that local styles differed and fashions changed over time. He does not question the fact that clothing types common in Granada were unlike the fashions of Castile, and that these distinctions played a strong role in visual identity—whether this identity was interpreted as religious or regional. He also makes strong claims about personal choice and free will, suggesting that people wear certain clothes because they are comfortable, fashionable, or affordable, not merely because church or state sumptuary laws require adherence. As in the rest of his memorandum, Núñez Muley makes the case for the weight of tradition, local (“native”) identity, and the practical aspects of daily life over those of religious belief in influencing the clothing choices of New Christians. Núñez Muley’s argument was that people in different regions will naturally look different, regardless of religion, while people sharing regional identity will gradually come to share vestimentary traditions over time (whether Christians in Jerusalem wearing local styles, or New and Old Christian women in Granada veiling their faces). Thus, the difficulty in Granada was merely that coalescence of dress had not yet happened, because habit and economic disincentive had so far led many New Christians—especially women—to preserve their long-held regional fashions.
Núñez Muley’s memorandum had no apparent effect in mitigating contemporary edicts against wearing almalafas, marlotas, and other elements of Morisco dress. But it did not fall on entirely deaf ears, since Luis del Mármol Carvajal mentioned Núñez Muley’s appeal in his history of the Morisco rebellion in 1568.40 Diego Hurtado de Mendoza went further, in his more sympathetic history of the same wars, by elaborating Núñez Muley’s arguments about regionalism in the voice of a fictional Morisco “of very great natural authority and ripe and mature counsel,” who pointed out that “they order us to leave off our Moorish clothes and dress in the Castillian manner. Even amongst the Christians, the Germans dress in one manner, the French in another, the Greeks in another, the friars in quite a distinct manner and the Christian boys dress quite differently from the Christian men. Amongst the Christians, each nation, each profession, each group and rank and station of mankind has a distinct way of dressing, and they are all Christians, and we are Moors and so we dress in the Moorish fashion: it is as if they wish us outwardly to conform even when we are not conforming in our hearts.”41 One might think that this argument would have had a certain logical traction, because it was objectively true and would appeal to the professed rationalism of contemporary thought. Nevertheless, it failed to change assumptions, based on customs and legislation that had been firmly in place for many centuries, that Christians and Muslims did in fact dress differently because of their different religious traditions.
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The pull of distinctive clothing presented a real problem in an age when religious and secular authorities wished to establish conformity in both external appearance and internal belief. This was very different from the medieval concerns, expressed in the Fourth Lateran Council, which had worried about an inevitable pull toward the assimilation of visual identity. Visual confusion of identity was a bad thing in 1215, when the overall desire was to preserve difference where difference existed. Crusaders needed to know that they were fighting the right enemies; tax collectors needed to be able to identify non-Christian subjects; preachers should be able to target their audience; jurists knew that different codes of law applied to different groups; and above all people must avoid jumping into bed with somebody of a different faith.
Overall, religious difference was a persistent fact of medieval Iberian life. Despite a strong rhetorical and polemical impulse urging the conversion of Muslims, there were no actual widespread, concerted, or successful efforts in this direction before the sixteenth century.42 Instead, while rulers such as Alfonso VI and Alfonso X of Castile and Jaume I of Aragon may have wished—on some level—to rule over entirely Christian kingdoms, they were also well aware not only of the practical obstacles to mass conversions but also of the economic and structural advantages to maintaining their subject non-Christian populations. Thus, Mudejars should look different from Christians, as a reflection of their Muslim identity; just as later Moriscos, being New Christians, must look the same as their Old Christian coreligionists.
Visual Identity in Medieval Spain
The effort to preserve difference, as opposed to mandating assimilation, resulted in medieval attitudes toward vestimentary legislation that were profoundly different from those of the sixteenth century (even while both traditions arose from the same basic premises about visual identity). In the wake of the Lateran IV rulings in 1215, Christian legislators all over Europe established dress codes and signs by which Jews and Muslims could be easily identified.43 Jews were the exclusive focus for such laws in most regions of western Europe, where there were no Muslim communities. Both subject religious communities were present in Spain, but even here vestimentary rules were not always equally applied to the two groups. Legislation relating to Jews in Castile and Aragon tended to focus on special signs (often stars) to be worn on clothing, particular colors (frequently yellow), and peculiar hats, but laws for Muslims more often required distinctive styles of clothing or hair. Only occasionally, as in a law of 1408 from Castile that ordered Muslims to wear badges in the shape of crescent moons, were Mudejar rules directly parallel to those of their Jewish contemporaries.44 Sometimes, Muslims were not even cited in Iberian laws relating to visual distinction. This was the case in the Siete Partidas, a comprehensive law code commissioned by Alfonso X in the later thirteenth century, which mandated that “Jews shall bear certain marks in order that they may be known” (los judios deuen andar sennalados por que sean connoscidos) without mentioning any similar law for Muslims.45
The reasons for this disparity in the thirteenth century are unclear. One might posit that by the time of the Lateran rulings, Jews in Spain already had a long history of life and assimilation under Christian rule, whereas Muslim subjects were still a relatively recent phenomenon, dating only from the last decades of the eleventh century. Muslim communities in Castile and Aragon also often maintained ties with family, business associates, and coreligionists in Andalusi regions still under Muslim control and in North Africa, and these connections may have fostered ongoing differences in dress and appearance. Mudejars, on the whole, were less acculturated with their Christian neighbors and less urbanized than were their Jewish counterparts, and this may have lessened Christian worries about confusion of identity. However, this situation appears to have changed over time, as one might expect, as generations of Muslims continued to live under Christian rule in Castile and Aragon and began to adapt their external appearance to their local context. So it is noteworthy that only in the later thirteenth century, two hundred years after the conquest of Toledo and many decades after the Fourth Lateran Council, did Iberian Christian legislation begin to focus serious attention on Mudejar dress and hairstyles. Before that, all evidence indicates that Muslims in Christian Spain generally dressed according to their own vestimentary systems and that they maintained a distinctive visual identity by their own choice.
There are three main sources for evidence telling us about visual distinctions in clothing and personal appearance in medieval Spain: sumptuary legislation, descriptions of dress in chronicles and literature, and depictions in art and sculpture. There are also other items of textual evidence, including wills, sale documents, and personal inventories that document clothing but usually say less about identity. Material evidence also survives, in the form of medieval articles of clothing and Andalusi textiles preserved in Christian tombs and treasuries. Virtually all of the textual sources on clothing and appearance date from the thirteenth century and after. Although one might think that twelfth-century fueros (as one example) would be a rich source for details of legislation about differential Muslim and Christian dress, they are not. This silence may further suggest that the visual distinction between Muslims and Christians was not perceived as a legal problem in Christian Spain before the later thirteenth century.
Almost all such evidence relating to differences of Christian and Muslim appearance in later medieval Christian regions is mediated through Christian perceptions and is found in sources produced by Christian authors and artists. The exception, textiles woven and embroidered in Andalusi ateliers, nonetheless reflects Christian appreciation and use of these materials.
