in the code that the taking of a Jewish or Muslim woman as a barragana was outlawed. Similarly, no objection was raised by the lawgivers of Sepúlveda if a Christian man had a child by a minority woman; however, we have seen that a Christian woman who bore a child to a minority man was to be considered a woman of ill repute, whipped, and driven out of town.71 The Costums of Tortosa contain numerous sections on the rights of minority concubines and their offspring, ruling that if the father were the owner of a slave concubine any child born to them would be considered free; if he were not the owner, the child would also become a slave, but could not subsequently be sold to a Muslim or Jew.72 For its part, the fuero of Cuenca also gives the impression that such interfaith liaisons were commonplace:
If someone has a child with another’s Moorish woman, this child should be the servant of the señor of the Moorish woman, until his father redeems him. Also, we say that such a child should not divide with his siblings that which corresponds to the patrimony of their father, while he remains in servitude. Later should he become free, he should take a share of the goods of his father.73
What especially concerned some lawgivers was that any child born to a minority barragana should be brought up as a Christian: the laws of Soria were a case in point.74 Similarly, the Fuero Real issued by Alfonso X of Castile in 1256 required a Christian man who fathered a child by a Muslim or Jewish woman to take responsibility for its upbringing and maintenance.75 However, such children did not enjoy the same protection under the law as those of Christian barraganas, and if a mixed couple separated the woman might lose custody of her offspring.76 From the fourteenth century, moreover, there is evidence to suggest that that the legal rights of such concubines and their offspring were gradually eroded.77
Christian men also frequented Muslim prostitutes. In Aragon the sex industry was subject to strict regulation by the Crown, which issued licenses and gleaned substantial tax revenues as a result.78 Religious institutions, such as the Military Orders, also had a significant economic interest in Muslim prostitution, such as the Templars of Tortosa, who levied taxes on local Muslim prostitutes.79 Municipal authorities subjected brothels to careful supervision, with premises often being walled in to prevent women from plying their trade in the public highway and to protect them from being kidnapped.80 According to Mark Meyerson,
Prostitution … was more than tolerated; it was encouraged. For why should a Christian king concern himself with the morality of Muslim women, who were, in any event, irredeemable on account of their profession of Islam? Since, according to the contemporary Catholic theological position, all Muslims were damned, the Christian authorities had no qualms about treating Muslim women as essentially soulless and exploitable objects.81
Many of these Muslim prostitutes were slaves, some of whom had fallen into servitude after having been condemned by local Islamic courts for sexual impropriety, or by royal or seigneurial officials for exercising prostitution without a license.82 Others had gravitated toward prostitution after having separated from unhappy marriages or abusive husbands.83 Social outcasts, disowned by their families and communities, vulnerable to sexual violence, for such women prostitution was one of the few economic avenues open to them if they were to survive. The experience of the Muslim woman Mariem, who left her husband in the village of Alasquer and moved to the city of Valencia in the company of another Muslim man, Cutaydal, some time prior to 1491, and was later tricked into working in the brothel of the morería (Muslim quarter) of Valencia, was probably not untypical.84
In reality, however, the boundaries between prostitution and concubinage were by no means clear-cut, and in the later medieval period there is evidence of former prostitutes entering into what have euphemistically been described as “domestic service contracts” with Christian men. The Christian Sancha Bolea, a resident of Daroca, who in her own words “became by chance a wayward woman, because a man there, in Zaragoza, took my maidenhood and dishonoured me, and I was on the verge of going to the brothels,” entered into such a contract with another Christian, Juan de Madrid, in 1460. Sancha’s predicament and motivation were clearly laid bare as she declared:
In order to have some goods and not end up in the brothels, I have decided to come and live with you and serve you of my own free will. And [thus] I begged and asked you to take me into your house as housekeeper or servant, to stay with you and sleep with you, and to do with my body as you wish.85
In return for this undertaking, Juan de Madrid agreed to pay Sancha the sum of 200 sueldos. It is likely that for numerous marginalized, impoverished Muslim women similar arrangements such as these offered them a welcome, if often temporary, sense of security.86
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