Expulsion Of The Moriscos Research Articles

Identidad y fiscalidad: los <em>gazis</em> de Sevilla ante el pago del Servicio Morisco de 1597

In this paper the author analyses the resistence of cultural Islamic rooted groups, such as the Mudejares and gazis , to be included in the “Service of Grenadans”, which was created after the expulsion of the Moriscos from the Kingdom of Granada in 1591. Based on studies from different sources, mainly notary records, the paper reconstructs the evolution of the gazi and Berber categories from their presence in the kingdom of Granada as of 1502 until their deportation after the Alpujarras war. The author researches how the interpretation and assessment of these two categories changes depending on the interest and position of the different parties involved in the fiscal equalization process that the Moriscos imposed onto other minor categories of the new converted population in Castilian land during the XVI century. The reluctance of Sevillian Mudejares and gazis to pay the new tax shows the differences existing not only within the Morisco community but also between this community and the rest of the Islamic based population in Castile, due to the diverse geographical origin of each group and the conflicts between the deported Grenadan citizen hierarchies with individuals from different origins and social structures.

:The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora

:<i>The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora</i>

Cuentas de un viaje sin retorno. Moriscos hacia el destierro

La expulsión de los moriscos de la Península Ibérica generaría una vasta documentación analizada por los historiadores desde diferentes puntos de vista. Lo concerniente a los territorios andaluces está siendo objeto de estudio en los últimos años, a partir de fuentes escasamente examinadas, planteando nuevos enfoques para el conocimiento de la minoría. La contabilidad redactada en el momento del extrañamiento de la población nuevamente convertida asentada en el sur peninsular, llevada a cabo durante los primeros meses de 1610, servirá de base para acercarnos a determinados aspectos del instante mismo del embarque de miles de personas hacia el destierro definitivo, en cuanto a la dimensión humana y logística, recogida en unos apuntes esencialmente económicos. Una serie de referencias descritas en los expedientes redactados ponen de manifiesto la tragedia de hombres y mujeres a los que les obligaron a abandonar sus habituales lugares de residencia, para encaminarse hacia un destierro incierto en todos los sentidos.

The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: a Mediterranean diaspora

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements List of Abbrevations and Note on Transcription List of frequently used terms List of Contributors Introduction Mercedes Garcia-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers Part I. The Expulsion. Preparations, Debates, and Process 1: The Geography of the Morisco Expulsion: A Quantitative Study Bernard Vincent 2: The Expulsion of the Moriscos in the Context of Philip III's Mediterranean Policy Miguel Angel de Bunes Ibarra 3: Rhetorics of the Expulsion Antonio Feros 4: The Religious Debate in Spain Rafael Benitez Sanchez Blanco 5: The Vatican's Position towards the Expulsion Stefania Pastore 6: The Religious Orders and the Expulsion of the Moriscos: Doctrinal Controversies and Hispano-Papal Relations Paolo Broggio 7: The Unexecuted Plans for the Eeradication of Jewish Heresy in the Hispanic Monarchy and the Example of the Moriscos: The Thwarted Expulsion of the Judeoconversos Juan Ignacio Pulido 8: The Moriscos Who Stayed Behind or Returned: Post-1609 James B. Tueller Part II. The Morisco Diaspora 9: The Moriscos outside Spain: Routes and Financing Luis F. Bernabe Pons and Jorge Gil Herrera 10 The Moriscos in France after the Expulsion: Notes for the History of a Minority Youssef El Alaoui 11: Moriscos in Ottoman Galata, 1609-1620s Tijana Krstic 12: The Moriscos in Morocco: from Granadan Emigration to the hornacheros of Sale Mercedes Garcia-Arenal 13: Andalusi Immigration and Urban Development in Algiers (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries) Sakina Missoum 14: The Moriscos in Tunisia Olatz Villanueva Zubizarreta 15: The Expulsion of 1609-1614 and the Polemical Writings of the Moriscos Living in the Diaspora Gerard Wiegers 16: Converted Jews and Moriscos in the Diaspora Natalia Muchnik General Bibliography Index of places Index of names

‘Ni chivato ni carnero’: la construcción de la diferencia étnica en Los moriscos de Hornachos

The anonymous play Los moriscos de Hornachos is a product of the propaganda campaign which was launched to justify the expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain in 1609. This work identifies in some detail the chief cultural and religious characteristics that were alleged at the time to differentiate the Moriscos from Old Christians. In this article I argue that this conception of difference becomes problematic for the playwright to sustain where the Moriscos are shown to be involved in tending sheep—for the dramatist reveals both a reluctance to accept their occupation as shepherds, and an eagerness to parody them for being involved in that activity. By contextualizing the play in terms of the religious and political attitudes displayed towards Moriscos in Golden-Age Spain, I show that the playwright's reluctance to accept that Morisco shepherds could exist stems from the idealized image of the Old Christian that was then predominant, since this image was repeatedly associated with the figure of the shepherd.

