52. Hussein Fancy, The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon
fascinatingly complex history
Hussein Fancy, The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2016.
The Mercenary Mediterranean is an award-winning history focusing on the thirteenth and fourteenth century territories of Aragon, ruled by Christian kings, and its Muslim neighbours. Fancy investigates the phenomenon by which Muslim holy warriors and crusading Christian knights took service under each others' rulers, though Fancy's focus is primarily on the jenets (Latin jeneti, Spanish jinetes, Catalan ginets, a term for Muslim soldiers in the pay of Christian lords during the 13th and 14th centuries). Through detailed study of the surviving documentation in Arabic and the Romance languages, including the archives of the Crown of Aragon, he traces what can be known of certain individuals as they crossed and recrossed borders between polities, using their careers to examine social and religious relations in the frontier zone between Christian and Muslim polities. He also uses them to examine the self-presentation of the kings of Aragon (with their connection to the Holy Roman Empire) in a European and pan-Mediterranean context.
While Fancy acknowledges the potential purely materialistic motives for mercenary service -- either taking service as a mercenary or employing mercenaries as a lord or king -- he makes a persuasive argument for the importance of religious considerations on both sides, a multi-vocal, multi-factorial set of considerations, goals, conflicts and compromises.
This is a fascinating book, and one which made me want to take copious notes (that I did not, in the end, have time for) because it is also a complex one. I wish I had the background to put some of Fancy's arguments in context: it's clear that the borderland societies of medieval Iberia and its North Africa neighbours are a truly rich and complicated area of study and one that must grapple with an even more politicised history than most places.
Anyway. I enjoyed reading it. Now I need a really good overview so I can fill in the giant gaps in my understanding.