The language barrier : the problem of bilingualism and Muslim-Christian interchange in the medieval kingdom of Valencia

Abstract

The thirteen-year Valencian crusade by King James of the confederated Arago-Catalan realms ended in 1245, doubling the coastline of Mediterranean Spain and heralding the close of the classical phase of Spain's Reconquest. A subtler and more intense confrontation then began between Muslim and Christian. James the Conqueror needed Christian settlers to defend his new seaboard; he needed as many Muslims as he could keep or attract, to wring profits from the land; and he needed a state of detente between the intermingled communities until he could stabilize Valencia as an independent and prosperous makeweight against his older provinces. This postcrusade story, with its assimilative-antagonistic tensions, its segregation and fraternization, and its bloody revolts and riots, supplies a chapter in the history of acculturative protocolonialism more fascinating and instructive than the crusade itself.