paragraphs devoted to the textiles, styles of clothing, and length of garments that Muslims and Jews should or should not wear. Another paragraph was devoted to hair and beards, both of which should henceforth be worn long and uncut “as had been the custom long ago.”98 These rulings were in line with an increasing emphasis on rules about clothing in the fifteenth century, and they also mark a shift in that they cover both Muslims and Jews under the same ordinance. The appearance of both groups was restricted in similar ways, to distinguish them from Christians, while the yellow stars and blue moons were established to differentiate them from each other. Later legislation from the reigns of Juan II, Enrique IV, and Fernando and Isabel would likewise group Muslims and Jews together, ordering them to wear public signals on their clothing, to dress differently from Christians, and to avoid luxury textiles and clothing adorned with pearls, silver, or gold.99
This repeated legislation not only reflects a change in monarchs (new rulers tended either to reiterate earlier laws or to enact new ones), but it may also suggest that vestimentary rules were not being routinely observed or enforced. At the Cortes of Madrigal in 1476, the Catholic Monarchs complained that Jews and Muslims customarily ignored the rules about distinctive signs and clothing, so that “it is not possible to tell if the Jews are Jews, or if they are clerics or letrados of great estate and authority, or if the Moors are Moors, or if they are gently bred courtiers [gentiles honbres del palaçio].” Moreover, they noted that some of these Jews and Muslims had documents (cartas) certifying that they were allowed to dispense with distinctive signs or permitted to wear luxurious clothes. To correct this laxity and liberty, Fernando and Isabel reaffirmed earlier vestimentary legislation.100
Parallel to these efforts to prevent Muslims from looking like Christians were the laws that required them to look like Muslims (at least insofar as Christians perceived “Muslim” appearance). We see this in legislation that required them to let their beards grow long, in accordance with Islamic law and to wear the aljuba, albornoz, and other articles of traditional clothing. These garments are mentioned in laws from the Crown of Aragon and from Portugal, including a ruling by Afonso V of Portugal from the middle of the fifteenth century that required Muslims to wear “Moorish costume” (traje de mouro), namely, the aljuba and albornoz, and that these long-sleeved enveloping garments be worn closed in front. In 1454, the Muslim community of Lisbon successfully appealed this law, and they were allowed to wear their robes open, as was more traditional. Meanwhile, another Muslim, from Setúbal, was permitted to wear silk garments so long as these were completely covered by his outer Muslim-style clothing.101 There were no such laws in Castile. In 1480, a local law in Murcia allowed Muslims to wear silk aljubas and head coverings during the public festivities celebrating Corpus Christi, but this was a special exemption to mark the holiday (just as all people in the town were permitted to wear fancy clothes on Holy Thursday, including items that would normally be forbidden) not a general everyday requirement.102
There is almost no evidence regarding views about dress and visual distinction from the Islamic perspective, and it is very hard to know whether Muslims in Christian Spain either dressed or wished to dress like their Christian neighbors. What is clear is that they strongly objected to the imposition of new, burdensome, and often confusing regulations about dress and hairstyles, and the concurrent costs of paying fines and purchasing exemptions. In a number of cases they won their appeal and the law was rolled back, sometimes for a significant period, as in Huesca in 1387. But overall, it was a long-fought and losing struggle, and one in which we do not hear direct Mudejar voices.
Codes of Islamic law written by and for Mudejars in late medieval Spain have little to say about dressing in Christian garments, presumably because standard Islamic legal thought, including the Pact of ‘Umar, assumed that the populations in question were living within the Dār al-Islām.103 Only the Breviario sunni, written by the jurist of Yça Gidelli (Īsa ibn Jābir) in Segovia in the middle of the fifteenth century, mentioned the matter, stating that “it is abhorrent to wear clothing in Christian styles [llebar bestidos á la usança de los christianos] for prayer.”104 Unlike standard books of Islamic law, Yça Gidelli wrote this text explicitly for Muslims living under Christian rule. His comment not only rejects Christian clothing in the context of Muslim worship, but it also implies both a recognition that there was something recognizably distinct about Christian styles and the possibility that some Muslims living in Castile might adopt these fashions.
Even within Muslim borders there may have been some degree of similarity between late medieval Muslim and Christian Iberian dress. According to Arabic authors familiar with both Granada and the Maghrib, Muslims in Granada had adopted a number of fashions that were perceived as “Christian.” Both Ibn Sa‘īd (d. 1286) and Ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 1374) claimed that Naṣrid styles of clothing and weaponry imitated those of their Christian neighbors.105 Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) analyzed this tendency, explaining that “a nation dominated by another, neighboring nation will show a great deal of assimilation and imitation. At this time, this is the case in Spain [al-Andalus]. The Spaniards [Andalusīs] are found to assimilate themselves to the Galician nations [umam al-Jalāliqah] in their dress, their emblems, and most of their customs and conditions.”106 Although many garments typical of Granada, such as the burnūs and the aljuba, were shared with Maghribi fashions, they may well have developed characteristically Iberian variants.107
Yet at the same time that Ibn Khaldūn described the natives of Granada as adopting northern (“Galician”) fashions (and it is noteworthy that he chooses regional rather than religious terminology), a chronicler in Aragon described the traditionally “Moorish” items of clothing worn by ambassadors from the Naṣrid sultan at the coronation of Fernando de Antequera in Zaragoza in 1412 (“todos vestidos con albornoces e capuces e aljuvas moriscas”).108 Perhaps these ambassadors were wearing distinctively regional dress in their diplomatic role on a ceremonial occasion. But it is also possible that the garments this Aragonese author saw as so typically Moorish were the same items that appeared to be inflected by northern fashions from the point of view of the Maghribi observer. Ultimately, the interpretation of style is in the eye of the beholder.
The story of medieval Christian legislation concerning Muslim dress, from the Fourth Lateran Council in the early thirteenth century until the edicts of forced Muslim conversion in the early sixteenth century, makes clear that the issue was never fully resolved. Rulers and churchmen experimented with a number of different strategies relating to hair, clothing, and distinctive signs, but none of these dealt conclusively with the ongoing problem of visual identity. At the Cortes of Madrigal in 1476, just as at the council in 1215, the legal record continued to lament the persistent confusion of Christian and non-Christian appearance.
Although Fernando and Isabel worried about the misidentification of social status, the sexual hazards of ambiguous identity also remained an issue—in line with Innocent III’s original warning. In most respects, Christian law codes were categorical in their condemnation of sexual relations between Christians and non-Christians (even Christian prostitutes were not permitted to accept non-Christian clients, although Muslim prostitutes could sleep with Christians), and some cases that ended up in court rested on excuses of uncertain identity. In 1304 and 1334, a court in Zaragoza heard of two Muslim men who had tried to pass as Christians in order to have sex with a Christian prostitute.109 Another incident came before the bailiff of Valencia in 1359, regarding a Christian prostitute who sometimes dressed as a Christian and sometimes as a Muslim (“nunc in christiano, nunc agarenorum habitu”) depending on her client.110 Her case is an excellent example of the ways in which people may have both understood and manipulated expectations of visual identity. And either way, whether the problem of identity was social or sexual, the basic difficulties remained essentially unchanged. In the later fifteenth century, Christian legislators were still deeply concerned that Muslims looked too much like Christians.
At the same time, visual identity was becoming more complex, as fashions changed and increasing numbers of Christians sometimes chose to wear certain elements of Muslim dress, especially the
