Expulsion Of The Moriscos Research Articles

The Tripartite Qibla Wall as a Visual Form of Embodied Belief: From Al-Andalus to Mudejar and Morisco Mosques in Exile—Memory and Identity

The maqṣūrah commissioned by Caliph al-Hakam II in the 10th-century Mosque of Córdoba epitomizes the blend of sacred grandeur and political symbolism in Islamic architecture. This structure enhances aesthetic experiences, allowing worshippers to connect with divinity during Friday prayers. A distinctive feature is its qibla wall, divided into three parts, with a central empty miḥrāb symbolizing sacred force. This spatial organization, reminiscent of Late Antique basilicas in the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean, persisted in peninsular mosques even after the Christian conquest of al-Andalus. Mudejar Islamic communities replicated this design in smaller mosques, perhaps to preserve al-Andalus’s memory amidst growing repression. Following the 17th-century expulsion of the Moriscos, similar architectural elements appeared in Testour, Tunisia, built by Morisco exiles. These visual codes, shared among Hispanic Islamic communities, reflect the enduring memory of the exile.

Local institutions and human capital formation in pre-industrial societies: evidence from Valencia

Abstract This article analyses the relationship between institutions and human capital formation. We use literacy rates in 1860 at the municipal level in Valencia where the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609 was followed by the Christian resettlement. Our findings show that male literacy was consistently lower in Morisco areas by mid-19th century. Yet, the analysis also shows the disappearance of this effect at the beginning of the 20th century. We argue that the deployment of the liberal state would have entailed the gradual decoupling of educational outcomes from the institutional heterogeneity characteristic of the Old Regime.

Ispanijos moriskų ir Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės totorių koranai: palyginimas ir bendrų bruožų suradimas

This paper is aimed at presenting a preliminary comparative study of the Qur’anic translations produced by two autochthonous European Muslim communities: Spanish Mudéjars (Muslims who remained in the Iberian Pen- insula after the Christian reconquest) and Moriscos (former Muslims forced to convert to Christianity) and, on the other side of Europe, the Tatars of Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL). The framework for this comparison is provided by some basic facts: over the span of two centuries, in the case of the Morisco pop- ulation (starting with the conquest of Granada in 1492, until the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609)1, and three centuries in that of the Tatars of the GDL (17th to 19th centuries), their literary production was exclusively hand-written. Both groups preserved their Muslim religiosity but, with some erudite exceptions, had only scarce knowledge of Arabic, the holy language of Qur’anic revelation. Moreover, without having access to one another’s culture, both Moriscos and the Tatars of the GDL adapted the Arabic alphabet to their vehicular languag- es, Romance and Slavic respectively2. Thanks to this adaptation strategy, they maintained the sacred aspect of their writings and were able to translate the Qur’an into a language they fully understood. However, in spite of these strik- ing similarities between the two groups, there were also notable differences. While the Tatars of the GDL were granted full religious freedom, the Moriscos were heavily persecuted for any signs of adherence to Islam. In order to shed more light on the phenomenon of European Muslim cultures, in this paper I will present various manuscript examples of these groups’ Qur’anic translations, and draw some preliminary conclusions regarding the information that can be retrieved from this kind of sources.

Juan Bautista Maíno’s Recovery of Bahia, Diego Velázquez’s Expulsion of the Moriscos and the Portuguese Converso Issue at the Court of Philip IV

Juan Bautista Maíno’s Recovery of Bahia, Diego Velázquez’s Expulsion of the Moriscos and the Portuguese Converso Issue at the Court of Philip IV

White Faces, Black Masks: The Racial Shimmer of Morisco and Sub-Saharan Slaveries in Lope de Vega's Los melindres de Belisa

Abstract: This essay examines how Lope de Vega's Los melindres de Belisa , a comedia urbana composed circa 1608, represents the intersection of different types of slavery in Habsburg Spain. This play is especially pertinent to these questions as its composition coincided with the intense debates that culminated in Philip III's Order of the Expulsion of the Moriscos from the Iberian Peninsula (1609), a time when sub-Saharan slavery was also firmly established in peninsular Spain. Lope de Vega's comic genius yields a rich dramatic canvas for exploring how racialized representations of enslaved Moriscos and sub-Saharan peoples intersect and interpellate one another in Spanish public theater. An analysis of racial imagery and plot twists in Los melindres de Belisa shows that even though early modern Spanish discourse often strategically essentialized differences between Black sub-Saharan Africans and Moriscos, the racial shimmer in Lope's representations of slavery discloses that these categories were fundamentally entangled with, and indeed, constructed one another.

