirs to the universal claims of the Holy Roman emperors before their Christian subjects, they also borrowed and adapted the universal claims of the Almohad caliphs before Muslims.
These missions also reveal a fact that has otherwise gone unnoticed. Over the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the Aragonese kings and North African sultans exchanged soldiers, Muslim jenets for Christian militias. As these treaties make clear, these rulers were not indifferent to belief. They neither employed religion as mere ideology nor were blindly obedient to it. Instead, in these treaties one finds creative attempts to navigate and negotiate emerging spiritual and pastoral concerns. Indeed, these concerns were a central aspect of the instructions issued to Aragonese ambassadors. But perhaps more strikingly, a regular feature of these exchanges was the mutual agreement on limitations for the use of these soldiers. Sultans regularly agreed to use their Christian militias only against their Muslim enemies, and the Aragonese kings agreed to use their jenets only against their Christian enemies.64 On some occasions, the limits followed political lines, as in the willingness of the Marīnids to let the Aragonese use jenets against the Ḥafṣids. Among these many treaties, ‘Abd al-Wāḥid’s agreement in 1287 to aid the Aragonese against all their enemies, whether Christian or Muslim, was unusual. To give one salient example of the degree of the respect for these limits: in 1323, the Marīnid sultan refused to return Christian troops in his service to support Jaume II’s conquest of Sardinia, which is to say, he refused to let these troops fight against other Christians, saying this would break with custom, but offered Muslim soldiers in their stead.65 Far from belying religious boundaries, these agreements for the exchange of soldiers proved to be a surprising confirmation of those boundaries. Religious commitments did not impede these exchanges but rather channeled them through certain types of interaction. To be certain, all interaction, all trade across the Mediterranean, was not bound and determined by belief or religious law, but the perduring assumption that interaction occurred despite or regardless of religion, that all commerce was what Montesquieu called “sweet commerce,” risks running so far in the opposite extreme only to achieve the same reductive end.
Christian Militias
The connection of the jenets to the longer-standing service of Christian soldiers to Muslim rulers exposes another narrative thread. It suggests a more profound ancestry for the jenets than that of the Hohenstaufen court. Indeed, by the late thirteenth century, when the Crown of Aragon moved to bring them under its jurisdiction, Christian militias had been well entrenched for centuries. What kind of precedent for the jenets did these militias offer?
Although the earliest evidence is sparse, within the Iberian Peninsula the use of foreign Christian soldiers by Muslim rulers can be traced at least as far back as the Umayyads (711–1031).66 As part of a wider military reform, the amīr al-Ḥakam I (r. 796–822) established an army of foreign, salaried troops, known as the ḥasham, composed of both Europeans and Berbers.67 Simultaneously, he also organized a palatine guard (dā’ira), a bodyguard, composed of Galician (Eastern European) and Frankish slaves or former slaves (‘abīd or mamālīk).68 Called “the Mute” (al-khurs) in chronicles—perhaps because they could not speak Arabic—these guardsmen were led by a Mozarab (must‘arab or must‘arib), that is, an Arabic-speaking Christian, captain (qā’id), named Rabī‘ b. Teodulfo.69 Al-Ḥakam’s son, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān II (r. 822–852) continued this tradition, employing foreign soldiers in both his armies and his personal guard.70 The palatine guard of slave soldiers is attested to again during the reign of ‘Abd Allāh (r. 888–912).71 The first Umayyad in al-Andalus to proclaim himself caliph, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III (r. 912–961), also employed foreign soldiers in his armies and entourage.72 Finally, the historian al-Maqqarī described Christian soldiers, dressed in parade uniforms, paying obeisance to the caliph al-Ḥakam II (r. 961–976).73 However scattered and fleeting this evidence from the Umayyad period may be, key elements of the later tradition were already in place.
