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Islamic Spain after the thirteenth century

Dr. Florinda Ruiz

From the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries the socio-political reality of Muslims

in the Iberian Peninsula underwent a series of radical changes. Progressively, but at different

times in different regions, and under different circumstances, their culture was drastically

reconfigured by the southward advance of Christian territorial conquests and military

supremacy.

Over the course of four long centuries their Hispano-Islamic identity was forcibly

transformed from 1) being free inhabitants of their own independent Islamic kingdoms to 2)

becoming Muslim subjects (Mudejars) of newly created Christian states to 3) living in those

kingdoms as compulsory converts who practiced Islam as crypto-Muslims (Moriscos) in

marginalized communities under the scrutiny of the Inquisition to 4) being finally expelled

from all regions of Spain in the early 17th century.

By the end of the thirteenth century the map of Islamic Spain had for the most part

already turned into a jigsaw of scattered Mudejar communities who continued the practice of

Islam under various levels of restrictions and protections granted by their new Christian

monarchs. Only the Kingdom of Granada remained, surviving as the last autonomous Islamic

state for two more centuries until its military defeat and surrender to the kingdom of Castile

in 1492. From this point on, Muslim subjects, many of whom had been relocated from their

native cities to other lands across Spain, were doomed to a catastrophic end played out in two

main phases. The first phase started with the decrees of conversion of all Muslim subjects of

Granada and the Kingdom of Castile in 1500 followed by similar impositions across other

peninsular territories in the following years. The royal proclamations by which conversion

was enforced served as a tool to eliminate the rights previously granted to Mudejar
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communities in the charters of their own surrendered lands, as well as the rights that were

stipulated for Granada’s Muslims in the peace settlement of 1492. As communities of forced

converts, or Moriscos, struggled to preserve Islam in their lives against increasing challenges,

they entered a second and final phase in which they endured different levels of persecution

culminating in a point of total elimination: the decrees of expulsion from peninsular society,

enacted between 1609 and 1614.

This critical period in the history of Spain can be studied from various different but

complementary perspectives. We will approach it through the lens of the Muslim community

rather than through the larger scope of the history of Spain. We will examine how peninsular

Muslims became a vulnerable minority steadily exposed to increasing rejection by the ruling

powers, leading to the deterioration of their society. The last four centuries of Islamic culture

and society in Spain can be characterized as a period of constant reconfiguration. This

reconfiguration had multiple physical and cultural layers, both imposed by Christian rulers

with the goal of effacing the practice of Islam, and self-inflicted by Muslim subjects with the

opposite goal of maintaining that very identity. One cannot explore how their liberty was

compromised and their culture catastrophically endangered under the new Christian

jurisdiction without looking at the succession of political developments that prompted their

struggle and accompanied the reconfiguration and ultimate destruction of their world.

Throughout the years, Christian and Muslim communities had shared a homeland

with different degrees of interaction (economic interdependence, political negotiations,

intellectual exchanges, evolving alliances and warfare, competing and complimentary trade

interests, cautious acceptance, cultural contamination, mutual attraction, surrenders, treaties,

use and abuse…) but always with an accepting notion of the existence of “the other” in a land
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that each considered their own. In the following pages we will examine how the concept and

acceptance of “the other” was drastically transformed as their spatial proximity was changed.

The centuries-old coexistence between Muslims and Christians had given Spain a

very different character from the rest of Europe. While all the new European nations lacked

this essential component in their constituting nature, the Iberian Peninsula had become an

exception. Thus the expanding Christian forces of Iberia set out to build a national identity

whose very nature and constituting self-definition was to be founded in the rejection of and

clear separation from that “other”. But in the end, Spain was built both with and against its

own Islamic component.

The small, mountainous northern regions of the peninsula, largely untouched by

Muslim forces since 711, had maintained a Christian identity and a way of life that had

grown stronger over the centuries, not without external influences and support from Christian

kingdoms across the Pyrenees. At the close of the tenth century, the Muslim city of Córdoba

and Christian León had become equally important and competing cities within their

respective regions and cultures. Alfonso VI’s Christian conquest of Toledo in 1085 soon

marked a point of no return in the evolving map of a shrinking Islamic Iberia with a Castilian

frontier now well established as far south as the Tagus River in the middle of the peninsula.

The southern section of Iberia was divided into numerous taifas, independent kingdoms

which were often fighting against one another, at the mercy of external political influences

and aid from North African tribes – first the Almoravids and then the Almohads who

overtook them. The influence and power that the great Caliphate of Córdoba had enjoyed

was long gone.

The eastern portion of Islamic Spain (Sharq al-Andalus), which once comprised most

of the Mediterranean costal lands, the Balearic Islands and several neighboring interior
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regions, had by the close of the twelfth century been pushed south of Tortosa after Alfonso I

took Zaragoza in 1118 and created the kingdom of Aragón. Valencia and Murcia had

become, under Almoravid and Almohad rule, two important Muslim capitals. The strategic

position of Valencia in the middle of the Mediterranean coast, with its thriving economy and

cultural Islamic life, had made it an ideal destination for many Spanish Muslims who needed

to relocate as one land after another fell to Christian control. Additionally, it became a

welcoming region for North African Muslim emigrants and merchants who encountered no

problems of adaptation in a city whose large population had maintained Arabic as the main

language of interaction in daily life. But its flourishing economy, based on innovative

agricultural practices and its profitable strategic position, also made it an attractive objective

in the plans of expansion of James I the Conqueror, king of Aragón.

