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CHAPTER 2

Clothing and Appearance

Do clothes make the man—or the woman? Should it be possible to know a person’s identity or religion simply from his or her appearance, and can certain clothes, hairstyles, and other aspects of visual identity be mandated by custom and law? Throughout the medieval period, the desirable answer was generally “yes.” Different groups of people should look different, with different vestimentary traditions, whether through self- or communal regulation (according to their own laws, habits, and personal desires) or mandated by external legislation. Prescriptive legal sources, both religious and secular, from medieval Islamic, Jewish, and Christian spheres, all indicate medieval sentiments in favor of the immediate visual identification of religious, social, and economic distinctions through regulations on dress, hairstyles, veils, belts, shoes, beards, jewelry, and other aspects of personal and collective appearance. One of the most famous iterations of these opinions, codified at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and requiring distinctive “signs” for Muslims and Jews, did not stand alone in the legal tradition.

Meanwhile, the lawyers, clerics, and administrators who upheld sumptuary laws were themselves far from alone in supporting the importance of differential visual identity in medieval and early modern Spain. Artists (and, by extension, their audiences) in Christian and Muslim regions were likewise familiar with the conventions for representing Christian and Muslim appearance, whether in luxury manuscripts produced at the court of Alfonso X of Castile, or in frescoes of courtly scenes adorning the ceilings of the Alhambra Palace in Granada. While it may be argued that neither law nor art necessarily reflected actual lived experience in medieval and early modern Spain, nevertheless, both genres expressed clear and well-understood expectations that Muslims, Christians, and Jews should be visually distinguishable from each other.

And just as different groups should look different, so too members of the same community should appear as such. Thirteenth-century Castilian law had dictated not only that Muslims should dress differently from Christians but also that newly converted Christians (“christianos novos”) must no longer dress as Moors (“nin vistan commo los moros”).¹ Three centuries later, on the eve of mass conversions in the early sixteenth century, the first archbishop of Granada, Hernando de Talavera, likewise advised that New Christians should conform outwardly to Christian ways of life, and lest they be suspected of harboring Muslim belief in their hearts, they should appear as good and honest Christians in their dress, shoes, and hairstyles.² Sixteenth-century opinion in this matter was founded on medieval precedents, with one adviser to the emperor Charles V in 1526 recommending that Morisco dress be prohibited because “people and things identify themselves by the signs that they carry, and thus they are judged to be those whose signs they bear.”³ It follows, therefore, that the 1567 law in Granada requiring that the Moriscos “may not wear Moorish clothing” (no traygan vestido de moros), but they must “conform with Old Christians in their dress” (conformen en los trajes con los cristianos viejos) was directly related to a much older discourse about legislating the visual distinction of identity.⁴ Pedro de Deza, the president of the Granadan Royal Audiencia who was in charge of implementing the 1567 ordinances, thus argued that the retention of Moorish styles (ropas a la morisca) “was dishonest, and it did not look right that Christian women should go around dressed like moras.”⁵

When Francisco Núñez Muley was called upon to defend the rights of New Christians to wear traditional styles, he was forced to find a new focus for this familiar line of argument, by reorienting the discussion from religious to regional distinctiveness. In trying to disassociate the long-held presumption that people of different religions were, and should be, visually distinct because of religion, he argued that “the style of dress, clothing and footwear of the natives cannot be said to be that of Muslims, nor is it that of Muslims. It can more rightly be said to be clothing that corresponds to a particular kingdom and province … it follows from what I have just said that Christianity is not found in the clothing or footwear that is now in style, and the same is true of Islam.”⁶ These arguments ran counter to centuries of legislation and assumptions linking belief and appearance. And yet Núñez Muley’s arguments also had good grounding since there were many different regional styles of dress in early modern Spain. Styles in Granada were different from those worn by New Christians elsewhere, stemming from the fact that this region had been very recently conquered, while Mudejars in Valencia, Aragon, and northern Castile had been living under Christian rule for centuries. Evidence from these regions indicates that Muslims had long dressed in styles that were often similar to those of their Old Christian neighbors—even while religious and secular legislation required differential appearance. By the sixteenth century, many New Christians in northern and eastern Iberia had more or less given up Morisco styles (el traje a los moriscos).⁷

Some identity requirements were purely external and easily changed, such as styles of clothing; others were also temporary, but somewhat more long term, such as particular styles for hair and beards; still others were permanently inscribed on the body, as with circumcision in particular.⁸ Inherent differences in appearance, such as skin color, might also be seen as important visual markers, but these could not be legislated or altered. Meanwhile, certain invisible elements that were believed to create identity—such as the importance given to purity of blood (pureza de sangre) in early modern Spain—were a different matter again.⁹ The case of Granada was thus particular, and this region would become the focal point for early modern attention to Morisco dress. But it was not entirely unique, and it is important both to consider the particularities of Granadan experience on their own terms and to situate them in a wider context.

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The more changeable aspects of visual identity could be easily shared, and there is a common and understandable tendency for people living in the same place at the same time to dress in similar fashions. Much of medieval sumptuary legislation therefore addressed the problems entailed by the social and economic muddling of visual identity. As has frequently been pointed out, repeated laws requiring differential styles of clothing may suggest that, in fact, people routinely ignored these rules. We know, for example, that many Christians in late medieval Spain liked to wear elements of what was commonly identified as “Moorish” dress, despite strictures against such things, while Mudejars did not always wear the particular clothing and hairstyles that were dictated by Christian authorities to signal their Muslim identity. Sharing was less likely in the case of permanent bodily signs, which could not be assumed without inflicting pain, and which would have remained the same even when identity changed. In 1526, when Moriscos in Granada were first required to abandon “Moorish” forms of dress, many adult male converts would still have been circumcised. But, needless to say, this inscribed sign of residual Islamic identity would rarely have been visible in the public sphere (except perhaps in a bathhouse). Old Christian authorities could not demand its removal, although they certainly tried to ensure that Morisco boys did not undergo the procedure.

Many rulings regarding communal visual identity were directed internally, issued by political and religious authorities toward members of their own communities to create solidarity and conformity, whether these were requirements for circumcision or sumptuary laws dictating clothing and hairstyles. Other laws were imposed by a ruling community that wielded power over a subject community (whether or not these subjects were actually a numerical minority). Both sorts of rules had very ancient roots, and many elements of legal thought that became common in the medieval Mediterranean world can be found in Roman law and other earlier traditions.

As regards Christian-Muslim relations, legislation on the proper dress and deportment of Christians and Jews living under Muslim rule (dhimmīs) can be traced back to the first century of Islam, in the so-called Pact of ‘Umar (Shurūṭ ‘Umar).¹⁰ This famous document is thought to have been promulgated by either the caliph ‘Umar I (d. 644) or ‘Umar II (d. 720), and it would be widely disseminated throughout the later medieval Islamic world, including al-Andalus, as a long-term template for Muslim-dhimmī relations. The categories for distinction were clearly, and strictly, envisioned along religious lines. Along with other provisions relating to behavior and daily life, Christians and Jews were not allowed to wear Muslim clothing, shoes, turbans, or hairstyles; instead, they were required to dress with a distinctive type of belt and to clip their hair in a particular way.¹¹ Although there is plenty of evidence to suggest that these rules were not always strictly or universally enforced, and that many dhimmīs actually dressed and looked much like their Muslim neighbors, the legal initiatives of the Pact of ‘Umar survived over many centuries.¹²