The decline and splintering of Umayyad authority in Iberia that followed, known as the Ṭā’ifa period, increased the opportunities for military alliances between Muslims and Christians.74 In this climate, various rulers competed to cast themselves as the legitimate successors to the Umayyads. For instance, in imitation of the caliphs, the ruler of Valencia, Ibn Jaḥḥāf, was said to parade with an army of Christian military slaves (‘abīd) before him.75 The fragmentation of political authority also precipitated the movement of free Christian political exiles into Islamic courts.76 For one example among many, one need only mention the nobleman, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, also known as El Cid, who served the Muslim ruler of Zaragoza in the eleventh century before establishing his own principality.77
Superficially, the events of the eleventh and twelfth centuries appeared to be less propitious to such border-crossing activity on the peninsula. Two Berber dynasties, the Almoravids and Almohads, successively united al-Andalus under a single authority and appeared hostile to religious interaction. Simultaneously, from north of the Pyrenees, crusade ideology entered into the Iberian Peninsula from as early as the reign of Pope Alexander II (r. 1061–1073). All this did little, however, to impede the movement of men and arms into armies of the other faith. The enthusiasm for crusading quickly dissolved.78 And individuals like Fernando Rodríguez de Castro (1125–1185), a Castilian nobleman, enrolled in the armies of the Almohads seemingly without compunction. His son, Pedro Fernández, fought with the Almohads at the battle of Alarcos in 1194 against Alfonso VIII of Castile.79
Although the Christian realms of Iberia united briefly to deal a devastating blow to the Almohads at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, the fragmentation of political authority that followed—a second Ṭā’ifa period—encouraged political exiles and warlords to cross into Islamic kingdoms once again. Despite papal censure, noblemen from Navarre, Castile, and Aragon regularly took up residence in Muslim territory.80 For instance, during the reign of King Jaume I, several rebellious Aragonese knights took refuge in Islamic Valencia, perhaps the most famous of these being Blasco de Alagón, who defected during Aragon’s crusade against Valencia to the court of Abū Zayd. According to Jaume’s autobiography, Blasco’s brother Giles converted to Islam, taking the name Muḥammad.81 It is worth repeating in this context that Blasco’s son, Artal, had jenets in his employ, underscoring that the family resemblance between these Christian and Islamic military traditions was more than coincidence.82 All the same, during this second Ṭā’ifa period, the flow of soldiers was sufficient such that Ibn Hūd, a rebel against Almohad rule, could maintain a guard of two hundred Christian soldiers in his service.83 This trading of allegiances continued well into the rule of the last Islamic principality on the Iberian Peninsula, the Naṣrids (1232–1492), who relied heavily upon foreign soldiers, both Berber and European, to serve in their armies and courts.84
The use of Iberian Christian soldiers in Islamic armies was not limited to the peninsula. The Almoravid ruler ‘Alī b. Yūsuf b. Tāshfīn (r. 1061–1106) was said to have first introduced the practice to North Africa.85 According the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, the chronicle of the reign of Alfonso VII of Léon (r. 1126–1157), these soldiers had been captives of war, who eventually rose to a privileged position:
At that time, God granted His grace to the prisoners who were in the royal court of their lord, King ‘Alī, and moved His heart toward them in order to favor the Christians. ‘Alī regarded them above all of the men of his own eastern people, for he made some of them chamberlains of his private apartments, and others captains of one thousand soldiers, five hundred soldiers, and one hundred soldiers, who stood at the forefront of the army of his kingdom. He furnished them with gold and silver, cities and strongly fortified castles, with which they could have reinforcement in order to make war on the Muzmutos [Almohads] and the king of the Assyrians, called Abdelnomen [‘Abd al-Mu’min], who attacked his territories without interruption.86