¿Por qué Villanueva de los Infantes es el “lugar de La Mancha” en El Quijote?

Se parte del hecho de que El Ingenioso Hidalgo don Quijote de La Mancha es solo una novela. Se trata sí, de una historia, de un relato ficticio, pero también en tanto que representativa de las primeras novelas realistas, describe sitios, épocas y personajes que correspondían a los siglos XVI y XVII cuando fue concebida o escrita. La Mancha, El Toboso, Barcelona, la expulsión de los moriscos por Felipe III o la mención al bandido Roque Guinart en Cataluña, demuestran que Cervantes estaba describiendo sitios, personajes y épocas reales. ¿Por qué no intentar conocer el “lugar de La Mancha” de donde salió don Quijote? En el presente trabajo, y a partir de diferentes metodologías utilizadas por el autor en trabajos anteriores, se va a pre-verificar que dicho lugar fue Villanueva de los Infantes, en la parte sureste de la provincia de Ciudad Real.

Enemy Enticements: A Habsburg Artist in Süleyman's Capital City

Throughout the early modern era, the confrontation and conflict with the Ottoman Empire shaped notions of Europe as a place as well as emerging European identities. This said, trade and other cross-cultural encounters often smoothed conflicts between the Muslim-majority Ottoman realms and the Christian realms of Europe. The standard-bearers of the military confrontation with the Ottoman empire were the Habsburgs, based on their stature and obligations as Holy Roman Emperors, as well as on their dynastic territorial interests. From the early sixteenth century onward, the Spanish Habsburgs embraced this role as defenders of the faith. Spanish perception of the Ottomans and their Islamic allies, generalized as “Turks,” was informed by the historical memories of Christian-Muslim clashes during the Reconquista, followed by the persecution and eventual expulsion of the Moriscos (ca. 1568-1609). Other Europeans, unburdened by the Habsburg self-conception as Christendom’s line of defense against Islam in Europe, proposed less bellicose conceptions of the Turks. At times, those attitudes took on an almost friendly character, at least on the level of everyday experience, such as commercial and diplomatic interaction. England under the Tudors, for instance, had close connections with Saadi Morocco, the two realms being united in their common aim of curbing the Spanish in the last decades of the sixteenth century. France, for its part, maintained a direct military alliance with Constantinople for a large part of the century, motivated by a shared rivalry with the Holy Roman Empire. Aware as they were of these cases of negotiation or accommodation, the Habsburgs and their allies viewed themselves as the real bulwark against the Ottoman Turks and their Muslim client states.

Episodes of Contemporary History in Lope de Vega

While contemporary facts seldom appear in 16th and 17th century European drama, Spanish comedia, and particularly Lope de Vega’s work, offers a wide catalogue that includes pieces where important public events occured during Lope’s lifetime are dramatized. Some of those plays may refer to events that, despite having taken place in the past, clearly deal with contemporary political and social events, such as the expulsion of the moriscos, or the construction of the modern State. Many other pieces recreate war or court episodes, pious legends, or foreign affairs, all of them contemporary to the audience. Some plays aim at providing political propaganda; others, at praising a noble family genealogy; yet others, at simply recreating war deeds. In almost all of them, Lope tries to avoid manichean views, he rather offers us a complex vision of reality, and he does not betray the principles of communion with the audience typical of popular theater.

Manuscript and Philology as Curatorial Practice in the “Memoria de los Moriscos”

