Body, baths and cloth: Muslim and Christian perceptions in medieval Portugal.

The coexistence of three religions in medieval Portugal entailed different cosmological perspectives which determined the cultural boundaries dividing the different ethnic-religious groups. These boundaries were, however, neither firm nor unchanging. The communities and their individual members, as actors in a wider social interaction, participated in a permanent cultural dialogue and constantly redefined their own identity boundaries. The acculturation of minority groups, or rather the different stages of acculturation, involved different types of forced, freely-chosen and unconscious acceptance of mainstream values and standards. Moreover, in the end, these incorporate and demarcate the ethnocentrism of the group itself, as evolved from its original form. In this sense, the identity and social psychology of Muslim groups in the medieval Iberian Kingdoms was certainly distinct from that of Muslims living under Muslim rule or even from the Mouriscos of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Religious ascription can only be understood in particular historical and sociological contexts and doesn't automatically imply insurmountable cultural differences or an antagonism sub specie aeternam.

(1). Perceptions of the body is one issue that differentiated Christian and Islamic cosmological systems from the outset. In Islam, pure/impure categories strictly established by the fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) created an ethical vision of the body. Although Islam excludes the concept of original sin, it is inscribed by a conception of purity which, constantly threatened by physiological functions, creates a permanent physiological-biological dialectic of impurity and the need to resume purity. Biological realities thus generates two categories of impurity (hadat): the major impurity (ganaba) (resulting, for example, from secretion of sperm and from menstruation) to which corresponds a need for whole body purification (gusl), and the lesser impurities, that require only partial ablutions (wudu').

The ritual purification (tahara), with its techniques for the restoration of metaphysical order through the erasure of physical, psychological or moral stains, makes it possible to sublimate the body and allows man to resume dialogue with the Holy. But tahara also establishes a significant internal hierarchy. As a result of which two types of discrimination emerge: first, a bias against impure or vile crafts (namely those directly in touch with blood), and secondly a gender bias, because women, due to their physiological attributes, are more prone to states of impurity. (1)

This structuring concept of material contamination, ritualised namely through dietary restrictions, defines (at least theoretically) the boundary between Muslim and non-Muslim. In this sense tahara is often regarded as the main obstacle to the integration of Muslim or crypto-Muslim minorities in Christian kingdoms. Since the classic work of Lucetta Scarafia on the renegades, (2) this concept has been used to explain the impossibility of the assimilation of the Moriscos in Spanish society during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (3) The emphasis on the minority group, however, tends to minimize the role of mainstream society and does not address the question of whether those practices represent a continuation of past practices or whether they are, in fact, a reaction to the contemporary parameters of social control. It is social interaction, in other words, rather than the social actors de per se, that is the main determining factor in the delimitation of the boundaries.

In this sense, the border concerning material contamination can be discerned for medieval Portugal but, curiously enough, only in the Christian context. Here, the historical and symbolic consequences of the 1496 decree of expulsion and the way it has come to structure our collective memory must be particularly born in mind. Post-expulsion the Muslim and Jewish archives disappeared as their functionality ceased, and as a result it is the Christian perspective that shapes our perception of the past.

One of the oldest references appears in a clause of the Costumes de Santarem (XIVth century). In a case of assault involving a Muslim and a Christian, one should not swear an oath over the injury, whereas the disposition applying only to Christians stipulates on the contrary that the aggressor must "poer a maao na ferida" ('place his hand on the wound'). (4) The bipolarity of this clause is extended in the Costumes de Beja (also XIVth century) which forbids this kind of physical contact in all disputes involving Christians and members of minority groups, i.e. Muslims and Jews. (5) The socially acceptable physical boundaries between the dominant group and the other seem to arise from a context in which the delimitation of the licit and the illicit comes directly from the antimony of between the pure and the impure, in so far as this situation could involve the spilling of blood. The compass of material contamination widens in popular quotidian experiences with respect to sociably admissible practices, but it is not clear whether this is owed to pressure from the representatives of the minority communities themselves or from the dominant urban oligarchy.