The most influential medieval Latin Christian statement on visual distinction was promulgated by Pope Innocent III at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Toward the end of the records of the council, in canon 68, the pope noted that in some Christian regions “a difference of dress distinguishes Jews or Saracens from Christians, but in certain others such confusion has developed that they are indistinguishable.” He therefore decreed that all Muslims and Jews “of either sex in every Christian province and at all times shall be distinguished from other people by the character of their dress in public.” He went on to explain that not only should non-Christians avoid rich and elegant clothing, or anything that might appear to set them above Christians, but that wearing distinctive clothing would avoid the possibility of any confusion of religious identity during daily interaction or—more critically—any confusion that might lead to forbidden sexual contact. Because of similarity of dress, Innocent warned, “it sometimes happens that by mistake Christians unite with Jewish or Saracen women, and Jews or Saracens with Christians.”¹³ His words reflected significant anxieties about confusion of appearance, mistaken identity, and the possibility of sexual mixing that had become common in western European thought by the later twelfth century in the wake of warfare, trade, and increasing encounters between Christians and Muslims.¹⁴

These rulings initiated a flurry of subsequent sumptuary legislation throughout Latin Europe, dictating the signs that Jews and Muslims should wear in order to be visually distinguished from Christians. The long-term ramifications for Mudejar dress and appearance in Christian Spain will be discussed in more detail below. But what is clear is that the dictates of Lateran IV confirmed and institutionalized, for the rest of the medieval period, widespread acceptance of the idea that Christians and non-Christians should look different.

Clothing After Conquest

In 1499, seven years after their conquest of Granada, when King Fernando and Queen Isabel returned to visit that city, they were greeted by the “admirable” scene of a great crowd of people that included (according to their chronicler, Alonso de Santa Cruz) thirty-thousand Muslim women (moras) wearing traditional white veils (almalafas).¹⁵ It must have been a stunning sight and distinctly different, visually, from the kind of crowd that might have greeted their entrance into Burgos, Barcelona, Madrid, or other towns where the Muslim population was very low. The original capitulations of Granada, drawn up late in 1491, had allowed the Muslim inhabitants of the conquered city to remain Muslim and to preserve their distinctive religious and customary ways of life, including clothing, foodways, language, and bathing. This and the other late fifteenth-century treaties that the Catholic Kings negotiated with cities throughout the former Naṣrid kingdom had all assumed, initially, that the newly subject inhabitants would remain Muslim and assume a status very like that of Mudejars living under Christian rule elsewhere in the realms of Castile and Aragon. So there was little surprising or problematic in the fact that the crowds in Granada who gathered to greet the monarchs in 1499 were dressed in the traditional fashions closely associated with their Islamic faith.

But problems and unpleasant surprises were about to appear, and the process of forced conversion of Muslims in Granada and other parts of the Crown of Castile, undertaken in 1500–1502, would profoundly change longstanding assumptions about visual distinction and identity. After conversion, New Christians were encouraged to abandon the earlier ways that had marked them as Muslim and to look, dress, speak, and act like Old Christians. Hernando de Talavera, appointed as the first archbishop of newly Christian Granada in 1493, was especially attentive to the nuances of dress and deportment, having already written a sumptuary treatise for Christians in 1477, which he revised and published in 1496 after moving to Granada.¹⁶ Talavera sought to “domesticate” his converted flock (para domesticarles) and to teach them Christian ways.¹⁷ Among these, “he made sure that they dressed in Castilian styles [que se vistiessen a lo Castellano], and he gave cloaks, shoes, and hats to poor men, and shawls and skirts [mantos y sayas] to their wives.”¹⁸ Talavera was much more sympathetic to the local population than was his colleague Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, who would become infamous for his hard-line attitude toward enforcing conversion and the abandonment of Muslim ways.¹⁹

Early capitulation treaties, in which Muslim communities in the region of Granada agreed to convert to Christianity, made practical provision for the difficult shift from Muslim to Christian ways of life, including clauses relating to butchers, bathhouses, language, and clothing. Similar documents drawn up with converted communities in Baza, Huéscar, and Vélez Rubio in 1500 and 1501 all promised that New Christians “would not be pressured to buy and wear new clothes until those that they and their wives currently owned had worn out.²⁰ We also find negotiations for a delay nearly three decades later, when Muslims in Valencia (in 1525) and elsewhere in the Crown of Aragon (in 1526) likewise faced forced baptism. New converts in Valencia pleaded to retain their styles of clothing “which are so different from the clothing of Christians, especially as regards female clothing. Because the change of dress and the loss of these articles of clothing would be a great hardship, and no provision had been made to cover the loss, they requested a grace period of forty years before being forced to abandon their clothing.” In reply (in a treaty ratified in 1526 but published in 1528), the king and the Inquisition granted them “a period of ten years in which to use and wear the clothes that they currently had, after which they would have to switch to Christian styles.”²¹

The grant of ten years may have been based on earlier experiences in Castile, where there seems to have been a decade of uncertainty about the point at which Morisco clothing could be considered to be “worn out” and whether items could be mended and refashioned to prolong their useful life. An ordinance issued by Queen Juana in 1511, addressed to all New Christians in the kingdom of Granada (“men and women, old and young”), ordered not only that they must give up wearing Moorish-style clothing (“ropa de vestir a la manera de los moros”) and dress like Old Christians, but also that “no tailor, for any reason or in any way, shall cut or make any clothing for the newly converted to wear except in the style of Old Christian dress.”²² However, a loophole was immediately found in this ruling, so in 1513 Juana issued another decree noting that for the past two years, Old Christian and Mudejar tailors had claimed that the 1511 law did not apply to them; from here onward, she “ordered that another decree be made that Old Christian and Mudejar tailors not be allowed to make Moorish-style clothing [ropas moriscas].”²³ Juana then went on, in this decree and in another document issued on the same day (July 29, 1513), to prohibit both New Christian and Old Christian women from wearing almalafas or any other form of veil that covered their faces.²⁴ This would be the first in a long series of edicts against the almalafa and female veiling, which will be discussed in more detail in a separate section below.

The first comprehensive set of postconquest ordinances and restrictions relating to New Christian life was issued in Granada by Charles V in December 1526, and the Inquisition was charged with enforcement of this legislation. Although the original edict’s extant text included no clauses relating to general Morisco clothing, other aspects of their visual identity—female face veiling and the almalafa, painting hands and feet with henna, and wearing ornaments in the shape of a hand inscribed with Arabic letters—were specifically addressed and prohibited.²⁵ Nevertheless, a later account of this edict in Prudencio de Sandoval’s Historia de la vida y hechos del emperador Carlos V (published in 1604) did give equal weight to clothing, recalling the requirement that “they were to put aside and leave off wearing the marlotas [loose open garments with sleeves] that they were accustomed to wear in place of skirts [sayas], and the linen almalafas that they wore in place of shawls [mantos], and all Moriscas and Moriscos were to dress themselves as Christians … and no tailor should dare to fashion clothes, or jeweler to create ornaments, in a Moorish style.”²⁶ The ordinances of 1526 were in any case sufficiently broad-ranging to create a shock wave through the New Christian community in Granada, and a petition was made to the emperor for a grace period to lessen the impact of his decree (not unlike the contemporary plea from New Christians in Valencia). Their appeal met with success, and the edict was put on hold for forty years—in return for a hefty payment to the crown from the New Christian community in Granada.²⁷

