Moorish
The moriscos (a word that derives from moro) were the Muslims of al-Andalus baptized after the pragmatic forced conversion of the Catholic Monarchs on February 14, 1502 in the Crown of Castile, a measure that the Cortes delayed in the Crown of Aragon until 1526. Both those who converted to Catholicism voluntarily before and those who converted compulsorily from then on became known as Moorish. Before the forced conversion, the Muslims who lived more or less openly practicing their faith in the Christian kingdoms were called by historiography Mudejars, a word derived from the Arabic mudajjan, that is, «tributaries»; although at the time, this denomination referred above all to the Muslims of the Kingdom of Castile, since in Aragon they were called simply Moors and in Valencia and Catalonia, sarraïns ("saracenos").
They were numerous in the Kingdom of Aragon and in the Kingdom of Valencia. In the Crown of Castile, their number is more difficult to determine, since they were highly integrated into society and had lost many of their distinguishing features. Their expulsion from the kingdom was decreed in the early 17th century century, and the effort to do so lasted several years. While in the Crown of Aragon his expulsion was implacable and he received the support of the Christian community, in Castile there was great resistance between the population and the authorities, so it was ineffective and there were a large number of returnees. In Castile, the expulsion focused mainly on the people of Granada scattered throughout the kingdom, who were less integrated and were linked to the rebellion in the Alpujarras. The hornacheros were also expelled in an agreed manner, who were transported armed to Morocco to form the Republic of Salé.
Name
Moriscos is a pejorative adaptation of the adjective "morisco" which means "little Moor" or "half-Moor", was used in 1517 to refer to Muslim converts in Granada and Castilla. The term soon became the standard reference to refer to all ex-Muslims in Spain.
Moriscos, according to the Covarrubias dictionary, "are the converts from Moors to the Catholic Faith, and if they are Catholics, God has given them a great mercy and us as well". Salazar de Mendoza thus explained the origin of the word: «The diminutive name resulted from the Moors who occupied Spain, called assí, because they came from the Mauritanias Tyngitana, and Cesariense. The Latins called them Mauros, and behold Mauriscos. Castilian, Moors, and Moros Moriscos».
At the time, other denominations were also used, such as Mudejar (which historiography now reserves for Muslims in Christian territory before 1502, that is, before their forced conversion to Catholicism), saraceno (in the territories of the Crown of Aragon) and new Christian, or more specifically new Moorish Christian, to differentiate them from baptized Jews, who were also new Christians. The word morisco has other less well-known historical uses: in the Canary Islands Muslims of North African origin were called this way and in America it was sometimes used as a synonym for "mestizo".
Demographics
For the XVI century the demographic weight of the Moriscos stands at one million people, concentrated in the southern half and east of the peninsula. The Moors were distributed in four groups, different from each other and with a wide internal variety.
Kingdom of Granada
Because it was the last Islamic kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula, it was concentrated in this region until the seventies of the XVI century the largest Moorish contingent, the majority and very scarcely acculturated: they spoke Arabic fluently, knew Islam well and retained most of the cultural traits that were their own: dress, music, gastronomy, celebrations, etc. After the rebellion of the Alpujarras (1568-1571) 80,000 Moors from Granada were deported mainly to Andalusia and Extremadura, and to a lesser extent to some areas of southern Castilla (mainly La Mancha).
Kingdom of Valencia
The second largest contingent was concentrated in this area, where it was around a third of the population. Protected by the lords of those who were vassals, because of the heavy taxes they paid, the Valencian Moors were also little acculturated. The use of the Arabic language was common, in a situation of bilingualism with Valencian, and the practice of the Muslim faith was notorious, despite the theoretical belonging of this community to the Church. The Valencian Moors were famous among the other Moors for their high degree of knowledge of the Koran and the Sunna, and for this reason the Valencian alfaquíes used to travel and act as teachers of the Moors from other parts of Spain. It was mainly the Valencian Moors who, due to their coastal situation and their knowledge of the Arabic language, established occasional relationships with Turks and Berbers.
Kingdom of Aragon
In Aragon, the Moors made up around 20% of the total population of the kingdom, and they settled mainly on the banks of the Ebro and its tributaries. Unlike the Valencians and the Granadans, they did not speak Arabic, but in their situation as vassals of the nobility they also enjoyed the privilege of being able to practice their Muslim faith in a not excessively clandestine way.
