” My friends, say farewell to her as a noble place, or else entrust her to whomever her affairs [will] belong to [i.e. God]

We have neglected the rights of the Lord so he has allowed us to perish, all but a few of the bonds of Islam have been broken.

Our Muslim community has never distinguished what is right to do from what is forbidden; see how this disapproval is now [turned on us].

We have obtained what [God] has given us through what we have deserved; such is the evil life for those who lead it.

In our miser, splitting up [disunity] accompanies our unity; we have been brought to circumstances that are blameworthy.

Our enemy has gained power over us because of our sinfulness; the lions and leopards of the enemy have wreaked havoc upon us.

Yes, they have pillaged our homeland, our lives and our possessions; its abundance has been allowed [them] s legitimate spoils;

They have seized [ravished] her [Andalus] without providing a bride-price; no spears have been watered for them, nor have her menfolk fought them for her;

The Franks have howled down at us from every hilltop and their vows to Cross have been completely achieved“

A lamenting poem by an Andalusian poet from Ronda, Abu al-Baqa’ al-Rundi. [1]

 

2 January 1492 marks the end of Muslim rule in Spain, which lasted for nearly eight centuries. It brought the Reconquista to close, consolidating Christian rule, although it took two and a half centuries for Granada to fall to Christian kings. It also marks the beginning of a dark chapter of religious intolerance to achieve the purity of land on the criterion of purity of blood, thus cleansing the Christian land of the impure infidels and heretics (Jews and Muslims) by their ultimate expulsion.

Fall of Granada was not by a sudden stroke of fate but was the last curtain of a long standing drama of disunity of Muslims, warfare between competing emirs, conspiracies within each dynasty, son rebelling against the father, civil wars, a financially decaying society as well as external aggression. Militarily weak, but protected geographically by Sierra Nevada, Granada was always at risk of being attacked and conquered by the stronger Christian armies. King Ferdinand’s full support to the last Muslim emir, Mohammad bin Ali’s (Boabdil or el Rey Chico i.e. ‘the little one’ in Spanish) rebellion against his father in 1483, that resulted in a civil war, weakened Granada even further. With Christian armies slowly pressing inside the Granadan land, only the city of Granada was left for Boabdil to rule when he took power in 1490. When King Ferdinand asked Boabdil to hand over the city to him, out of surprise and despair, Boabdil sought help from North Africa to assist him militarily, but none arrived. The war and drought stricken city could not resist any further in front of the mighty Christian kings and Boabdil officially handed over the city to Isabella and Ferdinand on January 2, 1492 thus closing the chapter of the Muslim rule in Spain.

Before the handover, Boabdil was in negotiations with the Catholic monarchs who offered him that he should abandon Granada and retire in the Alpujarras in exchange of income for him and his descendants. His mother, who was a converted Muslim, always resisted the idea, as she wanted him to ‘die a king’[2]. But a text from Cronica de los Reyes Católicos by Alonsa de Santa Cruz (1550), explains how, later, she herself tried to convince Boabdil to stay away from war and reach some kind of agreement with the monarchs to avoid massacre of his family and the misery of people and towns under his rule at the hands of the Christian armies, if he goes to fight and gets killed.[3] The city was stricken with hunger and Boabdil had lost many of his men and towns to the preceding military combats[4]. The people had no energy to fight in a state of hunger and desperation and they demanded peaceful negotiation with the monarchs. Some old Moors with military experience advised him to save his neck and pride by entering into a peaceful solution ‘for in this way their Majesties would respect their dignity, and treat him as a friend; if this were not done, they would surely all end up dead or imprisoned’[5]

