Commercial litigation across religious borders: rendering justice for Valencian merchants in fifteenth-century North Africa and Granada

Abstract

This article explores commercial litigation in the cross-religious environment of late medieval Christian Valencia, Muslim Granada and North Africa, where different religious communities are often said to have enforced their own sets of rules through separate community courts. Following the merchants of Valencia (and by way of comparison also Mallorca), including Christians, Muslims and Jews, we find a more complex scenario in which both Christian consulates and Muslim royal courts played a crucial role by adapting their proceedings to the requirements of cross-religious trade.