Читать книгу Forbidden Passages - Karoline P. Cook - Страница 10

CHAPTER 1

Who Were the Moriscos?

Introducing a Transatlantic Story

María Ruiz was faced with a difficult decision. Born in Spain, in the town of Albolote near Granada, Ruiz found herself in Mexico City fifty years later, married to an old Christian wine merchant and pondering whether she wanted to live and die as a Muslim or as a Christian. In 1594 she denounced herself to Mexican inquisitors for having had thoughts about continuing to practice Islam when she first moved to Mexico City ten years previously.¹ Although she had attempted initially to continue to recite the prayers she was taught as a child in Granada, Ruiz now expressed the wish to be reconciled with the Catholic faith and reincorporated into the church, in order to live out the rest of her life as a good Catholic. Whatever the crisis of faith that she faced, she described her attempts in New Spain to reconstruct the prayers and practices she first observed as a child in Albolote. Her story spans the Atlantic, suggesting how individuals struggled with their beliefs and adherence to a religious community in a world that was rapidly changing. What events were occurring in Spain during her lifetime that prompted her and countless individuals to have to choose which faith they considered to be the “true” one in which they might attain salvation?²

Individual struggles differed from officials’ concerns. For example, in Spain, a couple was denounced to the Toledo Inquisition for secretly practicing Islam following a gathering at their home in which they invited their friends to dance zambras and eat dishes piled high with couscous. On the other side of the Atlantic, in New Spain, a man was charged with being a relapsed Muslim because a neighbor claimed to have overheard him invoking Muhammad. Why did sixteenth-century Spanish authorities care about the presence of Muslims in their communities? What did early modern Spaniards imagine Muslims to be like, and what practices did they associate with Islam? Many of the accused were baptized Catholics, and some had been Christians for more than a generation. So how did the purported “stain” on their character and lineage continue to persist in the minds of accusers?

THE MEDIEVAL BACKGROUND IN IBERIA: MUDÉJARES, RECONQUISTA IDEOLOGY

The conquest of the Muslim Kingdom of Granada and the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabel foreshadowed the end of what many historians argue had been a lengthy period of coexistence among Muslims, Christians, and Jews on the Iberian Peninsula. The so-called Reconquista, or Iberian Christian crusading effort to conquer and colonize Muslim territories, spanned the preceding four centuries. Ongoing struggles between armies distinguishing themselves along religious lines—Christian and Muslim—ensued. These struggles have shaped how historians have understood the history of this period that fluctuated between violence and coexistence. Following the Arab conquests in 711, the Iberian Peninsula, known as al-Andalus, became an important commercial and cultural node of the Islamic world. The Caliphate of Córdoba flourished from 929 to 1031 until internal factions began to undermine its cohesiveness. During the Caliphate, al-Andalus was incorporated into commercial networks that extended from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. On the northern parts of the Peninsula, Christian forces began to unify and push south to conquer territories under Muslim control. With the fall of the Andalusi city of Toledo to Christian forces in 1085, the small Muslim kingdoms called taifas that had emerged with the fall of the Caliphate turned to the Almoravid dynasty, based in Marrakesh. The Almoravids were soon succeeded by the Almohads, and by the late thirteenth century they too were driven from the Peninsula by Christian forces.³ Granada remained the last Muslim stronghold from this period onward.

Initial surrender treaties provided a contractual agreement between Christian conquerors and Muslim communities that was borrowed from the Islamic principle of the dhimma, the status conferred on protected religious minorities. Dhimma status enabled Iberian Muslims in Christian cities to maintain their religious institutions and administrative infrastructure, including an Islamic court system.⁴ Conquered peoples thereby became tributaries in exchange for religious and administrative autonomy. As time passed, Muslims in thirteenth-century Catalonia and Aragon began to participate in the emerging Christian Iberian institutions and were slowly transformed into a mudéjar society.⁵ Incompatibility between Muslim and Christian social structures such as those governing taxation forced subject Muslim populations to alter their practices somewhat and adopt Christian ones. Social changes came about not through instant Christian domination, but rather by “a bundle of changes in the administrative, judicial, fiscal, economic, linguistic, social, and cultural spheres.”⁶ Muslim-Christian responses to each other varied regionally, however, due to differences in the demographic and economic importance of Muslim communities. While the Muslims of the Ebro Valley in Aragon tolerated Christian rule, in Valencia, Christian conquerors faced a longer period of resistance.⁷

