The Ousting of Spain's Moors

The Ousting of Spain’s Moriscos

The last Moorish kingdom in Spain was extinguished in 1492 when Granada fell to the Catholic monarchs. Thus ended an era of 7 centuries during which there was Moorish rule over most, or some, of Spain (an increasingly shrinking “some”).

That historical event coincided (not entirely a coincidence) with a marked increase in nationalistic Catholicism – Spain, or its ruling classes, held their country to be a triumphant Catholic nation, becoming the foremost power in Europe. 

Throughout the earlier Middle Ages there had been on the whole an unaggressive approach to religious differences within the constituent parts Spain (as opposed to between the warring kingdoms), to the extent that there were Christian and Jewish communities that lived and sometimes thrived under Moorish rule, and Jewish and Moorish communities that lived under Christian rule. 

Coexistence was not equal acceptance – in both sets of realms there was no doubt which faith was dominant, and the subordinate ones usually paid extra taxes and were subject to restrictive rules, especially about religious practice.  And coexistence was precarious. A change of ruler, or the eruption of mob violence, could lead to repression, expulsion or death.

To return to the closing years of the C15: in the Catholic world there was an increasing atmosphere of intolerance, in part caused by the seemingly unending conflict with the Ottoman Empire. In Catholic Spain the institution of the Inquisition was established. The Church Militant flexed both its own muscles and those of the State.

The first wholesale victims of the new intolerance were not Moorish but Jewish Spaniards. It was determined that the Jews, for so long settled in Spain, were an affront to its Catholicism. In 1492, coinciding with the fall of Granada, the Monarchs decreed that Jews either convert to Christianity or leave the country. The diaspora of the Sephardic Jews began, to their distress but to the ultimate benefit of their many new host countries. Catholic and regal attention then turned to the Moors.

Matthew Carr has written a judicious and moving account of the fate of the Spanish Moors after the fall of Granada (Blood and Faith), tracing the history over the next century and a bit, until the wholesale expulsion of Moors, converted or otherwise, in the early C17.

How did it come about that Catholic Spain could no longer tolerate anyone of Moorish descent? The causes are undoubtedly complex, but three factors stand out: an intolerant and aggressive Church, which desired to root out any traces of Islam; a triumphant kingdom, victorious at last over the Moors and establishing its great South American empire; but an insecure state, distrusting and fearing its Moorish citizens, suspecting their widespread secret adherence to Islam and that many were “enemies within”, conspiring with external Muslim foes, whether Ottoman Turks, or the Barbary pirates that carried out devastating raids on Spanish coasts.

There followed a century during which the Catholic Spanish noose was tightened, gradually for the most time, but with several vicious jerks. The first of these was felt in Granada itself. It was a key term of the ultimately peaceful surrender of the city that the Moorish population would remain free to practise their religion. Accordingly, for some time Granada remained a Muslim city, albeit governed by Christian Spaniards.

The church did not accept this state of affairs and agitated against it with all its increasing authority. The religious liberties were revoked. The, by now usual, choice was offered – conversion, exile or perhaps death.

Thus, in two of the constituent kingdoms of Spain, Granada and Valencia, which had most recently been under Moorish rule, the general situation in the early C16 was that the majority population was now notionally Christian, “Moriscos”, so called. But, allegedly (by the church especially) and to some extent in fact, the Moriscos’ loyalties were to Islam, or some fragmented version thereof, formal religious structures being long gone.

In spite of various religious “re-education programmes” (a tactic deployed today by China against Muslim minorities), relations between Catholic Spain and the Moriscos never evolved beyond the mutually suspicious and resentful. But the rope of the noose was in the hands of the former; intolerance increased.

One result was a great armed uprising by the Moriscos of Granada province at the end of 1568. The rebellion was suppressed after 2 years of bloody combat. The siege of Frigiliana belongs to this war.

The uprising entrenched Catholic Spain’s “Morisco problem”. Those that perceived the Moriscos as an alien Other, shamelessly resistant to Catholicism, and a fifth column for external Muslim enemies, became in the political ascendant and formulated the policy of, in short,  “the Moors must go, Christianised or not”.

Thus it came about, in the early C17, the Moriscos were expelled, numbering some hundreds of thousands. Carr’s book recounts in detail the suffering and exploitation that resulted. The expulsions were to haphazard destinations, mainly North Africa, chosen (if that is the right word for an event compelled) by the Moriscos themselves. The deportees were often swindled or even murdered by those transporting them overseas.

Carr wrote, or revised, his book fairly recently. He ends by drawing lengthy parallels between the C16 Spanish fear and persecution of the Moors and nationalistic and islamaphobic politics in modern Europe.

One point in particular struck me – the tendency of the leaders of majority communities to construct narratives of essential national identities to which minorities must conform, or be deemed unworthy citizens (“tolerance” being, ironically, one aspect of British identity so constructed) while all the while discrimination and ostracism puts barriers in the way of such conformity ("tolerant" Britons are in some essential respects quite intolerant). Carr also cites the warning by the economist and philosopher Amartya Sen against the creation of “belligerent identities” ‘based on supposedly antithetical civilizations and the potential for violence and demagoguery that such categories contain’.

In North Africa today there are people who claim descent from the expelled Moriscos. Spain has attempted to atone for the expulsion of the Jews by offering citizenship to their Sephardic descendants. No such offer has yet been made to the descendants of the Moriscos.

Jan 2019