1Hungary was one of the few places in Christian Europe where a Muslim minority lived during the Middle Ages1. Their position was unusual: the Muslim inhabitants did not settle because of the Muslim conquest of previously Christian lands, nor were they incorporated through Christian conquest of formerly Muslim lands. Rather, Muslims immigrated into a Christian kingdom (although it is possible that the earliest immigrants arrived before the Christianization of the area) and settled there. The evidence is very fragmentary, and scholars have argued over the place of origin of Hungary’s Muslim population. The following areas have all been suggested: the Khazar Empire, Volga Bulgaria, the Balkans, Khwarezm, North Africa, and the Iberian Peninsula2.

2As to the time of immigration, suggestions span the period between the late 9^th and the 11^th centuries3. Many scholars argue that it is mistaken to search for one place of origin and one period of immigration, because several waves of immigrants arrived over a few centuries, from several different areas. There is indeed evidence that in the mid- 12^th century, when there was already a Muslim minority living in the kingdom, the Hungarian king Géza II actively recruited Muslim soldiers from the areas near the Caspian Sea, inducing them to immigrate into Hungary, as he valued their military skills and wanted them to serve in the royal army4. According to one theory, Muslim Turk mercenaries, formerly settled by Byzantine rulers, were also incorporated by the mid- 12^th century through the Hungarian conquest of Byzantine territories between the rivers Danube and Sava5.

3Toponymic and written evidence suggests that Muslims lived in many different villages and towns in the realm. No reliable statistics exist for the Muslim population (or indeed for any of the medieval population figures in Hungary). Calculations have ranged between 2,000-15,000 individuals, and the only certainty is that Muslims constituted a small minority within the kingdom6.

4Texts from the kingdom of Hungary give relatively detailed descriptions of Muslim practices in the context of a brief but intense period when Hungary’s Muslims became the target of conversionary efforts, at the end of the 11^th and beginning of the 12^th centuries. In this period, legislation aimed at the conversion of all of Hungary’s Muslims. Written legislation in the Hungarian case is early and extensive, and consisted of mixed royal and ecclesiastical legislation, with kings presiding over local ecclesiastical synods7.

5The laws demonstrate a good knowledge of some Muslim rites. The Synod of Szabolcs (1092) designates «those merchants who are called Ishmaelites» as the subject of the legislation. It targets those already baptized who «return to their own law through circumcision (canon 9)8.

6Circumcision is thus correctly identified as distinguishing Muslims from Christians, although it is unclear whether the author envisaged a return to Islam through the circumcision of the converts’ own children (for which there are parallels among «marranos» and «moriscos», converted Jews and Muslims, in Spain9), or perhaps supposed a return to Islam by those who had been baptised as small children of Muslim parents prior to circumcision; or postulated a return to Islam through a new circumcision. The punishment was removal from their houses to other villages. Innocence from the charge, if proven (probably by ordeal), allowed the Ishmaelites to remain in their homes10. This is our first indication in the sources that a sustained missionary effort was directed at the realm’s Muslims.

7A few years later, at the very end of the 11^th or beginning of the 12^th century, the legislation of King Kálmán (Coloman) developed this theme more thoroughly11. The presupposition behind the legal text is that a large number of already converted Muslims live in the kingdom, who are, however, less than secure in their adherence to their new Christian faith. In order to hinder the converts from observing the laws of their old religion, the population was encouraged to report on the customs of such individuals. The incentive was high, as those who reported deeds linked to insincere conversion, were promised a part of the property of those they denounced. The three practices defined as signs of imperfect Christianity, or in other words, as signalling continued adhesion to Islam, were fasting (obviously not during the Christian periods of fast, but ramaḍān, although the name is not used), abstention from pork during meals and ablutions (a necessary preparation for prayer)12. The list is clearly based on a good knowledge of real Muslim practices. These practices are qualified as villainy (facinus). The legislation further intruded profoundly into the daily lives of converts, clearly focusing on a key Islamic dietary requirement: it stipulated that if any Ishmaelite had a guest for a meal, both the guest and the host were to eat only pork for meat13. Such a demand was much stricter than for example an opinion found in the Iberian Peninsula, which allowed converts from Judaism not to eat pork itself as long as they were willing to eat whatever else was cooked together with the meat14. It is clear that the legislators in Hungary were fully aware of key Islamic practices and targeted these as a way of eradicating crypto-Muslims, thus trying to ensure full conversion to Christianity over the longer term.

