In: Sonntag, Jörg ; Zermatten, Coralie (Hrsgg.): Loyalty in the Middle Ages: Ideal and practice of a cross-social value. Turnhout, Brepols 2015, pp. 235-275 (Brepols collected essays in European culture ; 5) . ISBN 978-2-503-55103-6

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Abstract

This paper focuses on a particular case of multiple loyalty in the Mediterranean world, that of Christian mercenaries who served Muslim sultans in Northern Africa. The study is based on numerous examples from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, mainly from the East ofthe Iberian Peninsula. It examines the nature ofthe relationships that mercenaries established with their nominal overlords, most prominently with the Kings of Aragon, while doing duty to foreign rulers beyond the seas. The most intriguing cases are those of Aragonese militia leaders, who were sent to the courts of the King of Aragon on behalf of the Muslim sultans whom they served: these Christians thus served the interests of their Muslim employers against their feudal lords. Strikingly, and tellingly, such double loyalties that transgressed the religious border did not cause fundamental tension in a Mediterranean world characterised by complex processes of transcultural transfer and interweaving.