Abstract
Abstract The present study discusses language as a tool of identity construction by Muslims from the Late Medieval and Early Modern Christian Iberian Peninsula who could practice Islam by law in exchange for paying taxes (Mudejars). Their writings, as well as those of the group who were later forced to convert to Christianity (Moriscos), are in various languages and scripts. The Arabic (Aljamiado) used to transcribe Romance is distinctive and abundant evidence of it is left from the later Morisco period. The earlier uses of language by the Mudejars are nonetheless essential to understand how Muslims negotiated their community boundaries within a Christian majority society. My analysis will concentrate on two Mudejar polemics against the Christians and the Jews, which were most likely composed in fourteenth-century Aragon. In these works, approaches to language and the interplay of Arabic—both as a target language and as a script—with Romance escape discrete definitions of religion and culture.1
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