Manuscript and Philology as Curatorial Practice in the “Memoria de los Moriscos” Heather M. Bamford “Memoria de los Moriscos: Escritos y relatos de una diáspora cultural”. Curated by Alfredo Mateos Paramio and José Jiménez Lozano. Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional, 17 June–26 September 2010. Exhibit. In the wake of post 9–11 Islamophobia and violence caused by xenophobic groups, the museum has been framed as a place by which to promote understanding of Islamic cultures.1 The Saudi Prince Walid bin Talal donated $20 million to the Louvre in 2005 for the construction of a wing for the museum’s collection of Islamic Art that would “assist in the understanding of the true meaning of Islam, a religion of humanity, forgiveness and acceptance of other cultures” (Tagliabue). In November of 2011, the MET opened its new galleries to display its collection of artifacts from the Arab world, “Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia”. The Islamic galleries had been closed for renovation since 2003, a time that the New York Times describes as just the moment “when we needed to learn everything we could about Islamic culture” (Cotter). In Spain, the Fundación tres culturas del Mediterráneo launched the 2003 exhibit “Mudejarismo: las tres culturas en la creación de la identidad española”, in which manuscripts and other objects associated with the Mudéjar period were exhibited with the mission [End Page 201] that they might unearth medieval models of coexistence that could be used to respond to current challenges with the Arab world.2 Other exhibits have avoided such explicit links between the exhibit and current European-Arab or United States-Arab relations to focus primarily on the esthetic appeal of the objects exhibited and the appreciation for the material book evidenced in their workmanship. Some of these exhibits have featured manuscripts and other rare books produced among Muslims. In Spain, while some exhibits have presented the manuscripts as having evidentiary value for scholars working on Islamic cultures, oftentimes the foci are the beauty of the books and their value as cultural heritage. Such exhibits include those coordinated by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in combination with other cultural and academic organizations, including one to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the Escuela de Estudios Árabes, as well as other exhibits organized by the Fundación de Cultura Islámica (FUNCI).3 One of FUNCI’S recent exhibits, “Qalam, l’Art du Livre” (National Library of Morocco, Rabat), stressed the centrality of the written word and calligraphy in Islamic cultures, as well as what the exhibit viewed as the universal values involved in the book-making tradition.4 A central focus of a 2010 exhibit of twenty-three Arabic, Hebrew, and Armenian manuscripts or leaves from the Fundación Lázaro Galdiano (“Las artes del libro oriental”), curated by María Jesús Viguera Molins, was the beauty of the manuscripts and the manuscripts’ uncanny ability to involve viewers in an emotional exchange: “su facultad para transmitir emociones y su armonía excitan la imaginación y son un deleite para la vista” (“Las artes [End Page 202] del libro oriental”). This essay examines how a single exhibit centered on manuscripts associated with a specific Iberian Muslim population, the Moriscos, approached the physical manuscripts and the texts they contain. In the summer of 2010, the Biblioteca Nacional de España and a subsidiary of the CSIC, the Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales (SECC), launched a three-month exhibit entitled “Memoria de los Moriscos: Escritos y relatos de una diáspora cultural” to remember the expulsion of the Moriscos ordered by Philip III in 1609 and lasting until 1614. The physical exhibit displayed some sixty-five manuscripts with text written primarily in Arabic and Aljamiado (regional dialects of Spanish copied out in Arabic script). In addition, the exhibit displayed several prints depicting conversions of the Moriscos of Granada and views of regions to which the Moriscos fled post-expulsion, including the Berber Coast and Tunis. While the majority of the manuscripts displayed were from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the exhibit included Mudéjar material...

Empathy for the Persecuted or Polemical Posturing? The 1609 Spanish Expulsion of the Moriscos as Seen in English and Netherlandic Pamphlets

Abstract In April, 1609, King Philip III of Spain needed to reinforce his image as defender of the faith as he signed a peace treaty with the Dutch Protestant heretics. He therefore ordered at the same time that the Moriscos—Muslims who some decades earlier had been compelled to convert to Catholicism—be expelled from Valencia. A few of these Moriscos made their way to Holland, where they seem to have been welcomed, thereby contributing to the reputation of the Dutch that they would tolerate any religious position. Even so, very few publications have survived on the subject of the Morisco expulsion, whereas treatises on the Twelve Years’ Truce poured off Dutch and English presses. While few, the English and Dutch language pamphlets on the expulsion decree reveal something about what English and Dutch audiences were told on the subject. How then was the Morisco expulsion explained to, and regarded by, Catholic and Protestant Europeans outside of Spain? While two of the surviving newssheets were accurate translations of Spanish decrees, a third work printed in the Spanish Netherlands defended the expulsion by linking Morisco plots with demonic witchcraft. On the other hand, a few Protestant and Mennonite writers in the Dutch Republic expressed some sympathy for the plight of the Moriscos and conversos as fellow victims of the Spanish Inquisition. Even so, the propaganda over the Treaty of Antwerp of 1609 clearly overshadowed the few works condemning the Morisco expulsion, rewarding Philip III’s decision to release them at the same time.