Crown of Castile
In both Castillas, Extremadura, León and western Andalusia, the presence of Moors as a distinct group was scarce, except in very specific places such as Hornachos, Arévalo or the Señorío de las Cinco Villas, where they constituted the majority or all of the population. population. The Castilian Moriscos hardly differed from the Old Christians: they did not speak Arabic, a good part of them were really Christians and those who were not usually had a very basic knowledge of Islam, which they practiced in an extremely discreet way. They did not carry out specific professions nor did they live separately from the Old Christians, except in the purely Moorish enclaves, so that nothing in their external appearance differentiated them from them. The arrival of the exiled Moors from Granada marked a revolution in Castile, since by keeping intact everything that could identify them as Moors (language, dress, ceremonies, customs...), they caused the even then the discreet Moorish presence became very visible, which had consequences for the Castilian Moors, despite the various attempts they made to ostensibly distance themselves from the Granadans. Thus, for example, marriages between Castilian Moors and Old Christians were more frequent than between those and Granada Moors. The Badajoz population of Hornachos was an exception, since not only were practically all its inhabitants Moorish (something that happened in other towns) but they also openly practiced Islam and had a reputation for being indomitable and independent. For this reason, the order for the expulsion of the Moors from Castile refers in particular to the hornacheros, who were in fact the first Castilian Moors expelled and who maintained their cohesion and combativeness in exile, founding the privateering republic of Rabat and I left, in present-day Morocco.
History
Conversion: from Mudejar to Moorish
In 1491, Boabdil, the last Nasrid king, capitulated to the Catholic Monarchs and negotiated the surrender of Granada on November 25. Among other things it is agreed:
May the Moors maintain their religion and properties. That the Moors shall be judged by their judges under their law, that they shall not bear identifi that they defile that they are moros as the capes that the Jews bear. They will pay no more tribute to the Catholic kings than those who paid the Moors. They can keep all their weapons except for gunshot munitions. That it will be respected and will not be treated as renegade to any Catholic who has become a Moor. That kings will only put of rulers people who treat the Moors with respect and love, and if they fail in something they would immediately be replaced and punished. May the Moors have the right to manage their education and that of their children.
Immediately after the entrance of the Catholic Monarchs in Granada they began a work of conversion by peaceful methods. For this they decide to entrust Fray Hernando de Talavera, the first Archbishop of Granada, with the task of converting the Mudejars to the Catholic faith. He dedicated himself to his task with great dedication: he learned Arabic, commissioned the preparation of the first Arabic-Spanish vocabulary (see Pedro de Alcalá) and preached with meekness and kindness, so much so that the Muslims called him "the holy alfaquí".
In July 1499, the kings and queens visited Granada and were amazed at the very Muslim air that the city still retained, even in its clothing and customs. They therefore decided to entrust Cardinal Cisneros, who had already participated in the conquest of the kingdom of Granada, with the task of persuading conversion more harshly. He would begin to force conversions through a three-point plan: a) return the elches or renegade Catholics converted to Islam to the Catholic faith; b) put pressure on Muslim leaders to encourage conversion. Normally the means of pressure were economic: exemption from debts and bribes; there was also physical abuse. There is a tale of a zegrí who resisted for twenty days, earning a reputation as a tough man; c) present to the people the example of the converted chiefs.
These means of pressure were effective. The repressive methods used by the cardinal fulfilled his objective, since several thousand Muslims received the water of baptism, becoming Catholics. Many books were also confiscated, and they were divided into two batches, one on religious themes, Korans, etc., all of which were burned at the stake, in the central square of Bibarrambla, and the other batch, on scientific subjects, which was sent to the University of Alcalá. These events occurred in the absence of the Catholic Monarchs. Later, in view of the results, the Kings declared that those were not their instructions. Probably Cardinal Cisneros exceeded the instructions received.
Most of them, however, continued to maintain their language, their customs and their old religion. An indication of this are the aljamiados texts, written in Romance but with Arabic script.
