The maintenance of a separate Islamic judicial system under Christian rule was a corollary of the contemporary concept of “nation” and law, which was anchored in a community's religious beliefs. But the Muslim legal system hardly survived unchanged by Christian domination: jurisdictions and offices changed, many of the formal and informal mechanisms which had operated to maintain the integrity of the system disappeared, and the separation of judicial and executive power seriously undermined its authority. The following study, revolving around what should have been a fairly straightforward case of “personal” law, illustrates several of these trends and further reveals the dynamic of interfamily competition in the aljama of Daroca.

Some time before May 1280 a dispute over some property arose between Iunez Abdella of Daroca and Ali de Mutarra and his sisters, in which the latter demanded the return of an unspecified property (hereditas) which the former possessed. Pere II ordered the baiulus of Daroca to oversee the inquiry, presumably to ensure that it would be assigned to the proper Islamic official, given that it dealt with an inter-Muslim dispute. The baiulus duly appointed the matter to Çayen, the town's alaminus, who judged the case some time in the following eleven months and found in Ali's and his sisters' favor.

Not to be deterred, Iunez launched an appeal, which was assigned to the alcaydus of Zaragoza. The plaintiff, however, was determined for reasons unknown to take the judgment to an alfaquinus in Saviñán.