8Other canons prescribed ways to exert pressure on Muslims by destroying their communities. Each Ishmaelite village was ordered to build and endow a church. Afterwards, half of the village was to move away to cohabit with Christians. The justification provided for such legislation was a religious one: Muslim villages were to be split up so that the converted Muslims could be united with the other inhabitants of the realm in the one and same Church of Christ15. The legislation did not just aim to separate Muslim villagers from one another, but also to split up families: Ishmaelites were prohibited from marrying their daughter to one «of their own» people, and were only to marry them to «one of us», that is, a Christian («de genere sua/nostra»)16. These measures aimed at the destruction of the social cohesion of the Muslim community, which had been a prerequisite for the continued practice of Islam.

9Intrusive, enforced evangelisation of Muslims and search for crypto-Muslims (including denunciations for bathing, fasting and eating habits) has parallels in the late medieval Iberian Peninsula, but the source material is much richer there, while the social context was very different17. Why such a policy was initiated in Hungary can only be guessed at, as there is no justification beyond the general religious one of including the converts in the Christian Church and thereby creating social harmony:

Let them henceforth reside together with us, in unanimity, in the divine house that is the one and same Church of Christ18.

10The idea that one religion, Christianity, was necessary for social cohesion and for the unity of the population resembles later Iberian rhetoric, but the local context was different: I would argue that Muslims in Hungary were targeted for conversion in the context of the realm’s Christianization, and the policy of integration through conversion then gained added impetus from the ideas that fuelled the First Crusade.

11Hungary’s Christianization started towards the end of the 10^th and beginning of the 11^th century19. A century later, the process was declared to be a success in the preface of Kálmán’s legislation20. Yet, clearly, the kingdom’s inhabitants were still seen by many as pagans, even within the kingdom itself. Late 11^th- and early 12^th-century synodal legislation, including that of Szabolcs, was still concerned with the eradication of «paganism» from the kingdom. These canons prohibited pre-Christian rites, such as giving offerings at trees or stones, and castigated converts who did not observe Christian regulations, such as going to church, keeping fasts and feast days and so on21. Kálmán’s legislation emphasized the true devotion of the realm’s Christian inhabitants, but this insistence also signals an underlying concern with the stabilization of a Christian kingdom, ensuring that the inhabitants conform to ecclesiastical definitions of what it meant to be a Christian at the time. This context was rather different from that in the late-medieval Iberian Peninsula, where Muslims were targets of mission in the midst of an old Christian society.

12In addition, at the time of the Hungarian legislation no established canonical tradition existed concerning the treatment of a Muslim community in a Christian kingdom; with the exception of a few local canons, for example in the decrees of the Council of Nablus, 1120, such legislation in canon law only started to emerge after Gratian22. Thus the solution elaborated by the Hungarian synod was the integration of Muslims through conversion. In comparison, there were established canonical precedents for regulating the status of Jews, who were also targeted in the same legislation, and the Hungarian laws mirror the canonical legislation in their focus: here the aim was not to convert, but to set the Jews apart and ensure their inferior position compared to Christians23.

