Islamic Confraternities and Funerary Practices: Hallmarks of Mudejar Identity in the Iberian Peninsula?

Abstract

Abstract Burial rites of religious minorities in the Iberian Peninsula were dominated by strong issues of identity. Agreements and legislation permitted Jews and Muslims to have separate cemeteries, where they enjoyed absolute freedom of ritual and practice, and therefore in this framework religious ideology could be fostered, as well as the sense of belonging to a select, religiously defined group. Methodologically, this article aims at a new approach by using the archaeological information provided by the expeditions at the Mudejar cemetery in Avila and contrasting them with contemporary accounts. Mudejar burial rites were recorded during the meetings of a confraternity in Toledo (active c. 1400–1420). This description is compared with the theoretical fiqh treatises used at the time: the Aljamiado and Arabic manuscripts of Ibn al-Jallāb al-Baṣrī's Kitāb al-Tafrīʿ (tenth century), the Risāla fī l-fiqh, by Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī (d. 996), and the Sunni Breviary, compiled by Yça Jabῑr, mufti of Segovia (fifteenth century).