Less ambiguous are the determinations of the Portuguese Church that emerged in the fifteenth century. In 1477 (11 December) the Archbishop of Braga, Luis Pires, decreed that only Christian silversmiths could weigh precious objects from churches and monasteries. In places where there were none, a Jew could be admitted as long as he 'non toque nem ponha a maao na dicta prata porque he sancta' ('does not touch the silver with his hands, because it is Holy'), in which cases the clergyman should place the objects on the scales and also remove them. (6) He also decreed an interdiction upon Jews and Muslims repairing or restoring any clothes or objects pertaining to the Church, such as crosses or sacred vases, 'pollo odio e avorrecimento que teem aa nossa sancta fe catholica' ('on account of their hatred and abomination of the holy catholic faith') and, when those objects reach their possession, they submit them to all kinds of 'cugidades e torpezas'. (7)

The impurity of the 'infidels' is here associated with 'filth and depravity', in the argument that mere touch would deconsecrated the holy objects. A concept of material contamination foreign to Christian cosmogony, in other words, informs the prelate's discourse and is deployed to argue for the exclusion of Muslims and Jews. Paradoxically then, a Jewish and Muslim canonical principle is assimilated and used by a member of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the rhetorical definition of otherness.

But cultural exchanges worked both ways also affecting the perceptions and mentality of Portuguese Muslims. One issue concerned the body and the public baths, whose importance is fundamental to the fulfillment of the tahara. After the Christian conquest, the balnea came under the rule of the lord of the land, at least in the regions south of the Tagus; the sovereign actually reserved their ownership in some of the main southern urban centres, where the Muslim presence survived a while longer. (8) The importance of public baths in Iberian sociability actually stems from a cultural tradition older than the period of Islamic rule, though it was renewed under the Muslims because of its liturgical and ritual meaning.

The Black Death and the gradual internalisation of a specifically biological understanding of the body, together with shifting perceptions of decency and shame, imposed by Christian ideology, rendered these buildings redundant. (9) Their use therefore decreased significantly, as observed in the rest of Europe. By the late fourteenth century some of these public baths had been abandoned and had fallen into ruin, (10) while a few others were leased to private individuals (11)--a clear indication that these facilities had become less important to medieval sociability, and causing the lordly powers to lose interest in their direct running. Simptomatic of this evolution are the lists of properties owned by the crown in Lisbon. In 1398 public baths are still mentioned (12), but references to them disappear in later periods. (13)

This renewed perception of the body, which in principle should have been assumed only by the Christian population, ended up influencing the Moorish communities and caused them to share behavioural patterns with their Christian neighbours. In this regard, the evolution of Muslim baths in Lisbon is quite illustrative. Located in one corner of the Moorish district, the public baths of the city's Muslim community belonged to the King in the fourteenth century and they still seem to perform their original functions in 1375. (14) In 1394, however, the building was already in ruins and had been leased, for accommodation, to a Muslim from Lisbon. (15) Although no subsequent attempt was apparently made to restore it to its original use, memory of its original function clearly remained into the first half of the fifteenth century in references from 1425 (16) and 1436 (17) in which the building continues to be referred to as 'as casas que foram banhos' ('formerly the baths').

The same process must have occurred in all the other Moorish communities in Portugal, as no reference is made to the existence of public baths in later fifteenth-century sources. The acculturation cycle of the communities had come to an end. Although the implicit abandonment of this important feature of Arab-Islamic civilisation does not necessarily imply a total subversion of the bounderies determined by bodily perceptions, it nevertheless does suggest that Muslims came to share the mental patterns of mainstream society. Water remained a key reference in liturgical acts; evidence of this is found in a well in Lisbon's larger mosque (18) and Lisbon's smaller mosque, adjoining the public baths, was particularly well located in this regard. (19) Such evidence however is found only in respect specifically to the ritual ablutions for the five daily prayers.