The year 1212, however, saw the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, or battle of al-Uqab,

in which the Christian troops of King Alfonso VIII of Castile, Pedro II of Aragón and Sancho

VII of Navarre, defeated the Almohad rulers. This signaled the beginning of the decline of al-

Andalus in the Iberian Peninsula, which would continue throughout the thirteenth century.

The campaign was enthusiastically supported as a crusade by Pope Innocent III who

attempted, without much success, to summon the French nobility to join the ‘crusade’ of

native peninsular troops. The battle became a national enterprise with the participation of

most of the Christian kingdoms, a soli Hispani army, against “the other”. The defeat of the

ruling Almohad caliph was a devastating blow to the geographic extent, influence and

cohesion of the Almohad Empire in the peninsula, now weakened and divided into taifa city-

states. In addition to defending against the threat from the Christian north, his son and

successor, Yusuf II, was also forced to protect the new Almohad capital, Seville, from

southern maritime attacks by the North African Banu Marin tribes, for which he commanded

the construction of the great Gold Tower of Seville to block entrance to the city by the
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Guadalquivir River. The Almohad dynasty vanished after Yusuf’s death in 1224 and new

internal rivalries among different local Taifas resurfaced throughout al-Andalus, which

became even weaker and more politically fragmented. Thereafter, beyond the crumbling

western territories, only three new Islamic kingdoms had any significant power in the East of

the peninsula: Murcia (ruled by Ibn Hud), Valencia (ruled by Zayyan ben Mardanis) and

Granada (ruled by Ben Al-ahmar.)

Kings Alfonso IX of León, Fernando III of Castile and James I of Aragón

immediately took full advantage of the collapse of Almohad power. During the following

three decades, nearly all Muslim territories in the Iberian Peninsula fell in a grand sweep

under the control of Christian states. In his autobiographic work Llibre dels Feytes (Book of

Deeds) James I of Aragón recorded his conquests in detail (Soldevila, 2007). His enterprises

were backed by Papal funding whenever the wars could qualify as crusades against Muslim

rebellions, but he also gathered the support of Sancho VI, king of Navarre; the collaboration

of military religious orders such as the Knights Templar; and his vassals’ compulsory

military service. James I’s campaign to appropriate Aragón’s neighboring Muslim lands

began by testing his naval power and taking control of the Balearic islands in the 1230s.

Within a few years, his fleet imposed a two year siege on the city of Valencia, now weakened

by the post-Almohad Taifa control of Zayyan ben Mardanis, who finally surrendered in 1238.

James’ territorial expansion then moved southward toward Murcia, which fell to the crown of

Aragón in 1266.

Simultaneously, in western al-Andalus, the Muslim territories of Extremadura,

bordering Seville and the southern frontier with Portugal, were swiftly conquered by Alfonso

IX of León between 1229 and 1230. Fernando III, who eventually became king of both León

and Castile, managed in 1236 to conquer Córdoba, the former Umayyad capital and center of
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Islamic intellectual life during the preceding five centuries. Immediately after its surrender,

the city’s Grand Mosque was consecrated as Córdoba’s cathedral and the stolen iconic bells

of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, kept in the mosque since Almanzor’s northern

campaign in 997, were returned to northern Spain. The conquest of Seville followed in 1248

after a grueling fifteen month siege from the Guadalquivir River. King Fernando’s initial

conditions required all its Muslim inhabitants to evacuate the city where their ancestors had

lived for five centuries. The spatial transformation, evacuations and forced relocations that

took place after the conquest of Seville would characterize the life of many Muslim

communities in the next three centuries until the final expulsion. It was in Seville, the former

seat of Almohad rule, where the king of Castile settled his court from that moment on.

The overwhelming significance of these conquests was not lost to the poet Abu al-

Baqa' ar-Rundi, who in 1267 recorded in his famous elegy the profound despair and

sorrowful resignation on the cultural emptiness and looming destiny of the fallen Muslim

cities after the forceful exodus:

…
Ask Valencia what became of Murcia,
And where is Játiva, or where is Jaén?
Where is Córdoba, the seat of great learning,
And how many scholars of high repute remain there?
And where is Seville, the home of mirthful gatherings
On its great river, cooling and brimful with water?
These cities were the pillars of the country:
Can a building remain when the pillars are missing?
The white wells of ablution are weeping with sorrow,
As a lover does when torn from his beloved:
They weep over the remains of dwellings devoid of Muslims,
Despoiled of Islam, now peopled by infidels!
Those mosques have now been changed into churches,
Where the bells are ringing and crosses are standing.
Even the mihrabs weep, though made of cold stone,
Even the minbars sing dirges, though made of wood!
Oh heedless one, this is fate's warning to you:
If you slumber, Fate always stays awake.
…
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(Fletcher, 1992, pp. 129-130)

By mid thirteenth century, only the kingdom established by Muhammad ibn-Yusuf

ibn-Nasr, known also as Ibn-al-Ahmar, around the city of Granada remained an independent

Islamic state. He had become known as Muhammad I, the founder of the Nasrid dynasty, who

started the construction of the Alhambra Palace over the site of an old fort strategically

situated atop the city. Facing the unstoppable victories of Fernando III of Castile and James I

of Aragón, Muhammad I had even cooperated in Fernando III’s conquests in exchange for

guarantees to preserve Granada as the one pillar left in the crumbling building of Spanish

Islam, which, although still an autonomous Islamic state, became a vassal of Castile for the

next two centuries until its demise. Muhammad I’s negotiations led to the surrender in 1246

of the city of Jaén to Castile in exchange for a 20 year truce, which obliged the kingdom of

Granada to pay an annual tribute and even to provide military aid in Christian campaigns

against nearby Muslim territories. This agreement forced him to participate with 500 troops

in the 1248 conquest and siege of Seville and continued in effect under the rule of Fernando

III’s son, Alfonso X, whom Muhammad I also helped in the conquest of Niebla.

