Knights on the Frontier: The Moorish Guard of the Kings of Castile (1410-1467) (review)

The presence of a Moorish guard in the service of the kings of Castile in the fifteenth century seems an anomaly as the Christian reconquest of Spain was still in progress and endowed by the papacy with the character of a crusade. From the initial Muslim invasion in the eighth century Christians and Muslims were thrown together in ways uncommon elsewhere in northern Europe. Christians were employed in the civil service of the emirs and caliphs of Córdoba. Christian knights such as the Cid served the Muslim rulers of Zaragoza and Valencia, and in the thirteenth century the armies of the Almohads and Marinids of Morocco included Christian contingents. Castilian magnates rebelling against King Alfonso X also took service with the king of Granada.

Conversely, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries individual Moors, at odds with the kings of Granada, entered Castilian service. From the early-fifteenth century Moorish military units were incorporated into the Castilian royal household. Mudéjars or Muslims living under Christian rule and Moors from the kingdom of Granada constituted the Guardia mora, which became especially prominent in the reigns of Juan II (1406-54) and Enrique IV (1454-74). The civil wars and uncertainties of the kingdom of Granada and the intervention of the Castilian kings facilitated this process. In some measure this reflected the general tendency of the era to create a standing army. Forming the king's personal guard, they were wholly dependent on him and generally loyal. As generations passed, membership in the Guardia mora passed from father to son.

The Moorish knights received a daily wage (the ración morisca) and account books dating from 1455-56 record those payments. Illustrating this material are several tables and a long documentary appendix containing 107 documents, mostly concerning payments of wages by the royal treasury.

Over time, many of Moorish knights opted to convert to Christianity. Some probably did so out of personal conviction, while others may have decided that conversion would give them full access into Christian society and military advancement. Whereas the ceremony of conversion involved baptism and the presentation of a symbolic cloth, the converts continued to wear Moorish dress and to carry Moorish arms. Some of them were drawn from the class known as elches or renegades, usually Christians taken captive in their youth who converted to Islam and on entering Castilian service decided to return to the religion of their ancestors. As the fifteenth century advanced, religious tensions led to antagonistic actions against the Jews and converts from Judaism. During that time, however, the sincerity of converts from Islam does not seem to have been challenged, and they were not subjected to the same violence.

The civil wars that erupted in the latter years of Enrique IV led to the dissolution of the Moorish guard, whose presence in the royal court provoked a hostile reaction. As Islamophobia reared its head, the nobles accused the king of being overly fond of Muslim practice, and they demanded that the Moorish guard be disbanded. That probably occurred by 1466 when chancery documents ceased to refer to it. Although the Guardia mora disappeared, in the twentieth century Generalissimo Francisco Franco brought Moroccan troops to Spain, where they figured prominently in parades and other celebrations.

Ana Echevarría has written an excellent book that places the hitherto obscure history of the Guardia mora in the context of Christian-Muslim relations and Castilian military organization. Utilizing many unpublished records, the work is thoroughly researched. An extensive bibliography, a map, a genealogical table, and an index complete a most interesting volume.