(2). While mental barriers separating Muslims from Christians were increasingly blurred, corporeal barriers became stronger, perhaps as a reaction to the process of social intermingling. In 1361 the people's representatives demanded from King Pedro I the spacial separation of Jews and Muslims, invoking the 'scandalo e noio' ('scandal and disgust') that Christians suffered in living together with the members of those religious groups. In response, the king determined that in places where more than ten Muslims or Jews lived, they should have separate quarters. (20) Christian ethnocentrism strongly asserts itself from the fourteenth century onwards. The law followed the determinations of the Fourth Lateran Council that stipulated a strict separation from members of different religious groups in the Christian Iberian Kingdoms. Later, in 1366, Pedro I also decreed the prohibition of Muslims and Jews circulating in towns after sunset. (21) Popular claims went still further. In 1390 at the Parliament of Coimbra the people's representatives complained against the sounding of the call to prayer by the muezzin (adan), which was consequently suppressed by explicit reference to cannon law. (22) In fact, the Vienna Council of 1311 had forbidden the public evocation of Muhammad's name, and pilgrimages to the tombs of Muslim saints in the Christian Kingdoms. (23)

Backed up by the necessary ideological support from the Church this restrictive trend aimed to fulfil the prime objective of securing the total segregation of the members of both minorities. If the objectives of the ecclesiastical hierarchy pointed towards a homogeneous and Catholic Europe, their arguments were employed by popular agents in the expression of their own ethnocentrism, and by the urban oligarchy towards eliminating economic and political competition from these minorities. The religious arguments were taken up in urban contexts in rhetorical speech and as a political weapon against the Other, whose daily relationship with the Christians allegedly caused the latter 'dapno e despendio de suas almas' ('damage and loss to their souls').24

Thus the Ordenacoes Afonsinas in compliance with Canon 68 of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 (25), determined the prohibition of carnal contacts between Jewish or Moorish men and Christian women, or, conversely, between Christian men and Jewish or Moorish women, invoking the need to abide by the Law of God (Ley de Deos). Offences were severely punishable with the death penalty, save in cases of rape or where the women were unaware of the fact that their partners belonged to such minorities, in which case they were spared any punishment. (26)

This ordinance complemented the canonical law which forbade mixed marriages, in an effort to define strict boundaries between the religious groups. In Sunni law such mixed marriages were allowed but only between Muslim men and women 'from the people of the Book' (kitabiyya), i.e., Jewish or Christian. In the sociological context of medieval Christian societies this principle was not applied, due to the constraint imposed by the Church and the laws of the Kingdom.

The severe punishment for adultery with members of other religious groups did not, however, prove sufficiently persuasive to deter such ocurrences, as these were deeply rooted in the codes of conduct of medieval society. All the more since the secular powers did not seem overly eager to enforce their strict application and compliance. Charters granting a pardon to Muslim men for offenses of sexual intercourse with Christian married women generally resulted in the payment of a monetary fine. (27) In some cases the punishment was more severe but never carried the death penalty, or at least no such occurrences are reported in the sources. In 1473 all the properties of Jufez (Yusuf) Cigarro, a Muslim from Evora, were confiscated by the King and donated to a nobleman, because he had had sexual intercourse with a Christian girl. Additionally he had to suffer 'a pena corporall que por ley merece' ('the corporal punishment he deserved by law') which is not specified. (28) In 1486 another Muslim, Ale ([sup.c]Ali) Valente from Evora, accused not only of sexual intercourse with Christian women but also of pandering them, was banished for a year to Mertola's couto, though he was later pardoned against the payment of a monetary fine. (29)

Even with Muslim women cases of similar sexual behaviour are reported in the sources involving either Muslim or Christian partners. This was the case, also in 1486, of Fotes Carota, from Santarem, wife of Ale ([sup.c]Ali) Rebolim, who admitted to having had sexual intercourse with Alvaro Vaz, a Christian from Lisbon. Since her husband forgave her 'o pecado e erro que por Sua lej merecia' ('the sin and error which she deserved by their law'), she was acquitted from any legal process and condemned to pay a fine. (30)