Here is how the contemporary historian, Luis del Mármol Carvajal, viewed the Moors:
(...) and if they used some good moral customs in their dealings, communications and costumes in the interior they hated the yoke of the Roman Catholic religion, and secretly they were teaching and teaching one another in the rites and ceremonies of the sect of Mohammed. This stain was general in the common people, and in particular there were some nobles of good understanding who gave themselves to the things of faith, and they honored themselves to be and to look like Roman Catholics, and such destuses does not treat our history. The rest, though they were not declared abode, were secret heretics, lacking in them faith and breaking the baptism, and when they showed themselves to be sharp and rebuked in their iniquity, they became rude and ignorant in virtue and doctrine. If they were to hear mass on Sundays and holidays, it was for fulfillment and because the priests and beneficiaries did not punish them for it. They never found mortal sin, nor said truth in confessions. On Fridays they kept and washed, and made the chaplain in their houses in private, and on Sundays and holidays they locked themselves to work. When some creatures had baptised, they secretly washed them with hot water to take away their crys and the holy oil, and did their ceremonies to cut them off, and gave them names of Moors; the brides, which the priests brought them with Catholic dresses to receive the blessings of the Church, stripped them into their homes and clothed them as moras, made their weddings to eat.
During the first half of the XVI century, there was a certain tolerance. The authorities disapproved of this fidelity to Islam, [citation needed] who fought through the Inquisition and tolerated it at the same time, hoping for conversion.
Many Mudejars from the Albaicín found themselves cheated by how the Catholics were deceiving them, since first they guaranteed them that they would be able to continue with their religion and then they were "convincing" them to convert. The Mudejars of Granada began to protest and demand the dismissal of Cisneros, and in response to these complaints, Cisneros imprisoned the most respected Mudejars in Granada, considering them to be the instigators of the rioters, and thinking that if they stopped preaching to the people, They would convert to Catholicism. In January 1500, a Cisneros officer was killed, which provoked an uprising of Muslims and converts. Thus began in 1500 the popular uprising of the Albaicín. This uprising spread throughout the Sierra de las Alpujarras, reaching Almería and Ronda, answering the kings with strong military repression at the hands of the Count of Tendilla.
After putting down the uprisings, in 1501, Tendilla asked "to put to the knife all the Moors who had participated in the revolts", to which King Ferdinand replied: "When your horse does some misfortune, you do not use the sword to kill him, before you give him a slap on the haunches, and you throw the cloak over his eyes; Well, my vote and that of the Queen is that these Moors be baptized, and if they were not Catholics, their children or grandchildren will be ».
Due to the uprising in the Alpujarras, the Catholics took the opportunity to affirm that the Muslims had broken the pact reached in 1491. For this reason they issued the Pragmatic of February 14, 1502, which ordered the conversion or expulsion of all Muslims of the kingdom of Granada, except for boys under 14 years of age and girls under 12, before April of that year. This Pragmatic meant a breach of the commitments signed by the Catholic Monarchs with King Boabdil in the Capitulations for the delivery of Granada, in which the Castilian and Aragonese victors guaranteed the Granada Muslims the preservation of their language, religion and customs.
Mudejars from all over Spain had to go to churches to be baptized. They were asked what name they wanted to have, and if someone did not understand Spanish well, which happened especially in the old kingdom of Granada, or no name occurred to them, they were given Fernando if they were men and Isabel if they were women. The conversion was general everywhere. After this forced conversion, the Mudejars officially ceased to be Mudejars, since they were baptized and were called moriscos, an expression that at this time had a clearly pejorative nuance.
To avoid exile, most Muslims opted for conversion to Catholicism. The conversion was general throughout the Kingdom of Granada. During the reign of Carlos V, thanks to the support that the Moors gave the king and substantial donations, the crown adopted a flexible position with them and allowed them to preserve their uses and customs. In this way, the Moriscos remained their own community without integrating with the rest of the Spanish society of their time.
The reign of Felipe II: the rebellion of the Alpujarras and its consequences
With the accession to the throne of Felipe II, the war in the Mediterranean with the Ottoman Turks intensifies and the manifest sympathy of the Spanish Moors with the Barbary pirates installed in their North African bases in Morocco, Algeria or Tunisia, put them in greater risk to the Spanish coastal populations, which is why the forced conversion of peninsular Muslims is once again urged. However, the fear of new uprisings soon caused the sincerity of his faith to be doubted. In fact, already in 1563, the disarmament of the Valencian Moors was ordered.