:Pedro de Valencia and the Catholic Apologists of the Expulsion of the Moriscos: Visions of Christianity and Kingship. Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World 38

:<i>Pedro de Valencia and the Catholic Apologists of the Expulsion of the Moriscos: Visions of Christianity and Kingship. Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World 38</i>

The Expulsion of the Moriscos: Review Article

The Expulsion of the Moriscos: Review Article

Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain (review)

Reviewed by: Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain Michelle M. Hamilton Keywords Michelle Hamilton, Barbara Fuchs, Spain, Moors, orientalism, Don Quijote, England Fuchs, Barbara . Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2009. 200 pp. In this study Barbara Fuchs interrogates the place of Moorishness; i.e. the Andalusi past and the Spanish customs and ways of thought indebted to and inherited from the Peninsula's Muslim inhabitants, in the process of Spanish self-fashioning as well as in shaping other European nations' perceptions of Spaniards in the early modern period. Fuchs locates what she calls maurophilic literature composed in early modern Spain (after the fall of Granada in 1492 and before the expulsion of the moriscos in 1609)—a corpus of texts that recognize Andalusi history and Moorish customs as part and parcel of what would become Spanish history and culture—as but one example within many other such maurophilic customs and practices, that include but are not limited to clothing and fashion, language, architecture or the organization of lived spaces, and equestrian forms and entertainments. The texts she examines include the romances on Moorish and frontier themes, the Abencerraje, the Guerras civiles de Granada, and the Guzmán de Alfarache. Fuchs begins by pointing out how Spain's Moorish past—the 700 years of Muslim presence on the Peninsula, several centuries during which Muslims would be the colonizers of Spain—problematizes Edward Said's concept of Orientalism. Perhaps more importantly for scholars of Spanish studies, it complicates Georges Cirot's and Menéndez Pidal's concept of maurophilia, or the idea that the obvious Spanish attraction for things Moorish in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, [End Page 339] rather than being the product of a deep cultural hybridity, was a mere fashion popular among a Spanish public that differed fundamentally from the Muslim cultures of Iberia. In the following five chapters Fuchs offers case studies, pairing a cultural phenomenon such as fashion or architecture with literary texts, to expose how such maurophilia was a far more complex and often contradictory cultural phenomenon defined by negotiation and self-fashioning. In the first chapter, "The Quotidian and the Exotic," the author examines how Moorish elements, including dress, food, and entertainment—which Spaniards saw as being essential to their own identity qua Spaniards—were perceived by other Europeans, particularly the French and English, as markedly oriental or exotic and foreign to the latter's notions of Western European identity. For French businessmen, the Spanish estrado, the "luxurious household space" characterized by low benches, pillows, and tapestries, which women in Spain used in the Middle Ages and early modern period, was conflated with the exotic seraglio of the East. While critics such as María Feliciano and Colin Smith argue that Spanish Christians' fondness for such Andalusi styles was not a sign of Islamicization, Fuchs points out that, on the other hand, there was no stigma attached to such styles (17). Fuchs then moves to a presentation of how such maurophilia did come to be marked as different and non-Spanish. Enrique IV's supposed maurophilia was demonized by fifteenth-century chroniclers sympathetic with Isabel, and his maurophilic tendencies are conflated with sexual and moral deviancy—a discourse adopted by foreign European travelers who visited Spain at the time, such as the French courtier Antoine de Lalaing whose account of Spain's "white Moors" Fuchs cites (21). In the second half of the chapter Fuchs turns toward sixteenth-century self-conscious definitions of the role of Arabic in the Spanish vernacular language, showing in quotes from Don Quijote, Antonio de Nebrija's Gramática, and Juan de Valdés's Diálogo de la lengua illustrate how these authors index (and reveal anxiety about) Spanish cultural practices and concepts as derived from the Moors and things Moorish. Chapter 2, "In Memory of Moors: History, Maurophilia, and the Built Vernacular" outlines how Spanish historiography, particularly Juan de Mariana's Historia general de España portrayed the conquest of Granada as part of a history of the nation, being "the heroic endpoint to which all of Spanish history has tended" (32), while imaginative...