Conversos, Moriscos, and the Eucharist in Early Modern Spain: Some Reflections on Jewish Exceptionalism

Sacrilegious attitudes toward the Eucharistic host are one of the most commonplace accusations leveled against Jews in premodern Europe. Usually treated in Jewish historiography as an expression of anti-Judaism or antisemitism, they are considered a hallmark of Jewish powerlessness and persecution. In medieval and early modern Spain, however, Jews and conversos (Jewish converts to Christianity and their descendants) were not the only proclaimed enemies of the Eucharist. Reports about avoidance, rejection, criticism, and even ridicule and profanation of the consecrated host were similarly leveled against Muslims and moriscos (Muslim converts to Christianity). This essay seeks to assess the parallels and connections between the two groups through a comparative examination of accusations of sacrilegious behavior towards the host. The first part of the essay analyzes religious art, legal compendia, and inquisitorial trials records from the tribunals of Toledo and Cuenca in order to show some evident homologies between the two groups. The second part of the essay focuses on the analysis of the works of Jaime Bleda and Pedro Aznar y Cardona, two apologists of the expulsion of the moriscos, and draws direct connections between Jewish and morisco sacrilege. By exploring the similarities and differences between accusations against conversos and moriscos, this essay aims to offer a broader reflection on Jewish exceptionalism.

HE WHO LOSES HIS LANGUAGE LOSES HIS LAW: THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN IBERIA

One of the most striking developments in the history of medieval and early modern Iberia is that of its linguistic transformation from being a predominantly Romance speaking community to being thoroughly monolingual in Arabic in most territories under Islamic rule, only to become again an almost exclusively Romance speaking society after the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609. This linguistic development can be arguably related to the political and social transformations due, in the first place, to the Islamic conquest and rule of most of the Iberia peninsula for a period of eight centuries and, second, to the subsequent belligerent reaction of the Christian Kingdoms of the North that ended up in the defeat and disappearance of the last Muslim kingdom of Granada in 1492, followed by the expulsion in 1609 of the last Muslims (Moriscos) of the Iberian peninsula many of whom were still speakers of the Arabic language. The association of Arabic with Islam and that of Romance with Christianity was a prevalent notion among both Christians and Muslims but it led to different linguistic policies and linguistic attitudes in the Iberia ruled by Muslims and in the Iberia ruled by Christians. In this article we intend to do a comparative study of the linguistic attitudes and policies towards the language of the religious “other” or religious “enemy” in two different specific periods: First, in al-Andalus, from the eleventh century onwards, at the time that Arabic was the dominant language and when religious diversity was on the verge of extinction after the strict rule of the Almohad dynasty. Second, in 16th century Christian Spain, at the time that Castilian Romance was being standardized and the dominant language of the country and when the only traces of religious diversity, that is, the Morisco community, were harshly repressed and on the eve of being expelled from the country. In both cases, the religious minority under duress was identified with a powerful external threat: the Christians of the North, in the first case, and external Islam (Ottoman Empire and North Africa), in the second. Furthermore, those minorities are representative of the religious enemy within the framework of confrontation between Islam and Christianity in the Iberian Peninsula. The comparison will be articulated through two main enquiries: First, the enquiry into the degree of knowledge of the language of the religious other/enemy and, more specifically, the awareness and interpretation of the two existing diglossias: Classical Arabic/Andalusi Arabic in the case of Muslims and Romance/Latin in the case of Christians. Second, we will address our enquiry into the linguistic policies (whether overt or surreptitious) and linguistic attitudes towards the language of the religious other as reflected in contemporary literature.