The Islamic kingdom of Granada occupied the south-western mountainous regions of

the peninsula and extended along the coastal lands, including the strategic cities of Málaga

and Almería. It had a large population due to the influx of displaced Muslim refugees from

conquered lands in the peninsula and the arrival of Berber mercenaries from North Africa

who formed the bulk of its efficient army. The region was protected by an intricate network

of mountains, watchtowers, fortresses and fortress towns, such as Ronda, along its frontier,

and by the aid of the North African Banu Marin tribe (the Marinid dynasty) across its shores,

which maintained control of Gibraltar. The Marinid interventions in support of the Nasrids

against Christian advances ended after suffering a complete defeat at the hands of Castile in

the battle of Río Salado in 1340. Even after Algeciras fell under Christian control and
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Gibraltar was captured, Granada and its coastal cities of Almería and Málaga benefited from

and contributed with luxury products such as silk, sugar and paper to a flourishing trade

network of Italian Genoese merchants that connected numerous cites from Valencia to

Lisbon. Despite areas of poor soil, its powerful economy was both agricultural and

industrial, with factories that also exported paper and silk throughout Europe. However, as a

lucrative “protectorate” of Castile, the kingdom was forced to exact from its own inhabitants

high levels of taxation to continue paying the price of peace with its Christian neighbors. The

increasingly heavy tributes owed to Christian states eventually became a source of internal

discontent, divisions and revolts.

The Nasrid dynasty, although plagued by numerous and violent internal feuds, ruled

with competent diplomatic leaders until the early fifteenth century and developed its thriving

economy in a Muslim society graced with rich artistic and intellectual life. Castile’s

involvement in Europe’s Hundred Year War in the 1300s and its efforts to be at the forefront

of newly developing European nations kept the Christian monarchs away, at least

temporarily, from heavy intervention in Spain’s last Islamic state which, after all, was

producing great revenues in taxation. Despite periods of turbulent relations with the

Christian north, Muslim rulers took advantage of the new power struggles between Castile’s

monarchy and its nobility and the constant confrontations for succession to the throne: first

that of Alfonso X the Learned (son of Fernando III) and later the civil strife between the

successors of Alfonso XI, Pedro I and Enrique II de Trastámara in 1370. Without real

political or military power, Muhammad V of Granada (1354-1391) maintained a long period

of relative peace by means of evolving diplomatic maneuvers in support of the most

advantageous Christian candidate. Both Yusuf I and his son Muhammad V were responsible

for the construction of the magnificent Alhambra palace. Even King Pedro the Cruel, whose

Christian court was now settled in Seville, requested in 1364 the collaboration of Granada’s
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architects for the construction of his own palace, the Alcazar of Seville, where one can even

find in its tiled walls the Nasrid motto “La ghalib ila Allah” (There is no victor but Allah).

The historian, poet, philosopher, physician and several times vizier of the court of

Muhammad V, Ibn al-Khatib (1313-1374) was the last important scholar and scientist in the

history of al-Andalus. His many works on the history of Islam in the west and his chronicles

on the history of Granada constitute an essential and direct source of information about al-

Andalus and the Nasrid kingdom, its peoples, its politics and its customs. Ibn al Khatib and

his protégé and successor as court poet and vizier, Ibn Zamrak (1333-1393), had a major role

in the completion of the finest parts of the Alhambra palace, and were in charge of

composing qasidas, odes to commemorate state events, as well as nawriyyat and rawdiyyat,

floral and garden poetry, whose full poems and hundreds of verses were used to decorate

many areas of the palace.

During the last years of the fifteenth century, the descendants of peninsular Muslims,

now scattered in different Christian territories throughout Iberia, began a four century long

struggle to preserve their identity within the confines of restricted cultural and physical

spaces. Known as Mudejars, Muslim subjects of Christian kingdoms, they experienced

varying freedoms to maintain and practice their religion until the end of the fifteenth century.

After the conquests of the thirteenth century their rights and spaces as “the others” were

negotiated differently in different regions and recorded in the newly established charters

(Fueros) or legal codes that applied to each territory. Many members of the elite with

connections abroad and monetary means opted to finally leave altogether their conquered

lands in the Iberian Peninsula, but the large Muslim masses, evacuated and expelled from

newly conquered cities, had to relocate in other Christian lands.

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The new regulations granted Mudejar communities some protection under the crown

and temporarily guaranteed certain freedoms such as freedom of worship, the right to

maintain or sell their property and freedom of movement. But they also served to identify the

Muslim community as a “separate other” and included numerous restrictions that

marginalized them and compromised the very freedoms they granted. In larger cities they

were forced to live in segregated suburbs apart from Christian communities, often outside of

the city. Even interreligious bathing could be restricted, as it was the case in the city of

Teruel, with Christians using the bathhouse on different days than Muslims. In the case of

legal penalties involving monetary fines, often the sum to be paid for a crime against a

Muslim was much lower than in the case of a Christian victim. The freedom to practice their

religion excluded any perceived form of Islamic proselytism; however, Mudejars were often

required to listen to the preaching of Christian clerics and to share in various Christian

obligations.

