1The objective of Los apartamientos de moros is to examine the medieval urban districts where Mudejars – Muslims under Christian rule – settled, specifically focusing on the process which culminated in the physical segregation of Muslims (and by extension, of Jews). This evolution is investigated within the framework of the Castilian laws legislating otherness in an urban context, particularly in the fifteenth century. While the title of the book encompasses the Iberian Peninsula, most of the articles in this collection centres on the Duero Valley in Spain’s northern plateau. Nonetheless, certain contributions do provide comparative context through case studies in the Kingdoms of Portugal, Valencia and Navarre. This phenomenon of urban segregation was largely short-lived in Castile and haphazardly implemented at the outset of the fifteenth century. It reached its peak after 1480 when the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel and Fernando, attempted a systematic reintroduction of minority enclosures. However, they lasted no further than 1502 in Castile when the Islamic minority was forced to relinquish their original faith and adopt Christianity.

4The opening article by Molina de la Torre revisits the legal context of these measures, concluding that most were initially directed at the Jewish minority and only later extended to the Muslims. He examines various manuscript copies of the laws enacted during the minority of Juan II – under the regency of his mother Catalina of Lancaster and his uncle the Infante Fernando – as well as legislation from the King’s actual reign. By comparing these extant manuscripts, he identifies specific misreadings in the historical record caused by previous reliance on incomplete versions that had not been fully collated.

5In the following chapter, Val Valdivieso re-examines the political context behind the laws approved by the Queen Dowager Catalina of Lancaster. She concurs with Molina de la Torre’s assertion that the segregation measures were originally aimed at the Jewish population, largely due to the direct influence of the zealous Dominican preacher Vincent Ferrer present in Ayllon in 1411, where the laws were drafted prior to their publication in January of 1412. The array of measures did not merely impose marks of infamy on the clothing; rather it consisted of a comprehensive battery of initiatives that culminated in the creation of confined quarters to which these minorities were to be relegated.

6To complement this analysis, Gamero Igea re-examines the segregation measures of the Cortes of 1480, clarifying several overlooked issues. He specifically distinguishes these measures from the Ordenamiento de Montalvo – a new juridical compilation ordered by the Catholic Monarchs that same year. However, it is worth considering an alternative perspective: Montalvo integrates the 1480 decree and clarifies Queen Isabel’s intent to link it to the laws approved in 1412 by Catalina of Lancaster. This would explain why at the end of the fifteenth century most Muslim (and Jewish) quarters in Castile were in fact enclosed within walls despite this not being specifically stipulated in the Cortes of 1480.

7The decision to include a section that allows for a comparative approach between Castile and other Iberian kingdoms is a commendable one, particularly given that the book’s primary focus diverges somewhat from its broad title. The examination of the Muslim quarters of Tudela in the Kingdom of Navarre (Sola Torres and Sesma Sesma), and of post-conquest Granada (García Porras and Busto Zapico) are especially insightful due to their archaeological methodology. Although these chapters do not describe strict seclusion within a designated enclave, they provide insight into the displacement of Mudejars into new urban sectors.

8One of the most engaging articles in this comparative section is that of Fialho Silva in which he traces the evolution of Lisbon’s mourerias of Lisbon from the 1147 conquest to the late fifteenth century, beginning with a vital reassessment of the 1170 Carta dos mouros forros (Charter of Free Muslims). Silva rectifies earlier (mis)readings of this document by demonstrating that this charter – an inversion of the ahl al-dhimma status – contained no mandate for Muslims to reside in a specific district. Furthermore, Silva traces the late medieval shift in Muslim urban settlement that mirrors other Peninsular cases: the original organic grid of square, courtyard-centred edifices was replaced in the fourteenth century by a ‘colonial-type’ urbanism of straight thoroughfares and thin rectangular plots. This transformation closely aligns with the findings for Castilian towns like Valladolid, examined elsewhere in this volume in great detail by Vasallo Toranzo.

9Torró’s article also highlights these circumstances in the Kingdom of Valencia which held the largest Muslim population of all the Christian kingdoms prior to 1492. He argues that residential segregation was a foundational element of the thirteenth-century feudal colonization process, rather than a late-medieval development as in Castile. Torró identifies a wide range of typologies of Muslim settlement, including the establishment of alquerías, homogeneous autonomous aljamas, and the arrabal (or raval). In the latter, extramuros Muslim communities were separated from an intramuros Christian population, to prevent intermixing. According to Torró, the primary driver for this separation was the need to enforce economic submission of subaltern Muslims (sarracenos in the Latin documents) through onerous fiscal tributes. The colonization typology where Christians were in proximity to Muslims, despite a physical barrier, often failed due to communal friction. Nevertheless, from the end of the fourteenth century there was greater flexibility and mobility for Muslim vassals as the demographic and economic crises made them more appealing as a tool of resettlement, especially in lordship lands.

10The case of the Muslim quarter of Plasencia by Rebollo Bote, despite being south of the Duero Valley, and thus not specifically linked to the main case studies examined in this monograph, does follow similar patterns. It is easily comparable to the Duero basin aljamas in the sense that most, if not all, of its indigenous Muslim population fled at the moment of conquest at the end of the twelfth century. At the time of the foundation of a new Christian town by Alfonso VIII, the King likely made an appeal to Muslims from other (Christian) territories to come settle in Plasencia. The author confirms the dichotomy between the existence of Jewish enclosures since 1412 and its absence for Muslims, and subsequently identifies the late-fifteenth-century closed quarters established only after this seigneurial town returned to the royal domain.