Economic crises and industrialisation in Southern Europe: the Valencian cloth-making town of Alcoi (1600 and 1800)

La investigación sobre el desarrollo del capitalismo industrial frecuentemente menosprecia la existencia de procesos de industrialización exitosos en el sur de Europa. El artículo analiza cómo la pañería de la ciudad de Alcoi respondió a las dificultades que enfrentó durante dos crisis que ocurrieron hace casi doscientos años. La primera surgió a fines del siglo XVI y después de la expulsión de los moriscos en 1609. La segunda crisis comenzó entre 1809 y 1815, en el contexto de la Guerra de la Península. Ambas coyunturas provocaron serias dificultades a las actividades manufactureras que se resolvieron con profundos cambios que afectarían, fundamentalmente, a la esfera de la producción. El estudio aclara ciertos aspectos con respecto a la aparición del capitalismo industrial en Alcoi a principios del siglo XIX.

Lope’s <i>El Hamete de Toledo</i>

Set in the aftermath of the 1609 expulsion of the Moriscos decreed by King Philip III of Spain (r. 1598–1621), the play El Hamete de Toledo, by Lope de Vega, has found a new relevance on stage and in political debates linked to the current immigration crisis. This article aims to rethink the current victimization of Muslims, as presented in the production of AlmaViva Teatro, a Spanish theater company which used the Early Modern Spanish tragedy to connect to a contemporary audience, thirsty for social justice. To this end, I will focus on the treatment of Hamete, a Moor imprisoned in Spain, and whose body becomes the symbol of the Other, to be conquered. As such, in the course of the play, his body is vilified, dehumanized, chained, and tortured. The culmination of this process coincides with the final act of surrender, the moment of his conversion, but also of the physical dismemberment of his body, a brutal ritualistic sacrifice carried out in the name of eternal salvation.

A graph-based analysis for generating geographical context from a historical cadastre in Spain (17th and 18th centuries)

The cabreves are notarial documents prepared between the 13th and 19th centuries in the Catalan and Valencian regions of Spain. These historical records were published before the first cadastral maps and contain geographical information that could help spatially reconstruct historical landscapes. However, these documents have not been used to their full potential mainly because of their semi-structured and complex nature. In this article, we propose a new graph-based interactive methodology for partially reconstructing historical landscapes. We have successfully applied this methodology for reconstructing the historical landscape of the Barony of Sella in the 18th century and the methodology has also helped us locate “El Poblet,” a previously unknown archeological site abandoned after the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609.

La expulsión de los moriscos de Alcalá la Real (1611)

La expatriación de los moriscos españoles fue un proceso en el que se pusieron a prueba los medios administrativos de la Corona y, muy especialmente, la tenaz resistencia de los implicados, que por todos los medios intentaron evitarla; sólo en 1611 puede decirse que el extrañamiento se había completado de forma aceptable para los responsables. En el presente estudio se pasa revista a las actividades desarrolladas en esa última hora en Alcalá la Real por parte del Alférez Marcos Pérez de Prado, comisario delegado de Francisco de Irrazábal y Andía, encargado de la expulsión en el Reino de Granada. La radical actuación del alférez en el desempeño de su contenido tuvo la virtud de levantar el clamor de las fuerzas vivas de la localidad, lo que nos ha permitido conocer, no sólo los pormenores del acontecimiento, sino, sobre todo, la permeabilidad social y étnica, además de la tolerancia no siempre desinteresada existente en este rincón gienense.

Control, aculturación, segregación, resistencia: los padrones de asistencia a misa de los moriscos en el reino de Granada

Este artículo analiza el control de la asistencia a misa de los moriscos del reino de Granada a través de los padrones parroquiales de la Diócesis de Guadix, situada en la zona oriental del reino, en la que era mayoritaria la población morisca. Utilizando como fuentes lo establecido en el Sínodo de 1554 y los pleitos de las Audiencias Episcopales, fuente esta última en gran medida infrautilizada hasta el momento, se ha podido valorar la importancia y evolución de las muestras de resistencia a este control, que van desde las ausencias a misa los días de guardar hasta los conatos de rebelión, lo que coadyuva a la progresiva configuración de la mentalidad del “todos son uno” por parte de las autorida- des, que acabó provocando la expulsión de los moriscos a principios del siglo XVII. El estudio también ofrece prueba documental de la profunda heterogeneidad de la comunidad morisca.