In the kingdom of Aragón, which included Aragón, Catalonia, Valencia, and Mallorca

along with various other Mediterranean territories, the legal code decreed by James I the

Conqueror in 1247 stated that all Muslims belonged to the king, who granted them

permission to live according to their own Islamic laws. However, they were obliged as

Mudejars to pay burdensome taxes, both to the king and to the individual nobles for whom

they might work, as well as periodical contributions or services from their agricultural or

professional endeavors. In Valencia, the special stipulation giving Mudejars permission to

work during Christmas holy days served in the end to increase the tax collections of their

noble masters. But the resilient Mudejar communities of regions such as Valencia responded

with an active and successful determination to maintain and transmit their Islamic principles,

identity and cultural traditions under the leadership of numerous active faqihs. Following the

advice of Islamic authorities overseas, these faqihs and qadis began to adopt different
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survival strategies to meet the needs of a community under threat of extinction, and worked

to keep strong ties with Muslim Granada and other communities in North Africa.

Since Muslim subjects were permitted to continue practicing their religion and sharia

law in some regions more freely than others, certain areas experienced a tremendous increase

in their Mudejar population, such as Valencia and Aragón, where many displaced Muslims

from conquered lands resettled. This caused the resurgence of flourishing professional

communities of much-needed notaries, accountants, scribes, legal experts, translators,

religious figures, scholars, mathematicians, doctors and caretakers who moved easily

between languages and were skilled in dealing with their Christian neighbors. In Valencia,

even two hundred years after its conquest, Muslims accounted for 1/3 of the population. In

other areas, such as the fertile Ebro Valley of Aragón, the dense and homogeneous Muslim

population comprised prosperous farmers, artisans, and merchants who carried on a peaceful

coexistence with their Christian neighbors, though not without occasional frictions and

discrepancies (Miller, 2008; Meyerson, 1996). By the mid-fifteenth century they were

considered an important source of fiscal revenue for the crown. Generally, however, their

integration was of a socioeconomic nature with partial acculturation, limited assimilation, no

real religious conversion and either compulsory or intentional segregation in differentiated

urban and agricultural spaces. Relations between Christian and Muslim population could

deteriorate quickly due to any number of circumstances, including international events. For

example, an outburst of violence in Valencia in 1455 followed a papal call for a new crusade

against the infidels in response to the siege of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks.

Despite the temporary successes of Valencia and Aragón, in most regions, particularly

Castile, the promised levels of coexistence never truly materialized. Instead, Mudejar

communities experienced different levels of subjugation and were gradually forced to alter
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their Muslim practices. One of the possible origins for the term ‘Mudejar’ stems from the

Arabic base d-j-n meaning “to stay”, whose participle mudajjan can refer to “he who has

stayed or remained”. However, the related form mudajin could also express the concept of

“domesticated and tamed”. The term clearly indicates an imposed condition of “otherness”

for having remained in a space and a land of “others” and/or of being a tamed “other” in that

land. Within this context the term “aljama”, which derives from the Arabic word “yam’a”

(group), is already documented in the thirteenth century as referring to entire Mudejar

communities. It introduced in Spain the concept of a community of “others” within which

the laws and traditions of Islam were kept and protected. For Muslims it symbolized the

continuity and permanence of Islam in a Mudejar community within a segregated Christian

city. The faqih was its authority figure, the representative and conveyor of all knowledge in

the practice of Islam.

In the fifteenth century several factors had also contributed to Granada’s decline. The

Christian kingdoms of the peninsula finally managed to solve their mutual and internal

conflicts. Moreover, the 1469 marriage of Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Aragón, with the

subsequent union of their kingdoms in 1474, turned the Iberian peninsula into a powerful and

unified Spain, which now sought to compete and rise among Christian European nations as a

powerful religious and political leader. Granada, thus, seemed like the one abandoned piece

of a former puzzle whose other pieces had already been tossed away, and the Queen and King

were ready to complete the Reconquest project by taking it away too. Additionally, with the

end of Marinid hegemony in North Africa, Granada had lost its single source of military

support. By then the tribute paid to Castile had risen to three times the sum paid by Christian

territories, which resulted in widespread internal discontent among its Muslim inhabitants.

Additionally, numerous rival factions contended over opposing ways to deal with Castile
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until king Mulay-Hasan decided in 1481 to stop paying the city’s tribute to Castile. Castile

responded by taking Antequera and followed with an attack on Granada proper in 1482.

The ten year war that ensued was staged throughout the Muslim kingdom over a series

of sieges and one city after another fell to the Christian armies. In 1492, after an eight-month

siege, Granada, with a Muslim population completely impoverished by the economic cost of

the war, succumbed to Castile and the Catholic kings Fernando and Isabel signed the

surrender agreements with King Muhammad XII (Abu-Abd-Allah or Boabdil) son of Mulay-

Hasan.

For Granada’s upper class and aristocratic families, emigration to the Maghrib was an

immediate consequence, which was encouraged and facilitated in order to remove the

possibility of organized Muslim opposition to new Christian authorities. Many families

relocated within the peninsula and joined the vibrant Mudejar population of coastal regions

such as Valencia and Murcia. According to the Capitulations, the terms of the treaty that

followed the 1492 surrender of the city, those who decided to stay were promised, as in the

case of Mudejars in other cities previously conquered, the right to continue their practice of

Islam, to observe the customs of their culture, to retain the use of their language, and to

maintain the legal institutions that regulated their society (sharia) and their judges (qadis).

