Translation and Multilingualism as Communication Strategies in Medieval Mediterranean Diplomacy

The establishment of diplomatic contacts between Christian and Muslim powers in the Late Medieval Mediterranean (13th-15th centuries) entailed the application of various strategies to ensure communication between the parties. In this context, the Crown of Aragon, a composite monarchy that reigned between the 12th and 18th centuries over the territories of Catalonia, Valencia, Aragon, the Balearic Islands, part of southern France, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, and southern Italy, enjoyed a regular diplomatic intercourse with the Islamic powers of Granada, Morocco, Tunisia, Tlemcen, Béjaïa and Egypt.
The documentation preserved in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon (Barcelona) —which houses the largest collection of medieval Arabic documents outside the Muslim world, together with their contemporary translations and even some documents originally written in Romance languages by the Islamic chancelleries— allows us to understand the different translation and communication strategies employed by the Christian and Muslim actors involved in these exchanges. This paper aims to explore those diverse means, which range from the establishment of a corps of translators under the orders of the state to the decision to issue the documents directly in the language of the addressees (e.g. Latin, Aragonese, Catalan, or Castilian). Through the analysis of this documentary evidence, the focus will be on the strategies, techniques, and actors used in the diplomatic exchange by the different Muslim powers, and, consequently, on the linguistic and cultural consequences derived from the translating and multilingual choices. In short, it seeks to offer an unexplored perspective of the diplomacy between the Crown of Aragon and the Muslim sultanates of the Mediterranean, to compare their differences and be able to understand the reasons behind them.