In this book Brian Catlos takes on the Herculean task of examining Muslim communities of Latin Christendom. This subject has been studied piecemeal over the years, but no one has undertaken a study of all Muslim subjects (Mudejars) under the yoke of pre-modern Christian rulers. Catlos covers the gamut of medieval Christian realms ruling Muslims over five centuries, from Iberia (with the largest and longest-lasting Mudejar population) to Norman Sicily, Hungary, and the Crusader States. He begins in the mid-eleventh century when Muslim rule in Iberia and Sicily started to unravel and the Church and kings of the Latin West took an active interest in Islam. He concludes with the forcible conversion and expulsion of Muslims in Iberia by the early sixteenth to seventeenth centuries.
Catlos divides Mudejar history in the Iberian Peninsula into three periods. Christian Spains I chronicles the first phase of the Reconquista (mid-eleventh to mid-twelfth centuries). Christian Spains II stretches from the 1150s to the 1350s, when the bulk of the Iberian Peninsula came under Christian control and relations between Muslims and Christians stabilized. Christian Spains III covers the demise of the Mudejar community (c. 1350–1526). By this point, the community represents the only area of Latin Christendom with a substantial number of Muslims. This period sees Mudejar communities at war with each other and deeply embedded in diverse networks of interdependence, subjugation, and mutual benefit.
Interwoven in this meta-narrative of Iberian mudejarismo is the story of Mudejar communities elsewhere in the Latin world. Catlos points out the striking sociohistorical parallels between the history of Mudejares in Norman Sicily and Iberia. Norman conquest of Sicily begins in the 1060s around the same time as the Castilian Reconquista and ends with the forcible deportation of Sicilian Mudejares to Lucera in 1224. In between is a remarkable symbiosis of Norman–Islamic culture that has left us with a rich legacy of art and scholarship. Mudejar experience in the Crusader Levant reflects similar episodes of convivencia and repression. It is only when the Crusaders settle in as rulers that a spirit of pragmatism driven by realpolitik takes hold. Even then, no effort was made to convert Muslims.
Catlos also addresses the non-indigenous Muslim communities of Hungary (Turkic tribes like the Bashkurts, Pechenegs, and Volga Bulgars) that had either migrated west or been taken as slaves. As recent converts to Islam, their connection to Arab–Islamic culture was tenuous. Hungarians had such good relations with their Muslim subjects that the papacy reprimanded them and Muslim soldiers helped to free Hungarian Crusaders.
This detailed historiographic investigation composes the first part of the book, which Catlos titles “Static Diasporas.” In the second part, Catlos addresses the sociocultural aspects of Muslims “Living in Sin.” This division has the virtue of laying out in great detail the historical basis for the in-depth discussion of thought, word, and deed that forms the intellectual heart of the book. In “Thought,” Catlos addresses religious anxieties of Muslims living under Christian domination and misperceptions of Islam. In “Word,” he skillfully tackles the administration of Mudejar communities and the application of lex Saracenorum (law of Muslims). Ideally, Muslims were to be judged secundam suam zunam (according to their own legal customs), but over time they lost status. Two Mudejar witnesses were equivalent to one Christian and, if caught for intercommunal adultery, Muslim men were severely punished by being hanged by their feet. In “Deed,” Catlos shows that in daily life Muslims and Christians were engaged in a diverse range of interdependent relationships.
Catlos's book is groundbreaking for many reasons. The foremost of these is that in the wake of strong anti-Muslim sentiment today, Catlos dares to present the other side of the picture: our medieval past when Christians mistreated and butchered Muslims. He gives lie to the story told by some Crusades scholars of Muslims thirsting for Christian blood. He shows that contrary to prevailing perceptions that continue to feed Christian anxiety of Islam, there were more examples of peaceful interaction and accommodation than there were of massacres. Boundaries between the communities, especially at the local level, were often blurred, and inter-communal interdependencies were the norm. Catlos provides us with a valuable counternarrative that will embolden others to pick up where he left off. This book offers an alternative textbook for the study of the Latin West and the roots of its interaction with the Muslim world.