13The ideas contributing to the birth of crusading may also have added impetus to these Hungarian anti-Muslim policies during Kálmán’s reign. Turning the Muslims into the main enemies of Christians both in the East (the Holy Land) and the West (the Iberian Peninsula) simultaneously, Pope Urban II’s ideas may have fuelled new legislation in Hungary as well24. Kálmán was seen as a learned king, and he was probably initially destined for an ecclesiastical career; according to legend he was even a bishop before becoming king of Hungary25. His legislation is certainly marked by particular attention to Muslims as well as to Jews, and by an insistence on the Christian character of the kingdom of Hungary.

14Another group of sources reflect Hungarian attitudes to Muslim rites: accounts by Muslim authors of the reception and treatment of Muslims in Hungary. These texts contain Muslim accounts of Christian views of Muslim practices. It is worth including these accounts as they complement the Latin laws, although any future studies of these narratives by scholars of medieval Arabic texts will doubtless add to their contextualization and better understanding. The most important and longest account is that by Abū Ḥāmid al-Garnāṭī. He was born in Granada in 1080, travelled in the Muslim world, lived in Saksin on the Lower Volga, and from there in the mid 12^th century went to the Volga Bulgarians, Rus’ lands, and Hungary26. He spent three years living in Hungary in the middle of the 12^th century27 and left a detailed account of his experiences.

15He wrote of two categories of Muslims in Hungary: Muslims who pretended to be Christians but secretly adhered to the rituals of Islam, and served the king; and Muslims who openly practiced Islam, were soldiers, and only served the Christians in times of war. He tied these two groups to places of origin, designating them as the children of Khwarezmians and the children of «Maghrebites» (awlād al-maġāriba) respectively28. The identification of the latter —the Arabic term’s significance is mysterious— is debated and remains unresolved. According to some, this area of origin designates Bulgaria on the Danube29. Szűcs thought these Muslims were Alans30. Others identify them as Pechenegs31. A main argument for that identification is that Abū Ḥāmid used the same term for Muslims in Rus’, but also wrote that they were like the Turks, spoke Turkic and had another name, a word read by several scholars as «Bajanah» and equated with Pechenegs32. These scholars also point out that when he wrote of «Maghrebites» in Saksin, he used a different term and also described them as following the Mālikī school, consistent with a «Maghrebite» origin, whereas neither he nor other authors suggest the existence of Mālikīs in Hungary33. Károly Czeglédy proposed that they were North Africans who had moved to the steppes of Central Asia, joined Islamized Pechenegs there, and with them immigrated into Hungary34. Balić contended that the designation meant «foreign troops35». Katona-Kiss argued that they were Muslim Turkic mercenaries settled in territories of Srem (Srijem, Szerémség, between the Danube and Sava rivers) by Byzantine emperors, and incorporated through the Hungarian conquest of these lands36. At times, the North African and Iberian origin of this group is taken for granted37. Islam, however, was widespread in Central Asia, from where immigrant groups certainly settled in Hungary. Moreover, Abū Ḥāmid did not acknowledge this group as descendants of his compatriots. In the title of his work, Abū Ḥāmid used al-Maghrib not as a designation of the western Maghreb, but the «West», the Occident, to refer to the areas of his travels, including the lands of the Bulgars, Khazars, Slavs, and Hungarians. Finally, no evidence exists concerning any memory of migration from North Africa among Hungary’s Muslims (see p. 252). Ultimately, only a detailed study by a scholar of medieval Arab texts may lead to the resolution of this debate.

16Abū Ḥāmid’s description confirms the existence of crypto-Muslims, a result of the conversions due to earlier missionary policy encapsulated in the legislation. Yet not all the Muslims converted, and if his account is correct, the open profession of Islam was by then possible in Hungary. He discussed in detail the religious observance of Hungary’s Muslims, but there are obvious problems with his account. First, he cast himself in the role of a Muslim teacher, successfully bringing the knowledge of Islamic tenets to the kingdom’s Muslims who previously did not even know key practices38. Secondly, Christian rule over Muslims was problematic from a Muslim perspective. Later Muslim authors from Islamic areas could denigrate Muslims living under Christian rule («mudéjares») in Spain, and see them as falling away from normative Islamic practices, regardless of reality. The fact of living under Christian rule in itself was seen by rigorist jurists as prohibitive of true Muslim practice (and by more permissive ones as causing a host of problems): Muslims were to emigrate from territories conquered by Christians39.

