be of humble origins, and their families frequently lacked the financial ability to ransom their kin. Collective measures were needed, and, before long, officials and deputized merchants began to arrange for the exchange of captives. In the twelfth century, Alfonso VIII of Castile directed officials of the military orders to redeem captives, and in Catalonia the counts controlled ransoming. When peace treaties between Muslim and Christian kings called for mutual exchanges of prisoners, representatives of the Christian authorities arranged to receive the Christians. Soon private citizens, usually licensed merchants, took both ransomed Muslims and Muslim slaves into Muslim territory and returned with Christians whose ransoms were paid or who were exchanged for Muslims. They could also arrange to ransom prisoners on their own account. In all events, these agents received compensation for their activities. In Catalonia the official ransomer was called a mostolaf; the first ones whose names are known were four Jewish merchants early in the twelfth century. The term—exea—for such an official was originally used both in the Crown of Aragon and in Castile. It continued in Aragonese usage, but in Castile from the thirteenth century those who conducted these activities came to be called alfaqueques, from the Arabic al-fakkāk, an envoy or redeemer.84
The frontier was a permeable barrier, and people crossed back and forth for any number of reasons, some peaceful and some not. To solve problems that might arise, the Castilian monarchs, beginning in the fourteenth century, named special officials whose tasks included settling cross-border disputes and supervising the work of the alfaqueques. There were four of these agents, called alcaldes mayores entre cristianos y moros (chief officials [negotiating] between Christians and Moors), one for the archdiocese of Seville, and one each for the dioceses of Cartagena, Cádiz, and the combined dioceses of Córdoba and Jaén. Each alcalde had at his command a group of police agents known as the fieles del rastro (lit. faithful ones of the track, or faithful trackers) who pursued criminals who fled across the borders.85 Cuenca and other cities regularly taxed their citizens to raise funds for ransoms, and the monks of Santo Domingo de Silos ransomed captives in the kingdom of Granada and in North African ports.86
Two religious orders, the Trinitarians and the Mercedarians, assumed a major role in redemptions by the thirteenth century and coordinated fund raising for that purpose.87 In Christian Córdoba in the fifteenth century, whose citizens still ran the risk of capture and captivity in Muslim Granada, the members of the Cofradía de la Caridad de Jesús, a religious brotherhood, devoted much effort to ransoming captives. Monasteries from places far distant from the frontier, such as the Trinitarian monasteries of Burgos and Arévalo, sent money to help families to ransom captives.88 At times, monarchs directed the ransoming orders to favor the ransoming of specified captives, often associates of the monarchs.89 Examples of individual ransoming include Juan Batlle, a native of the kingdom of Valencia, who had a brother held captive in North Africa. In 1491 he bought a Muslim slave from a Christian merchant and arranged with the merchant to take the slave to North Africa, find the brother, and exchange the slave for him. In 1494 Francisca Bos sent a Muslim slave to Oran in a German vessel, with the slave to be exchanged for her husband who was being held there.90
Muslim captives in the hands of Christians could hope for redemption by a variety of means, many of them similar to those used by Christians and including exchanges of prisoners either immediately after battles or over longer periods. We have fewer individual stories from Muslim sources than from Christian, but one tenth-century example is illustrative. After his forces failed to take the town of Simancas during a campaign against the Christians in 938, Muḥammad b. Hashim, ruler of Zaragoza, became a captive. As the chronicler reported, “His hands were bound and the price demanded for him was excessive. [‘Abd al-Raḥmān III, the ruler of Córdoba from 912 to 961] did not fail in his efforts to ransom him, until that was made possible by heavy expenditure and burdensome expedients. He was delivered to Cordova [sic], a free man, . . . two years, three months and eighteen days having elapsed since the day he was captured.”91 International merchants could undertake private exchanges. Such activities continued throughout the Middle Ages. Individuals could work to gain money to pay for their own ransom, as when a Muslim judge allowed Muslim captives in the Christian kingdom of Valencia to beg for alms for their own release. Others could hope that their families could arrange their ransom, and in some cases, family members could substitute as hostages for the captive, as, for example, a son might substitute for his father, on the assumption that a father might be better able than a minor child to raise the necessary money.92
In fifteenth-century Castile, if Christian captives were to be redeemed by their families, often a personal exchange was the quickest path. But that implied having a Muslim available to exchange. A normal expectation, resting on long tradition, was that owners of Muslim slaves would make them available for such exchanges. In a number of Andalusian towns, the owners of Muslim slaves had to turn them over for exchanges in return for the price they had paid for them plus 10 maravedís. Problems arose, and in the Cortes of 1462, King Enrique IV provided a set of guidelines for compensation that depended on how long the owner had held the slave and whether he had captured the slave or merely bought him. Sometimes, too, Christians raided Muslim towns just to capture hostages to be exchanged for Christian captives.93
The same procedures for ransoming captives prevailed as late as the eighteenth century, when the Trinitarians and the Mercedarians were still at work. By then they had been joined by the Congregation of the Santo Cristo de Burgos and the Third Order of the Franciscans. These groups collected money in Spain, as their earlier counterparts had done, both in the form of pious donations from ordinary people and as special ransom payments from the families of captives. The redemptors used the money to support relief and religious benefits for the captives in North Africa and to purchase the release of as many captives as they could.94 The Castilian Cortes on several occasions requested that bulls for the redemption of captives be preached so that more money for that purpose could be collected.95 Cynicism and fraud were also present. King Carlos III issued a royal order in 1778 warning against foreigners who came to Spain, claimed to be redeemers, and pocketed the money they collected.96
For those lucky enough to be freed, the homecoming was an emotionally mixed occasion. Following redemptions of Christians, especially when the Mercedarians had arranged them, the repatriated former captives still faced difficulties. They had to prove that their faith had not wavered, as we saw earlier. They had to make at least part of their own way home. On the way they were expected to participate in public processions and religious services, often by carrying their chains and then displaying them in churches. The chains and shackles that the former captives brought back are still to be seen in Spanish churches today. Those who had paid their full ransom prices still had to compensate their redeemers for expenses. Those who still owed the full price of their ransom could beg alms to raise the money. As one example, in the period 1433–1440, the archbishop of Zaragoza issued 111 licenses, called litterae acaptandi, to former captives to allow them to raise what they owed to those who had paid their ransom. These letters, addressed to the parish priests of the archdiocese, ordered the priests to provide hospitality to the bearer and to aid him in his search by making a public announcement asking the parishioners to offer donations to the licensee.97
The height of the era of corsairing was from the late sixteenth century to the early eighteenth. This was only one component of the long-term conflict between adherents of Christianity and Islam. Each side raided the other for booty and, above all, captives, either to be put to work as slaves or as hostages to be exchanged or redeemed across the religious frontiers. Some of those captives were forced to row the galleys and other oared vessels. At the battle of Lepanto in 1570, as a significant example, four hundred of the five hundred vessels involved were manned by some 80,000 rowers, about a third of them slaves, with 20,000 to 25,000 Christian slaves on the Ottoman vessels and 6,000 to 8,000 Muslims on Christian vessels.98
The raids, captures, and ransoms began to change in the eighteenth century, when the rulers of Spain and the North African states agreed to regular and extensive exchanges of captives. A representative of the sultan of Morocco went to