 Unfolding events of history reveal unmistakably that it was a wishful thinking, and events in Granada, although kicked off with a hopeful start in the shape of a magnanimous treaty written in 1491, ended up in forced expulsion of the Moors in only a hundred years, with all promises broken only under eight years. The terms of capitulation[6] were very comprehensive addressing the tiniest of the concerns of Moors. Put to practice, it would have set a glorious example of accommodating a minority in an unprecedented way. Not only did it guarantee freedom to practice religion and protection of all the Moors, but also promised punishment to the Christians who try to make life of Moors difficult in any way. The properties of Moors would not be confiscated nor would their lives or estates be harmed ‘without due legal process or without cause[7]’. Mosques, minarets and Muezzins were to stay, and actually be respected. ‘The Moors shall be judged according to the code of Sharia, under their judges and qadis’[8]. There were promises of protection of customs, traditions, prayers and rituals. Muslims were given a choice of relocation to North Africa for free, for coming three years, and at a small price thereafter. ‘No Moor will be forced to become Christian against his or her will’. The promises were big and no one would have wanted to leave their homes and their beloved land of memories of their forefathers if they were offered such bountiful assurances. These clauses meant that effectively nothing would change for Moors, and there would only be better days to come.

All the Jews of Spain were expelled in 1492 because their conversion to Christianity did not materialize as they ‘apostatized” to Judaism again. The Spanish Inquisition took to task, the ‘heretic’ Jews who secretly practised their faith, and also the Christians converting to Judaism. The Charter of Expulsion of the Jews (1492) cut off all interaction between Jews and Christians to prevent the ‘corruption of the Holy Catholic faith and its followers’ from ‘the evil and wicked purpose that Jews continue wherever they live and congregate.’[9] The intimidating language warned the Jews never to return to the kingdom.

The terms of agreement for Moors were strikingly different. Full of leniencies and freedom to practice faith and retain property, language, dress and custom; it was a remarkable contract. But what did this mean? Were Moors relatively acceptable to the Holy Catholic faith as compared to the Jews, or were the clauses of treaty only a political move with an ultimate goal of pulling the Moors to the Inquisition with ‘a due legal procedure’ and with ‘a cause’, or was the conversion of Moors and their faithfulness to Christianity, not tried and tested until then?

The truth is that Moors were no better than the Jews in the eyes of Christian kings. Sancho IV (1295–1312) of Castile, in his book of advice that he compiled for his son wrote, ‘The Moor is nothing but a dog… Those things which Christian considers evil and sinful, he considers goodly and beneficial for salvation; and what we think beneficial for salvation, he considers sinful.’[10] According to sixteenth century Granadan historian Luis de Mármol Carajaval, in the early period after the fall of Granada, Spanish bishops urged Ferdinand to give the same choice to Moors as given to Jews i.e. conversion or exile, but the king rejected these demands as it would mean a return to war. According to Mármol, the king opted the policy of relaxation so that ‘through domestic communications with Christians, debating and discussing religious matters, [the Muslims] would understand the error they were in and abandoning it, …come to a true knowledge of the faith and embrace it, as many other barbarous nations had done in the past.’[11]

In an under-populated land due to its geographic limitations, Muslims were a source of revenue for Spain. They were hardworking and able craftsmen and losing the entire Muslim population by a radical and absurd move would have resulted in loss of actual manpower to run the country at the grass root level. Also with years of war, Ferdinand wanted to stabilise Christian Spain with a policy of moderation. Thus, the first archbishop of Granada, Hernando de Talavera, was chosen for his saintly reputation and policy of moderation. Although conversion to Christianity was a goal, but persuasive methods, and not coercion, was his policy. He tried to learn Arabic and insisted the priests to do the same in order to get close to the Moors for their assimilation, as Christianising of the Moors meant civilising them. Pedro de Alcalá who composed his Art for Learning Rapidly the Arabic Language, states in his prologue that its purpose was to ‘bring the recent converts out of darkness and many errors induced by that evil, vile, and accursed Muhammad.’[12]

Talavera’s gradualist approach was too slow. Hence, Francisco Ximenez de Cisneros, the archbishop of Toledo was sent to assist him. His strategy, initially, was bribing the Muslim nobles, and later, conversion by harassment. Failure to convert would mean death. Arabic religious books were burnt and main mosque of Albaicín was converted to a church. Cisneros’ radical methods led to the first revolt of Alpujarras (1499-1500). The revolt finally made the terms of Capitulations null and void. The impressive clauses of the treaty were practised only initially, as a cautious political move, not to grant full religious freedom but to win Muslims towards integration into the Catholic faith by conversion. So, were they put on paper with a clear intention of giving freedom? Or were they ever truly practised to the core as ‘live and let live’; the evidence is hard to find with the attitude of the clergy, and the complacency of the monarchs towards it.