17Abū Ḥāmid does not claim to have tried to reconvert crypto-Muslims pretending to be Christians; instead he emphasizes his own role in teaching those openly professing Islam. He describes them as ignorant of important religious rules. They knew no Arabic, did not preach or have public prayer on Fridays (which he equated with the pilgrimage of the poor: those who could not go to Mecca would receive the reward due for pilgrimage if they went to Friday prayers). He had to teach them about inheritance laws and marital rules, notably that the men could have up to four wives and keep (slave) concubines as well; he also taught them not to drink wine, and instructed them about the duty of pilgrimage to Mecca. He claimed that in over 10,000 places Hungarian Muslims started to implement his teachings on Friday preaching, openly or in secret. He also endorsed their service in the army of the Hungarian king against Byzantium as Holy War.

18He recounts a lengthy conversation with one of his disciples, who already learned Arabic and wanted to use his new-found knowledge to copy books and learn from them. Abū Ḥāmid instructed him to learn by heart instead, arguing that true knowledge was not found in books but in the heart. Once he learnt the information, he could then write it down, rather than copy the text directly. He also taught this man never to copy texts without also copying the isnād («chain of tradition»). Thus Abū Ḥāmid presents himself as teaching Hungary’s Muslims key elements of Islamic practice.

19He also incorporates Christian opinion on Muslim practices in Hungary, or at least a Muslim version of what these Christian opinions may have been. Abū Ḥāmid records a conversation he says he had with the Hungarian king through an interpreter. He claims to have defended in particular two Islamic tenets so succesfully that he convinced the king about the truth of his views. The two issues in question were the prohibition to drink wine, and polygyny and concubinage. The king argued that the precepts of Islam were not in harmony with common sense, because wine strengthened the body while too many women and concubines weakened it. Abū Ḥāmid’s counter-argument focused on differences between Islam and Christianity and on the Muslims’ usefulness to the king. He contended that the laws of Muslims were different from the laws of Christians because the nature of the two groups was different. Wine was harmful for Muslims, he said, although Christians could drink it without negative effects. Muslims who drank wine, however, lost their mind, became like fools, only wanting to fornicate, kill, and act in a godless manner. Every good in them disappeared; they gave over their weapons and horses to whoever asked for these, and gave away their whole wealth. The Muslims of Hungary who were soldiers of the king, if allowed to drink wine, would thus have no weapons, horses or wealth to go into war if the king ordered them to do so, for they would squander everything on drinking. Therefore, Muslims would be more efficient as soldiers (of course in the king’s service) if they did not drink wine. Polygyny, he maintained, also benefited the king, as the more numerous children born from many wives would serve in the royal army when they grew up. Abū Ḥāmid asserted that as a consequence of this conversation, the king defended the right of Muslims to have concubines even against the opposition of Christian priests.

20Further, Abū Ḥāmid also claimed to have had a conversation with a freed Muslim captive who returned to Hungary from Byzantium, after he had been interrogated by the Byzantine emperor in the wake of Hungarian —Byzantine wars. The Byzantine emperor wanted to know why the Muslims in Hungary helped the king in war, whereas the Muslims in the Empire did not serve him in warfare. The Hungarian Muslim’s purported answer was that the king of Hungary allowed his Muslims to practice their religion freely, whereas the emperor forced the Muslims to convert and pretend they were Christians. Hearing this, the Byzantine emperor supposedly decided to thenceforth permit his Muslims to practice their own religion, and even to build mosques for them.