Precisely where these Iberian Christians came from remains unclear. They may have been among the Mozarabs deported by the Almoravids following a rebellion in 1125.87 The status and history of the leader of these troops between 1135 and 1137, Berenguer Reverter, the viscount of Barcelona and lord of La Guardia de Montserrat, is similarly obscure. Reverter likely came to North Africa of his own volition.88 Several letters held at the Archive of the Crown of Aragon suggest that this was the case.89 Moreover, Reverter served the Almoravids loyally, dying in battle against the Almohads.90 The careers of Reverter’s sons, however, underscore the complexity of parsing these soldiers’ motivations. One, known as Abū’l-Ḥasan ‘Alī b. Ruburtayr, converted to Islam and served the Almohads.91 The other, also Berenguer Reverter, moved between North Africa and Barcelona, signed his letters in Arabic and Latin, and eventually joined the Knights Templar, a crusading order.92
Although the same Chronica Adelfonsi Imperatoris reported that many Christian soldiers fled from Islamic lands to Toledo after the siege of Marrakesh in 1147 by the Almohads, within a year, the Almohads, too, began to employ Christians in their armies in North Africa.93 In fact, the rise of the Almohad Empire marked an important step toward the institutionalization of Christian militias. Like their predecessors and contemporaries, the Almohads maintained a palatine guard of Christian slaves or former slaves, whom they referred to as “Ifarkhān” or “Banū Farkhān,” an enigmatic term whose meaning is contested.94 Yet the Almohads also recruited large numbers of apparently free Christian soldiers from the Iberian Peninsula.95 The well-known Portuguese warlord Geraldo Sempavor (the “Fearless”) and the Castilian prince Don Enrique are worth mentioning in this context.96 For his part, Geraldo Sempavor pledged loyalty to the Almohad caliph Abū Ya‘qūb (r. 1163–1184) and was rewarded with lands in the western Atlas.97 According to Ibn Khaldūn, the caliph al-Ma’mūn (r. 1227–1232) reportedly recruited some 12,000 Christian soldiers through an agreement with Fernando III of Castile.98 Significantly, these soldiers were allowed to build a church at Marrakech.99
After the rise of the Almohads, the influence of these soldiers in royal courts appeared to increase. Once in the corridors of power, Christian militias and their captains became embroiled in intrigues and palace coups.100 Nevertheless, as Ibn Khaldūn explained, they held a reputation for fierce loyalty and were prized as heavy cavalry, which was unknown in North Africa (fig. 4):
We have mentioned the strength that a line formation [of heavy cavalry] behind the army gives to fighters who use the technique of attacking and fleeing (al-karr wa’l-farr). Therefore the North African rulers have come to employ groups of Franks (ṭā’ifa min al-Ifranj) in their army, and they are the only ones to have done that, because their countrymen only know how to attack and flee.101
These knights collected taxes for the caliphs, suppressed rebellions, and participated in demonstrations of force (maḥalla) among the nomadic tribes at the empire’s fringes.102 The Almohads only seemed to have hesitated to use these soldiers against other Christians.103 In practice, this trust was well placed. Christian militias played a prominent role in the defense of the Almohads against the advancing Marīnid armies.104 In one striking example of loyalty, after the conquest of Fez in 1248, two Christian captains, who were called Zunnār and Shadīd, conspired with the inhabitants of Fez to expel the Marīnids.105
Despite the fact that the Almohads had depended upon Christian soldiers in their wars against them, the new North African kingdoms—the Ḥafṣids at Tunis, the ‘Abd al-Wādids at Tlemcen, and the Marīnids at Fez—systematically recruited these very same men to serve in their armies and in their courts.106 In a telling instance, after their victory over the Almohads, the ‘Abd al-Wādids incorporated their rival’s Christian guard, mainly men of Castilian origin, into their armies and royal entourage:
After the death of al-Sa‘īd [Abū’l-Ḥasan ‘Alī al-Sa‘īd (r. 1242–48)] and the defeat of the Almohad army, Yaghmurāsan employed some of the corps of Christian troops that were in al-Sa‘īd’s army (qad istakhdamaṭā’ifa min jund al-naṣārā alladhīna fī jumlatihi), grateful to add to their number to his army and as well as display them in his military processions (al-mawāqif wa’l-mashāhid).107
But these troops remained loyal to the Almohads and eventually rebelled, leading the ‘Abd al-Wādids to expel them. In the wake of this rebellion, however, rather than ending the practice of using foreign militias, the sultan in Tlemcen simply sought replacements from the lands of the Crown of Aragon.108 The value of these Christian soldiers thus outweighed the threat of subversion.