The year 1501 marks the beginning of Royal ordinances calling Muslims to disarm[13], to choose between exile and baptism, and abandonment of Moorish dress and customs. 5000 Arabic religious books were put to flames in a public bonfire with thousands of Qurans and texts of ‘Muhammadan impiety’. Moors transformed from Mudejars to Moriscos, a lowly class of converted Christians separate from the Old Christians who enjoyed purity of blood (limpieza de sangre).[14] It was easier for the people, who did not have the means to migrate, to convert to Christianity and keep practising Islam secretly. They were subject to Inquisition on the slightest of suspicion of apostasy or secretly practising their own faith, just like with the Jews earlier, as described by Professor B. Netanyahu quoting an eyewitness account of the time:

‘Those of them who refused to accept baptism were immediately slain, and their corpses, stretched in the streets and the squares, offered a horrendous spectacle.’[15]

This was re-enacted upon the Muslims just a few years after the fall of Granada. As the agreement put in clear words that no Moor would be harmed ‘without a due legal process or without cause’, the due legal process was now the Inquisition, where people would be brought to ‘swift justice’ by torture until they confessed and when they confessed, they would either be baptised or killed any way. ‘The cause’ why they could be harmed or brought to Inquisition was justified by the crime i.e. heresy and apostasy.

Heresy could mean anything i.e.; taking bath on a Friday, wearing clean clothes, eating couscous, dancing on a Berber music, fasting in Ramadhan, retaining Arabic names, working on Christian holidays, refusing to eat pork or drink wine etc. The treaty did have loopholes, which were exploited by the clergy. No Christians who had converted to Islam before the capitulation, were to be abused but Christian women, who had married Muslim men, were subject to be questioned. Prior to the surrender there were incidents, where the converts were tied to stakes and killed with cane spears. Granadan converts were protected, in theory, against such treatment, but Cisneros took advantage of the loophole and started summoning the convert wives of Moors to which people revolted and one of Cisneros cardinals was killed. While Ferdinand was furious of the policies of the archbishop, Cisneros was unrepentant, convincing him that pardoning the rebels against the offer of conversion to Christianity would be a promising political move, to which Ferdinand agreed[16]. It hints that while Ferdinand disliked Cisneros’ radical approach, he never disagreed to conversion of the Moors to Christianity and the terms of the treaty were a pragmatic and political way of gradually Christianising the population, united under the Cross.

Moriscos were considered a hindrance to the unity of Christian Spain due to internal reasons, but they were also considered a threat because of their links externally with the global family of Muslims. They were a force that could potentially get help from North Africans, Egyptians, French, Turks, pirates of the Mediterranean, or other Christian heretics. Discovery of America and Spanish expansion made Spain dangerous to England, France and the Ottomans. Out of these, Turks were the biggest threat to Spain, with a mighty force that had conquered Constantinople and were making way to North Africa. The rise of Protestantism also had its repercussions for the Moriscos who, the Catholic Clergy thought, could conspire with them to weaken Spanish power. Thus, the attitude toward the Moriscos was hardened due to the multiple potential threats to the Peninsula. The irony was that, while in Spain, they were considered as bad and unreliable Christians, they were bad Muslims who had given up their faith and accepted that legitimacy of Trinity and the Church, for their co-religionists outside the Peninsula. Moriscos appealed to both Turks and North Africans for intervention. A letter written in the form of Qaseeda (praise) to Sultan Bayazid[17] in 1501, explained in an unusual way, as to why Moors of Spain were made to convert to Christianity against their wills, and under the fear of death. It was a composition of praise for the Sultan, prayer for his success, plight of the fellow brethren, and plea to him to intervene in the dire situation where young girls were raped by priests, and ‘slaves’ in Andalus had been ‘smitten by misfortune’, forced to eat pork, oppressed in a shameful way and struck by an ‘enormous calamity’. He also protested, subtly, of a total lack of help from those whom Muslims looked to, as their ‘brethren’. He conveyed that all promises of the kings were revoked and books of religion were burnt and to be mixed with dung and filth. The Muslims were asked to curse the Prophet Muhammad and faced beatings, fines and humiliation if invoked or chanted his name. The dead would not be buried (in Islamic way) but left ‘on a dung heap like a dead donkey’ or ‘burnt like charcoal’.

