The Mudejar Lorca

After more than five centuries of Moslem dominion, the Christian Kings would go over the Iberian Peninsula until reaching to Lorca in 1244. In that year, the male infant Alfonse, who was known afterwards as Alphonse X the Wise Person, incorporates the city to the kingdom Castilla by means of capitulation. Pedro Ponce was in charge of keeping this situation under the Castilian protectorate.

The pact of capitulation contemplates the respect of customs, law or religion, towards the Moslem who lived in Lorca, although they were put below the power of the Castilian monarch. We are in the Mudejar Lorca period.

Mudejar: Moslem permitted to live under Christian rules. It is also considered as the artistic and cultural phenomenon developed in Christian place, by remembering the Islamic tastes.

In 1257 the King was in Lorca and began to implant the Christian model in order to supplant the Moslem population. He conceded to the town council of the villa two farmhouses with their castles and their territories: Puentes and Felí. His objective was to form a municipality following the Castilian way, with a main villa surrounded by diverse dependent villages, and forming a whole considered as alfoz.

Alfoz. It is a jurisdictional term dealing with a city or villa.

The Castilian pressure against the mudejar people in Lorca continued just until 1264. The murcian and andalusian muslins revolted, but the Castilian trimming of the Lorca strength held on. From here, the gentlemen scourged the turbulent forces until the helping of James I of Aragon who put the end to the Mudejar rising. The King Alphonse X ‘El Sabio’ expelled to the greate part of mudejars of Murcia and the Christian repopulation started.