Managing Disaster: Networks of the Moriscos During the Process of the Expulsion From the Iberian Peninsula Around 1609

Managing Disaster: Networks of the Moriscos During the Process of the Expulsion From the Iberian Peninsula Around 1609 Gerard Wiegers In 1609 the Spanish authorities promulgated the first of a series of edicts ordering the expulsion of the Moriscos, descendants of the Muslim populations living in the Iberian kingdoms, which had been converted under duress between 1499 (Granada) and 1526 (Aragon). 1 Since the great majority of these nuevos convertidos de moros, as they began to be called after the forced conversions, never truly converted to Catholicism but only outwardly professed to be Christians and hence remained Muslim in secret, their existence increasingly came to be seen as a political and religious problem by both the Spanish Church and the state. This problem was eventually solved by the decision to expel these false converts from Spain. How did the Moriscos try to manage this disaster, and how did they prepare themselves around 1609 to start new lives abroad? In a recent article, Luis Fernando Bernabé Pons argues that Castilian and especially Granadan Moriscos, who made use of Morisco networks that came into being in France during the years of the expulsion, were able to act as guides for their community during their transfer from the Iberian Peninsula until the establishment of the Moriscos in Tunis, one of the primary places, next to Morocco, Algiers, and the Ottoman Empire, in which many eventually settled. 2 However, in order to explain the migration patterns of the Moriscos around 1609, which are still poorly understood as Bernabé Pons rightly argues, we need to consider the evidence concerning Morisco networks from different regions, with regard to the migration not only to Tunis but to many other places as well. 3 In the present article I will discuss a number of archival sources and other documents that shed light on the relations of prominent Moriscos [End Page 141] with authorities (both religious and political) of the receiving countries with which they established relations, in order to improve the conditions of their own settlement and the lives of their people. An example of such a Morisco is the scholar, diplomat, and translator at the court of Mawlây Zaydân, Ahmad b. Qâsim al-Hajarî (ca. 1570–ca. 1640), or Diego Bejarano, his Christian name. Al-Hajarî made a great effort to improve the conditions of his people in the diaspora, or rather, as he and other Moriscos referred to their group, the “nation,” which is nación in Spanish and al-tâ’ifa in Arabic. 4 His efforts seem to cover both the last years preceding the expulsion and the years following it. As we will see, his life and work also raise the question of whether leading Moriscos such as himself, who secretly left Spain in about 1600 and made contact with the Moroccan court, prepared their people for a future life outside Spain even before the general expulsion. Alternatively, did the leading Moriscos consider outright political liberation as an option, for example, through an invasion of Spain by Turkish or Moroccan armies or perhaps by both? Or was their only alternative to be found in religious inspiration: the prospect of imminent eschatological struggle with the help of a divine, Messianic figure? We will see that there is evidence that all these motives and expectations played a part and sometimes intermingled in a fascinating amalgam of the confused hopes and fears of a group of people who were forced to leave their place of birth. Before we embark on this research, it may be useful to discuss briefly the general context in which these events took place. The expulsion process did not consist of the direct deportation of Moriscos to the North African coast (though this was certainly the reality for many) but, rather, of a very complex process in which those expelled from Spain left in various phases and in various directions. Although Henry Lapeyre’s main aim in his standard treatment of the subject is to give a reliable assessment of the size of the Morisco population and its geographical distribution, he also examines migration patterns to some extent, and his work serves as a point of departure here. 5 Lapeyre...

The expulsion of the Moriscos from the Catalan Countries: ideology and history

The expulsion of the Moriscos from the Catalan Countries, particularly from the Valencian Country, has been interpreted in various ways. Historians who have dealt with the subject have tended towards one or two main positions that can be termed Moriscophile and Moriscophobic. The former considered that the expulsion of a very active Islamic minority brought about a serious check to the process of capitalist development. The latter, taking for granted that the Morisco minority was not so economically important, believed their expulsion did not have such an influence, and even that if they did have an influence, it was in the opposite direction. Both interpretations were heavily charged with ideological presuppositions. The present article attempts to settle the question more objectively by analysing the changes that took place in the population structure in the wake of the expulsion, the evolution of agricultural production during the entire Modern Age, and the changes in the structure of land ownership. The results seem to endorse what we have called Moriscophobic interpretation. This is because the population structure, the evolution of agricultural production, and changes in the structure of ownership seem to point to an acceleration in growth of the capitalistic economy after the expulsion.