The Morisco was very much a Spaniard. In the words of Spanish historian, Américo Castro, he was ‘heir to the glorious tradition of race that dominated almost the entire Spanish soil’ who ‘maintained a patriotic sentiment for the native country like the sailor, who prefers all sort of danger to the abandonment of ship. No doubt, the Morisco were Spaniards and no less so than the Castilians and Aragonese’.[18] But in the post-1492 Spain, he was considered impure and ignorant and everything attached to him including his customs and lifestyle was seen with contempt. Aznar Cardona, an anti-Muslim Catholic priest depicted Morisco as

‘the vilest of people, enemies of letter and sciences, far from courteous and polite manners and customs who brought up their children as animals without any education or hygiene. They were barbarous in language and ridiculous in dress, ate on the floor and lived on vegetables, grains, fruits, honey and milk. Sensual and disloyal, they marry young and multiply like weeds overcrowding places and contaminating them.’[19]

Early in the new century, edicts were issued prohibiting Morisco music and songs, traditional weddings, Moorish clothing, circumcision and slaughtering of animals. The laws also ordered destroying public baths, obliging Moriscos to leave their doors open and unveil their women. Francisco Núñez Muley, an old Morisco nobleman, wrote in protest to the president of the High Court, a comprehensive letter arguing as to why he thought the clauses of the edict were unreasonable[20], but it fell on deaf ears. The next revolt of Alpujarras (1568-70) was a disastrous one. The Granadans burnt churches, killed Christian clerics and innocent people, while the government responded with pillage, rape, mass killing and enslaving people[21]. The text by Huraldo de Mendoza, who was a diplomat, soldier, scholar and a poet, written between 1571-75, clearly depicts what was in store for the Moriscos thereafter. Arabic use was totally banned even among the Moriscos, and their exodus was imminent[22].

It became clear with time that the policy of forced conversion had not worked and would never do. After the Alpujarras revolt, pressures mounted on both sides and co-existence became impossible. The memorandum by the Bishop of Segorbe (1587) to Philip II summarised how Moriscos had failed the repeated efforts of the Church and Monarchs towards their assimilation into society. It all went in vain over time, as the Moriscos still repented to their God instead of confession, practised polygamy and divorce, killed Christians, circumcised their children, performed their own prayer and ablution, buried their dead in virgin lands and refused to go to the church. They conspired with the Turks and North Africans and persisted in following the ‘abominable sect of Muhammad’. They, therefore, must be considered heretics, worse than Jews and expelled the same way[23].

In 1609-10, Phillip III issued the edicts of expulsion. Archbishop of Valencia Juan de Ribera (1609) delivered a sermon in which he said that the land would not become fertile again until these heretics had been expelled. The justification of expulsion was put forward by depicting the Moriscos, as a threat to security of Christian territory, as they had allied with 150,000 Turks for the coming spring to slay the Christians in the name of Muhammad, thus convincing his listeners of the ‘admirable remedy, king had employed.[24]’ Orders were issued to landlords to deliver the Moriscos working for them to the port of departure, only with portable things, which they could carry on their backs[25]. The question of their children[26] was an interesting one. The state was confused whether the children should be allowed to go with their parents in exile or not. The letting go would be sinful and embarrassing as they would be raised as Moors and ‘hell would swallow so many innocent lambs.’ Ribera suggested that children under ten years should remain in Spain to be educated by priests. Infants should be given to Christian wet nurses. But after some negotiations with other theologians, he changed his mind. Children above seven would be sold as slaves to Old Christians as they are old and would be difficult to raise them as Christians. Slavery was morally wrong but would save children from apostasy, hence became an acceptable deed.