The mentality revealed in these cases, as in other aspects of daily life, is at odds with the trends in the law and with the rhetoric assumed by the representatives of the people. And, in this sense, one can also detect an evolution in Islamic parameters of behaviour. In letter, sunni Islamic law determines the death penalty for adulterous women--although requiring a burden of proof which, except in cases of pregnancy, is in effect impossible to meet, since the act must be attested to by four adult eye witnesses whose depositions must be precise and in agreement. (31) Implicitely, though, the consequences of women's sexual infractions and the issue of family honour are preferably relegated to the private sphere. By contrast, Christian authorities tended to place these infractions in the public domain in demonstration of jurisdiction over the private. As a result adultery became strictly controlled and legislated by the Crown, in a social control common to all subjects of the Realm, independently of their religious communal belonging. Common Law implies, over the long term, the assumption of mutual values and behaviour, as the jurisdiction over these cases moved from Islamic authorities to Christian ones, at least from the fourteenth century onwards.

The passive honour of women as opposed to the active honour of men, that Pierre Guichard claims as an intrinsic character of the anthropological structure of the society of al-Andalus (32) is paradoxically revealed in the Christian sociological background. The response from mainstream society to quotidian and frequent interaction between members of the three religions consisted in a manipulation of this concept to protect their women from Muslim and Jewish men and avoid the compurgation that, in fact, seems to characterize the popular orders.

In 1366 king Pedro I promulgated a law concerning this matter. The complaints of some men 'dignos de creer' ('of credible character') pointed out that 'molheres christaas solteiras e viuuvas e alguma outras casadas' ('Christian women, single and widows and even some married ones'), deceived by the Devil, had had sexual intercourse with 'homens d'outra ley' ('men of other law'), in the Judiaria and Mouraria. To prevent these situations, the King prohibited Christian women from entering these areas alone except in cases of ultimate necessity, and, when accompanied, by Christian men (two if the woman was married and only one if she was single or a widow). He also set out and defined two itineraries through Lisbon's Mouraria as the only ones permissible for women to circulate in. The penalty for infraction of this law was death. (33)

Nevertheless some charters of privilege were granted to women whose livelihood depended upon free circulation though the town, namely traders, as was the case in Evora. In 1469 (8 December), Ines Afonso, a widow, was allowed to enter alone in the Moorish and Jewish quarters to sell olive oil. The justification for this privilege lay in the fact that 'ela he em tall hydade e tam boa que merece lhe darmos a dicta Licenca' ('she is of such age and good enough to deserve this licence'). Old age alone, it would seem, was a powerful enough antidote against the temptations of the Devil.

The moralization of medieval society, whose priority was to draw barriers between the three religious groups was, from the fifteenth century, always present in charters of pardon relating to lawsuits for pandering. Panderers were accused of encouraging carnal relations between married Christian women and Muslim and Jewish men. This none the less seems to constitute only an ideological topos to emphasise the canonically and legal infraction, rather than an element of real aggravation of the penalty. (3). The most visible and tangible symbol of the frontier between members of the three faiths was the bodily entity, as a social and socialising factor, expressed in clothing. Dress constituted a form of communication where the presence of codes and the immediately perceivable match between referent and sign both identified and materialised the hierarchy of medieval society. Islamic fiqh strictly regulated the manner in which each gender should dress, seeking to replace the anatomical shapes of the body with the sexual symbolism of clothing. To its utilitarian function, Islamic law added the subordination of biological to theological values in modes of dressing. In Christian societies, this facet of identity had been made mandatory by the differentiations determined by the papacy, once again at the Fourth Council of Laterann of 1215, though only much later enforced in Portugal.

