Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [73]
Unlike any of its northern European neighbors, medieval Spain had a large Muslim minority, the result of centuries of earlier Islamic rule. In Aragon, some 35 percent of the total population of roughly 200,000 were Mudejars, the term for Muslims living in Christian lands. In some rural areas, Muslims were actually a majority. Spain was also home to the overwhelming majority of Christian Europe's Jews, who had been expelled at various points from England (1290) and France (1306,1322, and 1394) and massacred repeatedly in Germany (1298, 1336-38, and 1348). As a result of this unusual coexistence of religious communities, Spaniards were worldlier about non-Christians than many of their fellow Europeans. “No Iberian writer fantasized, as the German Wolfram von Eschenbach did, that the offspring of a Christian-Muslim couple would be mottled white and black; they knew better.”2
Of course, Spanish tolerance should not be overstated or confused with the “respect for difference” that tolerance implies in the twenty-first century. Jews and Muslims were often confined to separate quarters and required to wear special identifying emblems. Intermarriage with Christians was punishable by imprisonment, torture, or even execution. Although there was no fear of mottled offspring, Muslim women caught fornicating with Christian males were sometimes stripped naked and whipped in the streets. Popular anti-Semitism, frequently fomented by the clergy, periodically erupted in violence and waves of forced conversions. The latter created a significant class of so-called conversos (converted Jews), who would then be suspected—often correctly—of secretly continuing to practice Judaism. The spasms of anti-Semitic violence could be shockingly brutal. In June of 1391, Jews were massacred in Seville; the pogrom quickly spread to Cordoba, Toledo, Valencia, and Barcelona, resulting in mass throat-slitting and thousands of conversions.3
But once again, what matters is relative tolerance, and despite such bursts of horrific violence, Spain was for most of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the best place—sometimes the only place—for non-Christians to live and prosper in western Europe. Many of Spain's Muslims benefited from special treaties, granting them the right to practice their own religion and to be governed by their own laws. In places like Valencia, Mudejars lived largely autonomously, interacting only with other Muslims and speaking only Arabic. In other locales, Muslims were much more integrated into Christian society. In Aragon and Catalonia, for example, Muslims and Christians lived side by side, buying each other's goods and services. Mudejars came to dominate certain local industries, most prominently the building trades.4
The situation of the Jews was quite different. Whereas the great majority of Mudejars were agricultural laborers—most of the Muslim elite having emigrated to Islamic lands—Spanish Jews were principally urban and far more acculturated. All of Spain's Jews spoke a form of Spanish, typically in addition to Hebrew and Arabic. While most Muslims were vassals of feudal and ecclesiastical lords, Spain's Jews were under the immediate control and protection of the king, paying taxes directly to the royal treasury.
Jews in Spain participated in a striking range of economic activities. Jewish men were cobblers, grocers, tailors, shopkeepers, blacksmiths, silversmiths, butchers, chemists, beekeepers, dyers, and jewelers. Their clientele included many Christians and Muslims. Jewish women were weavers, spinners, and midwives. Some Jews were major sheepherders. Others were