In the early tenth century, the Balearic Islands of Mallorca, Menorca, and Ibiza became a part of the Emirate of Cordoba on the Iberian mainland.¹ From 902 to the thirteenth century, the island chain remained an important point of contact between Cordoba, known as the Caliphate of Cordoba after 929, and the trading hubs of Pisa and Genoa on the Italian Peninsula. Its significance for trade and as a launch point between the French Mediterranean and Northern Italy made the Balearics attractive for the emerging Crown of Aragon in the early thirteenth century as its monarch, Jaume ‘el Conqueridor’ (r. 1213-1276), set his sights on the Western Mediterranean.

Image citation: Ptolemy, Pirckheimer, Willibald, Regiomontanus, Joannes, and Grüninger, Johann, d. 1532?  ‘Tabula II Europae.’  Map.  1525.  Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:st74cz037 (accessed September 05, 2021).

Between the creation of the Taifa of Mallorca in 1031 and the invasion of Jaume of Aragon in 1229, Mallorca was governed by a series of valis, or administrative governors, which ruled the island on behalf of both the Almoravid (1018-1203) and Almohad (1203-1229) empires. During this three-century period, one group of crusaders from the County of Barcelona, Republic of Pisa, and the Occitan lands invaded Mallorca with the support of Pope Paschal II in 1114. This unsuccessful invasion led by the count of Barcelona, Ramon Berenguer III (r. 1086-1131), lasted only eight months as the archipelago was recaptured by the Almoravids by 1116. By 1229, the Crown of Aragon had been successful at expanding its borders from Aragon and Catalunya into Provence, Perpignan, and Montpellier. With success in absorbing these territories into the Crown, the Aragonese once again aimed to annex the Balearics.

In 1229, Jaume of Aragon sent over 15,000 troops to Mallorca to overthrow the current Almohad vali, Abu Yahya. Within the first year of the invasion, the city of Madina Mayurqa, later known as Palma, fell to Jaume’s forces while the rest of the island’s cities, ports, and mountains lay under siege. After the fall of Madina Mayurqa, the next two years of Aragonese occupation were equally as violent as the initial siege of the city since those that had fled organised pockets of resistance groups that took control of the Tramuntana Mountains. These Islamic resistance groups succeeded in holding off total Aragonese control of the island until 1231 when the final group surrendered and were sold into slavery in Aragon.²

Image citation: Mural painting of the siege of Mallorca preserved in the Palau Reial Major in Barcelona, Spain. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

For the rest of Mallorca’s remaining Muslim population of roughly 15,000 people, life in Mallorca teetered between varying degrees of freedom and unfreedom until the mid-fourteenth century.³ According to David Abulafia in his 2005 work, A Mediterranean Emporium: The Catalan Kingdom of Majorca, the Aragonese monarchy wished to ‘break the continuity of Muslim settlement [in the Balearics].’⁴ Those that did remain in the Balearic Islands were subjected to enslavement and ostracisation by the new Christian monarchy created by Jaume and his successors. Unlike many of the cities of the Iberian mainland in this period, the concept of La Convivencia, or peace between the Abrahamic religions, did not fully exist in the Balearic Islands.⁵

The goal of fostering a new Christian monarchy was realised by the end of 1231, as Mallorca formally became an administrative unit of the Crown of Aragon that functioned under the authority of Jaume in Barcelona. This arrangement continued until Jaume’s 1276 death when his son, Jaume II, inherited the Kingdom of Mallorca while his brother, Pere, inherited Aragon. From 1276 to 1344, the Kingdom of Mallorca, later joined by Menorca and Ibiza, was governed by a semi-autonomous branch of the Aragonese monarchy while still maintaining its role within the Crown’s territories. During its time as a semi-autonomous branch of the Crown of Aragon, the Kingdom of Mallorca’s administrative geography included the Balearic Islands, Roussillon, Cerdanya, and Montpellier. The continental regions of Montpellier, Roussillon, and Cerdanya had their capital in Perpignan and the island regions had theirs in the city of Palma.

Image citation: Map of the Kingdom of Mallorca from c. 1231 to 1344. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

This division of governance and the monarchy’s semi-independent status led to clashes between Jaume II, his son, Philip, and the Crown itself. Between the thirteenth and mid-fourteenth centuries, the Mallorcan monarchy often sided against the Crown on religious disputes over heresy (e.g., regarding regent Philip’s support the Spiritual Franciscans) and territory. It was not until the removal of Jaume III (r. 1324-1344) by Pere IV ‘el Cerimonios’ of Aragon (r. 1336-1387), that Mallorca formally became a territory of the Aragonese king and lost its semi-autonomous status.

Mallorca’s history between the Almoravid, Almohad, and the Aragonese makes it one of the most significant and highly contested islands in the Mediterranean during the medieval period. Its position made it important for trade networks and the balance between Islamic, Aragonese, and Mediterranean worlds. Not until the Aragonese conquest of Sicily during the War of the Sicilian Vespers (1282-1302) against the House of Anjou, would Mallorca’s importance be rivalled.

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[1] A note on spelling: I am choosing to spell the island as ‘Mallorca’ instead of ‘Majorca’ since during the period of 1229-1500, the island was an Aragonese possession and its residents spoke Catalan. To this day, the inhabitants of the island speak Catalan and thus, spell the island ‘Mallorca’ and not ‘Majorca,’ which is the Castilian Spanish spelling.

 [2] To learn more on medieval slavery, readers should look to: Phillips, William D. Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Blumenthal, Debra. Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth Century Valencia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009); Paolella, Christopher, Human Trafficking in Medieval Europe: Slavery, Sexual Exploitation, and Prostitution (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020), and Barker, Hannah. That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260-1500 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).

 [3] See also Hannah Barker’s website, https://medievalslavery.org.

 [4] Abulafia, David. A Mediterranean Emporium: The Catalan Kingdom of Majorca (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 59.

 [5] Lourie, Elena. ‘Free Moslems in The Balearics Under Christian Rule in The Thirteenth Century.’ Speculum 45, no. 4 (1970): 624–649.

Bibliography and Recommended Reading:

Abulafia, David. A Mediterranean Emporium: The Catalan Kingdom of Majorca. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Abulafia, David. The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms, 1200-1500: The Struggle for Dominion. London: Routledge, 1997.

Barker, Hannah. That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260-1500 Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019

Blumenthal, Debra. Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth Century Valencia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009

Gertwagen, Ruthy. Shipping, Trade, and Crusade in the Medieval Mediterranean: Studies in Honour of John Pryor. London: Taylor & Francis, 2016.

Lourie, Elena. ‘Free Moslems in The Balearics Under Christian Rule in The Thirteenth Century.’ Speculum 45, no. 4 (1970): 624–649.

Paolella, Christopher, Human Trafficking in Medieval Europe: Slavery, Sexual Exploitation, and Prostitution Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020

Phillips, William D. Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013