In general, the use of Christian soldiers by these three kingdoms followed the pattern established in earlier periods. Independent warlords and political exiles—for example, the sons of the Castilian king Ferdinand III (r. 1217–1252) and the nobleman Alonso Perez de Guzmán (1256–1309), also known as Guzmán el Bueno—traveled to North Africa.109 Like their predecessors, these kingdoms also recruited soldiers directly from the kings of the Crown of Aragon and Castile. Moreover, these sultans continued to employ royal guards, composed of slaves or former slaves.110 And most significantly, they never employed Christian militias against Christians on the Iberian Peninsula. As Ibn Khaldūn underscored in his discussion of these militias in the fourteenth century, “The rulers in the Maghrib do this [use Christians] only in wars against Arab and Berber nations, in order to force them into submission. They do not use them for holy war, because they are afraid that they might take sides against the Muslims. Such is the situation at this time.”111 Despite such constraints, the use of Christian was widespread.
By the time one reaches the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the period best illuminated by the chancery registers of the Archive of the Crown of Aragon, the employment of soldiers was not only thoroughly entrenched but had also become an “affair of state,” a fact that brought these armies greater legitimacy, authority, and influence in North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula.112
As seen in the case of Alfons’ three missions above, the Aragonese kings were concerned principally with asserting their jurisdiction over Christian soldiers in North Africa.113 In this regard, they were most successful in Tunis and Tlemcen. By contrast, in Fez, their influence was split: Aragonese and Castilian troops competed with each other for control, backing different factions at court, leading to decades of intrigue.114 Nevertheless, control over the traffic in Christian soldiers to all three North African kingdoms was an Aragonese diplomatic priority in the thirteenth century.115
The earliest Aragonese intervention into the lives of Christian militias in North Africa can be roughly dated to the 1250s. In that period, the captain William de Moncada approached the Aragonese king to help settle a salary dispute with the Ḥafṣid sultan in Tunis.116 The resulting agreement with the sultan would become the standard invoked during later negotiations, as it was, for instance, in the treaty of ‘Abd al-Wāḥid, the Almohad prince.117 In accepting the service of Christian knights, Muslim rulers had to confirm what they recognized as customary privileges related to pay and religion.118 They agreed to salaries for different ranks of soldiers from squire to knight. They recognized pastoral concerns and made assurances that these soldiers would be free to perform religious services.119 The Aragonese kings assigned Christian militias uniforms and banners, bearing the colors of the Crown of Aragon, a white cross on a colored background, an image that reportedly drew complaints from some Muslims in North Africa.120 But perhaps most significantly, the Aragonese king gained the right to name a captain (Lat. alcaidus or Rom. alcayt) over these soldiers, who would administer justice on the king’s behalf.121
In an effort to appeal to the powerful captains of these Christian militias, the Aragonese kings extended them honors and privileges. These captains were called upon to serve as ambassadors and translators, as representative of the Crown of Aragon in North Africa.122 The first Aragonese captain named at Tlemcen, William Gauceran, was forgiven his participation in rebellion against the king.123 Kings also granted these soldiers immunity from any religious crimes that they might incur or had incurred while aiding non-Christians.124 This privilege could also be granted to an entire family line in perpetuity.125 Honors and privileges such as these were expressions of the new jurisdictional prerogatives of the Aragonese kings and mirrored their treatment of jenet elites.
Earlier studies of Christian militias in North Africa have concluded that these soldiers were consciously transgressing or ignoring religious boundaries.126 These negotiations and privileges from the thirteenth century suggest, in contrast, that religious or, more precisely, pastoral concerns were of central importance to the soldiers. North African caliphs and sultans permitted Christian militias to build and maintain churches and to celebrate public rituals. Soldiers sought absolutions from the Aragonese kings for their sins in serving Muslim rulers.
