The Andalusian rahales in the Murcian Countryside and their Transfer to the New Christian Owners (13th Century)

Abstract

The administrative reorganization of the territory (delimitation of alfoces to the cities) and the restructuring of the Murcian dry land with the distribution of the Andalusian rahales found by the Castilian conquerors projected the colonization of the countryside after its integration in the Crown of Castile in the middle of the 13th century; project that was not possible. The study focuses on understanding through historical knowledge and the anthroponymy toponymy the economic and social nature of Andalusian rahales as agrarian spaces held by urban aristocratic and “bourgeois” elites, as well as their location mapped in their corresponding districts cadastral, which facilitates its approximate location. The colonizing comparative carried out on the Andalusian and Castilian countryside allows, despite the uncertainties, to obtain a series of qualitative and quantitative possibilities about the settlement and the use of the vast dry land territory and, in particular, of the private properties called rahales that articulated it. Finally, the impact on the territory caused the effective Castilian sovereignty in the second half of the thirteenth century would eventually translate into a new cultural landscape: uninhabited and uncultivated lands, seasonal transit and stay favorable to the ebb and flow of sheep farming migratory.