THE MESTA
served as a ‘ judge of the sheep walks,’1 may be dismissed at once.
There is not the slightest indication in any of the Castilian codes
that this official, either as the classical maiorinus or the Romance
merino, ever performed any duties concerned with sheep.2 If such
had been the case, he would certainly have been used to draw the
industry under the control of Alfonso X, Alfonso XI, and other
monarchs with ambitions for centralized government. Equally
nebulous is the naïve conception that the name is due to the sup-
posed introduction of sheep from across the sea (marina), as the
dowries of the English brides of Castilian kings. Eleanor Plan-
tagenet, queen of Alfonso VIII (1158-1214), and Catharine,
daughter of John of Gaunt and queen of Henry III (1390-1406),
were commonly believed to have brought to Spain the progenitors
of the famous breed.3
The most plausible view, however, is that the merinos were in-
troduced by and named after the Beni-Merines, one of the North
African tribes which figured in the Berber movement into Spain
during the AJmohad period (1146 ff.).4 It is quite certain that
the merino breed was not known in Spain before that time, for
1 Chronide of James I of Aragon, tr. by John Forster (London, 1883), ii, p. 707;
Covarrubias, Tesoro, s.t>. Merino.
2 Arch. Hist. Nac., Indice de Ios documentas del Monasterio Sahagun (Madrid,
1874), cites documents showing the change from the Latin form to the Romance.
Blancas, Comentarios de las Cosas de Aragon (1588), offers some curious theories
as to the origin and early functions of the maiorinus or merino. His duties as a
royal judicial and administrative officer in the towns are outlined in the Fuero
Viejo, lib. ι, tit. 5, ley ɪɪ, and tit. 6, Ieyes ι, 2; SietePartidas, part. 2, tit.9, ley 23,
and part. 7, tit. ɪ, Ieyes 2,5; Ord. de Alcald, tit. 32, Ieyes 45,54, 55; and ley 4, tit.
20; Leyes del Estilo, ley 222; and in the OrdenanQas reales por las quales . . . Ios
Pleitoscitiilesycriminales (Salamanca, 1500), lib. 2, tit. 13.
3 Diez Navarro, op. cit., p. ɪɪ; Acad. Hist., Ms. est. 27, gr. ι, E-ιo: Bafiez de
Ribera, Planta de . . . Espinar (1649). See also Alonso Cano, “Noticia de la
Cabana real ” (p. 408, below), whose views were accepted by many later observers,
among them Ponz, Laborde, and Bourgoing (see Bibliography). Even the usually
accurate Capmany seems to have lapsed on this point [Cuestiones criticas, p. 9).
Cano’s essay exists in manuscript in the Brit. Mus., Eg. 505, fols. 1-40, and in the
Bib. Nac. Madrid, Ms. 17708, no. 4. Parts of it were printed in the Biblioteca gen-
eral de Historia, Ciencias, . . . (Madrid, 1834), pp. 5-32.
4 Huart, Hist, des Arabes (Paris, 1912-13), ii, p. 212; Ensayo de la Sociedad
Vascongada de Ios Amigos del Pais (Victoria, 1768) ; Lasteyrie, Histoire de la Intro.
Merinos (Paris, 1812); Eguilaz y Yanguas, Glosario de Palabras . . . de Origen
oriental (Granada, 1886), p. 450; Colmeiro, i, p. 282.
ORIGINS
the famous Moorish classic on agrarian life in the peninsula, Abu
Zacaria Ben Ahmed’s “ Book of Agriculture,” 1 written shortly
before the coming of the Beni-Merines, makes no mention of any
sheep resembling the merino. Then, too, the marked similarity
of some ancient practices in the handling of migratory flocks in
Spain and in those sections of Africa from which the Beni-
Merines came, indicates a distinct association of the CastiIian
industry with that of the Moors.2 The fact that the greater part
of the mediaeval pastoral terminology of Spain was Arabic is
further evidence on the same point. Such examples may be cited
as zagal and rabadan (shepherd’s assistants), rafala (a pen for
strays), morrueco (breeding ram), ganado (domestic animal),
cabana (herd, sheepfold, shepherd’s cabin; the term was left in
southern Italy by the Saracens as capannd}, and mechta (winter
sheep encampment, probably related to mesld).
In this connection it should be noted that the word merino
as applied to sheep or wool did not appear in CastiIe until the
middle of the fifteenth century. Among the earliest instances of
it were those in the tariff schedules issued by John II in 1442,
and by Henry IV in 1457, in which duties were fixed for cloth
made of ‘ Iana merina.’3 In the two thousand odd documents of
the Mesta archive bearing dates previous to 1600 there are less
than a dozen references to ‘ merino wool ’ as such. In fact, the
name does not seem to have come into general use until the latter
part of the seventeenth century. This refutes the theory that
the name originated in the pastoral functions of an early mediae-
val judge, the merino or maɪorinus. If the activities of that of-
ficial had had anything to do with the naming of the merino
sheep, the term would have been applied to the animal far back
1 This author is sometimes cited as Ebn el Awam. The best edition is that of
Banqueri, Madrid, 1802, 2 vols. See Ramirez1BiWiogrofia agron6miea (Madrid,
ɪɛðʒ),p. 207, no. 517.
2 The methods used in mediaeval Spain to select breeding rams, to castrate and
to prepare sheep for slaughter, and to clip and wash the wool, were strikingly like
those of the North African tribes, and were, in fact, commonly believed by the
Spanish herdsmen to be of Berber origin. Cf. Manuel del Rio1 Vida pastoril (Ma-
drid, 1828), passim.
s Brit. Mus. Add. Mss., 9925, p. 96; Liciniano Saez1 Apendice d la CrCnica del
Rey Juan Il (Madrid, 1786)1 p. 109.