Western Civilization I / Unit 11 WC1 1038 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading a Charter: Jaume I's Terms for Valencia's Muslims
The idea
Sample question seven quotes a thirteenth-century charter by which a Christian king regulated the Muslims of a conquered city, and asks what it shows. The method is the one used for the Pact of Umar: who grants, who receives, what each side gives, and what the document assumes. Jaume I of Aragon's terms for Valencia's Muslims after the twelve thirties are the case, read in translation.
In practice
Apply. Who grants: the conquering king, in his own name. Who receives: the Muslim community, as a community. What they give: submission, taxes, acceptance of Christian rule and of limits on public worship. What they get: their own law, judges and religion, their property and their mosques within limits. What it assumes: that conquest does not mean conversion, that religious communities are units of law, and that a king profits more from taxed subjects than from expelled ones. The sample question's answer follows: conquest accompanied by regulation of religious communities, not their destruction.
Where people slip
The charter mirrors the dhimma the Muslims had applied to Christians, and the exam may pair them. Do not answer that either side was tolerant in the modern sense; both regulated a subordinate community for revenue and order, and the expulsions came centuries later.
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