Under the Saracen domination, Almería was the chief port of Spain, crowded with ships from Syria and Egypt, Pisa and Genoa. It boasted of a thousand inns for strangers and four thousand weaving shops, besides manufactures of copper, iron and glass (Dozy, Recherches, I, 244-5). For the wonderful wealth of the Moors under the caliphs of Córdova, showing the capacity of the race and of the land, see Conde’s “Arabs in Spain,” P. II, cap. 94. How unfitted was the Castilian chivalry to perpetuate this prosperity is seen in a letter of Alfonso X in 1258, reciting how he had peopled with Christians the flourishing city of Alicante, as it was a stronghold and one of the best seaports; how the allotment of lands had given dissatisfaction and on investigation he had found that the Christians could not live and prosper there, wherefore he now makes a new repartimiento (Memorial histórico español, I, 135).
[202] Fernández y González, pp. 294, 321, 367. Cf. Concil. Vallisolet. ann. 1322, cap. xxii; C. Toletan. ann. 1324, cap. viii (Aguirre, V, 251, 259); Concil. Parisiensis, ann. 1212, Addend, cap. i (Martene Ampliss. Collect. VII, 1420).
[203] Concil. Lateran. IV, ann. 1216, cap. lxviii (cap. 15, Extra, v, vi). This device originated among the Saracens of the East, who, in the eleventh century, required Jews and Christians to wear distinctive badges (Fernández y González, p. 16). The earliest trace of it in the West is found in the charter of Alais, in 1200, which prescribes distinctive vestments for Jews (Robert, Les Signes d’Infamie au Moyen Age, p. 7). In Italy, Frederic II obeyed the Lateran decree by ordering, in 1221, all Jews to wear distinguishing garments (Richardi de S. German. Chron. ap. Muratori, S. R. I., VII, 993), but he did not insert this in the Sicilian Constitutions or include his Saracen subjects. In 1254 the council of Albi prescribed for Jews a circle, a finger-breadth in width, to be worn upon the breast, and that of Ravenna, in 1311, a yellow circle (Harduin. VII, 458, 1370). In the fifteenth century, the Neapolitan Jews were required to wear as a sign the Hebrew letter Tau (Wadding, Annal. Minor. T. III, Regest. p. 392).
[204] Raynald. Annal. ann. 1217, n. 84.—Amador de los Rios, Hist. de los Judíos de España, I, 361-2, 554.
[205] Amador de los Rios, I, 362, 364.
[206] Partidas, P. VII, Tit. xxiv, ley 11.
[207] Córtes de los antiguos Reinos, I, 227.
[208] Concil. Tarraconens. ann. 1238, cap. iv; ann. 1282, cap. v (Martene Ampliss. Collect. VIII, 132, 280).—Fernández y González, p. 369.—Constitutions de Cathalunya superfluas, Lib. I, Tit. v, cap. 12 (Barcelona, 1589, p. 8).
[209] Ayala, Crónica de Enrique II, año VI, cap. vii.—Córtes de los antiguos Reinos, II, 281.
[210] Ripoll Bullar. Ord. FF. Prædic. I, 479. It was apparently in return for a tithe of ecclesiastical revenues that Jaime pledged himself to the pope to expel the Moors, but he was too wise a statesman to do so, and as late as 1275 he invited additional settlers by the promise of a year’s exemption from taxation. On his death-bed in 1276, however, partly, no doubt in consequence of a dangerous Moorish revolt, and partly owing to the awakened fears shown by his taking the Cistercian habit, he enjoined his son Pedro to fulfil the promise, and in a codicil to his will he emphatically repeated the request (Danvila y Collado, La Expulsion de los Moriscos, p. 24.—Swift, James the First of Aragon, pp. 140, 253, 290), but Pedro was obdurate.