The struggle over clothing was an uphill battle for both sides in the middle of the sixteenth century. Many New Christians steadfastly retained their traditional styles of dress; royal legislation was not necessarily effective, fines and penalties could be ignored, and the Inquisition had promised not to intervene during the grace period negotiated in 1526. Clothing, also, was easily changed, and people who dutifully dressed in Christian fashions for public activities might switch back into their more comfortable and familiar older-style clothing when they returned home. Royal letters sent to the archbishop and Audiencia of Granada in 1530 lamented the backsliding of New Christian women, who had resumed dressing in Moorish clothing (“se han vuelto a poner el [hábito] morisco”) and in so doing “had forgotten Christian doctrine and committed many sins and offenses.”²⁸ Later in the same year Charles’s empress, Isabella of Portugal, wrote directly to the New Christian community in Granada urging that they give up their past beliefs and errors in their ways of life, especially “the clothing and styles that you wore in the time when you were not Christians.” The letter even took on something of a personal tone, underlining Isabella’s concern over the issue: “we charge and entreat you to abandon these garments, and from now on to clothe and to dress yourselves and your children in clothing and styles after the manner that Old Christians wear in this kingdom, because as well as being something very important for the salvation and improvement of your souls, this will also give me much pleasure.”²⁹

Perhaps some New Christians heeded her request, but a quarter century later, in 1554, the canons of the Synod of Guadix repeated similar accusations that some Moriscos were switching back and forth between the two different styles of clothing as evidence of their bad faith. By the middle of the sixteenth century, concerns about faith and identity had taken on new importance in light of the Reformation. Martín Pérez de Ayala, bishop of Guadix and convener of the synod in 1554, was also a participant at the Council of Trent and well aware of such problems. The Guadix synod gave specific instructions about clothing reforms and six months to put them into effect, after which “nobody should dare to wear Morisco clothing or styles, and they should especially abandon veils [savanas or sábanas], marlotas, and head coverings [atavio de las cabeças], and they must put on shawls, skirts, and head coverings [mantos y sayas y tocas] in the Christian style.”³⁰

These rulings set the scene for the crackdown in 1567, when even more comprehensive restrictions on Morisco life were imposed in Granada. First, the legislation addressed those who made clothes. Henceforth, “no one among the newly converted in the said kingdom or among their descendants would be able to make or cut new almalafas or marlotas or any other types of shoes or clothes that were used or worn in the time of the Moors. And any new clothes that are made must conform to the styles that are worn by Old Christians, namely mantos and sayas.” The edict went on to lay out penalties, in prison terms and monetary fines, for first, second, and third offenses. Next, it addressed those who wore almalafas and marlotas, and permitted (once again) a grace period that allowed one year of further wear for fancy silk garments and two years for ordinary unornamented clothing. After that, nobody could wear such clothes, and they would be liable for the same penalties as those imposed on tailors. Finally, even while women continued to wear their almalafas during the grace period, they must be sure that their faces remained uncovered.³¹

This, then, was the situation that Francisco Núñez Muley was called on to address in his memorandum to the Audiencia in Granada, and which led him to try to disentangle the bond between religion and clothing styles. Ultimately, this was a lost cause, but the strategies of his argument illuminate various sides of the debate over Morisco clothing: religious, cultural, moral, economic, and visual. Núñez Muley began by reviewing the history of restrictions on clothing, going back to Queen Juana’s attempts to prevent tailors from making clothes in traditional styles and other early sixteenth-century decrees “prohibiting the wearing, weaving, and elaboration of Morisco clothing.”³² These rulings were never implemented, he says, not because of Morisco intransigence, but because Old Christian leaders of the city were either unaware of the new laws, or were opposed to them, or restrictions were suspended in return for payment. At the same time, from an economic perspective, people recognized that “overwhelming harm would be done to the natives by taking away their traditional style of dress, and great injury would also be done to those merchants who have invested their wealth in purchasing cloth for such clothing.”³³ Pressing this fiscal argument, Núñez Muley estimated that 150,000 people would be required to purchase new clothes, of whom only a small fraction (he claims four or five thousand) would have the money to do so. Another option might be to cut up Morisco clothes and sew them together again as Christian-type garments, but the differences in the two styles made this impracticable. In the end, he concluded, lots of perfectly good clothes would have to be thrown away, and this (to make one last compelling point) would “greatly diminish royal rents as well as all things related to the taxes paid to the Royal Crown.”³⁴

The primary issue that Núñez Muley had to contend with was the longheld correlation between clothing styles and religious faith. As he argued, “the prelates contend that the preservation of the traditional style of dress and footwear of the natives of this kingdom is tantamount to a continuation of the ceremonies and customs of the Muslims. I can only say, My Lord, that in my modest judgment (which has nonetheless helped me to reach old age) these reports are wholly without merit.”³⁵ This launches him into his argument (quoted at the start of this chapter) that traditional clothing styles were in fact merely an expression of regional identity, not religious affiliation. In support of this, he points out that clothing styles vary between different regions of Castile and in other Christian kingdoms and provinces, just as styles differ between Granada, Morocco, and Turkey, even though all inhabitants of the latter two lands are Muslim, so “it follows that one cannot establish or state that the clothing of the new converts is that of Muslims.” Furthermore, Christians from Jerusalem have been seen “wearing clothing and head coverings similar to what is worn in the Maghreb and resembling in no way what is worn in Castile—and yet they are Christians.”³⁶

Finally, regarding style, he observes that fashions change over time and thus modern Morisco everyday clothes were much closer to Castilian styles (being shorter, lighter, and cheaper) than they had been at the start of the century. This is in contrast to costly festive garments, only brought out for weddings and celebrations, which—he admits—tend to be carefully preserved and passed down from generation to generation.³⁷ New Christian men had quickly adopted new styles and now “wear wholly Castilian clothing. If the natives’ hearts were truly obstinate, then they would no doubt think that changing their style of dress would compromise their religion … and yet the men do not dress now as they used to.” According to Núñez Muley, this shift was a relatively easy process since male clothes and shoes wear out quickly and need to be regularly replaced in any case, and “seeing that the Castilian style of dress is better and more suited to men … they began to wear Castilian clothing as they do today by their own free will and without any complaint whatsoever. This has been the custom here for over forty years,” despite which New Christians have not yet received any relief from the special taxes and restrictions that still set them apart from Old Christians.³⁸ Women’s fashions were a different matter, and traditional styles persisted into the later sixteenth century, especially wearing the distinctive and enveloping almalafa, and Núñez Muley spoke forcefully about the benefits of modesty and protection, afforded to both Old and New Christian women, provided by covering their heads and faces.³⁹

Underlying all of Núñez Muley’s arguments were the assumptions that local styles differed and fashions changed over time. He does not question the fact that clothing types common in Granada were unlike the fashions of Castile, and that these distinctions played a strong role in visual identity—whether this identity was interpreted as religious or regional. He also makes strong claims about personal choice and free will, suggesting that people wear certain clothes because they are comfortable, fashionable, or affordable, not merely because church or state sumptuary laws require adherence. As in the rest of his memorandum, Núñez Muley makes the case for the weight of tradition, local (“native”) identity, and the practical aspects of daily life over those of religious belief in influencing the clothing choices of New Christians. Núñez Muley’s argument was that people in different regions will naturally look different, regardless of religion, while people sharing regional identity will gradually come to share vestimentary traditions over time (whether Christians in Jerusalem wearing local styles, or New and Old Christian women in Granada veiling their faces). Thus, the difficulty in Granada was merely that coalescence of dress had not yet happened, because habit and economic disincentive had so far led many New Christians—especially women—to preserve their long-held regional fashions.

