Not surprisingly, his successor, Joan I, faced an onslaught of complaint and opposition to this change immediately upon his ascent to the throne, especially after he reaffirmed laws imposing distinctive styles of hair and dress. There were Mudejar revolts in Zaragoza and Huesca in 1387, with protesters claiming that these laws were not the custom in Aragon and that they were only being imposed in order to generate income (presumably for the benefit of those selling exemptions and imposing fines).79 In Huesca, at least, the new king quickly backed down, ordering in September 1387 that officials in the city should stop requiring that local Muslims cut their hair short all around the head (sarcenati) or that they wear any other distinctive signs. He explained his decision based on the argument (undoubtedly presented to him by the Mudejar population) that this policy was not only unusual in Huesca but also that it would lead to the depopulation of the city’s aljama.80 Three months later, Joan followed up on this order and wrote to the bishop of Huesca to remind him that he could not require local Muslims to cut their hair or wear the clenxia (a style similar to the garceta).81
During the first half of the fourteenth century, legislation in Castile—as in Valencia and Aragon—tended to require yet another particular style of Muslim haircut (usually described as with a single part, cut short all around the head, and without the copete), along with rather vague statements that Mudejars must also wear some kind of distinctive sign (in line with the rulings of Lateran IV).82 The Castilian sumptuary ordinances that had been so prominent in the thirteenth century, however, were not restated until the reign of Pedro I (1350–69), when attention refocused away from hair back to clothing, textiles, and ornamentation. In 1351, at the Cortes of Valladolid, Pedro ruled that too many Jews and Muslims were dressing in high-quality imported woolen cloth, half-length cloaks, and adornments (“panos de viado e a meytad e con adobos”) making them indistinguishable from Christians. Henceforth, Castilian Muslims over the age of thirteen were not allowed to wear those types of clothes, nor any garments ornamented with gold or silver.83 After his succession to the throne, Enrique II restated these policies at the Cortes of Toro, in 1371, though with somewhat less precision: Muslims were not allowed to wear luxury textiles, and they must display unspecified signs to distinguish them from Christians. There was no mention of hair.84
Elsewhere in the Peninsula, there was also a shift away from policies regarding hair to those concentrating on clothing in the final decades of the fourteenth century. Although laws in the Crown of Aragon continued to mention the garceta, they also began to introduce other distinctive signals of Muslim identity—perhaps because the regulation of hair had proved too difficult on its own. In 1373, Pere IV had required that Muslims in Valencia wear aljubas, harking back to laws requiring this garment from a century earlier in the Costums de Tortosa. Another ordinance from the same year also required that Valencian Muslim men wear the aljuba and cover their heads with a blue cloth (“tovallola blava en lo cap”), while—in an unusual additional clause—Muslim women should veil their faces.85 At about the same time, Muslims in Portugal complained to King Pedro I (1357–67) about laws requiring them to wear the aljuba and burnūs (albornoz) because the sleeves of these garments got in their way when they were working.86 In 1384, Pere IV restated that clothing, vestments, and hair were all important in the demarcation of Muslim appearance.87
Unlike their coreligionists elsewhere, Muslims in Catalonia experienced almost no regulation of their hair or clothing for most of the fourteenth century, although in theory the regulations established in 1301 were still in effect. This changed in 1388, about a year after Joan I came to the throne, when he ordered that all Muslims who lived and worked in Lérida must wear the clothing and hairstyles established by the Constitutions of Catalonia, with the intention of differentiating them from Christians. It appears that the king was responding to the fact that local Mudejars had not been sufficiently distinguishing themselves from their Christian neighbors.88 Two years later, in March 1390, the king went much further at the Cortes of Monzón, issuing a new law that all Muslims in Catalonia over the age of ten must wear a yellow band of cloth on their right sleeve (or a red band if the garment that they were wearing happened to be yellow). These rules were repeated in Tortosa the following November.89 The new regulation was innovative and yet in line with the general move back toward the legislation of visual distinction through signs and clothing, rather than hair, which characterizes the end of the fourteenth century.
Needless to say, Catalan Muslims complained vociferously about this new law, and the king agreed to suspend it pending further investigation in January 1391.90 Six months later, however, he issued a new decree, this time in Zaragoza, requiring that Muslims in Aragon must wear the garceta along with red or yellow armbands. This caused such an uproar among Aragonese Mudejars that an ambassador from Granada even arrived to intervene on their behalf.91 Although Joan acknowledged the ambassador’s intercession and promised not to impose the law, other documents indicate that he reiterated these statutes from Monzón and Zaragoza several times over the next few years, though possibly they were not always enforced.92 Differential imposition is certainly suggested in an exemption issued in 1396, in which the king allowed Aragonese Muslims to take off the yellow band when they were traveling in Catalonia.93 It also seems likely that the yellow band was not commonly enforced in Catalonia given the irritation expressed by Catalan Muslims after the death of Joan in May 1396, when the queen regent María de Luna, wife of his successor Martí I, briefly reimposed the “good customs” established at Monzón. As soon as Martí arrived from Sicily to assume the throne, the aljamas of Catalonia appealed this legislation and received freedom from wearing the yellow band in 1397.94 Shortly thereafter, in 1401, Martí ordered Muslims in Aragon to wear distinctive signs, but there was no further mention of the despised colored armbands.95
Ever since the edicts of the Fourth Lateran Council, it had been common for Jews in Spain (as elsewhere in Europe) to be required to wear specific insignia on their clothing, often yellow stars or circles. However, there were no parallel laws establishing distinctive vestimentary symbols for Iberian Muslims until nearly two centuries later, with the colored armbands required in the Crown of Aragon. Before this, edicts that Muslims wear “distinctive signs” had been vague, and more explicit legislation focused on particular styles of clothing and hair that were supposed to be different from Christian fashions. Initially, at least, Muslims were forbidden from wearing certain styles (such as the garceta or gold ornamentation on their clothing) rather than required to add specific markers of their identity, perhaps because it was assumed that they were already sufficiently visually distinct from their Christian neighbors. This assumption seems to have changed in the course of the fourteenth century, as indicated by new legislative initiatives mandating that Muslims wear the garceta and colored armbands.
Even more explicit markers would be instituted in Castile in the early fifteenth century, with a new series of vestimentary laws issued by Queen Catalina in 1408, in her role as regent for her young son, the future Juan II. This legislation was aimed at “all of the Moors in my kingdoms and seigneurial lands, and those that are studying in them, and traveling through them,” and it ordered that “men must wear over their clothes a cowl [capuz] made of yellow cloth, and a symbol cut of cloth in the shape of a crescent moon, in cornflower blue [color torquesado], of this size [here there is a picture of a moon provided], that is to be worn openly below the right shoulder in such a manner as to be fully showing. And women must all wear the same [blue moon] symbol … large enough so that it is obvious, worn openly on all their clothes below the right shoulder, in such a manner as to be fully showing.” The ordinances went on to list certain types of clothing and shoes that Muslims were not allowed to wear, much along the lines of earlier Castilian sumptuary regulations.96 This law requiring yellow cowls and blue lunettes would be reaffirmed by Juan II in 1437 and repeated in later Castilian legislation into the reign of Fernando and Isabel.97
As well as mandating these distinctive symbols, Queen Catalina would also go on to establish the most rigorous and detailed prescriptions for Muslim clothing that had yet been set down in law anywhere in the Peninsula.
