Mudejar

The Granada neighborhood of Albaicín, originally a blacksmithy.

Tower of the church of the Saviour, Teruel, built in the style known as Mudejar art.

Mudéjar is a term derived from the Arabic word مدجّن (transcribed mudaʒʒan, meaning "one who has been allowed to stay"), used to designate Muslims who remained living in territory conquered by Christians, albeit segregated into neighborhoods called morerías and less specifically aljamas and under their political control, during the period of the Reconquest, which developed throughout the Middle Ages in the Iberian Peninsula.

History

At first they were allowed to continue to practice Islam, use their language and maintain their customs. They were organized in communities called aljamas or morerías with varying degrees of self-government, depending on the conditions of surrender, or subordination: in the case of the Balearic Islands, total slavery, in other cases, bondage in conditions of feudal servitude. In Valencia there were the so-called Moors shields (protected by the king) and others with a lesser degree of protection (decimati and quintati ).

The vast majority, of humble social status, were peasants with a special link to irrigated agriculture (orchards and meadows, terraces on the slopes) or specialized artisans (masonry, textile trades -cordoban, silk-). Over time, the conditions of coexistence and tolerance hardened, restricting social and economic contacts between communities; to the traditional separation of butcher shops (based on the special method of slaughter) was added the prohibition of professional contacts and mixed marriages.

The Mudejar revolts were numerous from the XIII century and caused the depopulation of some areas (Guadalquivir valley, northern of Alicante), although they remained in others, especially in the Levant, both Castilian (Murcia) and Aragonese (rest of the kingdom of Valencia -Denia, Játiva, Segorbe-, and even in the Aragonese Ebro valley -Borja, Tarazona, Huesca, Teruel, Zaragoza, Calatayud-, and the Lower Ebro and Lower Segre Catalans). At the end of the Middle Ages they represented 11% of the population of the Crown of Aragon.

The Granada War (1482-1492) provided the definitive extension of the concept of Mudejars to all peninsular Muslims. In principle, the conditions of the surrender allowed them their continuity and the exercise of the Islamic religion; however, non-compliance with the agreed conditions by the Christians originated the first conflicts. After the revolt of the Albaicín and that of the Mudejars from Granada in 1499, by the decree of 1502 they were forced to convert to Christianity, thus becoming known as Moors, who despite this continued with their differentiated customs and the clandestine exercise of their religion. The rebellion of the Alpujarras (1568) led to the dispersion of the Moors from Granada throughout the interior of Castile (not so those of Levante). The impossibility of integration and the suspicion of their collusion with the Barbary pirates and the Turkish Empire led to the decision to expel the Moors in 1609, although its real effects were scarce, except in the kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia, where the expulsion it was complete.

Mudejar art

The style of art that began to be called Mudejar in the XIX century, developed particularly in architecture, it consisted of the application to Christian buildings of Spanish-Muslim style influences due to traditional Andalusian masonry. It is an autochthonous and exclusively Hispanic phenomenon, which manifested itself both in structural and decorative architectural elements (horseshoe arch, coffered ceilings) and in the preference for the use of certain materials (plaster, brick -simple or vitrified in tiles-, wood -exposed in coffered ceilings-, etc.). Despite its name, there is no direct relationship between this style and the Mudejar population of the Middle Ages.

Since the XIX century, a historicist architecture called Neo-Mudéjar developed.