Núñez Muley’s memorandum had no apparent effect in mitigating contemporary edicts against wearing almalafas, marlotas, and other elements of Morisco dress. But it did not fall on entirely deaf ears, since Luis del Mármol Carvajal mentioned Núñez Muley’s appeal in his history of the Morisco rebellion in 1568.⁴⁰ Diego Hurtado de Mendoza went further, in his more sympathetic history of the same wars, by elaborating Núñez Muley’s arguments about regionalism in the voice of a fictional Morisco “of very great natural authority and ripe and mature counsel,” who pointed out that “they order us to leave off our Moorish clothes and dress in the Castillian manner. Even amongst the Christians, the Germans dress in one manner, the French in another, the Greeks in another, the friars in quite a distinct manner and the Christian boys dress quite differently from the Christian men. Amongst the Christians, each nation, each profession, each group and rank and station of mankind has a distinct way of dressing, and they are all Christians, and we are Moors and so we dress in the Moorish fashion: it is as if they wish us outwardly to conform even when we are not conforming in our hearts.”⁴¹ One might think that this argument would have had a certain logical traction, because it was objectively true and would appeal to the professed rationalism of contemporary thought. Nevertheless, it failed to change assumptions, based on customs and legislation that had been firmly in place for many centuries, that Christians and Muslims did in fact dress differently because of their different religious traditions.

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The pull of distinctive clothing presented a real problem in an age when religious and secular authorities wished to establish conformity in both external appearance and internal belief. This was very different from the medieval concerns, expressed in the Fourth Lateran Council, which had worried about an inevitable pull toward the assimilation of visual identity. Visual confusion of identity was a bad thing in 1215, when the overall desire was to preserve difference where difference existed. Crusaders needed to know that they were fighting the right enemies; tax collectors needed to be able to identify non-Christian subjects; preachers should be able to target their audience; jurists knew that different codes of law applied to different groups; and above all people must avoid jumping into bed with somebody of a different faith.

Overall, religious difference was a persistent fact of medieval Iberian life. Despite a strong rhetorical and polemical impulse urging the conversion of Muslims, there were no actual widespread, concerted, or successful efforts in this direction before the sixteenth century.⁴² Instead, while rulers such as Alfonso VI and Alfonso X of Castile and Jaume I of Aragon may have wished—on some level—to rule over entirely Christian kingdoms, they were also well aware not only of the practical obstacles to mass conversions but also of the economic and structural advantages to maintaining their subject non-Christian populations. Thus, Mudejars should look different from Christians, as a reflection of their Muslim identity; just as later Moriscos, being New Christians, must look the same as their Old Christian coreligionists.

Visual Identity in Medieval Spain

The effort to preserve difference, as opposed to mandating assimilation, resulted in medieval attitudes toward vestimentary legislation that were profoundly different from those of the sixteenth century (even while both traditions arose from the same basic premises about visual identity). In the wake of the Lateran IV rulings in 1215, Christian legislators all over Europe established dress codes and signs by which Jews and Muslims could be easily identified.⁴³ Jews were the exclusive focus for such laws in most regions of western Europe, where there were no Muslim communities. Both subject religious communities were present in Spain, but even here vestimentary rules were not always equally applied to the two groups. Legislation relating to Jews in Castile and Aragon tended to focus on special signs (often stars) to be worn on clothing, particular colors (frequently yellow), and peculiar hats, but laws for Muslims more often required distinctive styles of clothing or hair. Only occasionally, as in a law of 1408 from Castile that ordered Muslims to wear badges in the shape of crescent moons, were Mudejar rules directly parallel to those of their Jewish contemporaries.⁴⁴ Sometimes, Muslims were not even cited in Iberian laws relating to visual distinction. This was the case in the Siete Partidas, a comprehensive law code commissioned by Alfonso X in the later thirteenth century, which mandated that “Jews shall bear certain marks in order that they may be known” (los judios deuen andar sennalados por que sean connoscidos) without mentioning any similar law for Muslims.⁴⁵

The reasons for this disparity in the thirteenth century are unclear. One might posit that by the time of the Lateran rulings, Jews in Spain already had a long history of life and assimilation under Christian rule, whereas Muslim subjects were still a relatively recent phenomenon, dating only from the last decades of the eleventh century. Muslim communities in Castile and Aragon also often maintained ties with family, business associates, and coreligionists in Andalusi regions still under Muslim control and in North Africa, and these connections may have fostered ongoing differences in dress and appearance. Mudejars, on the whole, were less acculturated with their Christian neighbors and less urbanized than were their Jewish counterparts, and this may have lessened Christian worries about confusion of identity. However, this situation appears to have changed over time, as one might expect, as generations of Muslims continued to live under Christian rule in Castile and Aragon and began to adapt their external appearance to their local context. So it is noteworthy that only in the later thirteenth century, two hundred years after the conquest of Toledo and many decades after the Fourth Lateran Council, did Iberian Christian legislation begin to focus serious attention on Mudejar dress and hairstyles. Before that, all evidence indicates that Muslims in Christian Spain generally dressed according to their own vestimentary systems and that they maintained a distinctive visual identity by their own choice.

There are three main sources for evidence telling us about visual distinctions in clothing and personal appearance in medieval Spain: sumptuary legislation, descriptions of dress in chronicles and literature, and depictions in art and sculpture. There are also other items of textual evidence, including wills, sale documents, and personal inventories that document clothing but usually say less about identity. Material evidence also survives, in the form of medieval articles of clothing and Andalusi textiles preserved in Christian tombs and treasuries. Virtually all of the textual sources on clothing and appearance date from the thirteenth century and after. Although one might think that twelfth-century fueros (as one example) would be a rich source for details of legislation about differential Muslim and Christian dress, they are not. This silence may further suggest that the visual distinction between Muslims and Christians was not perceived as a legal problem in Christian Spain before the later thirteenth century.

Almost all such evidence relating to differences of Christian and Muslim appearance in later medieval Christian regions is mediated through Christian perceptions and is found in sources produced by Christian authors and artists. The exception, textiles woven and embroidered in Andalusi ateliers, nonetheless reflects Christian appreciation and use of these materials. Although we have some visual and textual data on clothing and appearance from al-Andalus and Naṣrid Granada, for example, in legal texts (ḥisba treatises and fatwa collections) or images (illustrations in the tale of Bayāḍ and Riyāḍ [see Figure 1], or paintings of Muslim and Christian warriors on ceilings in the Alhambra), these sources are very limited in number as compared to their Christian-context counterparts.

Notably, however, there are a few Andalusi sources that discussed clothing and religious identity before the development of Christian concerns in the thirteenth century. Arabic legal writings about dhimmi clothing were generally based on the aforementioned Pact of ‘Umar, a text that was familiar to Andalusi jurists and others. The early twelfth-century Sevillian market inspector Ibn ‘Abdun reiterated the regulation that Christians and Jews should dress differently from Muslims, but he also remarked that one ought not to sell used clothes that had belonged to a Christian or Jew without clearly informing the buyer about their origins.⁴⁶ Apparently the appearance of the clothing was not sufficient in itself. In Córdoba, another early twelfth-century jurist, Ibn Rushd (d. 1126; the grandfather of Averroës), answered a query about whether it was necessary to wash clothes that had belonged to a Christian before wearing them for Muslim prayer. His answer turned on the issue of whether or not the Muslim wearer knew that the clothes had previously been worn by a Christian.⁴⁷ Both of these cases suggest that in al-Andalus, at least, there were often no obvious differences in styles of clothing worn by Muslims and their local Christian (dhimmī) neighbors.