11The issue of the Muslim enclosure of Ávila – one of the largest Muslim aljamas in Castile – is examined in a chapter by Jiménez Gadea who has dedicated much of his career to the study of this city and this minority. The first segregation mandate of 1412 seems to have failed as even the bishop of Ávila opposed this measure (since he was landlord to Mudejars who would have to abandon their homes to comply). Finally, the 1480 measures obliged them to move extramuros within a new walled enclosure. It appears as though the community was distributed into two disconnected ghettos. Jiménez Gadea explores the possible locations of the new mosques built in the designated late-fifteenth century enclosures, using the method of comparative historical planimetry and deciphering extant medieval inscriptions in architectural remnants integrated into modern buildings.

12There are two methodological essays by García Cuesta, García Martín, and Villanueva Zubizarreta that propose a novel way to identify the Muslim quarters within the urban grid of towns. The first deals with the use of cartography and aerial photography to locate certain historical elements that have disappeared from the current layout of a town. This experimental approach, detailed by the authors for the first time, is based on the superimposition of historical cartography onto modern maps and aerial imagery. They advocate for georeferencing: establishing at least three points of reference found on historical maps, tracing them onto a modern plan, and calibrating the errors found at each point due to planimetric distortion. By integrating archaeological and documentary evidence, new landmarks can be plotted onto the superimposed cartographical layers and provide further clues to locate the Muslim structures or any other lost construction for that matter.

13The second methodological essay adapts this general model to the search for hypothetical sites of the Muslim districts and enclosures, as well as the key elements that anchored Islamic life in a city. This is particularly relevant for the disappeared mosques of late medieval towns in the Duero Valley. These mosques were often the hub around which local Muslims gravitated, and where significant clusters of dwellings were located. Consequently, identifying the location of a mosque may ostensibly point toward a possible nucleus of Muslim settlement, both for older diffuse quarters and newly allotted enclosures. To identify the specific lot where an original mosque stood, the authors emphasize using the direction of Mecca and tracing the bearings of the qibla wall, toward which Islamic prayer is oriented and where the mihrab (the prayer niche) is situated. This proposal is developed to test the orientations of the mosques of the Duero Valley, but it is also applicable to the study of all mosques across the Iberian Peninsula.

14The application of comparative historical planimetry is the methodology used by Rodríguez Plaza in the chapter on the Muslim quarter of Aranda de Duero (Burgos). This is a unique case, as it features the earliest extant urban plan in Castile dating to 1503. The plan is accompanied by fascinating witness testimonies from a lawsuit sparked by urban renovations undergone to accommodate the new segregated quarters for Jews and Muslims. From these testimonies, it is clear that the original 1412 segregation measures failed to seclude Muslims in a designated area. Once again, it was not until the 1480 decree that authorities finally enforced the displacement of the Muslim community to an enclave on the outskirts of the town, across the Duero River.

15The final chapter by Villanueva Zubizarreta provides a glimpse into the aftermath of the 1502 forced conversion of Mudejars and the impact on the urban spaces they occupied in the northern plateau of Castile. Just as there was a desire to erase Islam from the souls of the Crown’s subject, a process began to expunge all traces of sites and buildings related to Islamic practice. This included the physical dismantling of mosques – rather than their conversion into churches, as occurred in other towns – and the eradication of their cemeteries thereby destroying a memory marker of their ancestors (as well as the desecration of their physical remains). This property fell to Queen Isabel, who then proceeded to donate buildings, land and objects – such as tombstones as building material – to servants of the Crown. Although the enclosures were eventually dismantled in time, many Moriscos – new Christians of Islamic ancestry – continued living in and around the quarters originally meant to confine them. The chapter concludes by suggesting that this sixteenth-century transformation should be the focus of future research to establish a clearer picture of these urban shifts.

16A recurring theme across these case studies is the systematic lack of historical memory regarding medieval Muslim quarters in modern urban centres in Spain and Portugal. Because most towns lack prominent monuments from this minority, their historical vestiges are often invisible within the modern grid. While it is tempting to attribute this to an active ‘erasing’ of history – especially since these communities no longer exist in the Peninsular landscape – this absence likely stems from a broader failure by local and national authorities to disseminate history to the public. Historical research should not only merely serve academic depth: it must allow local communities to recognize and transmit the unique heritage of their own towns and regions. Ultimately, this volume reveals that even among professional historians, there has been a profound knowledge gap regarding the basic spatial realities of the Muslim minority at the end of the Middle Ages, as well as the conditions they were forced to endure.

17This research team has produced valuable insights into Mudejar urban dwellings and segregation in medieval Castile; this publication is the direct result of that intellectual debate and exchange. The authors have successfully challenged many assumptions held by traditional historiography, examining diverse case studies throughout the Duero Valley, and providing a rich comparison with other regions across the Iberian Peninsula. Furthermore, they have introduced a pioneering methodology to overcome documentary shortcomings: an innovative approach to comparative historical cartography that allow researchers to test hypotheses and precisely locate former Muslim enclaves within the urban lattice of modern cities.

18It would be worthwhile to extend this research beyond the Duero Valley and go south to La Mancha, Extremadura, Murcia and Andalusia. Moreover, the development of Muslim – and indeed Jewish – quarters warrants deeper investigation within Portugal and the various realms of the Crown of Aragon. By expanding the geographic scope, historians will move closer to a “big picture” understanding the Mudejar phenomenon in all its complexity. This monograph represents a substantial step towards that ultimate goal.