Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia. William D. Phillips, Jr.
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and stone quarries or on public works projects. As one example, when the Moroccan sultan established a new capital at the city of Meknes early in the eighteenth century, he employed some two thousand Christian captives among the thirty thousand construction workers. Some captives worked as domestic servants and artisan helpers, and those with specialized skills and occupations often worked in their accustomed trades.77
Among the most famous of all Spanish captives was Miguel de Cervantes. He and his brother Rodrigo were traveling by sea from Naples to Spain in September of 1575 in the galley El Sol. Muslim pirates, led by two formerly Christian renegades, fell upon the Christian ship as it passed along the coast of Catalonia and took the Cervantes brothers along with the other captives to Algiers. There Cervantes would remain for five years. Though not of particularly exalted status, Miguel was a former military officer and carried letters of recommendation from two of Spain’s highest figures: the admiral don Juan de Austria and the duke of Sessa. That caused the Muslims to view Cervantes as an important figure himself and to set a high ransom of 2,000 ducats for him and his brother. Though his father exhausted the family fortune, he was only able to ransom Rodrigo. Four years later, the widowed mother finally was able to raise the money for Miguel and arranged for the Trinitarians to negotiate his release. His experiences can be seen in the statements that he obtained from twelve principal Christians in Algiers about how he had comported himself as a captive and, fictionalized, in several of his literary works. His captivity appears prominently in two of his plays, El trato de Argel and Los baños de Argel, and the chapters known as “The Captive’s Tale” in Don Quijote.78 The plays and the novel contain realistic descriptions of life in captivity and romanticized accounts of flight and escape (Cervantes attempted to escape four times), enlivened by depictions of remorseful renegades eager to return to the Christian fold, Muslim maidens seeking conversion to Christianity, and the inspirational guidance of the Virgin Mary. Cervantes was wise to secure written evidence of his bona fides. Some captives chose to convert to Islam to buy their freedom. This brought them condemnation from the Christians back at home, who branded the converts as renegades. The humbler ones blended into the local Muslim societies. Others rose to high military or naval ranks, often leading raids against their former homelands or serving as well-informed guides or scouts during raids. Enough of them tried to return to Christian lands and Christianity that all returning captives had to face a degree of suspicion and to prove or at least to swear that their faith had not faltered while in captivity. Many captives, like Cervantes, took the trouble to obtain written statements that they had remained steadfast Christians during their captivity.79
Some captives returned home, but they were likely few out of the many originally captured. The two sides frequently exchanged prisoners after the battles, as we have seen. Treaties between Christian and Muslim states frequently specified mutual repatriation of prisoners,80 and public and private exchanges took place periodically. By the fifteenth century, Christian raids on Muslim territory were almost always followed by truces whose terms included provisions for the Muslim rulers of Granada to turn over hundreds and even thousands of captives.81 The prime responsibility for securing the release of long-term captives devolved on the families of the prisoners. In the Muslim parts of the Mediterranean, the mechanisms for ransoming captives remained rudimentary and less developed than in the Christian parts, where both church and state devised means to help Christian captives to return to their homes. Up to about the thirteenth century, Muslims most often redeemed their coreligionists by prisoner exchanges. Thereafter, with Muslims more frequently on the defensive, the task of redemption fell on Muslim communities with support of local magnates. Often this meant that Muslims in places such as the Christian kingdom of Valencia redeemed local captives more readily than captives from North Africa.82
As early as the tenth century in Catalonia, church officials aided Christian captives. By the twelfth century, similar procedures were in place in both Castile and Aragon for those who wished to ransom a prisoner from the Muslims. The municipal law code of the town of Calatayud in the early twelfth century stated that the relatives of a Christian captive in Muslim hands could buy a locally held Muslim captive for the price the owner had paid and then take that person to exchange for their relative. If the exchange failed for any reason, the original owner could buy back the Muslim captive for the same price.83
This practice was general, though the details could vary. Often the captives tended to be of humble origins, and their families frequently lacked the financial ability to ransom their kin. Collective measures were needed, and, before long, officials and deputized merchants began to arrange for the exchange of captives. In the twelfth century, Alfonso VIII of Castile directed officials of the military orders to redeem captives, and in Catalonia the counts controlled ransoming. When peace treaties between Muslim and Christian kings called for mutual exchanges of prisoners, representatives of the Christian authorities arranged to receive the Christians. Soon private citizens, usually licensed merchants, took both ransomed Muslims and Muslim slaves into Muslim territory and returned with Christians whose ransoms were paid or who were exchanged for Muslims. They could also arrange to ransom prisoners on their own account. In all events, these agents received compensation for their activities. In Catalonia the official ransomer was called a mostolaf; the first ones whose names are known were four Jewish merchants early in the twelfth century. The term—exea—for such an official was originally used both in the Crown of Aragon and in Castile. It continued in Aragonese usage, but in Castile from the thirteenth century those who conducted these activities came to be called alfaqueques, from the Arabic al-fakkāk, an envoy or redeemer.84
The frontier was a permeable barrier, and people crossed back and forth for any number of reasons, some peaceful and some not. To solve problems that might arise, the Castilian monarchs, beginning in the fourteenth century, named special officials whose tasks included settling cross-border disputes and supervising the work of the alfaqueques. There were four of these agents, called alcaldes mayores entre cristianos y moros (chief officials [negotiating] between Christians and Moors), one for the archdiocese of Seville, and one each for the dioceses of Cartagena, Cádiz, and the combined dioceses of Córdoba and Jaén. Each alcalde had at his command a group of police agents known as the fieles del rastro (lit. faithful ones of the track, or faithful trackers) who pursued criminals who fled across the borders.85 Cuenca and other cities regularly taxed their citizens to raise funds for ransoms, and the monks of Santo Domingo de Silos ransomed captives in the kingdom of Granada and in North African ports.86
Two religious orders, the Trinitarians and the Mercedarians, assumed a major role in redemptions by the thirteenth century and coordinated fund raising for that purpose.87 In Christian Córdoba in the fifteenth century, whose citizens still ran the risk of capture and captivity in Muslim Granada, the members of the Cofradía de la Caridad de Jesús, a religious brotherhood, devoted much effort to ransoming captives. Monasteries from places far distant from the frontier, such as the Trinitarian monasteries of Burgos and Arévalo, sent money to help families to ransom captives.88 At times, monarchs directed the ransoming orders to favor the ransoming of specified captives, often associates of the monarchs.89 Examples of individual ransoming include Juan Batlle, a native of the kingdom of Valencia, who had a brother held captive in North Africa. In 1491 he bought a Muslim slave from a Christian merchant and arranged with the merchant to take the slave to North Africa, find the brother, and exchange the slave for him. In 1494 Francisca Bos sent a Muslim slave to Oran in a German vessel, with the slave to be exchanged for her husband who was being held there.90
Muslim captives in the hands of Christians could hope for redemption by a variety of means, many of them similar to those used by Christians and including exchanges of prisoners either immediately after battles or over longer periods. We have fewer individual stories from Muslim sources than from Christian, but one tenth-century example is illustrative. After his forces failed to take the town of Simancas during a campaign against the Christians in 938, Muḥammad b. Hashim, ruler of Zaragoza, became a captive. As the chronicler reported, “His hands were bound and the price demanded for him was excessive. [‘Abd al-Raḥmān III, the ruler of Córdoba from 912 to 961] did not fail in his efforts to ransom him, until that was made possible by heavy expenditure and burdensome expedients. He was delivered to Cordova [sic], a free