21Abū Ḥāmid’s stories paint an image of complete acceptance of Islamic practice by Hungary’s Christian king, who realized that this was the way to ensure the loyalty of a valuable military force. Abū Ḥāmid presents himself as the polemicist of Hungary’s Muslims, promoting and celebrating a change in royal policy from the early 12^th-century attempt at the forcible conversion of Muslims, to the mid- 12^th century attitude of toleration and even royal favour extended to Muslims. His stories serve the same purpose: to show that Muslims, allowed to live openly as Muslims, are a loyal and powerful military force in the service of the Hungarian king, and at the same time to suggest that Muslims forced to convert and live pretending to be Christians are of no use to the king. To the Muslim readers of his book, he presented himself as a successful teacher and effective protector of Muslims beyond the edge of the Islamic world, implicitly engaging with the problem of Muslim life under a non-Muslim ruler. Abū Ḥāmid suggested the possibility of a full Muslim life, even of a privileged position, under a favourable Christian king, perhaps justifying travel and settlement in the non-Islamic world.

22Underlying the argument of Muslim usefulness, however, was a sense of insecurity, the precarious position of a small Muslim minority in a Christian kingdom, whose only possibility of convincing the ruler to support their continued existence was a permanent demonstration of military value. Abū Ḥāmid referred to this basic insecurity —probably a reflection of actual Muslim anxieties in Hungary, rather than his own meditation on the position of a Muslim minority, in the light of Yāqūt’s account below— when in another work he referred to the fear of Hungary’s Muslims of seeming to betray the king. Allegedly, Abū Ḥāmid’s proposal to travel to a neighbouring land was met by the opposition of Hungarian Muslims, saying that the king would suspect them of sending an envoy to the king’s brother and pretender to the throne living there, to conspire with him, which would lead to a royal order to put the Muslims of the realm to death40.

23In the 1220s, Yāqūt b. ‘Abd Allāh al-Rūmī al-Ḥamawī (d. 1229) encountered Muslims from Hungary in Aleppo who studied law according to the school of Abū Ḥanīfa there41. They hoped to gain great honour from their study of Islamic law on their return to Hungary, where their coreligionists would put them in charge of religious matters. Yāqūt was surprised that they failed to observe Islamic regulations in their clothing and hair; notably, they shaved their beard. When questioned, they responded that all Muslims who served the king as soldiers conformed to Christian custom in their appearance, although this was not true of the other Muslims. They spoke the language of the Franks (as Yāqūt called them; a term for European Christians), and dressed like them. The king did not allow them to build walls around their settlements for fear that they would revolt against him. Questioned as to how they could be followers of Islam in a place completely surrounded by Christians, one of the Muslims from Hungary responded that he heard that a long time ago, seven Muslims went from the land of the Bulgars to Hungary and converted them to the true faith42. This suggests a local Muslim tradition of conversion within the territory of Hungary in the mythical past, through the agency of Islamized Bulgar immigrants (and not «Maghrebites»). This account also indicates a rather loose observance of Islam. The Ḥanāfī school, a Sunni branch of Islam, was the most permissive, and made adaptation to local circumstances possible; that is why it was prevalent among the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, such as Khwarezm43.

24In the early 13^th century, Hungary’s Muslims came into the papacy’s focus of attention. Papal letters, based on local information from Hungarian prelates, reproached the Hungarian king for the intermingling of Muslims and Christians, particularly through Muslims holding Christian slaves and their intermarriage with Christians44. These letters focus on Muslim rites in a different way. According to them, Muslims used Christian slaves as their concubines, forcibly converted them to Islam, and did not allow the baptism of their children. Muslims also pretended to be Christians and married Christian women, and then compelled them to apostasy. These letters claim a conscious subterfuge, Muslims hiding their identity in order to mislead Christians and then force them to convert to Islam. Poor Christians also supposedly voluntarily converted to Islam because they would have a more advantageous position as Muslims. In 1232, Archbishop Robert accused a former «comes camerae», that is, a royal official of the treasury, Samuel, of being a false Christian, a convert from Islam who did not give up his previous rites45.