The first protests by Muslim against being forced to wear specific clothing (aljuba and burnous) were raised by the community of Moura and date from the reign of King Pedro I (1357-1367). But they only claimed that the sleeves of the costume imposed on them were so large as to interfere with the performance of their normal work. (34) It is difficult to ascertain whether such protests were due to the mandatory and restrictive nature of the rules (standardised by central administration) or to the fact that until then the garments of these Muslims were similar to those of their Christian countrymen. In fact, about a century later, the Moors of Lisbon claimed that they always used the burnous (albonoz) exactly as their compatriots living in the 'land of the Moors'. Be that as it may, differentiation of dress would be the object of further legislation throughout the fifteenth century, targeting external appearance as the object of immediate visual perception.

In the reign of King Afonso V (1438-1481), the Ordenacoes Afonsinas regulated this aspect in greater detail by defining the so-called 'Moorish costume'. Actually, the law aimed only to impose what at the time was considered the traditional Moorish costume: large cloaks, identified by Arabic names (aljuba > al-gubba; albornoz > al-burnus) (35), implicitly following the Islamic prescriptions stating that clothes should not be tight, nor show the shape of the body. Nevertheless some major improvements were ordered: excessively large sleeves and the obligation to wear the garments totally tied up and closed. This last obligation was later revoked as a response to the plea by the Lisbon commune that alleged its traditional mode of wearing (11 December 1454). (36) But curiously there were no complaints about the sleeves, a clear means of discrimination which imposed dissimilar bodily attitudes to the Christians, involving as it did a specific posture in gesture and inhibiting even the accessibility to objects. (37)

Legislation was directed only at outer clothing, as external visibility is the object of perception and hence of prescription. In this sense a Muslim from Setubal, Brafome, was allowed to wear silk garments ('assy gibooes como em outras rroupas') as long as they were under his 'traje de mouro [...] e doutra maneira non' ('Moorish costume [...] and not in another manner') (25 April 1466). (38) This document reveals an approximation to the dressing patterns of mainstream society reported in other sources. At least throughout the fifteenth century Muslims dressed exactly like Christians, under those large cloaks.

This caused the representatives of the people to protest loudly at the parliament held at Santarem in 1451, accusing Jews and Muslims of wearing delicate fabrics and clothing similar to that Christians, which did not permit the recognition of 'a nobreza per vestidos' ('the nobility of dress') that was meant to differentiate the groups. The king decided in their favour, with the exception of royal receptions and parties in which the members of the minorities could freely exhibit their luxury clothes. (39)

The protests were repeated once again at the parliament of Evora-Alvito, in 1482, explicitly recalling the distinction required by canon law between the members of the three religions. The main aim of the Commoners was clear: the Jews were accused of sumptuousness in their dress, but also of what in fact, constituted the main objection: 'e pior ainda he serem rendeiros' ('and worst of all is that they are tenants'). As a result, the king forbade Jews from wearing silk clothes and ordered them to wear their distinctive signs visibly and required, once again, that Muslims wear their cloaks tied up and closed up or, when wearing them open, to add a visible red crescent at the height of the shoulder. (40)

The invisibility of under garments was definitely imposed, in spite of previous Moorish reactions. From then on the visible symbols of otherness were increasingly manifest in public spaces, either completely enclosing the bodies of Muslim men in specific dress or marking them by the distinctive sign of the red crescent. By the end of the fifteenth century, as demanded by urban oligarchies. no ambiguities were allowed.

Nevertheless these measures were not as discriminating and humiliating as found in some neighbouring Iberian kingdoms, namely Castille. From the fourteenth century, Castilian regulations went as far as forcing the Muslims to cut their hair in a specific manner and shaving their beards, forbidding the use of some expensive fabrics, furs, cloths and shoes with certain colours, as well as gold and silver jewelry. (41)

