Brian A. Catlos

Accursed, Superior Men: Ethno-Religious Minorities and Politics in the Medieval Mediterranean

One of the most salient features of the medieval Mediterranean is that it was a zone of intense interaction and long-term cohabitation of members of various ethno-religious communities whose relations are usually conceived of as fundamentally adversarial. Yet Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived amongst each other in both the Christian- and Muslim-ruled Mediterranean, even during the era of the crusades. Typically, such relationships have been presented as either fundamentally hostile, or cordial, and as related to the “tolerance” that host cultures were inclined to demonstrate as a consequence of their own religious orientation. This paper takes a different, phenomenological approach by focusing on a specific manifestation of this interaction: the emergence of out-group political elites in confessionally defined societies. Through the medium of three case studies—a powerful Jew in Islamic Spain, a powerful Muslim in Norman Sicily and a powerful Coptic Christian in Fatimid Egypt—I demonstrate that the status of minority elites was related to concrete political circumstances grounded in the particular environment of the region, and that, despite cultural differences that might have distinguished them, these societies developed near-identical strategies for engaging with minority elites. The language of religious polemic, exclusion, and marginalization was present, but it tended to serve as a post factum rationalization for repression rather than its cause, and tended to be deployed decisively only in certain circumstances. This provides new insights not only into Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations, but the fundamental nature of Mediterranean history and society.

THE DE REYS (1220-1501): THE EVOLUTION OF A MIDDLE-CLASS MUSLIM FAMILY IN CHRISTIAN ARAGÓN

The Muslim minority of Christian Spain is often imagined as consisting of a marginalized, rural population, a large number of slaves, and a rather narrow economic and political elite—an image which arises in part as a consequence of the narrow range of sources which are typically consulted. Through chancery registers, letters, notarial registers, and court transcripts, this article traces the history of the de Reys, a Muslim family based in the Aragonese town of Huesca, from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. The de Reys were a prosperous, but not wealthy, family that maintained its prosperity over the course of three centuries by a variety of strategies. Notable among these was the family’s tenacious struggle to maintain their exemption from communal taxes, a struggle that turned them against their own community and drove them into alliances with local Christian parties.

Why the Mediterranean

The Mediterranean has now become broadly accepted as a frame of analysis in literature, history, and social studies, and particularly among European scholars. Nevertheless, there remains significant resistance to its use among medieval historians within Anglo-American spheres. Typical objections include the intimation that it does not reflect historical reality the way that established paradigms such as “Europe,” and the “Islamic World” do, that it is a consequence of an urge to “Political Correctness,” rather than a response to the data of history. However, while it may not offer a historical unity in terms such as institutional history, the present chapter argues that there are many underlying unities that mark the region as historically and cultural coherent, and that deploying it as a frame allows us to answer questions that traditional approaches do not.

Reflections: Talking Mediterranean

Reflecting back on the colloquium, Catlos suggests that Mediterranean studies should not be conceived of as a new, rigidly conceived paradigm to replace old, rigidly conceived paradigms, but rather a loose approach to certain problems that old approaches do not seem to be able to account for. Kinoshita notes the inevitable problems that come with terminology as it becomes associated with certain concrete concepts, and reflects on the composite nature of the Mediterranean. Hilsdale sees in the “thalassal optic” and the Mediterranean a means of distinguishing overlapping circles of influence that together lend meaning to objects. Farago sees in the Mediterranean frame, the potential to build out further towards a global understanding of art and culture. Finally, Horden reflects on the inevitability of politics invading our historical and cultural discourses, however determinedly we might wish to avoid it.

The mercenary Mediterranean: sovereignty, religion, and violence in the medieval crown of Aragon

Art and architecture, powerful vehicles of political propaganda and identity formation, are also almost entirely missing, although one can look elsewhere, namely to the numerous publications of Patricia Fortini Brown on the theme of ‘Venice outside Venice’, for insights. The problem of grasping the character of the Venetian state is perhaps best summed up at the end of Schmitt’s fascinating and insightful microhistory of Curzola, and his consideration of the system of institutionalized communication between the island and the capital. He ends his essay, however, by noting that one cannot generalize from Curzola to all of Dalmatia. Therein lies the problem: if scholars cannot generalize even about Dalmatia, then how can they possibly reach some agreement about the nature of this perplexing and wide-ranging entity, the Venetian state/commonwealth? The debate therefore continues.

Christian Identity amid Islam in Medieval Spain

The Mozarabs, long-neglected in the historiography of medieval Spain, have been the subject of considerable scholarly attention of late. No episode in their obscure history is more compelling that of the “voluntary martyrs” of Córdoba: the fortyeight Christian men and women who were put to death between 236/850 and 245/859 on charges of deliberate blasphemy or technical apostasy, and the two figures at the centre of the movement: St Eulogius of Córdoba (who was among the martyrs), and Paul Alvar, his layman friend and memorialist (who chose life). Long held by Catholic and nationalist historians to be emblematic of a broad Spanish, Christian resistance in the face of the Islamic domination of Hispania, the movement has been the subject of well-deserved revisions from the perspective of intellectual and social history, notably by Kenneth Baxter Wolf and Jessica Coope. Meanwhile, others, particularly Thomas Burman, have been subjecting the religious writings and intellectual culture of later period Mozarabs (post-1050) to careful analysis. Tieszen’s Christian Identity fills a space between these two approaches to the martyrs and the Mozarabs, by focusing primarily on the ninth century, but taking a Burman-like turn, subjecting the polemical and theological works of Alvar and his contemporaries to a much-overdue reexamination. Indeed, it is Tieszen’s intention not to use the polemics to plumbMuslim–Christian relations, but rather to explore these “authors’ Christian identity in the light of Islam”