Christian demographic pressure pushed Valencian mudéjares into interior drylands and mountains

Evidence

[Despite royal legislation] the mud´ejares of the Kingdom of Valencia had always lived in a changing and insecure environment marked by constant pressure from the growing Christian population. The pressure from below had been primarily responsible for driving the mud´ejares from the fertile huerta to the dry farming and mountainous regions in the interior of the kingdom where they remained until the expulsion. The “expulsions” of the fourteenth century also had the effect of reducing the numbers of mud´ejares in the vicinity of the larger towns, which were now controlled by the Old Christians, but this partial segregation of the population of the kingdom did little to reduce the antagonism between the two communities. To the evident differences in religion, dress, and customs was added the new economic role of the mud´ejares as the servile tenant farmers of the hated Valencian nobility. As a result the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were punctuated by ugly incidents such as the massacre of Valencia’s Islamic community in 1455. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 434

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the standing theme of small acts of decorum toward corpses vs. practical logic — here class/economic roles compounding religious antagonism.