Sources provide little information about women's clothes. Lawmakers were actually more concerned with male garments, as the presence of men was more likely to occur in common public spaces due to their recognised economic activity. There was probably not a great difference between male and female costume, as, although the fiqh reaffirmed the need for differentiating sexual boundaries, favouring a clear distinction between the appearance of people of different gender, in Medieval Islam this dichotomy was expressed more by means of the materials and the colours, rather the tailoring of clothes. (42) The indicative element of gender was, at least in public areas, the veil, generally understood as any piece worn by women to hide their body, or at least part of it. (43) A Carta de Arras (marriage contract) between Muslims in Lisbon establishes that the groom should offer his wife as the alfadia (al-hadiyya--the nuptial donation) several jewels and dresses, and among them a 'linen alfame (al-lifam)', i.e., a veil. However it does not seem that Muslim women were completed veiled in public spaces. In fact, a poem from the later fifteenth century underscored the covered appearance of North Africa Muslim women in striking contrast to the Portuguese context. (44)

These regulations instituted Islamic principles concerning the role of women, and their exclusion from public life. A long handwritten document revised and signed by the commune's public notary--Yusuf Ibn Ibrahim Ibn Yusuf al-Lahmi--in the reign of King Joao I (1385-1433), provides a systematic description of taxes charged to the Muslims of the kingdom, following the basic principles of Islamic law. A clause concerned women who were not subject to taxes that pertained to remunerated economic activities, because, as it stated, 'as mouras nom trabalham' ('Muslim women don't work'). (45) Irrespective of this, however, the sources bear witness to different levels of social integration of Muslim women in Portugal, namely as active artisans. Some cases attest to the fact that only as widows were women perceived by society as economic producers, and as such integrated into the same fiscal status. This recognition was assumed, for instance, in Santarem, where Moreima, a Moorish potter (moura oleira), received this designation after the death of her husband, the potter Azambujo (9 December 1445). (46)

All the same, for some other female artisans it is not so simple to detect their dependence on a husband or on a male relative. In 1471 Luza, a ware maker (moura louceira), declared that she was 80 years old and that she had carried out this activity for 50 or 60 years. (47) Also undefined are the cases of Moula, a Moorish potter (moura oleira) of Lisbon, and Zeina Saboeira (soap maker) of Evora, whose designations explicitely focus on their occupational activity.

(4). If religious ascription was assumed as a criteria of social differentiation in medieval Portuguese society, its expression has taken place against a common cultural background. All the social actors were bounded not only by a shared territory and by the same linguistic expression, as by certain types of common behaviour. The cultural exchanges determined that Islam as lived by Portuguese Muslims had evolved but also that Christian doctrine and practises suffered the influence of the daily contact with minority groups, under a sort of contamination process. Nevertheless the affirmation of Christian ethnocentrism through Church guidelines, and the competitive attitude of urban oligarchies gradually shaped up greater social barriers in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Still there was a clear distinction between two different levels, that of the higher circles of power and that of popular daily coexistence. In the end, it was the model of the first that finally imposed itself upon society as a whole.

Universidade de Evora

(1) Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, La sexualite en Islam, 2nd edn. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979), pp. 59-74.

(2) Lucetta Scaraffia, Rinegatti. Per una storia dell'identita occidentale (Rome: Quadrante Laterza, 1993).

(3) Cf on this matter Mercedes Garcia Arenal, 'Moriscos--estado de la cuestion', in Adel Sidarus ed., Islao Minoritario na Peninsula Iberica (Lisbon: Hugin, 2001), pp. 47-66.

(4) Portugaliae Monumenta Historica. Leges et Consuetidinis, II, ed. by Alexandre Herculano and J.S. Leal (Lisbon: Academia Real das Ciencias, 1858) pp. 20, 29.

(5) Portugaliae Monumenta Historica, p. 64.

(6) Synodicum Hispanium. II Portugal, ed. by Antonio Garcia y Garcia (Madrid: Catolica, 1982), p. 89.

(7) Synodicum Hispanium. II Portugal, pp. 132-33.

