ABSTRACT
How does one begin to adumbrate a history as long, as complex, and as marvelous as that of the Mudejars? An eminent medievalist's strategy in introducing a more famously vanished world seems appropriate. The classification of Mudejars is therefore strictly a jurisdictional matter. Mudejars are Iberian Muslims with Christian lords. The existence of such a classification highlights a novel and important phenomenon: the birth of 'diaspora' communities of Muslims. The Mudejar experience of being a Muslim minority in a non-Muslim polity, of willingly living out one's days in the 'house of war', was exceptional for the Middle Ages. The Mudejars themselves left little direct evidence of how they perceived their own identity, which in any case they themselves did not label as 'Mudejar'. Variable, almost as important as population density in understanding the varieties of Mudejar experience, is lordship.