25The explanation for these charges lies in internal politics; the archbishop of Esztergom tried to find leverage to gain papal help against the king. In the 1220s and 1230s, ecclesiastics and the lower nobility were involved in confrontations with the king, finally securing their privileges in the Golden Bulls of 1222 and 1231. Yet they continued to put pressure on the king in order to ensure the keeping of these privileges. In 1233, the king had to take an oath in front of a papal legate to observe regulations on non-Christians and on ecclesiastical privileges, which entailed rights to the salt revenue. The oath included the requirement not to employ non-Christians as officers of the treasury and of the mint, salt intendants and tax collectors. They would also be prevented from holding Christian slaves46.

26Under the charges of Muslim trickery lay the archbishop’s attempts to protect his interests, threatened by the royal employment of non-Christians. This had a negative impact on the archbishop’s customary rights, for example over the sale of salt, which the king entrusted to Muslims47. Similarly, royal appointments affected minting. The royal mint was in Esztergom (also the seat of the archbishopric), with the archbishop drawing revenues from it. Jewish and Muslim involvement in minting was prohibited in the Golden Bull48. Both the putative danger of Muslim subterfuge leading Christian women to apostasy, and the appeal Islam allegedly excercized among the poor disappeared from papal letters as quickly as these charges had appeared, once the problems between the king and his internal opposition were resolved.

27Christian attitudes in Hungary towards Muslim rites underwent several transformations during the first centuries of the existence of the Christian realm. The chronology of the descriptions concerning Muslim rites is significant. Muslims do not appear in the earliest laws, those of István I and László I before 1092. It seems that in the first phase of the Christian kingdom’s emergence, Muslims lived in society without Christian attempts to define their status through legislation. Nor did lay and ecclesiastical elites involved in legislation pay any attention to their rites. This state of affairs changed towards the end of the 11^th century, when royal and ecclesiastical policy targeted Muslims in order to convert them. Thus, to achieve conversion, legislators started paying explicit attention to Muslim rites. This change was perhaps abrupt, but we have no evidence on the beginnings of the attempt to convert Muslims. When Muslim rites first appear in the sources in 1092, it is already in the context of an on-going process.

28In Hungary, therefore, there was a change from a de facto acceptance of Muslims to a short but intense period of evangelization by intrusive methods. The Muslims in no way constituted a real military enemy, unlike in the Iberian context or in the Latin East for example, although it seems that the Muslim inhabitants of Hungary were conscious of the king’s anxiety over the possibility that they would constitute such an enemy, and wanted to guard against arousing his suspicions or displeasure. The context of Christian attention to Muslim rites, however, was that of a very small and isolated Muslim minority within a Christian kingdom. Yet at least some ecclesiastics feared that pagans were still lurking among the Christian inhabitants, whose Christianity was insecure. A need to affirm Christian identity and possibly a new identification of Muslims as enemies in the context of crusading led to an emphasis on Christian unity and on the need to incorporate Muslims into that unity through conversion.

29Perceptions of concrete Muslim rites in Hungary were linked neither to a fear of Christian apostasy, nor to a need to justify Muslim domination over Christians. Thus, these perceptions were very different from the more fantastic descriptions that proliferated first in Eastern lands, then in the Iberian Peninsula and finally more broadly in Western Europe49. Instead, in Hungary, local observation and knowledge, including knowledge gained from the Muslims themselves in conversation, was probably the basis of descriptions of Islamic rites. This, however, does not mean that Christian sources ever mentioned such rites in positive terms: it is only a Muslim source that can present a Christian view of Muslim rites that involved approval. The Christian texts interpreted Muslim customs in negative terms, and focused on the eradication of Muslim rites in the context of conversionary effort. Such rites had to be wiped out in order to convert Muslims to Christianity. Moreover, the persistence of Muslim rites was suspected among the converted population; elimination of such villainous deeds was seen as necessary in order to secure the Christian identity of the kingdom.

