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Infidel friends: Charles V, Mulay Hassan and the theatre of majesty 451

Fig. 4. R. Alemán, Surrender of Granada, Lower Choir, Cathedral of Toledo (1495).

There are also testimonies of Mulay Hassan’s contacts with Charles
V before being dethroned by Barbarossa. Afterwards, he even offered
one of his daughters as a lady-in-waiting for the empress Isabella of
Portugal. It appears that the little girl was captured during the
conquest of Tunis in 1535 and sent to Spain as a slave. Subsequently
her father begged Charles V to provide her with a dowry to profess as
a nun in a royal convent and she eventually became a member of the
Poor Clare convent of Santa Isabel in Barcelona . For their part, some
13
Ottoman chroniclers (including Bostan Çelebi and Seyyid Muradi)
insisted on the impious nature of the Hafsid King, who had allied with
“Infidels” instead of agreeing with his coreligionists .
14
In other words, inter-confessional diplomacy in the Mediterranean
lands was not exceptional, but the personal involvement and meeting
of princes was. Mediterranean diplomacy is being currently analysed
through the agency of frontier agents as a “diplomacy from below”, but

13 Consultas for Charles V, Toledo, May 1534, Ags, E, 28, f. 168v. She adopted the
name sor Juana de África. Consultas for Charles V, Toledo, 28 March 1538, Ags, E, 42,
f. 190; F. Marca OFM, Chronica seraphica de la santa provincia de Cataluña de la
Regular Observancia de Nuestro Padre S. Francisco, Imp. Carmelitas Descalzos,
Barcelona, 1764, part 2, pp. 364-371.
14 See E. Türkçelik’s article in this same volume.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XVII - Agosto 2020
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)