Dos textos mudéjares de la serranía de Ronda (1491)

Abstract

This article presents two "mudejar" texts about the Serrania of Ronda. dated in 1491 and written in the dialectal Arabic of Granada. The author makes a linguistic and historical commentary of both texts. The first one is about the prohibition of the "mudejares" of possessing weapons, and we can see how the royal decrees are worsening in this sense, till 1486 they had to stop the greed of their Christian neighbours, who accused them of having old iron in their houses, because halft of the penalty was for the accuser. A disposition of 1501 shows us that edicts were assigned to the Moorish people too. The second text is about a particular case in the life of the frontier: in 1471 the citizens of Casares steal a herd of cattle from Marina de Villalobos, she lived in Gibraltar and it was on the lands of that village. Reprisals were made after that event, and, Marina de Villalobos went to the Court of Granada to ask for justice. The lawsuit begins after the conquest, which lasted till 1493; the sentence was unfavorable for the council that suffers a loss in its incomes which were auctioned in Ronda, in 1491; in order to pay a fine of 974.000 maravedies. This sum had to be paid in 1501, but it was not done regularly. This is an unusual case which shows us how the Crown does not respect agreements because it judges an event which happened fifteen years before the conquest.