What is more, popes and religious lawyers were both more permissive of and involved in these activities than one might imagine. It is true that in 1214, after the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, Innocent III (r. 1198–1216) excommunicated all Christians who offered military aid to Muslims.127 Within the peninsula, the archbishop of Toledo similarly condemned the mercenaries in North Africa in 1222 or 1223.128 Nevertheless, as Simon Barton and Michael Lower have shown, these rigid attitudes masked flexibility.129 Over the thirteenth century, the papacy eased or added subtlety to its stance toward Christian militias in North Africa. Fearing that they would alienate Christians living abroad, some popes began to recognize the spiritual needs of Christian mercenaries. Honorius III (r. 1216–1227) absolved these soldiers of their sins and urged the Almohad Caliph to allow them to practice Christianity freely.130 For his part, Innocent IV (r. 1243–1254) saw the Muslim sultans’ dependence upon these troops as an asset and used the threat of withdrawing his approval of their residence in North Africa for diplomatic leverage. By the time of Nicholas IV (r. 1288–1292), the pope claimed that the presence of Christian soldiers might have a positive effect on the conversion of the Muslims.131 Ramón de Penyafort (d. 1275), the master-general of the Dominican Order and advisor to Jaume I, clarified that only soldiers who had the king’s permission to serve in North Africa should be considered licit.132 For his part, the bishop of North Africa openly acknowledged the leadership of Bernat Segui in Morocco.133 Were these venal gestures or attempts to justify political ends? Just like the Aragonese kings, the Papacy and religious authorities moved belatedly to legitimize the enduring presence of Christian soldiers in Muslim kingdoms, but they also bent to meet the desires of these soldiers for spiritual recognition. These thirteenth-century popes were not indifferent to the beliefs and practices of Christian soldiers in North Africa.
The Aragonese control over Christian militias in North Africa peaked during the thirteenth and the early fourteenth centuries. By the middle of the fourteenth century, both Aragonese and Castilian influence appeared to have waned.134 In Tunis, where the Aragonese had been strongest, one finds a Genoese captain in 1358.135 The movement of fifty thoroughly assimilated families of Christian soldiers, known as the farfanes, from Fez to Castile at the end of the fourteenth century may have indicated that the political climate in Morocco had shifted away from reliance on non-Muslim troops.136 Nevertheless, these militias continued to exist elsewhere in North Africa. Roser Salicrú has found permissions for individual Castilian soldiers to depart for North Africa as late as the fifteenth century.137 When the friar Juan Gallicant arrived in Tunis in 1446 to negotiate the release of captives, he sought the assistance of the captain of the Christian militia, Mossen Guerau de Queralt.138 The pilgrim Anselm Adorno found a thriving and well-assimilated Christian community at Tunis a few decades later.139 Almost at the end of Ḥafṣid rule, Leo Africanus (d. 1552) attested to the continued existence of a Christian “secret guard” in Tunis.140 In other words, while official exchanges of soldiers had vanished, Christian royal guardsmen, at the very least, continued to serve in North African courts.
The use of Christian Iberian soldiers by the Muslim rulers of al-Andalus and North Africa provides an important precedent for the jenets. From at least the eighth century, Christian soldiers were present in Islamic armies and courts. In the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the Almohads institutionalized the use of these soldiers. Their agreements with Christian kings regularized customs and practices concerning pay, limitations on use, and spiritual and liturgical practices. When the Aragonese kings ultimately sought to recruit jenets from North Africa in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, these customs were either implied or explicitly invoked. The employment of Muslim jenets grew out of and into an already established tradition. The Mediterranean trade in “infidel” soldiers also declined in tandem. In parallel with the case of the guardia morisca of the Castilian kings, after Christian soldiers disappeared from the Islamic armies of North Africa, they remained a regular feature of North African courts. In other words, in both regions, the performative and ornamental function of these soldiers also outlasted the military and practical one.
