Non-Christian Service on the Public Stage: Artisans, Musicians, and the Implications of Ethno-Religious Difference in Late-Medieval Iberia

Abstract

This article examines the public service roles performed by Muslims and Jews for municipal governments within late-medieval Iberia through the analysis of a largely unexamined body of municipal records from the city of Tortosa in comparison with a diversity of other cases. The assessment of various contractual public works projects of different sizes conducted by ethno-religiously mixed and homogeneous artisans and laborers serves to contextualize the primary focus of the study: the activity of salaried and contractual Muslim musicians, who played and sounded their instruments with their Christian counterparts in support of diverse events throughout the year, decade after decade, all at the direction of the city’s governing Christian elites. This survey of public service by non-Christians provides a means to evaluate and make recommendations regarding the methodologies and models utilized by scholars to conceptualize and analyze premodern interfaith interaction within the context of Christian hegemony.