Living as Muslims under Christian rule. The Mudejars

Abstract

The analysis of Muslim minorities in the Iberian Peninsula highlights their shifting identities throughout time and spaces. The integration in different kingdoms, and under distinctive landlords, implied a social engineering in their status and prerogatives. The intended and progressive homogenization of the Muslim due to the Iberian monarchies lied mainly on the discourse of a respublica christiana intended to separate the Christian community from the Other. This gradual process, that included continuous political negotiations between both groups, conveyed different degrees of acculturation. Muslim minorities developed a dynamic dialectic between the Islamic umma and the specific contexts of their daily life.