There is, however, one important distinction between these intertwined histories. Unlike the jenets, a large number of Christian troops in North Africa were, in fact, slaves or converts of slave origin. Although earlier studies have tended to emphasize the presence of mercenaries and warlords, men who were attracted by the prospect of making their fortunes or seeking political refuge, these free men were also employed alongside slave soldiers.141 Indeed, there were large Christian slave populations in North Africa serving in a variety of roles. Eva Lapiedra has argued that Arabic texts were intentionally ambiguous in distinguishing between free and slave soldiers. Chronicles refer to Christian militias sometimes specifically as slaves (‘abīd or mamālīk) and other times more generically as barbarians (‘ulūj) or simply Christians (rūm or naṣārā).142 If one wanted to generalize, then the term “slave” does appear more frequently to describe members of the royal entourage (biṭāna, dā’ira, ḥāshiya, khāṣṣa, ‘abīd al-dār, or sanī‘a).143 But for Lapiedra, this ambiguity reflected the fact that these distinctions in status were essentially irrelevant to Islamic rulers.144 From the perspective of the royal court, all foreign Christian soldiers, whether they were free or not, were still thought of as slaves, as royal possessions.145 This perspective not only resonates strongly with the Sicilian and Aragonese tradition of the servi camerae regis but also points us toward an even earlier precedent for the employment of “infidel” soldiers in western Mediterranean courts.
Military Slaves
Although armed slaves can be found in numerous contexts from ancient Greece and Rome to Revolutionary America, the scope and significance of military slavery in the Islamic world is unparalleled.146 Beginning at least with al-Mahdī (r. 775–785) and more fully under al-Mu‘taṣim (r. 833–842), the ‘Abbāsid caliphs imported Turkic slaves to serve in their armies, transforming the nature of Islamic military forces for centuries to come.147 As young boys, these soldiers were trained in both martial and courtly arts. Although they continued to be called slaves (‘abīd, ghilmān, or mamālīk), they were usually at least nominally converted to Islam and manumitted.148 Occasionally, these soldiers became part of the ruling elite, enjoying extraordinary wealth and power. This military servitude, in other words, was different from the “social death” associated with Atlantic slavery, different from domestic slavery or slavery in the service of great state enterprises.149 Strangers to the Islamic heartlands and cut off from their lineages, these men nevertheless celebrated their servile status as a sign of privilege in the ‘Abbāsid context. Their servitude was understood as a form of clientage (walā’), of obedience and loyalty to the ‘Abbāsid caliphs, whom they protected against internal and external threats.150 Indeed, these slave soldiers depended upon and reflected the power of the ‘Abbāsid caliphs. They were a simultaneously powerful and vulnerable figure.