Figure 1. Ḥadīth Bayāḍ wa Riyāḍ (ca. 1240). Vatican Arabo 368, fol. 22r. Andalusi depiction of contemporary Muslim garb, showing men’s and women’s head coverings. © 2017 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

The first Iberian statute to reflect the rulings of Lateran IV appeared in the canons of the Council of Tarragona in 1239, with a brief statement that “Jews and Saracens must distinguish themselves from Christians in matters of dress,” and that interfaith wet-nursing and cohabitation were prohibited.⁴⁸ This idea was considerably elaborated in later secular legislation sponsored by Alfonso X of Castile at the Cortes of Seville in 1252, which ordered that “wherever there are Moors who live in towns that are also inhabited by Christians, they must be sure that their hair is clipped all around their heads, and parted in the middle without any longer pieces [sin tapet]. They should wear beards, as is mandated by their law, and they may not wear any items made of çendal, nor any white, green, bright red, or dark red fabrics, nor white or gold shoes.”⁴⁹ The Cortes of Valladolid, in 1258, for their part issued a long list of sumptuary legislation that was almost entirely aimed at Christians, with only one brief entry on Muslim clothing and another on Jewish garb. As in Seville, Muslims who lived in towns with Christian neighbors must trim and part their hair in a certain way (this time sin copete), wear long beards according to Muslim tradition, and avoid wearing çendal, white or tinted cloth (except as had already been specified for Jews), and white or gold shoes.⁵⁰ Ten years later, almost identical rules about male clothing, hair, and beards were issued by the Cortes of Jerez in 1268, but an additional clause was added noting that Muslim women (moras) were to dress in the same fashions and colors that had been prescribed for Jewish women (judias). Non-Christian women were allowed to wear colored or white clothing, with otter-fur trim, but not scarlet or orange, or ermine-trimmed items and other expensive adornments, golden shoes, or sleeves made of gold and silk.⁵¹

These detailed regulations on clothing (as opposed to those for hair and beards) all emphasize color, fabric, and ornamentation rather than what we would think of as “style”—in other words, unlike sixteenth-century legislation, particular types of garment (such as the almalafa or marlota) were not singled out for prohibition. All of these colored, expensive, and gilded items were reserved for the Christian nobility and royalty, and thus these clothing rules were probably less aimed at restricting Muslim dress than at enforcing hierarchy and protecting noble entitlements.⁵² Ordinary Christians were also prohibited from wearing richly adorned and expensive clothing.⁵³ Nevertheless, in all three of these pieces of Castilian legislation, the clause limiting its application to “those Moors who live in towns that are populated by Christians” suggests that another intended aim was to prevent any possible confusion (in line with Innocent III’s stated goals), not merely to penalize or humiliate non-Christians.

Medieval sumptuary laws always reserved elaborate and expensive dress for members of society’s elite, and cost was almost certainly more important than perceived religious origin. Indeed, exotic or foreign fabrics gained value through their rarity. We know from textiles and clothing preserved in tombs at the convent of Santa María Real de Las Huelgas, in Burgos, that the Castilian royal family owned and appreciated Andalusi luxury fabrics.⁵⁴ Here again, the richness and exclusivity of the materials was presumably what made these items suitable and indeed desirable for royal attire and burial, rendering any actuality of “Muslim” origins irrelevant.

At the same time, there clearly were differences in style and types of clothing worn by Muslims and Christians in thirteenth-century Castile, and these would generally have provided immediate visual identification without the need for legislation. This is suggested in ordinances from Seville in the early 1270s specifying that new converts to Christianity (los christianos novos) must no longer dress as Muslims.⁵⁵ Presumably Old Christians were not supposed to dress in Muslim styles either. Visual differences between Muslims and Christians, both men and women, are explicitly depicted in thirteenth-century Castilian art, most notably the Cantigas de Santa María and the Libro de ajedrez, both manuscripts closely associated with the court of Alfonso X (see Figures 2 and 3).⁵⁶ Details of hair, beards, skin color, robes, turbans, veiled faces, bare feet, and hands painted with henna (sometimes holding books with Arabic writing) all drew attention to real distinctions that may have been even more prominent in the Christian imagination and artistic presentation than in everyday life.⁵⁷

Much medieval Christian legislation merely stated that Muslims and Christians should dress differently, but there were a number of more precise statements about how this difference should be expressed. As already noted, thirteenth-century Castilian laws tended to emphasize social hierarchy, expressed in terms of particular types and colors of clothing and fabrics, distinctive hairstyles, and the wearing of beards by Muslim men. Unlike Jews, Muslims in this place and period were not required to wear special signs or symbols on their clothing. Neither, at this point, did Castilian legislation mention particular garments that might be traditionally associated with Muslims. Thus, while legislation for Muslims was undoubtedly restrictive, it is not clear that it was more restrictive than sumptuary legislation for many Christians. Nor is there any indication that Muslims were not able to wear garments (except for luxury items) other than those that they would normally have worn, so long as they were not distinctively Christian.

Figure 2. Libro de ajedrez (ca. 1283). Escorial Codex T.I.6, fol. 18r. Castilian depiction of Muslim women; note use of henna on fingers. © Patrimonio Nacional

Figure 3. Libro de ajedrez (ca. 1283). Escorial Codex T.I.6, fol. 17v. Castilian depiction of Muslim men; several of the figures seem to have henna-dyed beards. © Patrimonio Nacional

Hair was a different matter. On the one hand, the distinctive haircut described as being “cut short all around the head” (what Elena Lourie has described as “a special pudding-basin haircut”) was surely a humiliating requirement and not something that could be easily changed or hidden.⁵⁸ On the other hand, Muslims may already have often worn their hair differently than did Christians, and possibly preferred to have it cut by members of their own community. Jaume I’s grant of immunity from royal taxes and seigneurial dominion to a Muslim barber from Vall de Gallinera in 1259 (in return for an annual fee paid to the crown) suggests that this man traveled widely, pursuing his craft in the Muslim communities of Valencia and beyond, and he may have cut hair in certain distinctive styles.⁵⁹ In the first half of the fourteenth century, Muslim men in the Crown of Aragon were forbidden to wear their hair in a style called the garceta, in which the hair was allowed to grow in locks on either side of the face, in front of the ears and falling to about halfway down the ears, then cut back behind to reveal the ears.⁶⁰ The garceta (which may have been similar to the copete and tapet mentioned in Castilian documents) was favored by Christian men in the thirteenth century, and the style appears in contemporary images.⁶¹ But fashions change, as do laws, so that by the middle of the fourteenth century many Muslim men would suddenly be required to adopt the garceta (instead of avoiding it) as a sign of their non-Christian status. Nothing was ever said about hairstyles for Muslim women.

Beards presented a different issue, though again exclusively a matter of male appearance, and they appeared much less frequently in Christian legislation than did hair. This makes it especially noteworthy that early Castilian legislation required Muslim men to wear long beards, with the recognition—quite correctly—that this was part of Muslim tradition, which from the beginning had been intended to distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims. Islamic ʾaḥādīth reported the Prophet Muhammad’s injunction that Muslim men should allow their beards to grow, while keeping their mustaches trimmed, because this was “the opposite of what the pagans [or polytheists, al-mushrikūn] do.”⁶² Beards did often signal difference; they continued to be commonly worn by Muslim men in thirteenth-century Spain, presumably by choice as much as requirement, while their Christian contemporaries were often—but not universally—clean shaven. Thirteenth-century images normally showed young Christian men without beards, although older men might have them (and one of the most famous beards in medieval literature was, of course, sported by the great Castilian hero Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, El Cid).⁶³

Despite the early expression of Lateran IV rulings at the 1239 church council in Tarragona, secular legislation from the Crown of Aragon did not regulate Muslim appearance until the final quarter of the thirteenth century.⁶⁴ In the late 1270s, the Costums de Tortosa echoed Castilian rulings—though with the notable variation of singling out particular articles of Muslim clothing. Mudejar men were to have their hair cut short all around the head and allow their beards to grow long and, unless they were working, should wear long loose tunics with sleeves (aljubas or al-jubbas) and other loose sleeved garments (almeixias or almejías). Muslim women were to dress as did their Jewish counterparts, in something called an aldifara.⁶⁵ Nothing was said about color, fabric, or ornament.