The uneven pace of Christian conquests and regional differences produced geographic variations within the mudéjar societies that developed throughout the fifteenth century and remained visible in the Morisco populations of the sixteenth century. This geographic diversity among mudéjar and eventual Morisco populations is important to keep in mind, as it would later have an impact on the claims Moriscos made as they negotiated their status during the period of forced expulsions. It also cautions against settling on a term like Morisco that homogenizes the experiences of individuals who fell into this category. Castile experienced some of the earliest conquests and retained some densely settled enclaves of mudéjares, although the region was predominantly Christian. Aragonese conquests had faced less violent conflict than those of Valencia a century later. Mudéjar religious and scholarly elites, or faqihs active in Christian-controlled lands, maintained contact with jurists in dar al-Islam in order to answer pressing questions that mudéjares faced under Christian rule. The activities of the faqihs can also be traced to the varying histories of the Iberian regions.⁸

By the end of the fifteenth century, growing tensions on the Peninsula prompted the dissolution of many of these agreements, leaving Muslim minorities with fewer political recourses in an increasingly oppressive society. The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile united the two Crowns. While administratively separate for generations, the union of Castile and Aragon pointed to a broader move toward national and religious unity, as would become apparent in the court chronicles.⁹ They also provided growing stability that allowed the Catholic monarchs to push overseas in their competition with the Portuguese over trade routes to Asia. While these developments were neither neat nor linear, they pointed to a changing atmosphere as Iberians began to wrestle with questions of nation and identity, linked to territorial changes at home and overseas. As Spain began to establish its empire, these anxieties over nation and identity came to the forefront, in tension with regional identities within Spain and the identities of religious and ethnic minorities across the empire, from the Iberian Peninsula, to lands in the Mediterranean and northern Europe, to the Americas, to the Philippines.

In late 1491 the Catholic monarchs presented a surrender treaty to the Muslim population of Granada that granted them a number of freedoms. In exchange for the city of Granada and the Alhambra fortress, the treaty granted Granadan Muslims the right to continue to practice Islam without persecution. It stipulated that the monarchs, “and their successors, in perpetuity, allow … [everyone] to live according to their law, and not consent that anyone remove their mosques or their towers or their muezzins … nor disturb their ways and customs.”¹⁰ It provided for Granadan Muslims to maintain their courts, to be judged “by the Shari’a law that they are accustomed to following, with the opinions of their qadis and judges.”¹¹ The capitulations permitted Granadan Muslims to bear arms, emigrate freely to North Africa if they desired, without danger of having their possessions confiscated by local authorities, and not be forced to pay the Crown “any tribute other than that which they were accustomed to give the Muslim kings.”¹² Furthermore, prior converts from Christianity to Islam, especially women who married Muslim men (renegadas) and their children, could not be harassed or forced to convert back to Christianity.¹³ The terms of the capitulations were soon violated.