Theater reminiscences: the politics of memory after the expulsion of the Moriscos

ABSTRACTThis paper explores how theater reminiscences helped Moriscos to strengthen their sense of community in North Africa after their expulsion from Spain (1609–1614). Moriscos in exile remembered early modern Spanish theater so as to deal with the difficult circumstances of losing their land but also to highlight their sense of identity as distinct from that of other Muslims outside the Iberian Peninsula, who did not have a strong theater tradition. By tracing references to theater in two manuscripts written in Tunisia, El manuscrito morisco 9653 de la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid (Mami 2002. El manuscrito morisco 9653 de la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid. Madrid: Fundación Ramón Menéndez Pidal.) and Tratado de los dos caminos por un morisco refugiado en Túnez (Galmés de Fuentes 2005. Tratado de los dos caminos por un morisco refugiado en Túnez. Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Instituto Universitario Seminario Menéndez Pidal.), through the lens of memory studies, instances of remembering are viewed as a strategy for Moriscos to celebrate their past but also to recognize their hybrid status in their new lands. I use Jan Assman’s definition of communicative memory as the theoretical framework of this essay and take into consideration the element of space in classical treatises on memory.

Narratives on the margins of history: memory and the commemoration of the Moriscos

ABSTRACTThis article explores the resonances of the Morisco past in present-day Spain and the connection between the commemoration of the 1609 expulsion and Spanish-Moroccan relations today. It looks at the different forms of remembering the 400 years since the Decree of Expulsion was issued, its critics, and how these public memory projects intersect with colonial narratives, before investigating how the conflicting pasts converge and are reinterpreted in current discussions about the place of Islam in Europe. By examining the claims about history and memory made by different actors reacting to the commemoration of Spain's expulsion of the Moriscos, the article shows how the Muslim subject is acknowledged as part of the country's historical past, yet is hardly accepted as part of Spanish society today.

To Live Like a Moor: Christian Perceptions of Muslim Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain by Olivia Remie Constable

Reviewed by: To Live Like a Moor: Christian Perceptions of Muslim Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain by Olivia Remie Constable Payton Phillips-García Quintanilla To Live Like a Moor: Christian Perceptions of Muslim Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain By Olivia Remie Constable. Edited by Robin Vose. Foreword by David Nirenberg. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Reading and reviewing Olivia Remie Constable's final publication, To Live Like A Moor: Christian Perceptions of Muslim Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain, is a humbling experience in which somber reflection on a life lost too soon is juxtaposed with an awe-filled celebration of the scholarship Constable imparted throughout her career and, in the case of this book, immediately before her passing. Constable worked with her former student, Robin Vose, to prepare the manuscript, and entrusted its editing and posthumous publication to him as well. Vose made minimal interventions and additions, all of which were based on the author's own copious notes. The result is a cohesive treatment of the ways in which quotidian practices around dress, hygiene, and food variously informed and were informed by shifting economic, social, and religious concerns in the Christian-ruled kingdoms of Iberia between the early thirteenth century (though some discussion is set even earlier, and significant attention is paid to Al-Andalus in general, and pre-conquest Granada more specifically) and the early seventeenth century (when the Moriscos were expelled from Spain). While this book, as its title communicates, is essentially about the ways in which Iberian Catholics perceived the cultural and religious identities of Muslims and Moriscos living alongside them or under their rule, it is also about the ways in which Christian leaders long nurtured, maintained, constructed, or imposed identities of difference through matters of the everyday material world—until the forced conversions of the early sixteenth century, after which reactions to difference took on a completely new tenor, and the stuff of daily life became a matter of life and death. Constable manages clearly and succinctly to bridge these two periods by reconstructing the concrete realities of each. Chapter 1, titled "Being Muslim in Christian Spain," opens with a discussion of a document that is well-known to scholars and students of [End Page 265] early modern Spain: the 1567 memorandum written by the prominent Granadan Morisco, Francisco Núñez Muley, in response to Philip II's comprehensive prohibition of Morisco customs and cultural practices. Constable employs this familiar text both to frame the book as a whole and to lay the groundwork for the argument that will run throughout her remaining chapters: that "this new push to eliminate Muslim 'rites and customs' was merely the mirror image—reversed yet fundamentally the same—of earlier laws concerning Muslim life and practice" (10). In Chapter 2, "Clothing and Appearance," Constable carefully traces how the medieval expectation of visual distinction and preservation of difference between Christians, Jews, and Muslims transformed into an untenable expectation for visual sameness between Old and New Christians in the sixteenth century. Chapter 3, "Bathing and Hygiene," examines how the ubiquitous, lucrative, and highly regulated existence of urban bathhouses in the Christian and Islamic kingdoms of medieval Iberia—which were regularly frequented by Muslims, Christians, and Jews—came to be overwhelmingly associated not just with residual Islam, but also with filth, crime, and sin in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Christian Spain. Finally, Chapter 4, titled "Food and Foodways" (the only subject not explicitly addressed in Philip II's prohibitions or Núñez Muley's memorandum, but which frequently appeared in rationale for the ultimate expulsion of the Moriscos) unpacks, among other topics, the economic concerns underpinning the butchering and sale of meats (halal or otherwise) across the centuries, and the complications involved in condemning culinary traditions and mealtime habits that had long been shared across religious lines. A recurring theme, then, is how shifting perceptions of and reactions to the cultural practices of Muslims and Moriscos shaped and transformed Old Christian lifeways and identities as well. As Vose states in his Preface, Constable's "ability to glean evidence from a dizzying array of archival documents, manuscript and printed volumes, architectural remains, and material...

