Editing Almogavars (section)

==Decline==

The end of the great wars of expansion in the Iberian Peninsula, with only the Kingdom of Granada resisting, meant the gradual decrease in the number of Almogavars. While the Granadian border offered good opportunities of profit, penetrating it was not as profitable as before, since most of the captured Moors ended up being slaves and their price did not justify the risk of crossing the border to catch them. Moreover, in peacetime royal officials closely watched these activities, so it was very difficult to sell those captives as slaves.<ref><span class="a" style="left:962px;top:5496px;word-spacing:-1px">Torres Fontes, J. ''Murcia Medieval...'', p. 80.</span></ref>

This had several implications. On the one hand, the figure of Almogavars was transmuted to the [[Ballestero de monte]] (mountain crossbowmen) and head hunters, who held mainly defensive functions against frequent attacks from Granada. On the other, it meant drift of some Almogavars to banditry.

When these activities were illegal in peacetime, some Almogavars from Orihuela soon discovered that it was much safer to make raids in their own territory, where there were also Moors; the Islamic communities at the time of the conquest had accepted Christian domain. Almogavars took members of these communities as prisoners, hid them in caves and demanded ransom or sold them far away as captives. Often these Almogavars were acting not in their own territory, but in the neighboring one, to better ensure their impunity and further complicate the chase. To do so, they found moral justifications based on the suspicions against the Moors of the Murcian kingdom, accused of helping fellow Granadians in raids on Christian territory. At a popular level, in addition, the distinction between enemy Moors and Moors who were not was not very clear. Almogavars practicing this crime of kidnapping or ''collera'', consisting of taking a free person to sell as slave, were called ''Collerats''. Almogavars were so often dedicated to this activity that the word ''Almogavar'' eventually ended up becoming synonymous with ''Collerat''.<ref>Ferrer i Mallol, M. T. ''La frontera amb l'Islam en el segle XIV'', pp. 50-53.</ref>

Some Almogavar groups also committed abuses against the Christian population of the neighboring kingdoms, as in May 1296 when a Christian boy of five along with some Saracens had been captured by Almogavars in Murcia and sold as a Moorish captive. Also in May, James II ordered the return of some prisoners robbed and sold by Almogavars which belonged to three Catalan knights. In June, the king commanded that some Saracens be released, and returned their cows, mares and all other livestock that belonged to them, which were stolen by Almogavars. These criminal practices made Almogavars to fall into great disrepute.