Page 191 - sfogliabile 49

Infidel friends: Charles V, Mulay Hassan and the theatre of majesty 457

traditions of the Tunisian «retinue»,
which is how he defined the group
who joined the imperial camp .
39
Other contemporary observers from
the Netherlands and Germany, less
accustomed to such sights, mar-
velled at these courtiers sitting on
the ground and particularly at the
sight of a king who sat by squatting
on a «tapestry» in their midst as was
his custom. They were embarrassed
by the small number of soldiers he
had brought to the campaign, as
well as the unceremonious charac-
ter and loud and (as they saw it) dis-
respectful voices of Mulay Hassan’s
noble entourage even when they
were with him . Meanwhile, the
40
Granada-born chronicler and eye-
witness Luis de Mármol Carvajal
Fig. 5. P.P. Rubens (after J.C. Vermeyen), lamented the decadence of this
Portrait of Mulay Ahmad, Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston (ca. 1609). exiled court by contrast with the
situation before 1534. Tunis, he
explained, had been organised according to a strict, social hierarchy with
well-defined offices and clear precedence, a system comparable to the
European framework. According to him, the Hafsids had followed the
same style for eating and negotiating as the Kings of Fez, thus
highlighting the awareness of some of these chroniclers of the different
courtly traditions and societies across the Mediterranean .
41

39 J.C. Vermeyen, King Mulay Hasan and his retinue at a repast in Tunis, circa
1535, engraving, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, studied in S. Borsch, Jan
Cornelisz Vermeyen: King Mulay Hasan and his retinue at a repast in Tunis, «The
Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin», N.S., 52:2 (1994), p. 22.
40 The King «la mayor parte del tiempo, o casi siempre, estaba sentado en tierra sobre
un tapiz que le ponían, y estaba siempre sentado en cuclillas, que era cosa de ver, mas
así es la costumbre de la tierra. Y así estaban todos alrededor de él en tierra, vestidos
mal y desnudos, sin mucha ceremonia. Antes, muchas veces hablaban todos
juntamente tan alto, más que el mismo rey, aunque siempre retenía en sí alguna
majestad real». A. Perrenin, Goleta de la ciudad de Túnez cit., p. 87.
41 L. del Mármol Carvajal, Libro tercero, y segvndo volvmen cit., pp. 244v-245v. Some
modern authors have assumed that there was a general courtly Maghrebi style, humbler
and more public than contemporary Ottoman protocol. J. Dakhlia, J. Valensi, Le
spectacle de la Cour : éléments de comparaison des modes de souveraineté au Maghreb
et dans l’Empire ottoman, in G. Veinstein (ed.), Soliman le Magnifique et son temps, La
Documentantion Française, Paris, 1992, pp. 148-152.

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