The 1609 Expulsion of the Moriscos in Early Modern British Thought

The 1609 Expulsion of the Moriscos in Early Modern British Thought

Europe through Arab eyes, 1578-1727

AcknowledgmentsA Note on TransliterationChronologyList of RulersPart IIntroduction1. Popular Sources: Accounts of Muslim Captivity in Christendom2. Elite Sources: Muslim Ambassadors in ChristendomConclusion: Encountering the Dunya of the ChristiansPart II. Translations1. 1578: Letters of Radwan al- Janawy on Muslim Captives2. After 1588: Description of the Defeat of the Armada3. ca. 1589-1591: A Journey from Morocco to Istanbul and Back4. After June 1596: Description of the En glish Attack on Cadiz5. 1613-1618: Description of Pisa and Florence6. 1623: Expulsion of the Moriscos and the Miraculous Ransoming of Muslim Captives7. 1633-1635: Letters from Tunis by Osman/Thomas d'Arcos, a Convert to Islam8. 1635: Letter About Muslim Captives Converted to Christianity9. 1635: Expulsion of the Moriscos10. 1642: Description of the World11a. Before 1688: Christian Attack on Jarbah (Tunisia) in 151011b. 1685: Bombardment of Tripoli, Libya, by the French Fleet,12. 1681-1691: Battle Accounts13. 1590-1654: Euro-Tunisian Piracy14. Before September 2, 1706: Letter of Mulay Isma'il to the English Parliament15. November 1, 1707: Letter from a Captive in France16a. 1713: Letters of Bentura de Zari, Moroccan Ambassador Under House Arrest in London16b. January 12, 1717: Letter of Mulay Isma'il to Philip V17. 1726-1727: On Quinine18. Mid-eighteenth century: Captivity in Malta19. 1782: Muhammad ibn 'Uthman al- Miknasi. Falling in Love in Naples20. 1798: Letter from a Female Captive in MaltaNotesBibliographyIndex

Moros en la costa..., a los cuatrocientos años de la expulsión

Partiendo de la base de que tampoco en los documentos históricos la versión «oficial» de los hechos coincide siempre ni necesariamente con la realidad y que el recurso a la propaganda para justificar lo que es difícil de explicar no es práctica exclusiva de los poderes actuales, en el presente artículo sugerimos la conveniencia de intentar diferenciar entre el miedo real que ocasionaba la presencia de «moros en la costa» y el uso de ese miedo, cuando no su directa inducción, por parte del poder de la época. Porque aunque oficialmente la expulsión de los moriscos se justificó por razones de seguridad, a nosotros nos parece que los integrantes de aquella minoría social no pasaban de ser dudosos enemigos de la monarquía que los expulsó. No creemos necesario institucionalizar una nueva área científica, como podría ser la «moriscología», pero sí estamos convencidos de que faltan aún bastantes incógnitas por despejar y el cuarto centenario de aquel genocidio puede ser el momento adecuado para impulsar esta investigación.

Una reflexión sobre la expulsión de los moriscos valencianos y la repoblación

La historiografía sobre los moriscos y su expulsión ha estado determinada por todo un conjunto de prejuicios ideológicos. Los contemporáneos de la expulsión, al menos los que tuvieron ocasión de expresarse por escrito, adoptaron una posición que podemos llamar moriscófoba. Consideraban que la población morisca valenciana era económicamente poco relevante, dado el carácter minifundista y atrasado de la agricultura que practicaban. Al mismo tiempo pensaban que su población crecía a un ritmo mayor que la cristiana, debido al matrimonio universal y precoz que practicaban, ya que las que llamaban «cargas del matrimonio» eran para ellos poco exigentes y no practicaban el celibato. Los historiadores y publicistas del siglo XIX, fundamentalmente los liberales, adoptaron una actitud moriscófila, fundada en una percepción absolutamente contraria. Los moriscos eran una minoría económicamente muy activa y eficiente. Por lo tanto, su expulsión el año 1609 supuso un grave quebranto. Sin embargo los historiadores conservadores, interesados en la canonización del patriarca Ribera, mantuvieron el punto de vista moriscófobo. Los historiadores actuales han oscilado entre la moriscofilia y la moriscofobia, pero por razones menos ideológicas, como una explicación de un supuesto atraso económico valenciano, consecuencia de la expulsión de los moriscos y una repoblación que reforzó el régimen señorial.

El escamoteo del tercer papel del Patriarca Ribera a favor de la expulsión de los moriscos

D. Juan de Ribera, arzobispo de Valencia, escribió tres memoriales a Felipe III en 1601-1602. En ellos propugnaba la expulsión de los moriscos, aconsejaba que se comenzase por los castellanos y consideraba lícito venderlos como esclavos. Su primer biógrafo, el jesuita P. Francisco Escrivá, ocultó esta última propuesta. En el texto se trata de reconstruir el contenido del «tercer papel» de Ribera, manipulado por Escrivá.