To Live Like a Moor - Olivia Remie Constable The Middle Ages Series

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warfare and relative peace, sometimes separate and sometimes side by side. For much of this period, they had maintained separate polities under Christian or Muslim rulers, although Christians and Jews also lived in Muslim territories while Muslims and Jews lived in the Christian kingdoms. But mere adherence to a religion does not imply unity, and there were regional political, cultural, and linguistic differences that were unaligned with religion, leading to warfare between Christian states, or between Muslim states, as well as between Christians and Muslims. In the eleventh century, for example, the northern Christian states (Castile, León, Galicia, Catalonia, and others) were often as hostile toward each other as they were to Muslim states, while Muslim rulers of the disparate Taifa kingdoms fought against each other as much as against their Christian neighbors. In the later Middle Ages, consolidation of territories clarified the Christian-Muslim frontier conflict, but did not resolve inter-Christian disputes.10 By the later thirteenth century, three major political entities emerged: the Naṣrid kingdom of Granada, the Crown of Castile (consolidating the older regions of León, Castile, Asturias, Galicia, Murcia, and Andalusia), and the Crown of Aragon (encompassing Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearics, and other Mediterranean colonies), alongside the separate and smaller Christian kingdoms of Portugal and Navarre (the latter of which would become part of the Crown of Aragon in 1512). In 1492, Fernando and Isabel added Granada to the regions held within the Crown of Castile, putting the entire Iberian Peninsula in Christian hands for the first time since the Islamic conquests of 711.

      The period of Fernando and Isabel, who were granted the joint title “los Reyes Católicos” (the Catholic Monarchs) by Pope Alexander VI in 1496, has been celebrated as the culmination of a long process of Spanish unification, but in reality unity remained elusive and differences did not disappear under their rule. The Crowns of Castile and Aragon would not be politically unified into the nation-state of “Spain” until 1516, with the death of Fernando and the accession of Carlos I (Emperor Charles V), the grandson of Fernando and Isabel. Even this merger did not quell unrest, and there were Morisco uprisings in Granada, Valencia, and Aragon throughout the century, creating a feeling of disunity and insecurity. Many Christians feared that the Moriscos could become a fifth column, and that they might receive outside aid from Muslim rulers in North Africa or from the powerful Ottoman sultan.

      In many respects, the conquest of Granada paved the way for religious unification of the Peninsula, with the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 and increasing pressure on Muslim communities to convert, but Christianization would also prove to be a long struggle. The surrender treaty negotiated with Granada in late 1491 had promised that Muslims could continue to live in Granada, to practice Islam, and to maintain their traditional ways of life. But this policy changed within a decade of the conquest, as hard-liners such as Cardinal Cisneros successfully argued for new requirements of conversion or expulsion. In 1501, in the wake of a local uprising in 1499–1500, Cisneros oversaw an edict ordering the conversion of all Muslims in Granada, followed a year later, in 1502, by an extension of the policy to Muslims throughout Castile.

      These proclamations caused many Muslims to leave Spain, but large numbers remained, submitted to baptism, and became New Christians, or Moriscos. These two synonymous terms are controversial, in large part because many of the converts were, in almost all respects, still essentially Muslim. They practiced their faith either covertly (adhering to the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya, or permissible dissimilation) or relatively openly, especially in regions like Valencia where mosques still existed even after further conversion edicts were passed in the 1520s. Scholars like L. P. Harvey have therefore argued that this group, sometimes called crypto-Muslims, should simply be called Muslims.11

      But people like Francisco Núñez Muley do not fit comfortably within this rubric, since all evidence points to the fact that he considered himself to be a true Christian, albeit a New Christian. He uses the term cristianos nuevos to designate his compatriots, describing them as “the said natives of this kingdom [who have] converted to our holy Catholic faith” (los dichos naturales deste Reyno se convirtieron a nuestra santa fe católica).12 The persuasive force of his memorandum itself rests to some extent on an assertion of the New Christians’ loyalty and Christian faithfulness, as well as his own insistence that “my intention [in writing] … is to serve the Lord our God, the Holy Catholic Church, and His Majesty.”13