The reasons behind expulsion were multifactorial. Apart from lack of transformation successfully into a different faith and set of customs, on the part of the Moriscos, they were a demographic threat as well. According to Ribera, ‘Morisco only thinks about reproducing[27]’, and would soon outnumber the Christians. Population growth would ultimately make Morisco successful without arms or help from abroad. Ribera described them to Phillip II as an imminent danger, ‘wizened trees full of knots of heresy, who needed to be uprooted before they send out new shoots that quickly grow into trees[28]. Also, Moriscos were hardworking, thus an imminent danger forever, as they retained the possibility of a ‘comeback’ with strength if they were given room to flourish. Danvila wrote about the incompatibility of the two races. He called it justifiable and unavoidable. ‘Humanity and religion fought, but religion emerged victorious. Spain lost its most industrious sons; children separated from the lap of their mothers, and from paternal love. There was no pity or mercy for any Morisco, but religious unity appeared radiant and luminous in the sky of Spain. Happy is the nation that is united in all its sentiment.’[29] And the resultant Spain was like Henry Lea described,

‘The fanaticism which expelled the Jew and the Morisco hung like a pall over the land, benumbing its energies and rendering recuperation impossible… transformed Spain into a paradise for priests and friars and familiars of the Inquisition, where every intellectual impulse was repressed, every channel of intercourse with the outer world was guarded, every effort for material improvement was crippled’[30]

Such was the dramatic end of a realm that the world sees with romance as well as nostalgia. Was it a war of religions or a ‘clash of civilizations’ as fashionably called? Was it a unique story of history that only occurred between Islamic and Christian forces? Was it the last encounter between the mighty and the weak, on the basis of religion and race? The case of this particular century must be viewed in a broad context of eight centuries as a constant struggle of claiming and reclaiming of territories, justified by a religious sentiment and arousal of the competing people with a hope of salvation, that lies in the eradication of ‘the other’, ‘the impure’ and ‘the infidel’. A call to save what belongs to ‘us’ and eradication of what belongs to ‘them’ has been running the political scenario of the world since ever and even to this day. Victory is a shower of support from God just like Christians thought at the Reconquista, and humiliation is a punishment from Him as Muslims interpreted at the time of persecution. Religious supremacy, territorial hegemony, economic benefits, and conspiracies to achieve these, have driven the world vicious. It was a turning point in the history of ‘Islam and the West’, which continues to shape attitudes, affiliations and trust or mistrust in treaties and promises etc. The tragedy of the Morisco is a small component of a bigger picture which manifests itself repeatedly whenever a minority is at the mercy of a powerful ruling majority that makes the use of racial superiority in order to establish a national identity, free of corruption of ‘the other’.

History is very much alive with same or similar manifestation of expulsions, exclusion, walls, denial of rights, separation of children from parents, and other forms of persecution, none of which is new. Fear-mongering, stereotyping the other and justifying the mistreatment in the name of saviourship, worked well throughout history and are still the most useful rules of the game in the world of power. The mighty and the powerful find one way or the other to justify the oppression by portraying ‘the other’, a threat to ‘our’ faith, ‘our’ values and ‘our’ freedom..

 

References: 

[1] S. Mohammed, ed., Une élégie andalouse sur la guerre de Grenade (Algiers, 1914, 1919), pp. 60-65, C. Melville & A. Ubaydli, Christians and Moors in Spain Vol. 3 (Warminster, 1992) pp. 182-85

[2] C. Melville & A. Ubaydli, Christians and Moors in Spain Vol. 3, p.145

[3] Ibid, p.147

[4]Nubdhat al-asr, trans. L.P. Harvey, Islamic Spain, 1250-1500 (University of Chicago Press, 1990) pp. 307-314 in O. R. Constable, Medieval Iberia – Readings from Christian, Muslim and Jewish Sources (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997) p.350

[5] C. Melville & A. Ubaydli, Christians and Moors in Spain Vol. 3, p.149

[6] L.P. Harvey, Islamic Spain, 1250-1500 (University of Chicago Press, 1990) pp.313-315

[7] O. R. Constable, ed., Medieval Iberia, Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources, p. 345

[8] Ibid, p. 345

[9] Ibid, p.354

 

[10] R. Fletcher, Moorish Spain, (London, 1992) p. 135

[11] L. Mármol y Carajaval, Historia de la rebelión, p.63, in M. Carr, Blood and Faith, The Purging of Muslim Spain 1492-1614, (London, 2009) p. 64

