UCLA Scholars Identify Rare Muslim-Crusader Surrender Treaties from Medieval Spain


Date: November 15, 1999
Contact: Harlan Lebo ( [email protected] )
Phone: (310) 206-0510

Two UCLA medieval scholars working in the Royal Archives in Barcelona have identified two unique Muslim-Crusader treaties dating from the wars between Islam and Christendom.

The two tattered, blotted documents-one parchment, the other paper, written in black ink that has oxidized to brown-are the only Christian-Islamic surrender treaties from the crusader period to survive in their original interlinear bilingual form.

"The discovery of the treaties represents one of the most important archival finds of the century for students of the Middle Ages," said Robert I. Burns, a senior history professor at UCLA who reconstructed the documents with historian Paul E. Chevedden. "All three cultures of medieval Spain--Muslim, Christian and Jewish-played a part in the drafting of these international agreements, and their ratification signaled a new stage in the evolution of Spain's multicultural society that would have dramatic effects both in Europe and in the Americas."

"The Arabic texts of these documents are extremely important," said Chevedden. "Other than these two texts, there is little documentation in Arabic for crusader-era Muslim society or for Muslim-Christian interaction in Spain in its original artifact form."

Burns and Chevedden have published a full-length study of the documents in their new book, "Negotiating Cultures: Bilingual Surrender Treaties in Muslim-Crusader Spain Under James the Conqueror" (E.J. Brill).

The full meaning of these battered and deteriorated documents emerged only from a minute reconstruction of the bilingual texts by Burns and Chevedden. Both treaties were part of an epic struggle to subdue Eastern Islamic Spain by King James the First, "The Conqueror" (1213-1276), ruler of federated Aragon and Catalonia.

Of the many surrender agreements negotiated by James during 50 crusading years (1225-1276), only the two studied by Burns and Chevedden survive in their original bilingual form.

"These treaties not only depict how peace emerged from war, but how a major multicultural society developed in the Kingdom of Valencia," said Burns. "This region formed a crucible for the convergence of cultures in the medieval Mediterranean world," Burns noted, "and the mingling of Muslim, Christian and Jewish cultures would define Spain and would color Spain's actions and institutions in the New World."

Though representing different political-military episodes in the same long crusade, the treaties were separated from each other by less than a year during the mid-1240s.

"A kaleidoscope of contexts affected each of the treaties," said Burns, "and provides enough drama for a Hollywood epic. The exhilarating backdrop to these documents comprises the dizzying changes that issued from the collapse of Islamic Spain; the bitter rivalry of Castile and Aragon; the struggle for southern France involving marriage maneuvers and the attempted abduction of the heiress of Provence; papal embassies to the Mongols; a crusade to the Holy Land that King James aborted for the love of a lady; a queen shunned in the royal chambers but esteemed at the negotiating table; the daring ambush of the king by his Muslim nemesis; and the final end of the great crusader of Christendom and the legendary champion of Islamic Spain in the same year."

The first treaty-the surrender of the city of J�tiva to King James in 1244-had mysteriously disappeared during the Middle Ages. In 1991, archivist Alberto Torra recovered it in the archives of the realms of Aragon-Catalonia in Barcelona among "problem" manuscripts that had not been deciphered. The director of the Royal Archives, Rafael Conde y Delgado de Molina, alerted Burns and Chevedden about its discovery, and the UCLA scholars edited the text and minutely reconstructed its context.

The second treaty-the surrender of a Muslim warrior-ruler called al-Azraq to King James and his son in 1245-was known mostly to local historians and as an isolated oddity, until Burns and Chevedden recently created a critical edition of it with commentary.

In research on both treaties, Burns investigated the historical context of the documents and analyzed the Latinate texts of the treaties. Chevedden, an Arabist and Middle Eastern historian at UCLA's Center for Near Eastern Studies, edited and interpreted the Arabic texts.

The Arabic text of the J�tiva treaty alternates with lines of a Latin text, and the Arabic of the al-Azraq document is interwoven among lines in Romance text. Curiously, however, the Arabic and the Latinate texts of the treaties are not direct translations of each other. The Arabic texts of the two agreements selected the elements of each accord that were most crucial to the Muslims, while the Latinate texts similarly emphasized those points basic to the Christians' interest.

"The Arabic texts of the treaties approach the two agreements in quite a different spirit than do the Latinate texts," said Chevedden. "The interlinear arrangement of the documents allows a view of the opposing political psychologies of the two adversaries and reveals two very different understandings of their shared agreement."

The confluence of cultures in Spain can also be seen in the treaties. As Chevedden pointed out, "The Arabic secretariat of the Christian chancery, which was staffed by Jews, drafted the Arabic texts of both treaties, so that these documents embody the convergence of the three cultures of medieval Spain: Muslim, Christian and Jewish."

Both treaties exhibit unusual terms. Unlike a conventional surrender agreement in which a victor dictates to an enfeebled enemy, the "defeated" parties of these treaties were bargaining from a position of strength and retained substantial negotiating assets.

"In 1244, J�tiva surrendered on a qualified basis and salvaged considerable powers of autonomy," said Chevedden. "The thirty-three surviving provisions of the J�tiva treaty reveal that King James was in no position to dictate terms, but was compelled to offer incentives to entice the Jativans to surrender."

"The exemptions, privileges and rights that were safeguarded by the treaty attest to the capacity of the Jativans to preserve their identity and institutions even as the integrity of their society was threatened by political domination," said Chevedden. "The treaty maintained the city's ruling family in power and left its population, its defenses and its army all intact."

The al-Azraq treaty demonstrates that a surrender agreement can also mask covert action.

"In 1245, al-Azraq cunningly played at surrender with King James in order to gain necessary time to launch an Islamic counter-crusade," said Burns. "The "great war" that erupted two years after al-Azraq's "capitulation" drew the attention of wider Christendom and required a full-fledged papal crusade and a ten-year campaign before the king was able to achieve victory."

A faculty research grant from UCLA and grants from the Institute of Medieval Mediterranean Spain at Los Angeles and from Iberia Airlines enabled the authors to examine the treaties in the crown archives at Barcelona. The Spectronics Corporation of Westbury, N.Y., contributed two Spectroline magnifying ultraviolet lamps to assist tracking trace amounts of fluorescence in the badly ruined J�tiva treaty. The Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain's Ministry of Education and Culture and United States Universities provided financial assistance for the publication of "Negotiating Cultures."

"For the history of both Islamic and Christian Spain, the recovery of these treaties is a major event," said Burns. "This discovery may have special significance for our own day, when some twelve million Muslims now reside within Europe, with more arriving daily, so that the Muslim presence and multiculturalism as in King James' day is once again, over seven centuries later, deeply marking today's Europe."

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NOTE:

* The November 1999 issue of History Today (volume 49, no. 11) carries as its lead article an essay by Robert I. Burns and Paul E. Chevedden, "The Finest Castle in the World" (pp. 10-17), adapted from their new book, "Negotiating Cultures."

* Illustrations of the treaty are available, either as printed photographs or electronic files.