However, shortly after the conquest of Granada, the situation began to change

radically everywhere in the peninsula and a new attitude of anti-Islamic prejudice grew.

With the immediate expulsion of Jews, Spain’s economy was deprived of some of its most

productive population and experienced a dramatic blow. The Spanish monarchy saw the need

to apply a different approach to their Muslim subjects and at the same time moved forward

with the goal of creating a homogeneous society in line with the rest of the European

monarchies. By 1498, an influx of numerous Christian immigrants, eager to benefit from the
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Jewish exodus and Muslim emigration, populated the city. With them came a new

redistribution of the city’s living space into two separate zones that asserted the ‘otherness’ of

the Muslim community and clearly infringed their freedom. Under the new regulations

Christians were to live within the limits of the city and Muslim families were concentrated in

the exterior area of the Albaicín. Others took the initiative to relocate far from the urban

centers, in the Alpujarras area, where they would be less disturbed by Christian authorities.

Soon the missionary and moderate policies of Granada’s first archbishop Hernando de

Talavera, who faithfully implemented the terms and rights established in the Capitulations,

were not considered effective enough by Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros of Toledo,

whose priority was achieving rapid conversions instead of peaceful coexistence with “the

other.” Cardinal Cisneros first decided to intervene in the matter by incarcerating any

Muslims whose forebears had been Christians (elches, as they were called) for falling to

return to the Catholic faith. The great social unrest that ensued among the Muslim inhabitants

of the Albaicín immediately evolved into armed strife in which one of Cisneros’ bailiffs was

killed. As a consequence, numerous Muslims were imprisoned and brutally punished, and in

1499 Muslim leaders were forced to hand over more than 5,000 religious Arabic texts which

were publicly burned. The uproar spread rapidly throughout the region’s Mudejar

communities, which took up arms, resulting in the first Rebellion of the Alpujarras. The

uprisings were put down between 1500 and 1501 in a violent military campaign, with many

casualties and large numbers of prisoners sold later into slavery. These events became a

convenient pretext used immediately by the Catholic monarchs to revoke the initial terms of

the Capitulations of Granada and even the charters by which other regions had been similarly

settled. Mass conversions, with a choice between exile or baptism within a period of three

months, were ordered by a new royal decree of 1501. Other massive impositions of baptism,

despite the opposition of some members of the aristocracy, came in a quick succession over
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all territories: Castile in 1502, Navarre in 1516, and, finally, in Aragón/Valencia, where the

protection of Muslims by the crown had prevailed longer, the edict of conversion appeared in

1526-1527. Eventually all mosques were turned into Christian churches and the life of

Muslims in their native land was changed forever. Spanish Islam had, officially at least,

ended. From that point on, Spain’s large minority of converted New Christians fell under the

jurisdiction and scrutiny of the Inquisition but continued the practice of Islam in secret, while

paying lip-service to their enforced Christianity. Thus was born the resilient Crypto-Muslim

society, the community of Moriscos or New Christians scattered throughout the Iberian

Peninsula between 1500 and 1609.

In the case of the Crown of Aragón, after the late edict of forced baptisms, a pact was

reached by which new converts were expected to abandon the use of their language and

traditional attire after a grace period of ten years and could not be tried by the Inquisition for

a period of forty years. During these four decades the edict of conversion expected them to

adjust and learn the Catholic faith and Christian practice at the hands of appointed clergy.

Everywhere heavy monetary penalties were set for failure to attend church services or to have

memorized, after the grace period, the key Catholic prayers.

Throughout the century, in different regions, the pressure of Christian authorities to

control these communities and erase any sign of Islamic “otherness” became unbearable,

even more so after the visit that emperor Charles V paid to Granada in 1526, after which

new restrictive measures were added. In the following years, Muslims were allowed to move

only within Christian interior territories away from coastal lands, and they were forbidden

from emigrating overseas for fear they might give crucial information to their Berber or

Ottoman Turkish counterparts. This decision was reinforced after the attempt by the Ottoman

Empire and Suleiman the Magnificent to capture the city of Vienna, Austria, in 1529.
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Although the siege of Vienna was not successful, Suleiman’s venture was perceived as an

Islamic threat and an attempt at expansion by the Ottoman Empire into a part of Europe also

ruled by Charles V.

In Charles’ new dispensations, which put an end to the acceptance of Islamic law, the

list of forbidden un-Christian activities included every aspect of daily life. Not only were

Muslims geographically segregated but also, for both communities, the official condemnation

of many forms of contact and behavior resulted in a deeper dissociation among them. Under

penalty of excommunication it was prohibited for Granada’s Christians to rent city space for

gatherings and celebrations of Muslim families. Muslims were expected to gradually change

their traditional dress and women, in particular, were strictly forbidden to wear the veil. At

the moment of baptism they were obliged to take the name of a Christian saint. A

Christianization plan such as that carried out in the Americas/Indies was partially

implemented, but the Spanish church faced serious problems in recruiting the manpower to

supply adequate evangelization to so many areas of the world. Muslims could be prosecuted

for refusing to eat pork or drink wine, for performing halal slaughterings, for using henna or,

in some regions later on, for gathering at celebrations to sing zambras or leylas. Certain

forms of marriage and intermarriage between faiths were severely punished. They were

forced to keep their doors open on Sundays and on Christian holidays to show that they were

not working inside. Other restrictions, such as the use of baths on Friday and Sunday, were

shrewdly intended to impede the ritual purification necessary to engage in Islamic prayers or

in the prayers of any forced Christian services they might use as substitutes while ignoring

the words of Christian preaching. Additionally, former Muslims were forced to finance with

a special tax, the farda, the military services provided by the crown to protect its coasts from

North African pirate attacks.