The lexical impact of language contact with Arabic on Spanish and Catalan

Abstract During the nine centuries of Arab presence in the Iberian Peninsula (from the conquest in 711 to the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1610), the Ibero-Romance languages received hundreds of Arabic loanwords. This lexicon is distributed in specific notional fields that reflect the cultural exchange that Christian Spain benefitted from in its contact with Al-Andalus, and is often characterized by a limited diatopic, diastratic and diachronic diffusion that reveals that the transfer of lexical material occurred in very varied social, political and cultural contexts and periods. There was already an interest in Arabic loanwords during the Age of Humanism, at which time they began to be the object of systematic compilations and attempts at etymological interpretation. In the second half of the nineteenth century, authors such as Dozy and Eguílaz gathered an ample documentation of Arabic loanwords and proposed numerous, largely correct etymologies. With the studies of modern authors, mainly of J. Corominas and F. Corriente, the lexical material has been further extended and deepened in the description and etymological analysis, efforts whose results are incorporated into dictionaries specifically centred on Arabic loanwords and etymological works of general orientation.

Segregated Fields. Castilian and Morisco Peasants in Moclón (Málaga, Spain, Sixteenth Century)

The aim of this paper is to analyze the distribution of the agricultural fields in the alquería of Moclón (Málaga. Spain) after the Castilian conquest of 1485. Moclón was populated by seven morisco neighbors and five Castilian settlers during the sixteenth century, until the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1570. The study of written evidence and the archaeological survey have permitted us to locate the fields of both communities. Clearly, there were segregated areas of irrigated and dry fields. The internal distribution of the Moriscos’ fields is also analyzed. Finally, some explanations for this segregation are put forward.

Moors Dressed as Moors: Clothing, Social Distinction and Ethnicity in Early Modern Iberia by Javier Irigoyen-García