Mention of the garceta first appeared in the final decade of the thirteenth century, in Catalonia in 1293, when King Jaume II of Aragon wrote to the bailiff of Lérida with instructions that Muslims could wear their hair long (in contrast to the “pudding bowl” cut), but without the garceta (sin garceta), so long as they looked different from Christians. Apparently the local bishop had recently complained that there was not sufficient visual distinction between the two communities.⁶⁶ This 1293 ruling may not have been very effective, since less than a decade later (in 1300 or 1301) the king not only had to reem-phasize differential Muslim hairstyles in Lérida (this time requiring that hair be cut short all around the head), but he also had to remind Christians in the city that they should not wear Muslim dress.⁶⁷ Nevertheless, it would be the first of a deluge of legislation regulating Muslim hair that would continue throughout the fourteenth century in the Crown of Aragon. This preoccupation with hair, and especially with the garceta, was very prominent in fourteenth-century legislation from the regions of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, even while there was very little attention given to Muslim hair in contemporary Castilian law.

Legislation on Muslim hairstyles must have existed in Valencia before 1301, when a Catalan Muslim from L’Espluga de Francoli was arrested and enslaved on a visit to Valencia because he was not wearing the correct haircut (and could not pay the fine). His seigneurial lords, the Templars of Barberá, complained to the king and obtained his release.⁶⁸ This case was probably related to Jaume’s other rulings about Muslim hairstyles in Catalonia and Aragon, made in that same year. At the Cortes of Zaragoza (also in 1301), he required that all Muslim men in Aragon, Ribagorza, and La Litera must wear their hair cut short around the head, and without the garceta.⁶⁹ A year later, he wrote to the bailiff of Albalate de Cinca (near Huesca), reiterating these requirements, and in 1306 in Calatayud, he ordered that the bailiff general of Aragon ensure that all Muslims cut their hair differently from Christians, in accord with the recent rulings of the Cortes of Zaragoza.⁷⁰ This latter ordinance was now to include those Muslims living near the border with Castile, whom the king had earlier released from this requirement during a period of warfare between the two Christian kings.

While Jaume’s attention to this matter suggests a desire to coordinate legislation relating to Muslim hairstyles throughout the Crown of Aragon, it also indicates a tendency toward regional differences in appearance both within his own territories and across the border with Castile. These may have been slight but sufficiently recognizable for a Muslim to be identifiable when he traveled from one place to another. Regional difference could also provide a rationale for exemptions, especially for those who had money and influence. In 1345, Pere IV granted permission to Yahya de Bellvís (a member of a wealthy Muslim family in Aragon and Valencia) to wear his hair in the style customary in Castile, and thus be exempt from Aragonese laws regarding Muslim hairstyles, because he lived in Medinaceli and traveled throughout Castile.⁷¹ A decade later, in 1355, another member of the Bellvís family pleaded exemption from Valencian laws regarding hairstyle on the grounds that his branch of the family was from Aragon.⁷²

This latter plea was probably in response to a sudden change in Valencia law, imposed under Pere IV in September of 1347, that now required Muslims to wear the garceta—a reversal of the earlier prohibition.⁷³ This about-face immediately spurred a flurry of court cases and appeals involving Mudejars, their lords, urban administrators, and royal officials, as Muslim men were apprehended in Valencia for not wearing the garceta. In October, for example, the king heard the case of a Muslim from Alfama who was apprehended in Murviedro for not wearing the garceta; Ramoneta, the seigneurial lord of Alfama, had interceded on his behalf, pleading that he had been excused from wearing the garceta because of a wound (presumably to his head). Such cases would persist over the next two decades in Valencia, and it is clear that many Muslims (or their patrons) simply paid for an exemption.⁷⁴ Eventually, in 1373, the king became tired of all of this legal fuss. Claiming that ambiguous appearance was still causing too many problems, he revoked all of the earlier privileges and exemptions given to individual Muslims and Muslim communities regarding dress and hair. Muslims in Valencia were to wear “a certain Clothing and Appearance haircut” (certa scisione crinium), presumably the garceta, and they must dress as Muslims; that is, in the aljuba, not in Christian clothes.⁷⁵ Nevertheless, some differential treatment apparently continued. In 1389 Prince Martí (later Martí I) wrote to the governor of the kingdom of Valencia to reprove him for too rigorously punishing Muslims in the Serra d’Eslida for not wearing the garceta, while other (more wealthy) Muslims in the region were not so heavily penalized for this infraction.⁷⁶

This ongoing legal wrangling in Valencia testifies to confusion, inconsistency, and resistance, especially because (as was clear from the Bellvís appeal in 1355) laws in Aragon had in fact continued to insist that Muslims must not wear the garceta (a fact reiterated in Zaragoza in 1360)—long after the reversal of this policy in Valencia.⁷⁷ Perhaps in an effort to resolve these differences, Pere IV eventually changed the law in Aragon also, now requiring the garceta for all Aragonese Muslims in November 1386, just two months before his death.⁷⁸ Not surprisingly, his successor, Joan I, faced an onslaught of complaint and opposition to this change immediately upon his ascent to the throne, especially after he reaffirmed laws imposing distinctive styles of hair and dress. There were Mudejar revolts in Zaragoza and Huesca in 1387, with protesters claiming that these laws were not the custom in Aragon and that they were only being imposed in order to generate income (presumably for the benefit of those selling exemptions and imposing fines).⁷⁹ In Huesca, at least, the new king quickly backed down, ordering in September 1387 that officials in the city should stop requiring that local Muslims cut their hair short all around the head (sarcenati) or that they wear any other distinctive signs. He explained his decision based on the argument (undoubtedly presented to him by the Mudejar population) that this policy was not only unusual in Huesca but also that it would lead to the depopulation of the city’s aljama.⁸⁰ Three months later, Joan followed up on this order and wrote to the bishop of Huesca to remind him that he could not require local Muslims to cut their hair or wear the clenxia (a style similar to the garceta).⁸¹

During the first half of the fourteenth century, legislation in Castile—as in Valencia and Aragon—tended to require yet another particular style of Muslim haircut (usually described as with a single part, cut short all around the head, and without the copete), along with rather vague statements that Mudejars must also wear some kind of distinctive sign (in line with the rulings of Lateran IV).⁸² The Castilian sumptuary ordinances that had been so prominent in the thirteenth century, however, were not restated until the reign of Pedro I (1350–69), when attention refocused away from hair back to clothing, textiles, and ornamentation. In 1351, at the Cortes of Valladolid, Pedro ruled that too many Jews and Muslims were dressing in high-quality imported woolen cloth, half-length cloaks, and adornments (“panos de viado e a meytad e con adobos”) making them indistinguishable from Christians. Henceforth, Castilian Muslims over the age of thirteen were not allowed to wear those types of clothes, nor any garments ornamented with gold or silver.⁸³ After his succession to the throne, Enrique II restated these policies at the Cortes of Toro, in 1371, though with somewhat less precision: Muslims were not allowed to wear luxury textiles, and they must display unspecified signs to distinguish them from Christians. There was no mention of hair.⁸⁴