      In contrast, Núñez Muley describes Muslims as Moors (moros) and Islam as the sect of the Moors (la seta de los moros). This vocabulary is obviously designed to reinforce his argument that certain customs were regional rather than religious, but these terms must reflect contemporary usage to some degree. Meanwhile, most Old Christians used the word moro for any person who was religiously, culturally, politically, linguistically, or ethnically linked with Islam in Spain or North Africa, usually Muslims but often including converts.

      The term moro, like morisco, frequently had a derogatory flavor. Morisco was also a contemporary usage, but its meaning is confused by having two separate senses. It could either (as a noun or adjective from about 1500 onward) refer to a New Christian, or (as an adjective, and an older usage) pertain to anything to do with los moros. Thus, for example, a piece of clothing described as a capa morisca could either be a cloak in the style worn or made by New Christians or, more generally, any cloak in a Moorish style. This double meaning can sometimes be confusing, but it does not detract from the legitimacy or utility of the term when used, as by Luis del Mármol Carvajal, in the sense of “the Moriscos who have been baptized and are called Christians” (los moriscos tenian baptismo y nombre de cristianos) even though they may not act or dress like Old Christians.14

      Cardinal Cisneros and his contemporaries were well aware of the obstacles to conversion and assimilation if New Christians in Castile preserved their older customs and habits, and he moved, unsuccessfully, to ban them in 1516. A second ban on Muslim clothing, language, and customs in Granada, imposed in 1526, was postponed for forty years after local Moriscos petitioned Charles V and paid over eighty thousand ducats to the crown.15

      During the early 1520s, Muslims in Valencia and Aragon also faced forced baptism and suppression of their customs and usages.16 And opposition to any practices perceived as Islamic, including traditional Morisco modes of dress and appearance, bathing, foodways, names, and the use of Arabic, continued to appear throughout the sixteenth century, both in royal documents and inquisitorial records. Then in January 1567, precisely timed to coincide with the seventy-fifth anniversary of Granada’s surrender, the Audiencia of Granada issued its proclamation banning Morisco dress, language, names, bathhouses, and other traditional customs. The original text of this edict does not survive, but evidently it revived many of the bans originally promulgated by Charles V in 1526.17

      Reactions to the 1567 decree included not only Francisco Núñez Muley’s carefully argued memorandum but also the launching of a major rebellion among Moriscos in the Alpujarras in 1568. Neither effort achieved its desired effect. There is no evidence that Christian authorities paid any serious attention to Núñez Muley’s appeal, and the Alpujarras revolt was put down after two years, followed by the deportation and relocation of many Granadan Moriscos to other areas of Castile in 1570. Meanwhile, uprisings in Aragon and Valencia led to forced disarmament of Moriscos in these regions and an intensification of efforts to enforce Christianity and suppress Islamic practices. Whether these goals were even achievable became an increasingly hot topic for debate among Christian administrators and clerics, with the majority eventually deciding that it would never be possible to assimilate the Old and New Christian populations. Between 1609 and 1614, during the reign of Felipe III, the entire Morisco population was expelled from Spanish territories.

      The Morisco period in Spain lasted for roughly a century, from the conversions of the early sixteenth century until the expulsions of the early seventeenth. It was only the final chapter in the story of Muslim life under Christian rule in the Iberian Peninsula, yet this Morisco chapter was dramatically different from what had gone before. Until about 1500, and even after the conquest of Granada, Muslims had been able to live openly as Muslims (mudéjares) in the Crowns of Castile and Aragon, although it was often a struggle to maintain the requirements and customs of their Islamic identity. The difficult question of how to continue to live a fully Muslim life under Christian rule became a pressing issue in Iberia

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