To Live Like a Moor. Olivia Remie Constable

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