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As the use of Arabic became forbidden, the loss of its knowledge among the next

generations became inevitable. But a new form of communication came about with the birth

of Aljamiado (from al- ͨ jâmiyyah), the Hispano-Arabic dialect of the sixteenth century, which

used Arabic letters to transcribe Castilian, or other languages of the peninsula, mixed with

many Arabic words and expressions. The origin of the term adds yet one more level to the

concept of “otherness” that defined the Morisco community. The word a'yamí refers to a

‘non-Arab foreigner’ and the related feminine adjective a'yamiyya, when applied to the word

‘language’, indicated a foreign language different from Arabic, 'arabiyya or “algarabía” in

old Spanish. On the one hand, the very existence of this language indicates a partial level of

acculturation within the reality of sixteenth century Spain. On the other, it was also a

mechanism by which the Morisco community was able to maintain and transmit their

evolving Muslim identity. Due to the oppression exerted against spoken forms of Arabic, it

produced great numbers of literary and religious texts, medical and esoteric treatises, poetry,

travel guides, translations, short novels and legends, historical narratives and various kinds of

records often found centuries later in hidden spaces amid the remnants of old Muslim ruins

(Benlabbah & Chalkha, 2010, pp. 368-396; Montaner Frutos, 1988, pp. 313-326). Thus,

although pure knowledge of Islam became weaker, the tenets of Islam continued to be

secretly taught in this dialect in spite of the prohibition against its instruction. Among them,

the 1462 work by the faqih of Segovia Iça de Gebir (Yçe Gidelli), Suma de los Principales

mandamientos e devadamientos de la ley e çunna, contained a summary of the basics of

Islam as they should be practiced by the Morisco community of Castile (Wiegers, 1994).

The advice given to Moriscos in the fatwa of 1504 (dated Rajab 910) by the Mufti of

Oran (Harvey, 2005, pp. 60-69) stated that Spanish Muslims could apply to their situation the

principle of taqiyyah, the practice of dissimulation or concealment, using various tactics.

Previously, orthodox Muslim scholars had advised strict hijra, or emigration, from Christian
 18

lands to any country ruled by Muslim authorities while they were still able to leave

(Koningsveld & Wiegers, 1996, pp. 133-152; Harvey, 1990, pp. 55-67). But given that

Spanish Muslims, subjected to persecution and oppression, were now unable to escape, this

religious document spelled out in detail the modifications that persecuted Spanish Muslims

could introduce in their practice of Islam given their extraordinary circumstances. The mufti

indicated that “those who hold fast to their religion just as somebody might clutch to himself

a burning ember” (Harvey, 2005, p. 60) were allowed to make up at night the prayers they

had to omit during the day and to simply wipe themselves clean when ritually pure water was

not available. They could eat pork, drink wine or bow down to idols as long as their true

intention was turned to Allah and the rejection of sin was sincere in their heart. If forced to do

so, they could publicly deny the Prophet Muhammad by intentionally mispronouncing his

name as ‘Mamad’, as Christians were known to do. To conclude his advice, the mufti

expressed his hope “that Allah may bring it about that Islam may be worshipped openly

without ordeals, tribulations or fears, thanks to the success of the future attack of the noble

Turks.” (Harvey, 2005, p. 63).

Although a habit of more or less practical tolerance was achieved depending on the

rigor with which different regions applied the regulation imposed by the edicts of conversion,

by the middle of the sixteenth century the political, social and religious scene of Spain

changed dramatically with the new king, Philip II, in 1554 and the impact of the numerous

reforms that were issued by the European ecumenical Council of Trent in 1563. Following

the ideals of the Counter-Reformation, the council revised the teachings of Catholic doctrine

and traditions, issued numerous condemnations against what the Church considered

Protestant heresies and introduced many disciplinary reforms.

 19

Philip II succeeded his father with the zealous desire to assert himself as a strict

Catholic leader defending the new dogmas against Protestant European nations, supporting

related Inquisitorial trials in major Spanish cities, and fueling the evangelization of the

Americas. Accordingly, in the new monarch’s agenda the Morisco population was regarded

as a disobedient and heretic community whose forbidden conduct was more in need of

serious disciplinary measures than further evangelization. Consequently, their freedoms were

even more curtailed and their oppression became so radical, particularly in Granada, that

even influential noblemen such as Don Francisco Núñez Muley submitted to the king in 1567

a written petition in their defense arguing that the language and cultural traits of the Morisco

minority was in no way incompatible with the customs of other Catholic populations sharing

the same territory (Garrad, 1954). The repression of Muslim customs in Granada led in 1568

to a second insurrection of the Morisco population of the Alpujarras, which turned into a two

year war which received the aid of the Ottoman governor of Algiers. Fearing an increase in

the support that Muslim rebels might receive from Ottoman Turks or from other enemies of

the crown, Philip II engaged in a brutal suppression of the revolt with his best military

resources. The leader of the rebellion, the Morisco Fernando de Valor, adopted the Arabic

name Ben Umayya – reminiscent of the past glories during the centuries of Umayyad Muslim

Iberia.

