:Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614

Abstract

L. P. Harvey has studied the history and literature of Muslim communities in the Iberian Peninsula for more than half a century. His Islamic Spain, 1250–1500 (1990) surveyed the history of Muslim communities in Islamic polities (such as Granada) as well as those living under Christian rule (called Mudéjares). Its last chapter chronicled the age, beginning with the conquest of Granada, in which Iberia's Muslims became “All Mudejars Now.” That period did not last long. In 1500, only eight years after the conquest of Granada, a rebellion in that city moved Christian authorities to initiate a series of more or less forced conversions, and a new religious class was born: the Moriscos (as they came to be known), converts to Christianity from Islam. By 1526, all the Muslims of Spain had been converted through a series of campaigns more military than evangelizing. Many, however, continued to consider themselves Muslim, and to practice their religion clandestinely as best they could. From 1526 until the expulsion of all the Moriscos in 1611–1614, Islam survived in Spain only as a crypto-religion. From Mudéjar, to Morisco, to exile: it is this history of Islam that L. P. Harvey synthesizes here.