[12] Pedro de. Alcalá, Arte para ligeramente saber la lengua arábiga, (Granada, 1505) in A.G. Chejne, Islam and the West: The Moriscos (State University of New York Press, 1983) p.6

[13] ‘The deprivation of arms was not only humiliation but it left them defenseless at a time when violence was constant and to an Old Christian the blood of the deprived race was little more than that of a dog’, H.C. Lea, The Moriscos of Spain, Their Conversion and Expulsion (Philadelphia, 1901) p. 190

[14] A.G. Chejne, Islam and the West: The Moriscos, p.7

[15] B. Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain, 2nd Edition (New York, 2001), p. 159

[16] M.Carr, Blood and Faith, The Purging of Muslim Spain 1492-1614, p.70-72

[17] O. R. Constable, Medieval Iberia – Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources, p.364

[18] A. Castro, Espána en su historia: Cristiano, moros y judíos. (Buenos Aires, 1948), A.G. Chejne, Islam and the West: The Moriscos, pp. 7, 176

[19] A. Cardona, Expulsíon Justificada de los Moriscos españoles, cited in G. Arsenal, Los Moriscos, (Madrid, 1975), A.G. Chejne, Islam and the West: The Moriscos, pp. 8, 176

[20] K. Garrad, The Original Memorial of Don Francisco Núñez Muley Atlante, 2 (1954), C. Smith, Christians and Moors in Spain Vol. II 1195-1614 (Warminster, 1989), pp. 160-163

[21] A.G. Chejne, Islam and the West: The Moriscos, p. 11

[22] C. Smith, Christians and Moors in Spain, Vol. II, pp. 164-67

[23] P. Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos españoles y su expulsion. (Valencia, 1901), A.G. Chejne, Islam and the West: The Moriscos, p. 12

[24] H.C. Lea, The Moriscos of Spain, Their Conversion and Expulsion, (Philadelphia, 1901), p. 325-26

[25] Ibid, p.320

[26] Ibid, p. 322-24

[27] D. Fonseca, Justa expulsión de los moriscos de Espana (Rome, 1612) pp.161-62, R. Boase, ‘The Morisco Expulsion and Diaspora’, Cultures in Contact in Medieval Spain, ed. D. Hook, & B. Taylor (London, King’s College, 1990)

[28] B. Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos: Juan de Ribera and Religious Reform in Valencia, 1568-1614 (Baltimore, 2006), M.Carr, Blood and Faith, The Purging of Muslim Spain 1492-1614, p. 246

[29] M. Danvilla y Collado, La expulsion de los moriscos españols, (Madrid, 1889) in A.G. Chejne, Islam and the West: The Moriscos, p. 15

[30] H.C. Lea, The Moriscos of Spain, Their Conversion and Expulsion, pp. 400-401

 

Bibliography

Boase, R., ‘The Morisco Expulsion and Diaspora’, Cultures in Contact in Medieval Spain, ed. D. Hook, & B. Taylor (London, King’s College, 1990)

Boase, R., Muslim Expulsion from Spain, The History Today, Vol. 52, Issue 4, 2002 http://www.historytoday.com/roger-boase/muslim-expulsion-spain

Carr, M., Blood and Faith, The Purging of Muslim Spain 1492-1614 (London, 2009)

Chejne, A.G., Islam and the West: The Moriscos (State University of New York Press, 1983)

Constable, O. R., Medieval Iberia – Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997)

Fletcher, R., Moorish Spain (London, 1992)

Harvey, L.P., Islamic Spain, 1250-1500 (University of Chicago Press, 1990)

Harvey, L.P., Islamic Spain, 1500-1614 (University of Chicago Press, 2005)

Harvey, L.P., ‘The Political, Social and Cultural History of the Moriscos’, The Legacy of Muslim Spain, ed. S. K. Jayyusi (E.J. Brill, 1992)

Huntington, S., The Clash of Civilizations (1993)

Lea, H.C., The Moriscos of Spain, Their Conversion and Expulsion (Philadelphia, 1901)

Melville C., & Ubaydli A., Christians and Moors in Spain Vol. 3 (Warminster, 1992)

Smith, C., Christians and Moors in Spain Vol. 2 1195-1614 (Warminster, 1989)