ABSTRACT

The preceding chapter discussed the ban on mixed unions in general and on mixed marriages in particular. It became clear that both Christian and Islamic law put barriers to such unions, especially if a union involved women of their own faith and men from other religious communities. According to each majority discourse, Christian and Muslim men could, on the contrary, enjoy women within looser frameworks than the one set by formal marriage. The Siete Partidas legislates that a man could hold a free woman or a slave as barragana, or concubine, as long as he does not have a legally wedded wife at the same time. Islamic law, on the other hand, permitted Muslim men to have sexual relationships with their own female slaves. Concubinage with barraganas or slaves therefore represented lawful alternatives to both Christian and Muslim men in medieval Iberia. Both Islamic and Christian laws appear, moreover, to have been more permissive with regard to the religious identity of women involved in extramarital partnerships than with regard to the religious identity of married women. A final section of this chapter addresses fatwās dealing with cases that transgressed the boundaries established by the laws. They put on stage dhimmī men who mingled with Muslim women and the challenge such behavior represented to the Islamic legal authorities.