New merchant elites rose through collaboration as Granada’s old aristocracy collapsed

Evidence

Gal´an distinguishes between the collaborators among the old Granadan aristocracy who came to have a leading role precisely because they had played a prominent part in the actual surrender and those motivated by ambition or desire for gain who appeared on the scene a little later. In this latter category he places businessmen like the members of the Mora family, Castilian Mudejars by origin (from the Kingdom of Toledo). In 1497, Yuc¸af Mora, a silk factor, was appointed amin (warden) of the alcaicer´ıa (government-controlled silk market) in Granada. And in 1500 he was one of those listed as converted to Christianity in the city (Gal´an 1991, 270–71). Gal´an’s distinction between the traditional leadership and a new generation of men who rose to the top as entrepreneurs is useful, but as he makes clear, these merchants also often served as political go-betweens and negotiators. In a society in collapse, rigid social class boundaries could not be maintained. … El Fisteli continues to crop up over many years in documents, first from Granada itself in the 1490s, and then, more frequently, from Malaga. Although to focus on his career will take us chronologically too far ahead, he provides such a good introduction to the nature of the leadership on which the inhabitants of the territories of the former Nasrid Kingdom of Granada were beginning to have to rely that it will be useful to follow him a certain way into the future. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 224

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader trajectory of conquered-elite collaboration and conversion that this book’s earlier chapters on the mudéjar aristocracy establish.