MAKING MORISCOS

The Kingdom of Granada changed greatly in the half century preceding María Ruiz’s birth. Following the conquest of Granada in 1492 by the Catholic monarchs, the local Muslim population faced increasing pressure to convert to Christianity. Archbishop Hernando de Talavera carried out a relatively peaceful campaign to attract converts from Islam that included concessions to the new converts such as allowing local dances and music, zambras and leilas, to be performed during Mass. In contrast, Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros’s aggressive program to Christianize Granada, which included mass baptisms and the persecution of Christian converts to Islam, created resentment among the Muslim population.¹⁴ These violations of the capitulation treaty following the fall of Granada, combined with prohibitions that ranged from carrying arms to buying land, prompted the Granadan Muslim population to rebel in 1499. Between 1500 and 1502, Spanish authorities responded to this increasing dissent by ordering that the mudéjares be baptized en masse. A royal decree issued in 1502 after royal forces had suppressed this first Alpujarras uprising, gave Granadan Muslims the choice between baptism and expulsion.¹⁵ The resulting mass baptisms restructured already uneasy social relationships on the Peninsula by creating new categories by which to define and control a population that in many cases was only nominally Christian. The first Alpujarras uprising also had repercussions across the Iberian Peninsula and prompted mass conversions in other regions. Due to their newly acquired legal status as Christians, this population, now known officially as Moriscos, fell under the jurisdiction of Spanish ecclesiastical authorities and institutions such as the Inquisition.¹⁶

Because their conversions had been coerced, many Catholic authorities and old Christians became suspicious that the Granadan Moriscos were only nominally Christian. While members of the elite were more integrated into old Christian society and were Catholic, some Moriscos continued to practice Islam in the privacy of their homes.¹⁷ Religious and cultural practices of the Morisco population varied greatly, not only according to social status but also with respect to geographic location. In Aragon, Valencia, and Granada, many Moriscos continued to practice Islam. Their proximity to Muslims in the Mediterranean and the continued presence of Muslim religious leaders—faqihs or alfaquíes as they were known in the Spanish documents—suggests that they were able to maintain some of their practices.¹⁸ By contrast, in Castile, many Moriscos had converted to Christianity several generations previously, and some even petitioned to have their status as old Christians legally recognized by the courts.¹⁹

During the first half of the sixteenth century, a number of laws were passed that placed restrictions on Morisco dress, speech, mobility, and a range of practices perceived as Islamic. By 1513, this growing “corpus of prohibitions” had cast suspicion on their public baths, butcheries, births, weddings and funerals, and on texts written in Arabic.²⁰ Maintaining these practices became an offense that could render individuals liable for inquisitorial prosecution. Inquisitors reprimanded Moriscos for dancing and singing zambras, observing Muslim dietary practices and fasts, reciting prayers, and speaking the Arabic language. While many Spanish officials and clergy recognized that the new converts’ relationship with Catholicism was tenuous, they nevertheless developed a “politics of acculturation” whose goal was to completely assimilate the Morisco population within the next half century.²¹ The forced conversions therefore raised a number of unsettling issues for contemporaries, deepening suspicions about the Moriscos’ faithfulness, in both the term’s religious and political connotations.

The conversion campaigns undertaken by religious authorities stressed the persistence of Islam in Spain. The documents they crafted made Morisco practices appear uniform, as a formulaic set of examples of “Islamismo” that they hoped to eradicate. Among these, ecclesiastical authorities stressed praying the zala five times a day, performing the guadoc or ritual ablutions, observing Fridays, and fasting during Ramadan.²² Although many Moriscos did not speak Arabic outside of Granada and parts of Aragon, its use also became subject to persecution.²³ Inquisitors ordered that books and manuscripts in Arabic and aljamiado be destroyed, and those discovered hidden in homes were confiscated and burned periodically. They stigmatized the fadas, or naming ceremonies for Morisco children to welcome them into the community, concerned that they were purposefully washing away the baptismal oil.²⁴ Ecclesiastical authorities also prohibited the use of Muslim names like Hamete, Ali, Zahara, or Aixa.²⁵

Religious practice often became confused with what some contemporaries argued was actually customary practice. In 1526 Charles V convened in Granada a panel of theologians, jurists, and prelates to debate policies toward the Granadan Moriscos. Doctor Lorenzo Galíndez de Carvajal’s Parecer on this issue was fundamental and discussed both beliefs and practices. He condemned anything that varied from the old Christian ways of doing things.²⁶ Moriscas were forbidden to wear veils (almalafas), to use henna, and to carry amulets in the shape of hands, crescents, or stars. Moriscos were prohibited from becoming butchers because it was feared they would slaughter animals in the manner permitted in Islam.²⁷ The Inquisition of Granada was established later that year, following Galíndez de Carvajal’s recommendation.²⁸ However, these initial measures from 1526 failed to gain much ground following negotiations between the Crown and the Moriscos, with the support of Iñigo López de Mendoza, Count of Tendilla.