(8) As shown in the foral charters granted to Faro, Silves, Castro Marim and Loule. Reference should be made, however, to the existence of what seem to be privately-owned baths in the city of Lisbon. In a list of properties (d. 1220-1221) owned by the Military Order of Santiago in this city, reference is made to the baths that had belonged to Master John ('Et habent partem in domibus. et in balneis que fuerunt magistri iohannis'), see Jose Manuel Vargas, 'O patrimonio das Ordens Militares em Lisboa, Sintra e Torres Vedras, segundo uma inquiricao do reinado de Afonso II', in Ordens Militares: guerra, religiao, poder e cultura: actas do III Encontro sobre Ordens Militares, II (Lisbon: Colibri-Camara Municipal de Palmela, 1999), p. 121.

(9) Cf. Georges Vigarello, O Limpo e o Sujo. A Higiene do Corpo desde a Idade Media (Lisbon: Fragmentos, 1988), especially pp. 25-37.

(10) There is a reference from 1390 to some abandoned buildings in Faro, 'que em outro tempo fforom banhos' ('that once had been baths') and belonged to the King, Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais/ Torre do Tombo, Chancelaria de D. Joao I, livro 2, fol. 10v; Livro 6 de Odiana, fol. 273v. In a reference from 1472, a land from Silves also belonging to the royal patrimony, is said to be the place where the baths were once located, see Livro do Almoxarifado de Silves (Seculo XV), ed. and transcribed by Maria Jose da Silva Leal (Lisbon: Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo [I.A.N./T.T.], 1989) p. 13.

(11) As, for example, in Evora, where the three public baths from Alconchel's quarter were privatized at least in the 15th century, see Maria Angela Rocha Beirante, Evora na Idade Media (Lisbon: Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian-Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia, 1985), p. 399.

(12) I.A.N./T.T., Nucleo Antigo, no. 314, fol. 3v. Under the previous king, Afonso III, there is reference to a house 'near the royal baths' ('apud Balnea domini Regi'), I.A.N./T.T, Chancelaria de D. Afonso III, livro 1, fol. 155.

(13) In 1506 and 1508 there is no reference to the royal ownership of these baths, I.A.N./T.T., Nucleo Antigo, no 318; no 333.

(14) I.A.N./T.T., Chancelaria de D. Fernando, livro 1, fol. 167 e fol. 184v.

(15) I.A.N./T.T., Chancelaria de D. Joao I, livro 2, fol. 88.

(16) Idem, livro 4, fol. 92.

(17) Chancelarias Portuguesas. D. Duarte, ed. by Joao Jose Alves Dias, vol. 1, tomo 2 (Lisbon: Universidade Nova--Centro de Estudos Historicos, 1998), doc. 1119, pp. 341-42; doc. 1122, p. 345.

(18) Luis Filipe Oliveira and Mario Viana, 'A Mouraria de Lisboa no seculo XV', Arqueologia Medieval, 2 (1993), p. 198.

(19) Oliveira and Viana, 'A Mouraria de Lisboa', p. 198.

(20) Cortes Portuguesas. Reinado de D. Pedro I (1357-1367), ed. by A.H. de Oliveira Marques and Nuno Jose Pizarro Pinto Dias (Lisbon: Instituto Nacional de Investigacao Cientifica 1986), p. 52.

(21) Chancelarias Portuguesas. D. Pedro I (1357-1367), doc. 1131, pp. 534-35.

(22) Arquivo Municipal da Camara Municipal de Lisboa [A.M.C.M.L.], Livro Primeiro de Cortes, art. 17, fol. 68v,

(23) Cf. F. Fernandez y Gonzalez, Estado social y politico de los mudejares de Castilla (Madrid: Hiperion, 1985), doc. LXII, pp. 376-77.

(24) As stated in 1403, at the synod convened by the archbishop Dom Joao Esteves da Azambuja, Synodicum Hispanum. II Portugal, art. 11, p. 328.

(25) Apud Fernandez y Gonzalez, Estado social y politico, doc. XII, pp. 307-08.

