Today's History: How to Disappear a People

Spain and the Reconquista

Today’s History is my column pulling current events and relating them to items that have happened 400 years ago.

---

I got into researching history because of a sole woman I discovered in literature. From there, I embarked on finding books on numerous subjects from that period. Spain in the 1600s is known in the world as a Golden Age. It is also known for the Inquisition.

Try as I might, this is going to be a longer post. There’s a great deal of history to sift through and I did what I could to bring up the highlights.

Royal Decree from King Felipe III

From about 700 A.D. to the 1400s, the majority of Spain was ruled by Moors, a group of people mostly from North African tribes who practiced Islam. Other faiths were also allowed to live and practice as there were churches and synagogues in the area. Granted, Jews and Christians were allowed to practice their faiths, but they were not allowed to build additional buildings than what were already there. Were there skirmishes? Absolutely. But in general, this was a long period of conviviencia.

With the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella came the unification of the Christian lands of Spain and the Reconquista, an idea that the land was originally Christian and must “return” to that. Many of the Moorish kingdoms had become weak from in-fighting. With the Reconquista, they defeated the Moors town by town. The final stronghold was Granada and in an overnight agreement, the last king, Mohammed XII, passed along the keys to the city and departed.

So what became of the people the king abandoned? The demographic of the townspeople was still mostly Muslim, with Christians and Jews. Any Muslims that chose to leave had to pay ten gold doblas for passage to North Africa. Most could not afford it, so they chose to stay and convert.

Bishops walked through the streets and threw holy water on the crowd, making a large baptism. Those people, originally Moors, were now Christians. Their new name: Moriscos.

One would think, okay, but now they’re Christians just like Ferdinand and Isabella, but Moriscos were Christians with a different past, and bloodline meant everything to Catholic Spain. Moriscos were made to wear distinctive clothing that set them apart from the “Old Christians.” They lived in different parts of the city and were limited in the trade they could take up. Morisco men were not allowed to enter university because the school records required demonstration of no Moorish or Jewish blood for the previous four generations. Slowly, new decrees emerged. Decrees that limited what Moriscos could do. In 1511, Moriscos were banned from serving as godfathers in baptismal ceremonies. At the same time, they banned halal butchery and required that only Old Christians would be allowed to slaughter animals.

In 1526, the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, Carlos I ruled Spain. He began a 40-year moratorium on Moriscos. They were prohibited from speaking Arabic anywhere, even in their homes. They could not use the bath houses without having an Old Christian as supervisor. Morisca women could no longer wear henna on their hands and feet. Finally, Morisco representatives had to pay around eighty thousand ducats to the Crown annually.

In 1567, more decrees came out. In one, priests made lists of Morisco children who would be taken from Granada to Castile where they would receive a Christian education.

That year, Moriscos began to organize, stockpiling weapons in caves in the mountains, pretending to be beggars in the city in order to find fellow Moriscos wiling to be recruited. They rebelled, taking over the town of Granada. While successful at first, armies from the Crown came and overpowered them. The Alpujarras War would last three years. In the aftermath, the men were taken to Castile. They informed the women that they would later join their husbands, but most were kidnapped by their escorts and sold into slavery.

In 1569, King Felipe II called for fire and blood. His soldiers were given the freedom to loot and enslave at will. Morisco children under the age of ten were taken from their families and placed in Old Christian households. Within the next two years about fifty thousand Moriscos were deported.

Things would settle for the next few decades. Some Morisco adults remained in the country because they were servants to prestigious Old Christians. But tensions grew again. In the early 1600s, there was a terrible plague and it was blamed on the Moriscos. Politically, King Felipe III worried. The Ottoman Empire was his greatest threat and the worry was that if the Ottomans did decide to invade, the Moriscos would take their side, and thus take over the country. A new decree arrived. From 1609 to 1614 nearly 130,000 Moriscos were expelled from the country. Within that decree, all children around 10 years and younger were forced to remain in Spain. They would be adopted into Old Christian families. The hope, though not said aloud, was that they would be young enough to forget their parents. The children were meant to be raised in the families, but many were forced to be servants.

The Moriscos that did survive the journey to the boats were taken to lands they had never lived in. Some assimilated. Others perished. This would mark the end of the Moors in Spain. The Moriscos, now a minority likely to die out. It would be later that scholars would argue that the elimination of a large part of the population contributed to the decline of the empire.

My story starts after all of this, with a little girl that was left behind.