The war concluded in 1570 with the expulsion from Granada of the Moriscos, who

were dispersed across other Spanish territories, leaving a mere 10 to 15,000 in a highly

impoverished city (Vincent, 1970; Vincent, 1971). In a country with a population of about

eight to nine million, the Morisco population of the sixteenth century has been calculated to

have been about 350,000, unevenly distributed throughout Spanish territories (Reglá, 1974,

pp. 60-63). The region of Valencia remained the most densely populated by Moriscos, with

an estimated 135,000 (Lapeyre, 1959).

 20

As they dispersed throughout the different northern territories, particularly in Aragón,

and as far north as the kingdom of Navarra, many Moriscos avoided settling in lands that

belonged to the crown or the church and opted for relocating to lands belonging to the

Spanish aristocracy, who tried to defend their freedoms while exploiting them at the same

time. Everywhere else the mutual perception of “the other” became tainted with a veil of

fear, distrust and suspicion, as the newly established inquisitorial districts and their agents

performed inspections and encouraged secret denunciations accusing Moriscos of heretic acts

or of connivance with Turkish enemies. Some noblemen, whose lands had been granted

special charters and the benefit of autonomous jurisdiction, had a clear idea of the terrible

economic repercussions that the loss of laborers among the tribute-paying Morisco workforce

would have in their territories, and defended them against the monarchs’ impositions and the

intervention of the Inquisition. The cost of an Inquisitorial trial was also burdensome for the

aristocracy as it implied the confiscations of a Muslim vassal’s property and wealth, which

was redirected to finance the many costs of a trial and the salaries of the clergy who

participated in it. In this scenario of conflicting interests, some Moriscos still managed to

become an integral part of daily life in large urban centers such as Valencia. Their active

engagement in the economy of the region has been documented by their extensive book-

keeping practices and by the records of regional Inquisitorial offices. The regions of Murcia

and Extremadura also welcomed large numbers of Moriscos who had been expelled in 1571-

1572 after the war in Granada (Chacón, 1982). Some of them, such as those who joined the

large and thriving Islamic community of the town of Hornachos, which was entirely inhabited

by Moriscos, eventually arranged an exceptional mass departure to North Africa, forming the

vibrant Hispano-Muslim communities of Sale and Rabat (Sánchez Pérez, 1964; Harvey,

2005, pp. 369-377). The most intense social and religious persecution of Moriscos originated
 21

in Castile and spread throughout the peninsula as a result of a combination of political

factors.

Generally the different strategies and measures to eradicate Islamic cultural practices

among Muslim subjects of reconquered lands had not produced the desired effects even after

strict conversion policies had been implemented. The Morisco community was regarded as

insubordinate on account of their unsatisfactory and only nominal conversion to Christianity.

It seemed that after decades of secretly practicing their adherence to Islam, Muslims had

become hardened to any form of Christian proselytism or to imposed regulations regardless

of the consequences, except for one yet to come: complete physical eradication. In different

social levels there were plenty of arguments from all stances on how to deal with this

“anomaly” or stubborn “otherness”. The political debate intensified over the pursuit of more

drastic disciplinary measures at the hands of an expanded Inquisitorial system, the

reorientation of missionary initiatives of evangelization, or the Muslims’ expulsion, although

Philip II was reluctant to follow the latter. But at the close of the sixteenth century the

vulnerable, scattered and small crypto-Muslim communities could pose no danger to the faith

of a strong and thriving Catholic majority, their way of life and self-isolation brought about

no real problems of public safety, nor did they signify any political threat to the powerful

Spanish empire. However, in addition to the social impact caused by the religious reforms

imposed by the Council of Trent, a combination of external political factors escalated the

level of social intolerance toward Morisco communities.

The 1581 decree of expulsion of Moriscos by the crown of Portugal was considered

by many as a model to follow in Spain. The constant threat of North African pirate attacks

was coupled with rumors of Morisco complicity and machination to facilitate a new Muslim

invasion of the peninsula. At the same time, the crown’s international conflicts with
 22

protestant European enemies exacerbated suspicions of alliances and conspiracies between

these communities and the political movement created by the Huguenots, the numerous

members of the Protestant Church of France, who posed a serious threat to the Catholic

crown of France. Thus, although the number of Inquisitorial trials against the Morisco

population had reached its highest points in Granada after the 1568 revolt, with 82.1% of

cases against them, during the last two decades of the sixteenth century these spiraled

throughout the peninsula, reaching high numbers which in Valencia amounted to a soaring

72% of Morisco cases (Vincent, 1970; Carrasco, 1992).

The impact of Inquisitorial prosecutions caused incalculable damage to the Morisco

community and the Spanish society at large: daily life was filled with the fear of the “other”,

of possible denunciations, suspicion, treason, imposition of fines, loss of property,

incarceration, death, and a generalized apprehension in any form of social relations

(Cardaillac, 1990). The Inquisition delivered the political triumph that the crown sought: to

disturb any threads between and within both communities to such an extreme that the fabric

of society was unalterably torn apart.

