The Expulsion of the Muslims from Portugal (1496–1497)

The expulsion of the Muslim minority from Portugal, decreed by King Manuel I in December 1496, has been one of the most overlooked aspects of the end of religious tolerance in the Iberian Peninsula at the close of the Middle Ages. Using unedited documentary sources preserved in the national Portuguese archives, this article focuses on the expulsion of the Muslims from Portugal and seeks to challenge a number of assumptions concerning this unprecedented event. Three major questions concerning this expulsion are examined. What evidence is there that the expulsion of the Muslims did take place? Where did the expelled Muslims seek refuge? What were the causes of this expulsion? This article will endeavour to present a new hypothesis relating to the causes of this expulsion, which radically differs from that advanced by modern historians.     

A Possible Connection between the Philosophy of the Castilian king Alfonso X and the Risālat ayy ibn Yaqān by Ibn ufayl

This article explores the textual connections between two narratives: Ibn ufayl's (581/1185–6) Risālat ayy ibn Yaqān and a brief history of religions present in two works – the General Estoria and the Stenario – produced in the Castilian court of king Alfonso X (1221–1284). Both literary narratives deal with the intersection of philosophy and metaphysics. First, Alfonso X's cultural renaissance is contextualized. Under Arabic influence, Alfonso's collaborators created a cultural synthesis that was denounced by his son Sancho in the 1290s. Second, we compare Ibn ufayl's and Alfonso X's narratives. Ibn ufayl's model was probably adapted to justify a cultural programme that blended Christianity and Pagan inheritance. Unfortunately, there is no physical evidence to prove that Alfonso's circle was familiar with Ibn ufayl's work. Nevertheless, the analysis of a common genre – following A.W. Hughes's theory – allows us to contend that Alfonso X reproduced this type of text within a Christian context.     

Bring on the Dancing-Girls! (a Gadibus usque auroram)1

In Greece and Rome, Ionic rhythm appears to have been associated with erotic dances. A tune-type going with this rhythm is found in several of Alfonso's Cantigas (second half of the thirteenth century) and in folk music from around the Mediterranean, recorded from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. Could these tune-types (and their associated ground-basses) go back as far as Martial's Dancing-girls of Cádiz – and indeed to Euripides and Aristophanes? There is also a possible link with the kharjas of the Andalusian muwashsha.(h)āt, and a substantial connexion with the dance known from later sources as the Canaries. Not only is there evidence of a rhythm and associated melodic motive stretching over more than two millennia, but we can discern, even hear, parts of an unwritten tradition of improvised instrumental music and discover a harmonic vocabulary which mostly emerges on the written page only in the Renaissance.     

Muslim Freedmen in León,Castile and Portugal (1100–1300)

This article examines the social status of manumitted Muslim slaves in the Christian kingdoms of León, Castile and Portugal between 1100 and 1300. Modern historians had largely overlooked this social group of which very little is known. Using both law codes and other surviving Latin and Arabic documents from the period, the author examines the process of manumission. Emancipation did not mean complete freedom. A freedman emancipated conditionally could continue to be bound to serve his owner, depending on the particular terms of the contract. Furthermore, according to the legal codes, even if a freedman or freedwoman was manumitted unconditionally by his or her owner, they would continue to suffer legal disabilities due to their previous condition. The end result was that freedmen formed an intermediate social and legal category, no longer servile but neither completely free.     

The Development of Feudal Relations in a Post-Conquest Reality: The Experience of the Mozarab Community of Toledo (Eleventh–Thirteenth Centuries)

The conquest of Toledo by Alfonso VI (r. 1065–1109) in 1085 opened a period of transformation and restructure in the traditional patterns that had organised the former taifa. While some scholars state that, in the early years of the Christian conquest, the traditional features of the Muslim civilisation endured, it is the aim of this article to discuss to what extent it is possible to admit a real continuity in everyday practices, taking as a prism the experience of the Mozarab community of the city. Our hypothesis is that, under the apparent continuities, a process of transformation began, through which new feudal relations managed to infiltrate the previous forms of organisation of land, taxes and religion in order to undermine their basis and make them conform to northern patterns, applying policies of segregation and cooptation.