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I have been searching for the ethnic composition of the armies of the Iberian Christian kingdoms (mainly Castile) during the middle ages but I couldn’t find any source mentioning anything about it. I am also interested in knowing the ethnic composition of the army of Al-Andalus as well. I also wonder if the ethnic composition of the armies was changing over time.

I did search first before posting the question here, there is no details about this on Wikipedia and I couldn’t reach an answer after searching on google.

Regarding “how do I define an ethnicity in this context”, I mean ethnicity like any ethnicity/ethnos/(group of people) of that time like Berbers, Slavs, Arabs, Franks, etc

Rodrigo de Azevedo
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Amr Elmowaled
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    How do you define ethnicity in this context? They probably had rather similar composition, with admixture of northern Europeans in the Christian side, and some people from Africa and Middle East on the Muslim side. – Roger V. Sep 15 '23 at 11:07
  • I did search first before posting the question here, there is no details about this on wikipedia and I couldn’t reach an answer after searching on google.

    Regarding “how do i define an ethnicity in this context”, i mean ethnicity like any ethnicity/ethnos/(group of people) of that time like berbers, slavs, arabs, franks, etc.

     – Amr Elmowaled Sep 15 '23 at 11:31
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    The problem with ethnicity is that it is typically traced back to a political entity or a religious group - these may be rather arbitrarily chosen among a larger groups (like are Russians, Polish and Ukrainians different ethnicities among Slavs?). Ethnicity can be also a compositions of many smaller groups (e.g., is Arabs a single ethnic group?) Besides, there is often political pressure to redefine ethnicity - are modern Spaniards an ethnicity? Some of them descend from Castilian conquerors and others from al-Andalus inhabitants. – Roger V. Sep 15 '23 at 12:32
  • There is a little bit of info here – Lars Bosteen Sep 15 '23 at 14:55
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    "Ethnicity" is also not something medieval rulers seemed to concern themselves with much. It really only became a big deal politically with the advent of Nationalism in the late 18th - early 19th century. Before then the major differentiator of states was religion (and often not that). I'm not saying its not possible to reason about Medieval states ethnically, just that we don't get a lot of help doing so from people at the time (eg: people who might have taking note of the "ethnicity" of individual soldiers) – T.E.D. Sep 15 '23 at 14:57
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    If we're lucky, there might be some record of where units were recruited from. That wouldn't tell us the ethnicity of the soldiers, but it might be an OK proxy for that. – T.E.D. Sep 15 '23 at 15:02
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    You are asking about a period of 780 years. That's too imprecise. – Carlos Martin Sep 15 '23 at 15:07

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