Although the origins and nature of Islamic military slavery remain under dispute, the strongest influences for this idea of servitude appear to have been the pre-Islamic Turkic and Iranian royal guards.151 For example, the imperial guardsmen of the Sāsānid shahs were known as the bandagān, meaning “bondsmen” or “slaves.”152 The bandagān wore a distinctive dress—earrings or belts that symbolized servitude. They received certificates of manumission (āzād nāma) as a reward for extraordinary service. But critically, they were not slaves. Instead, as Peter Golden has argued, in this case an ideal of “political dependence was expressed in the vocabulary of slavery.”153 This background to the Islamic tradition of military slavery, in which slavery was symbol more than reality, underscores again the fact that the performative value of military slaves to imperial authority was as central as if not more so than their military function.154
The ‘Abbāsids not only adapted this tradition of military service but also expanded it dramatically, making it a central feature of Islamic rulership until the nineteenth century. For instance, in Khurasān, a region that now covers eastern Iran as well as parts of Central Asia and Afghanistan, the Samānids (819–999) and their successors, the Ghaznawids (977–1186) and Seljuqs (1037–1194), each employed Turkic military slaves. The Ayyūbids (1171–1250) also relied upon military slaves, who eventually established their own political authority in the form of the Mamlūk Sultanate in Egypt (1250–1517).155 Finally, the Ottomans maintained this practice into the modern period. As Yaacov Lev has recently contended, scholars have insufficiently examined the use of military slaves in North Africa as an extension of this phenomenon.156 North African rulers did not rely upon Turkic slaves, who lay at a distance, but rather European and black slaves (saqāliba and ‘abīd), who lay closer at hand.157 The Aghlabids (800–909), Ṭūlūnids (868–905), Ikhshīdids (935–969), and Fāṭimids (909–1171) all employed black African slaves.158 The Ibāḍī imām Aflaḥ b. ‘Abd al-Wahhāb (r. 832–872) had a royal guard composed of Christians.159 Thus, when the Umayyads and later the Almoravids and Almohads first employed Frankish and Galician military slaves—whom they also called ‘abīd or mamālīk—they were intentionally invoking and drawing comparison with the practices of their contemporaries and rivals to the east. Although it has not been, the history of Christian mercenary soldiers in North Africa in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries should be also understood as an important extension of this tradition of military slavery.
The ‘Abbāsids may have also influenced other emperors around the Mediterranean. For instance, in the ninth century, the Byzantine emperor established the Hetaireia (ἑταιρεία), an imperial bodyguard composed of mainly of Turkic Khazars, which is to say, the very same soldiers who were used in caliphal military retinues.160 Indeed, contemporary observers saw the ‘Abbāsid and Byzantine practices as indistinct.161 And as discussed above, the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II also maintained a palatine guard of Muslim slave soldiers.
From here, one need only travel a short distance to close the circuit of ideas. The thirteenth-century Aragonese kings not only styled themselves the heirs to the universal claims of the Holy Roman emperors before Christians but also invoked the supreme authority of the Almohad caliphs in North Africa before Muslims. Like each of these emperors and caliphs, they employed foreign soldiers, whom they treated as legal slaves, in their armies and in their courts as their personal protectors. The fact that the jenets were not actually slaves or of slave origin mattered little to the Aragonese kings just as it mattered little to Islamic rulers. The Aragonese tradition was not an aberration from the tradition of military slavery but a reflection of its deepest logic. In addition to adding military might, these soldiers brought imperial prestige to rulers. By treating these soldiers as slaves, as their possessions, the Aragonese kings articulated their claims to absolute authority and universal jurisdiction. The jenets were just another in a line of military slaves belonging to Mediterranean emperors.
This tradition, which intimately bound emperors and religious others across the Mediterranean, outlasted the Middle Ages. It was not simply a premodern mode of governance. In the nineteenth century, for example, rulers from the Ottoman governor of Baghdad to Napoleon Bonaparte employed mamlūks as elite guardsmen.162 But the most fascinating and relevant modern case comes from twentieth-century Spain. In addition to casting himself as the new El Cid, a preserver of Spanish Catholicism, General Franciso Franco (1892–1975) also established a Moorish Guard (Guarda Mora) of some 80,000 troops brought from Morocco, who served in his armies and as his personal protectors.163 These troops fiercely attacked Republican sympathizers, suppressed rebellions, and appeared in parades alongside Franco, riding white horses, dressed in scarlet tunics with white capes, bearing turbans, and carrying lances. From a distance, Franco’s employment of these Muslim soldiers was seen as a failure of his Spanishness, his descent into “Moslem fatalism.”164 The service of these soldiers was seen as expression of their “semi-oriental loyalty,” of their slavish obedience.165 Seen from the history of the jenets, however, there was nothing surprising about any of this, or about the fact that when he was forced to disband the Moorish Guard, Franco dressed his new Spanish Christian protectors in the same red and white clothes, which is to say that he continued to dress them as Muslims. The fiction of sovereignty persisted.