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De Re Militari | Book Reviews

Ana Echevarría

Knights on the Frontier: The Moorish Guard of the Kings of Castile (1410-1467)

Translated by Martin Beagles of Caballeros en la frontera: La guardia morisca de los reyes de Castilla. Leiden: Brill, 2009. ISBN: 978 90 04 17110 7. xx+358pp. €119.00 / US$179.00.

The English translation of professor Echevarría’s Caballeros en la frontera is a welcome treatment of a topic that has received ample attention within Spain as evidenced by the essay collection La Banda Morisca durante los siglos XIII, XIV y XV [The Moorish Guard during the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries] edited by Manuel García Fernández (Seville, 1996) and Echevarría’s article “La guardia morisca: un cuerpo desconocido del ejército medieval español [The Moorish Guard: an unknown corps within the Spanish medieval armies], Revista de Historia Militar 90 (2000): 55-78, but has been almost ignored outside of it. 

The Moorish Guard in the fifteenth century was royal cavalry and infantry corps in Castile composed almost exclusively of recent converts to Christianity from Islam.  Because of their desirable skills in frontier warfare, high social position within their Muslim societies of origin, and willingness to serve on the Christian side, these individuals came to compose an elite standing military force that served to protect the Spanish monarch as well as conduct important missions along the Castilian-Granadan frontier.  This study touches upon many different areas including Military History, relations between Castile and Granada, and religious attitudes within Castile toward Muslims and Moriscos.

Echevarría provides in historical overview of Castile and Granada in the fifteenth century, their respective administrations, their respective problems—bouts of civil war in both kingdoms, a struggle between the high nobility and the kings in Castile and the slow decline of the Nasrid dynasty in Granada—and the status of the Mudéjar (Muslims living under Christian rule) communities in Castile.   In her next chapter, she outlines the Castilian policies followed by Juan II (1406-54) and Enrique IV (1454-74) toward Granada, which consisted of draining it through a combination of military and diplomatic measures.  The constant conflict at the frontier and within Granada engendered a fluid environment that permitted many Muslim knights to cross over and serve on the Christian side.  While many were simply exiles or mercenaries, some were brought together in the royal court to form the Moorish Band.  Echevarría’s third chapter is of most interest to military historians since she argues that the Moorish Guard was part of the general tendency of the time for the creation of permanently available forces, and in this way formed a step in the formation of professional standing armies.  She then details how the individual Moorish knights were paid, how they were armed, and how they adhered almost exclusively to the lighter, a la jineta, riding technique that favored speed and mobility over strength.  At its height, this corps was composed of 100-150 men, with its own command structure and distinctive dress.  Their remuneration was the responsibility of the royal treasury, although the records of the raciones moriscas (Moorish allowances) were kept in their own section perhaps illustrating their importance to the crown.

In the last section, Echevarría delineates the process by which the Moorish knights could integrate themselves into Castilian society, in essence erasing their Muslim origin within three generations.  She makes a point of explaining that not all Muslims serving under the Christians converted, but those who returned to Granada or North Africa appear to have been a small minority.  She goes to great lengths, a far too long enumeration of many individuals that made the transition from Muslim to Christian seemingly without much trouble, to explain that religious attitudes toward Moriscos, Mudejars, and even to Jewish conversos, were much more permissive in the period between 1410-1463 than later when the goal of an exclusively Catholic society became paramount.  It was only during periods of conflict that the Guards’ status as recent converts became a liability.  In fact, she argues that the dissolution of the Moorish Guard was caused more by the desire of rebellious nobles to weaken Enrique IV rather than by the anti-Muslim attitudes always bubbling under the surface in Castile.   After this corps was disbanded, those that did not convert headed outside of Castile while the others integrated quietly into society.

As is characteristic of many Spanish historical monographs, the author has included a lengthy documentary appendix containing no less than 106 excerpted documents in Spanish and English.  These were taken from the Raciones moriscas section of the Escribanía Mayor de Rentas de Castilla and include names of individual knights, origins, how much they were paid each year, and who was given the task of remunerating them.  This is an invaluable resource for any researcher studying Castilian military and/or financial history.

Nicolás Agrait

Long island University <Nicolas_Agrait@liu.edu>

Page Added: September 2009