Christian-Islamic Confrontation in the West: The Thirteenth-Century Dream of Conversion

Nowhere does this spirit of combative dialogue appear more visibly than in the realms of Arago-Catalonia, which subdued and attached to itself in the thirteenth century an Islamic kingdom roughly the size of the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem during its earlier, palmy days.5 Thrusting into a sophisticated commercial region belonging to Islam’s heartland, the Aragonese crusade had persisted stubbornly for almost a quarter century. Preceded by an abortive foray in 1225 , its central victories fell between 1232 and 1245 . In 1243 Murcia, the Islamic principality south of Valencia, had affiliated itself with Castile as a tributary state under colonial garrison. Murcia’s actual conquest, largely by Aragon’s armies, came only in 1266 .6 For nearly forty years after the Valencian crusade a series of revolts and crises threatened to loosen Christendom’s grip on the kingdom of Valencia and demonstrated that region’s residually Islamic character.