30Not all Muslims rites were targeted explicitly in the legislation. There is no mention of prayer in mosques, perhaps because there were no mosques and calls to prayer (if one is to believe Abū Ḥāmid). This very public manifestation of Islam was often targeted in the Iberian Peninsula after Christian conquest; it may have already been suppressed in Hungary, or perhaps never existed there. The rites mentioned in Hungary are those practiced in families and homes that could be performed in private: eating habits, circumcision, ablution. This focus resembles the inquisitorial hunt for crypto-Muslims in Spain at the end of the Middle Ages. Indeed attention to these rites was coupled to other measures that would intrude into family life and disrupt social cohesion by interfering in marriage patterns, and dividing communities. Muslims were not demonized, no fantastic charges inspired by literary sources, such as idolatry, were levelled against them. The terminology was also less denigratory than in many other European sources: only the term «Ishmaelites» appeared in the laws discussed above. During the first period (during the late 11^th and early 12^th centuries) when Muslim rite came into the focus of Christian attention, the basis of Christian textual references to Muslim practices was an observation of real Muslim rites, coupled to an attempt to find practical and effective measures to eliminate them. Thus this Christian interest in Muslim rites was displayed only in the context of evangelization.

31Abū Ḥāmid of course suggests otherwise, claiming that the king of Hungary (as well as the Byzantine emperor), became convinced by the mid- 12^th century that in order to ensure the loyalty of their Muslim subjects, as well as to get the best possible service from them, they should endorse Muslim practices, even if these directly contravened Christian canon law, such as concubinage. The policy of forcible conversion was certainly abandoned, and Hungarian rulers probably tolerated certain Muslim customs in practice. Yet Christian texts from Hungary in this period never demonstrate any interest in Muslim rites for their own sake, nor endorse them as valid in any way: Muslim rites disappeared from Christian texts.

32In the 13^thcentury, another change occurred. New charges appeared: that Muslims converted Christians to Islam by subterfuge and pretense, compelling Christian women (concubines or wives) to apostasy, and that poor Christians voluntarily converted to Islam to ameliorate their economic position. These charges were linked to discontent over political and economic developments within Hungary. The archbishop of Hungary could gain papal backing for his own interests by dramatizing and exaggerating Muslim danger in the kingdom. In the period, therefore, Muslim rites were simply equated with trickery; there was no attempt to give any details on the content of these rites. Terminology also changed. The Golden Bull of 1222 used Ishmaelites, that of 1231, Saracens50. The Hungarian chronicle, in a list of immigrant groups included «Ishmaelites or Saracens»51. The charges against the Muslims disappeared as soon as the archbishop achieved his goal of securing his privileges.

33In the Hungarian case, Muslim rites only appeared in Christian sources when lay and ecclesiastical authorities made the Muslim minority living in the kingdom the target of conversionary efforts. Descriptions were based on real customs and on a knowledge of the rites’ function within Muslim communities. Except in the reflections of a Muslim author, Islamic rites were only of interest to Christians in Hungary when they sought to eliminate them in order to convert Muslims and force the converted to abstain from traditional customs. The evanescent 13^th-century accusations of Muslim treachery leading Christians to apostasy suggest that the more the Muslims were portrayed as an enemy and a threat, the less attention was paid to the real practice of Islam. This trend seems to have continued in the late 15^th century, when the Hungarians were fighting against the Ottomans. «Turks» appeared in many (although not all) sources as nefarious, wicked enemies, without mention of their specific rites. For example, in collections of the miracles of John of Capestrano (d. 1456) from 1460 onwards, several miracles concerned Christians freed from Ottoman captivity, but none mentioned Muslim rites52. King Matthias of Hungary (d. 1490) in his letters included various denigratory terms for the Ottomans, mentioning their superstition, but did not discuss their real religious practices53.