(26) Ordenacoes Afonsinas, ed. by Martim de Albuquerque, Livro 5 (Lisbon: Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, 1984), pp. 94-95. Jurisdiction over these cases seemed nevertheless to raise some controversy with the ecclesiastical authorities. The Archbishop of Lisbon, Dom Joao Esteves da Azambuja, stated that 'ours is the power to absolve, as also those who received such power from us' ('a nos pertecem abssollucom ou aaquelles que pera ello nosso poder teem'), 'those men who sleep with Jewesses or Moorish women, or those women who sleep with Jews or Moors' ('aquelles que jazem com judias ou com mouras ou aquellas que jazem com mouros ou judeus'), Synodicum Hispanium. II Portugal, p. 321.

(27) Between 1480 and 1486 three charters of pardon are recorded concerning Muslim men from Setubal accused of sexual intercourse with married Christian women. They were acquitted upon payment of a fine following pardons by the women's husbands, I.A.N./T.T., Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, livro 32, fol. 6; livro 23, 103; livro 1, fol. 120v.

(28) I.A.N./T.T., Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, livro 33, fol. 122.

(29) I.A.N./T.T., Chancelaria de D. Joao II, livro 8, fol. 73.

(30) I.A.N./T.T., Chancelaria de D. Joao II, livro 4, fol. 27v.

(31) G.-H. Bousquet, L'Ethique sexuelle de l'Islam (Paris: Desclee de Brower, 1990), p. 80.

(32) Cf. Pierre Guichard, Al-Andalus--Estructura antropologica de una sociedad islamica en Occidente (Barcelona: Barral, 1976), pp. 133-39

(33) Chancelarias Portuguesas. D. Pedro I (1357-1367), doc. 1131, pp. 535-36.

(34) Chancelarias Portuguesas. D. Pedro I (1357-1367), doc. 360, p. 143.

(35) Attributes similar to those characterising the popular social layers, under the Almoravid and Almohade rule, see Manuela Marin, 'La vida cotidiana', in El Retroceso Territorial de Al-Andalus --Almoravides y Almohades--siglos XI al XIII, Historia de Espana, ed. by Ramon Menendez Pidal, VIII, 2 (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1998), p. 393.

(36) I.A.N./T.T., Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, livro 10, fol. 119v.

(37) There is earlier evidence of sleeves used as a means to humiliate and discriminate minority groups, in measures taken by the Almohade caliph al-Mansur (1198/1199) who, according to chronicles, compelled the Jews of his land to wear a specific blue costume, with 'very long sleeves that nearly touched the feet', apud Manuela Marin, 'La vida cotidiana', p. 393.

(38) I.A.N./T.T., Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, livro 14, fol. 61.

(39) I.A.N./T.T., Suplemento de Cortes, maco 2, fol. 44v.

(40) I.A.N./T.T., Nucleo Antigo, no 118, fols 172v-173.

(41) Miguel Angel Ladero Quesada, Los Mudejares De Castilla y Otros Estudios de Historia Medieval Andaluza (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1989), pp. 62-65.

(42) Manuela Marin, Mujeres en al-Andalus (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 2000), p. 187.

(43) Marin, Mujeres en al-Andalus p. 188. The transcendent importance of the veil 'springs from a veritable theology of the maintenance of female purity', Bouhdiba, La sexualite en Islam, pp. 49-50. Metaphorically projected onto the Muslim household, 'the woolen or cotton veil' becomes 'a veil of stone'.

(44) 'Mas vos yreis embucadas / dalfareme de cendal / de tres mocos agoardada, / muy olhada, / poys nom vay nenhuma tal', Cancioneiro Geral de Garcia de Resende, ed. by Aida Fernandes Dias, IV, (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional--Casa da Moeda, 1993), p. 176.

(45) Portugalia Monumenta Historica, Leges et Consuetudunis, pp. 98-100.

(46) I.A.N.T.T., Mosteiro de Chelas, maco 45, doc. 887.

(47) I.A.N./T.T., Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, livro 16, fol. 14.