Elsewhere in the Peninsula, there was also a shift away from policies regarding hair to those concentrating on clothing in the final decades of the fourteenth century. Although laws in the Crown of Aragon continued to mention the garceta, they also began to introduce other distinctive signals of Muslim identity—perhaps because the regulation of hair had proved too difficult on its own. In 1373, Pere IV had required that Muslims in Valencia wear aljubas, harking back to laws requiring this garment from a century earlier in the Costums de Tortosa. Another ordinance from the same year also required that Valencian Muslim men wear the aljuba and cover their heads with a blue cloth (“tovallola blava en lo cap”), while—in an unusual additional clause—Muslim women should veil their faces.⁸⁵ At about the same time, Muslims in Portugal complained to King Pedro I (1357–67) about laws requiring them to wear the aljuba and burnūs (albornoz) because the sleeves of these garments got in their way when they were working.⁸⁶ In 1384, Pere IV restated that clothing, vestments, and hair were all important in the demarcation of Muslim appearance.⁸⁷

Unlike their coreligionists elsewhere, Muslims in Catalonia experienced almost no regulation of their hair or clothing for most of the fourteenth century, although in theory the regulations established in 1301 were still in effect. This changed in 1388, about a year after Joan I came to the throne, when he ordered that all Muslims who lived and worked in Lérida must wear the clothing and hairstyles established by the Constitutions of Catalonia, with the intention of differentiating them from Christians. It appears that the king was responding to the fact that local Mudejars had not been sufficiently distinguishing themselves from their Christian neighbors.⁸⁸ Two years later, in March 1390, the king went much further at the Cortes of Monzón, issuing a new law that all Muslims in Catalonia over the age of ten must wear a yellow band of cloth on their right sleeve (or a red band if the garment that they were wearing happened to be yellow). These rules were repeated in Tortosa the following November.⁸⁹ The new regulation was innovative and yet in line with the general move back toward the legislation of visual distinction through signs and clothing, rather than hair, which characterizes the end of the fourteenth century.

Needless to say, Catalan Muslims complained vociferously about this new law, and the king agreed to suspend it pending further investigation in January 1391.⁹⁰ Six months later, however, he issued a new decree, this time in Zaragoza, requiring that Muslims in Aragon must wear the garceta along with red or yellow armbands. This caused such an uproar among Aragonese Mudejars that an ambassador from Granada even arrived to intervene on their behalf.⁹¹ Although Joan acknowledged the ambassador’s intercession and promised not to impose the law, other documents indicate that he reiterated these statutes from Monzón and Zaragoza several times over the next few years, though possibly they were not always enforced.⁹² Differential imposition is certainly suggested in an exemption issued in 1396, in which the king allowed Aragonese Muslims to take off the yellow band when they were traveling in Catalonia.⁹³ It also seems likely that the yellow band was not commonly enforced in Catalonia given the irritation expressed by Catalan Muslims after the death of Joan in May 1396, when the queen regent María de Luna, wife of his successor Martí I, briefly reimposed the “good customs” established at Monzón. As soon as Martí arrived from Sicily to assume the throne, the aljamas of Catalonia appealed this legislation and received freedom from wearing the yellow band in 1397.⁹⁴ Shortly thereafter, in 1401, Martí ordered Muslims in Aragon to wear distinctive signs, but there was no further mention of the despised colored armbands.⁹⁵

Ever since the edicts of the Fourth Lateran Council, it had been common for Jews in Spain (as elsewhere in Europe) to be required to wear specific insignia on their clothing, often yellow stars or circles. However, there were no parallel laws establishing distinctive vestimentary symbols for Iberian Muslims until nearly two centuries later, with the colored armbands required in the Crown of Aragon. Before this, edicts that Muslims wear “distinctive signs” had been vague, and more explicit legislation focused on particular styles of clothing and hair that were supposed to be different from Christian fashions. Initially, at least, Muslims were forbidden from wearing certain styles (such as the garceta or gold ornamentation on their clothing) rather than required to add specific markers of their identity, perhaps because it was assumed that they were already sufficiently visually distinct from their Christian neighbors. This assumption seems to have changed in the course of the fourteenth century, as indicated by new legislative initiatives mandating that Muslims wear the garceta and colored armbands.

Even more explicit markers would be instituted in Castile in the early fifteenth century, with a new series of vestimentary laws issued by Queen Catalina in 1408, in her role as regent for her young son, the future Juan II. This legislation was aimed at “all of the Moors in my kingdoms and seigneurial lands, and those that are studying in them, and traveling through them,” and it ordered that “men must wear over their clothes a cowl [capuz] made of yellow cloth, and a symbol cut of cloth in the shape of a crescent moon, in cornflower blue [color torquesado], of this size [here there is a picture of a moon provided], that is to be worn openly below the right shoulder in such a manner as to be fully showing. And women must all wear the same [blue moon] symbol … large enough so that it is obvious, worn openly on all their clothes below the right shoulder, in such a manner as to be fully showing.” The ordinances went on to list certain types of clothing and shoes that Muslims were not allowed to wear, much along the lines of earlier Castilian sumptuary regulations.⁹⁶ This law requiring yellow cowls and blue lunettes would be reaffirmed by Juan II in 1437 and repeated in later Castilian legislation into the reign of Fernando and Isabel.⁹⁷

As well as mandating these distinctive symbols, Queen Catalina would also go on to establish the most rigorous and detailed prescriptions for Muslim clothing that had yet been set down in law anywhere in the Peninsula. Her legislation enacted in Valladolid in January 1412 contained three 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 toca (a turban-like head covering or hat), marlota, and other garments that had long been characteristic of styles in al-Andalus and the Maghrib. This conscious fascination with Moorish fashions (vestidos moriscos) among Spanish Christians, particularly the elite who wore them for festivities and special events (especially the popular juego de cañas), was a trend that appeared in the later Middle Ages and extended well into the sixteenth century. Kings and nobles, such as Enrique IV of Castile and his constable, Miguel Lucas de Iranzo, were known for wearing Moorish garb. A letter sent from the sultan of Granada to Alfonso V of Aragon in 1418 described an accompanying gift of richly adorned garments, included a gilded aljuba, a burnūs, two silk tocas, and a marlota embroidered with gold.¹¹¹ This Christian delight in “Moorish” clothing has been amply discussed by Carmen Bernis, Barbara Fuchs, and others as a facet of the maurophilia that was so prevalent in the fifteenth and sixteenth century.¹¹² But although late medieval Christian kings, queens, and their courtiers may have enjoyed dressing up in the luxurious and exotic alharemes, almaizares, quiçotes, and albornoces described in their chronicles, inventories, and account books, it is highly unlikely that anybody would actually have mistaken these prominent public figures for Muslims.¹¹³ Certainly, there was no sudden legal or clerical outcry denouncing this fashion trend.