Reviewed by: Moors Dressed as Moors: Clothing, Social Distinction and Ethnicity in Early Modern Iberia by Javier Irigoyen-García Trevor J. Dadson Javier Irigoyen-García. Moors Dressed as Moors: Clothing, Social Distinction and Ethnicity in Early Modern Iberia. U of Toronto P, 2017. 324 Pp. READERS SHOULD NOT BE DECEIVED by the first part of the title of this book, which gives little indication of the richness of the material explored here nor its ramifications for a better (and different) understanding of early modern Spain. The key is in the second part: Clothing, Social Distinction and Ethnicity. Moors Dressed as Moors seemed at first sight a strange title to give a book; what else would they be dressed as? But once the reader gets into the book, it becomes clear that the title has been very deliberately chosen, even though the first part of this work has little to do with Moors dressing as Moors; rather it examines how and why aristocratic or noble Christians dressed as Moors, and what this had to do with social distinction. As Irigoyen-García shows—from an extensive and exhaustive trawl through dozens of local archives—throughout much of the sixteenth century and the first third of the seventeenth, noble Spaniards regularly dressed as Moors to take part in the juegos de cañas (game of canes) that featured so prominently in local and national festivities. And not just nobles, but also members of the royal family: Charles V, Philip II, and Philip III were keen participants in these games, which continued well into the seventeenth century even after the expulsion of the Moriscos (former Moors). However, Philip IV seems to have been less interested in them, and by the middle of the seventeenth century they had lost the importance they once had and were in rapid decline. But what fascinates the author (and the reader) is the dichotomy (indeed, schizophrenia) between a Spain that celebrated dressing as Moors in the games of canes and at the same time produced decree after decree prohibiting such dress by the descendants of said Moors. That noble Spaniards did not see any contradiction in this is itself very revealing of the parallel worlds that existed in early modern Iberia. The game of canes was a noble sport in which competing teams dressed up as Moors and threw canes at each other; it was a sort of jousting contest but without the danger—nobody would be killed, even by accident. To be able to [End Page 167] take part in these games, the participants had to be of elevated social status and had to have the wealth associated with that status, since the costumes worn were expensive to make and to buy (or, indeed, rent, as many did). The luxuriousness of the clothes these nobles wore, the cost of buying or renting them, even their sometimes bizarre ideas of what actually constituted Moorish dress makes for fascinating reading. It also helps to explain the frequent presence of Moorish clothing—turbans, marlotas, coloured bands, and so forth—noble inventories of the period, a presence often overlooked by those who study these inventories. Participating in a game of canes was therefore a very visible sign of one’s aristocratic status; not surprisingly, to be allowed to participate was a much sought-after privilege. Those who never made it, such as Lope de Vega, would often denigrate or criticize the sport in their writings. As Irigoyen-García notes: “those individuals on the fringes of nobility approached Moorishness as a shortcut for social promotion—in Lope’s notorious case, unsuccessfully” (74). And, as he goes on to say: “no matter how much Iberian aristocrats admired Lope, they never considered him an equal who could ride along them dressed as a Moor in the game of canes” (89). While the first part of this enthralling book deals with Christians dressing as Moors (or what they thought Moors dressed like), the second part looks more closely at Moors and Moriscos dressing as Moors, and here all the inconsistencies and paranoias of Spain’s relationship with its own Muslim population come to the fore. On Christmas Eve of 1568 a band...

Economic Dynamics in the Malthusian Era: Evidence from the 1609 Spanish Expulsion of the Moriscos

We investigate economic dynamics in the Malthusian era using the 1609 expulsion of Moriscos from Spain. Sharp population declines in former-Morisco districts were accompanied by decreased output and increased per capita output. While these short-run results are consistent with standard Malthusian predictions, Malthusian convergence was delayed up to 1786 in former-Morisco districts. Archival sources and historical accounts suggest extractive institutions and cultural differences may have contributed to delayed convergence in population and output per capita. This historic episode provides an unusually rich setting to examine Malthusian dynamics, highlighting the potential for sustained differences in per capita output in the Malthusian era

Si hay moreras hay cristianos nuevos: Los Duques de Pastrana y la industria de la seda en la formación de un espacio de conflicto (Pastrana, c. 1569- c. 1609)

Due to the support of the Dukes of Pastrana, during the last decades of the 16th century the moriscos controlled the silk industry and commerce and the municipal power in Pastrana. This article deals with the creation of a locus of hate in Pastrana because of the social competition between the old christians and the moriscos. One result of this social hate was, especially since 1572, the process of characterization of the moriscos as evil suspicious new Christians. This stigmatizing experience was the precedent of the same process against the Portuguese merchants in the early decades of the 17th century. After the expulsion of the moriscos, the Portuguese took their place in the Pastrana silk industry and municipal offices. As a result, the old Christians came to develop a narrative of demonization around the identification of Portuguese as criptojews.