Islam in Medieval Hungary: Judicial Power over Muslims as Evidence for the Christian-Muslim ‘convivenza’

Introduction

Muhammad who was born in Mecca is credited with the foundation of Islam. He went through a religious experience that changed not only his life, but the history of a large part of the world, Hungary included. Although Hungary was both nominally and de facto a Christian kingdom, the Christian religion was not the only one which touched its ethnically heterogeneous population. Islam too had its fair share of followers.¹

There are a few primary Arabic and Latin sources. The surviving Arabic sources were written by Muslim authors who either visited Hungary personally or recorded information given to them by Hungarian Muslims. The remainder were written by Muslims who drew on the information contained in travelogues or other general compendia for their descriptions of Hungary. The written testimony is complemented by numismatic evidence and some archaeological artefacts.² The Latin documents are of either royal or ecclesiastical origin and record royal and synodal legislation and correspondence between the Roman Curia and the Royal Court.³

This paper is intended to explore who had judicial power over Muslims in Hungary and asks three questions in making the exploration. Firstly, what was the legal power that Christian kings and other authorities had over the Muslim population? Secondly, who was competent to judge disputes between Christians and Muslims and finally did Muslims dispense justice within their own community according to Sharia law?

The biggest problem in answering these questions is the scarcity of documentation and, accordingly, information gained from that which does exist must be treated with great caution since corroboration is difficult. I would like to point out that the Muslim population in Hungary through the eleventh and fourteenth centuries was composed of several ethnicities amongst which were the Pechenegs and the Khwarazmians. The Khwarazmians were mainly traders whereas Pechenegs were originally soldiers serving in the king’s army although they climbed the social ladder over the centuries.

What Was the Legal Power that Christian Kings and Other Authorities Had over the Muslim Population?

Although Pechenegs initially had the status of serfs and lacked special rights or privileges, their skill as horsemen meant that the Crown soon began to employ them where their rapid mobility was useful. To begin with they were stationed in border areas with orders to patrol and scout out unwanted incursions and were later used by the army as a form of light cavalry. They were also used as patrols on important trading routes within the country and as guardians of public order – ‘precones’. As direct subjects of the king with no intermediate overlords these recent arrivals were placed in the group referred to as ‘condicionales’. The king could dispose of them at will and transfer them from one part of the country to another depending on where he needed their services.

The Pechenegs’ status on the social ladder may have improved later. According to the Chronicon Pictum,⁴ whilst the battle for the throne between King Geza I (1074-1077) and his rival ex-king Solomon was going on, some of the Pechenegs settled in the west of the country offered to side with Geza in return for a release from their status of ‘condicionales’. Geza appears to have agreed to this bargain since the Pechenegs gained some freedom soon afterwards.⁵ We do not know exactly the extent of these freedoms, but even if they included the administration of justice, they would probably still depend on the king as supreme judge.

Disputes that only affected the Muslim community were probably resolved internally but any case that touched, however lightly, upon Christians outside the community would have had to have been referred to the king’s courts. It is difficult to say whether ecclesiastical courts were involved at this early stage of the Pecheneg colonization but I am inclined to think that they were not.

Whilst the Pechenegs seem to have had the freedom to profess their religion, the other Muslim groups were treated differently. King Ladislas (1077-1095), the successor to Geza, enacted a law which referred...