In 1566, Felipe II prohibited, instructed by Diego de Espinosa, the use of the Arabic language, costumes and ceremonies of Muslim origin. When trying to apply this decree, the rebellion of the Alpujarras (1568-1571) took place, under the command of Abén Humeya. Despite the fact that during this last rebellion Spain maintained a very tense relationship in the Mediterranean with the Turks, a tension that ended up leading to the Battle of Lepanto, once the revolt was subdued, the Moors from Granada were deported to La Mancha and Castilla la Vieja.
At the end of the XVI century, it is estimated that the Moorish population in the peninsular kingdoms could range between 275,000 and 350,000 people. They were mainly concentrated in the Kingdom of Valencia and in the Kingdom of Aragon, since they were much more dispersed in the plateau, Extremadura, Murcia and Andalusia, that is, in the territories of the Crown of Castile. The Moriscos lived mainly in the countryside, as vassals of the lords, in much harsher conditions than those of the Catholic population. Since the Alpujarras uprising, preaching was accompanied by repression.
Hated by the old Catholics, rejected by the Crown, which worriedly saw the possibility of a new uprising that would act as a fifth column of the Barbary pirates, the Turks or the French, and hated by the Church, which logically doubted the sincerity of their conversion, the Moors became a mass subject to all kinds of suspicions and impossible integration because it meant the survival within Spain of an unassimilable and hostile people.
The expulsion of 1609 and the Moorish diaspora
On several occasions it was thought of decreeing his expulsion, but the measure was postponed time and time again due to pressure from the Aragonese and Valencian nobility, beneficiaries of this regime of semi-slavery.
Finally, after 117 years of difficult coexistence, Felipe III, probably as a result of the verified collaboration of certain leaders of the Moors with the King of France to organize a general uprising in Spain, which at that time was at war with the French, decreed the expulsion in 1609. The expulsion is carried out for seven years, until 1616.
118,000 Moriscos left Valencia, 61,000 from Aragon, 45,000 from Castile and Extremadura, 16,000 from Murcia and 32,000 from Andalusia.
However, we know, from the letters of the Count of Salazar —appointed by King Philip III in 1610 to direct the operations to expel the Moors from the Crown of Castile, a task that the Count carried out with particular zeal—, the reality of his task: five years after the first expulsion orders in Castile, and when his mission was over, Salazar launched repeated calls to the King and the Duke of Lerma, alarmed by the large number of Moriscos returning to their places of origin or who relocate to other parts of the peninsula. The expulsion of the Moors from Castile, some already highly assimilated, was to some extent a fiasco. However, the expulsion of Granadans [citation required] and Valencians, much more numerous and strongly Islamic in character, was almost complete.
According to Trevor Dadson, the very fact that the expulsion decrees were repeated over and over again, with increasing threats, proves that such decrees were of little real effectiveness in Castilian towns where the Moriscos were well integrated.
The consequences were serious and fundamentally affected the kingdom of Valencia, which lost a third of its population, which resulted in the paralysis of agriculture, especially the production of sugar cane. The great lords, harmed by the expulsion of a significant contingent of their workforce, are content with the incorporation into their patrimony of the lands confiscated from the Moors. The bourgeoisie is ruined, since it saw the payment of rents suspended for the loans made to rural owners (census).
The term Moorish was absolutely imposed from 1570. Before, there was a whole range of denominations: New Moorish Christians, New Moorish Christians , simply new Christians or newly converted.
Spanish citizenship
In October 2006, the Andalusian Parliament decided to require the agreement of the three majority parliamentary groups to support a law that would grant access to Spanish citizenship to descendants of Moriscos. The proposed law is expected to pass to the General cuts.
This measure could benefit an unknown number of people in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania, Mali and Turkey, among other places.
This fact is a consequence of some calls made by some Spanish and Moroccan historians and academics since 1992 requiring a similar treatment for the Moriscos to that given to the descendants of the expelled Sephardim. In Morocco, it is estimated that some 600 Moorish families with Spanish surnames could benefit from a law similar to that applicable to the Sephardim.
Moorish novel and Moorish romance
Without responding to the strict definition of Moorish, since it is an idealization of the warfare of the Reconquest, there were literary genres typical of the century XVI in Spain:
The Moorish novel, narrative prose fiction.
The Moorish romance, in poetry, in which the heroic and chivalrous behavior of a Moor is used as a device to praise a Christian gentleman.
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