Overall, there were very few complaints about Christians being mistaken for Muslims before 1500, although Christians had certainly worn many similar styles, including versions of the toca, aljuba, and almejía, at least since the thirteenth century.¹¹⁴ According to Iñigo López de Mendoza y Quiñones, who was writing in 1514 to object to new ordinances against Muslim clothing and hairstyles, it had been perfectly normal for Christians to dress in vestidos moriscos and to wear their hair in Muslim styles until the middle of the fourteenth century (he dated the change to the accession of Enrique II in 1369).¹¹⁵ It has already been noted that medieval Christians in Spain had long valued Islamic luxury textiles, and these items have been found in church treasures and royal tombs dating back to the twelfth century. Ramon Llull commented favorably on the fact that loose-fitting “Saracen” clothes were cool and healthful.¹¹⁶ Even more ordinary people seem to have appreciated their worth, taking them as booty in war and loot from theft.¹¹⁷

For the most part, the choice of medieval Christians to wear these styles passed without comment, a fact that raises significant questions about how such clothes were perceived, and how they fitted within a broader dialogue about religious visual identity. Even though medieval sources persistently tagged certain styles as “Christian” or “Muslim” (and this tendency has been mirrored by modern scholars), the realities of day-to-day appearance were surely more complex. But it is difficult to see beyond the centuries of complaint about confusion of identity and consequent legislation, to get an idea of why people dressed in certain ways, how they perceived the appearance of themselves and others, and what they intended to look like. On the one hand, there is the ongoing evidence of muddled visual identity; on the other hand, there is the relentless rhetoric (probably reflected to some degree in reality) that there was—or at least it was possible to create—something that was recognized as a “Muslim” or a “Christian” appearance.

One factor here is that many clothing items widely worn by medieval Christians were simply seen as ordinary “Christian” styles, even if they had names clearly derived from Arabic, or were a type of textile or garment known to have been originally created or worn by non-Christians. Some of these styles may have been genuinely shared, effectively removing their religious valence and making visual distinction impossible—hence the ongoing legal concerns. This was very different from the situation in which fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Christians consciously donned exotic vestidos moriscos as fancy dress (although this had probably happened in earlier periods too). If appearance was not always easily differentiated by clothing, which could in any case be easily changed, this may explain the ongoing attempts to define “Muslim” appearance through more lasting hairstyles, such as the garceta in the Crown of Aragon.

But there are also other ways to explain the fact that medieval Christians were rarely censured for wearing “Muslim” clothes. Perhaps they simply never wore them, but the evidence is against this conclusion. Alternately, and perhaps more likely, garments of similar names and styles actually had subtle but recognizable differences depending on the religious identity of the wearer, differences that would have been familiar to medieval contemporaries but which have been erased by time. Fashions have long had the ability to project aspects of social and economic identity, but these meanings—though well understood at the time—leave little long-term imprint in a world of changing aesthetic tastes. It is likely, also, that sumptuary laws about “Muslim” dress were often ignored and that periods of enforcement tended to focus on non-Christian violators rather than Christian infractions.

Overall, it appears that the legal burden of differentiation was generally placed on Muslims rather than Christians. This tendency even extended to new converts from Islam, who were ordered to cease dressing as Muslims and strongly urged not to attend Muslim weddings or other festivities that might tempt them to don Muslim clothing and ornaments.¹¹⁸ Laws requiring that New Christians must dress in the same manner as Old Christians can be found in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but they became strident in the sixteenth century, after the promulgation of edicts demanding conversion or expulsion.

The conversion of entire populations from Islam to Christianity, from moro to morisco, fundamentally changed the language of legislation about identity in sixteenth-century Spain, but without shifting any of the underlying assumptions about the proper relationship between appearance and religion. New Christians should now look the same as Old Christians, and if they did not, the burden was on them to change their appearance just as their faith had been changed by baptism. The fact that this did not happen, and that many Moriscos (and especially Morisca women) continued to dress as they had before conversion, presented a huge problem. Castilian administrators and inquisitors demanded that there be a rupture with the past, and they interpreted the continuity of appearance as representing active resistance by Moriscos to their new religious condition. In many cases, they were probably perfectly correct in this assumption. But in others, the persistence of earlier clothing traditions was surely also due to the varying pressures of inertia, familiarity, comfort, convenience, aesthetic preference, and economy.

Inquisition records indicate that a perception of non-Christian appearance was one among many indicators of imperfect faith. An accusation that somebody either routinely or occasionally donned Morisco clothing immediately generated suspicions of heresy, and in concert with other evidence it could land the accused in court, in jail, or on the scaffold. As early as 1498, even before the official edicts of conversion, a letter from King Fernando indicates that the Inquisition in Valencia was already paying close attention to Moorish dress.¹¹⁹ In 1526, when the Moriscos of Granada purchased their forty-year exemption from laws requiring that they abandon their traditional dress, it came along with a promise that they would also not be subject to inquisitorial attention during that grace period. After this expired, however, inquisitorial attention again included appearance among its measures of unbelief, and Moriscos were well aware of the dangers of continuing to wear clothing that did not distinctively mark them as Christian. When inquisitors visited Morisco communities in the region of Málaga in 1568–69, they inspired such fear that “they found all the women dressed in Castilian costume” (por este temor de la Inquisición hallaba vestidas las mujeres a la castellana).¹²⁰ Likewise, in the Aragonese village of Gea de Albarracín, where the Morisco community would come under intense inquisitorial scrutiny and persecution, local officials insisted to the inquisitor general in 1566 that the inhabitants never used Moorish dress or language any more, and that they did whatever else was necessary to be good Christians (“los deste lugar jamas usaron el habito de moros ni la lengua … hizieron lo demas que es necesario para qualquier pefecto christiano”).¹²¹ Both reports reflect an assumption, on the part of the inquisitorial recorders, that moriscos did not normally dress like Old Christians, and they only put on Christian clothing in order to avoid inquisitorial attention. This may have been the case, but it is also possible that by the 1560s some Moriscos had genuinely made the switch to wearing Christian fashions.

A New Focus on Women: Female Veiling and the Almalafa

There is no question, however, that in the early sixteenth century, New Christians continued to dress differently from Old Christians, and this was especially the case in Granada, where the population had only recently come under the rule of Fernando and Isabel.¹²² Comments from Christian administrators, inquisitors, visiting travelers and artists, and the Moriscos themselves all testified that Granadan fashions were completely unlike those of Castile, though they might disagree as to whether this was a factor of religion, region, or culture. A famous series of illustrations by the German artist Christoph Weiditz, who traveled in Spain in 1528–29, includes depictions of Moriscos and Moriscas in Granada, with special attention to their costume and its differences from other contemporary Iberian dress (see Figures 4 and 5).¹²³

These detailed descriptions of women in Granada draw our attention to a striking difference, in terms of gender, between medieval comments on Muslim appearance and sixteenth-century descriptions of Moriscas. Whereas almost all medieval legislation about Mudejar hair and dress was directed toward male appearance, with only passing comments on female dress, early modern attention was very strongly focused on women. Sixteenth-century Christian authors were fascinated by the Moriscas’ voluminous white veils (almalafas), baggy trousers (zaragüelles; from Arabic sarāwīl), marlotas, distinctive shoes, and hennaed fingers. Legislative and inquisitorial attention to clothing was also mainly directed toward women, requiring that they give up these earlier styles in favor of decent Christian skirts and mantles (sayas and mantos), no matter what it cost to replace an entire wardrobe. Yet even after years of such legislation, Morisca dowry documents from 1565 still listed almalafas, marlotas, and other items of characteristically Granadan clothing.¹²⁴

Figure 4. Christoph Weiditz, Trachtenbuch (1529). Germanisches Nationalmuseum Hs. 22474, fols. 97–98. Visiting German artist’s illustration of a Morisca woman in almalafa.

Figure 5. Christoph Weiditz, Trachtenbuch (1529). Germanisches Nationalmuseum Hs. 22474, fols. 99–100. Depiction of Morisco casual home wear; note child’s sábana.