A change of political climate came with the new king, Philip III, whose prime

minister, the Duke of Lerma, along with the Archbishop of Valencia and several important

members of the clergy, adopted a more radical position. They made demographic arguments

in favor of expulsion, namely the threat of the rapid population growth among Moriscos,

claiming that they could soon outnumber Christians, many of whom were celibate clerics or

military men. Only the self-interest and the fear of losing economic profits from their vassals

maintained the desire of some noblemen to keep hardworking Muslims as second class fellow

subjects in their lands. Also, the General Inquisitor, Cardinal Niño de Guevara, opposed the
 23

petitions of expulsion, out of concern for the great economic losses that the measure would

inflict to Inquisitorial and church revenues.

At the same time, by the end of the sixteenth century, Spain was finally free from

military interventions in Europe’s political conflicts: it had signed a peace treaty with

England in 1604 and a 12 year truce with the Netherlands. The westward advance of the

Ottoman Turks had been brought to an end after the naval expedition of 1571 and the Battle

of Lepanto in Greek waters. Turkey was now distracted by its own eastern wars with other

countries, and the Northern African tribes were dealing with internal civil wars. Therefore, a

large fleet and numerous military resources were available to the crown to deal with internal

conflicts and the Morisco “problem” became the main political objective. At home, a

conspiracy attempt in 1590 by Valencian Moriscos to enlist the assistance of Henry IV of

France against Spain had needed the attention of the crown, which quickly put an end to the

plot and used it to justify the need for intolerance. Although Christendom was no longer

under real military threat from the Great Turk or other Islamic countries, a second clandestine

attempt at recruiting military help from the Maghrib sparked great fears of further intrigues in

Valencia. The moment was ripe for political action and, thus, any attempts at rebellion

against harsher persecutions were officially used as an accepted argument to bring about a

swift end to the Morisco presence.

The political crime of lesae maiestatis, or treason, was finally used by the Spanish

crown as the legal justification behind the decree of expulsion. It is not surprising that the

first decree of expulsion was announced in Valencia in September 1609 after a fleet of

Spanish galleons had been secretly prepared to that effect. Immediately, harsh deportations

by sea, mostly towards Oran, were enacted, giving individuals only three days’ notice to

make arrangements to leave. It is calculated that more than 120,000 Moriscos (one third of
 24

the population) departed from Valencian harbors, leaving behind about 3,000 children under

seven years of age, who were obliged to stay and were sent to other regions to be educated by

priests and work for the prelates or nobles (Domínguez Ortíz & Vincent, 1997).

The loss of such a productive workforce and the revenues they produced had a

tremendous impact on the economy of the kingdom of Valencia, whose villages remained

deserted for decades to come. In the course of the following year similar proclamations in

Aragón, Murcia, Andalusia, Castile and Extremadura were enacted and about 275,000

departed between 1609 and 1614 (Lapeyre, 1959). The implementation of some of the later

edicts of expulsion differed in tenor, giving a month’s notice to make preparations for

departure or the choice to make personal arrangements regarding their destination, and

included different expulsion routes, travelling by land with their children to French territories

in the hope of embarking later toward North African coasts, or emigrating to Italy and

Constantinople. In their new Andalousi communities overseas, Spanish Muslim exiles

proudly maintained last names that indicated their Iberian origin: Garnati, from Granada;

Balansi, from Valencia; Saraqusti, from Zaragoza, etc.

King Philip III’s goal was to achieve at home the same Catholic homogeneity that he

championed against heretics outside Spain. He perceived as a major inconsistency that a

nation which was dedicating great efforts to convert large numbers of Indians to the faith

would permit such an ‘aberration’ in its own land. The Moriscos’ true religious allegiance to

Islam and their refusal to renounce Muslim rituals were presented as offensive, as an

unacceptable behavior of true subjects of a Catholic empire – and therefore they could be

dealt with politically as enemies and traitors. In the end the decision turned out to be more

than the eradication of a religion or a culture: the elimination and purging of its members who

did not fit into the newly constructed Spanish identity of pure Christian blood, religion and
 25

customs. The decision to rid the country of its most productive population accelerated

substantially the declining power, wealth and prestige of Spain. But the catastrophic measure

was to be justified throughout centuries to come by a continued ideological campaign which

equated their expulsion with the Spanish right to complete the Reconquest of all Iberian lands

from the hands of Muslim invaders and the mission to restore them to their “original”

Christian owners.

Thus, a nine-century history of Muslim presence in Iberian culture and society was

forcefully driven to an end. From that point on, any official recollection of the period was

constructed from the nationalistic perspective of a triumphant Spanish Catholic Empire and

its capacity to give birth to the new artistic and literary movement known as the Golden Age.

Ironically, this and the great cultural and intellectual transformations of Europe in the early

modern period could not have happened without the stimulus of this historical symbiosis and

the fundamental influences of a Muslim past and Arabic legacy that the Spanish Catholic

crown was so eager to erase and deny.

 26

MAPS

The Iberian Peninsula ca. 1030

Christian and Islamic territories ca.1030. Extract

From The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1926. "Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The
University of Texas at Austin." Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection.

The Iberian Peninsula ca. 1212

Christian and Islamic territories ca.1212. Extract From

The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1926. "Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The
University of Texas at Austin."
 27

The Iberian Peninsula ca. 1360

. Christian kingdoms and the kingdom of Granada ca.

1360. Extract From The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1926. "Courtesy of the University of Texas
Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin."

Nasrid Kingdom of Granada (1292-1492)

Approximate borders of the Nasrid Kingdom of

Granada and loss of territories between 1292 and 1492. Creative Commons Attribution
 28

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