The Synod of Guadix (1554) compiled a number of both religious and customary practices of the Granadan Moriscos, presenting them as signs of continued adherence to Islam. Not only abstaining from pork but also eating couscous (alcuzcuz) came to be considered by ecclesiastical authorities a sign of Islamismo, and the Synod recommended that ecclesiastical authorities work to eradicate these practices.²⁹ Finally, in 1566, the Royal Council in Madrid drafted a series of laws that were met with outrage when proclaimed publicly in Granada on 1 January 1567. These new laws proscribed a number of Morisco practices and increased the severity of the penalties for anyone who failed to obey them to imprisonment and fines.³⁰ In addition to many of the above measures, they decreed that the Granadan Moriscos should learn and speak only Castilian within a period of three years, banned all books in Arabic, and prohibited Moriscos from owning slaves.³¹ Attempting a new round of negotiation, Francisco Núñez Muley, a member of the Granadan Morisco elite, composed a Memorial that he presented to the Royal Audiencia and Chancery of his city. Núñez Muley argued that wearing Morisco dress, dancing zambras, going to public baths, and conversing in Arabic was not incompatible with Catholicism. Concerning Morisco dress that included the veil for women, Núñez Muley pointed out that “it can be said that it is clothing of the kingdom and province, like in all the kingdoms of Castile.”³²

These increasing restrictions prompted the Morisco population to respond in various ways. Many among those who remained faithful to Islam developed a confrontational attitude toward Christianity, producing a peninsular polemical literature in aljamiado, or Spanish written using the Arabic script. Its contours were shaped in response to the arguments put forth most likely by missionaries and parish priests, if not also by the old Christians in their midst. Other misunderstandings were simply the result of confusion over doctrine. Some missionaries sought to bridge the gap in understanding by presenting difficult concepts such as the Trinity in the sign of the cross. For example, in his catechism for the Valencian Moriscos (1566), Martín Pérez de Ayala instructed them to recite, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, Amen.”³³ Missionaries active among the Moriscos hoped to reduce confusion about the Trinity by asserting the unity of God, so that the three elements of the Trinity could not be confused with three deities.

SIGNS OF ISLAMISMO: HOW INQUISITORS DEFINED ISLAM

When taken together, the extensively detailed trial records compiled during inquisitorial proceedings for Islamismo depicted Moriscos as unrepentant Muslims, thereby producing an image that Spanish jurists and theologians favoring expulsion seized upon. Much of the existing documentation concerning Moriscos, both in Spain and in Spanish America, comes from inquisitorial trials and correspondence. The terminology used to refer to Islam, as the “sect of Muhammad,” the “law of the Moors,” or the “law of Muhammad,” reflects the biases of ecclesiastical officials regarding Islam and presents a point of view that was also widespread.³⁴ These records supplied images of Moriscos that individuals also drew upon when crafting accusations during local disputes. The public reading of edicts of faith listed a series of characteristics that came to essentialize Morisco-ness for an early modern Iberian audience. Yet what can we say about the religiosity of individual Moriscos and the importance Islam, Catholicism, or some combination of the two might have held in their daily lives? This question cannot be entirely dismissed, as lived religiosity was important in the lives of people across the early modern world. Preoccupation with salvation, and living and dying according to the precepts of the “true” faith, appear not only in the inquisitorial records but in a number of other sources. Individual struggles with faith surfaced during inquisitorial interrogations, often in tension with inquisitorial constructions of Moriscos.

When approaching her confessor in Mexico City with her wish to live and die as a good Catholic, María Ruiz may have known from her experiences in Granada that she might end up before inquisitors. Founded in Spain in 1478 to prosecute heresy among converts from Judaism, the Inquisition’s jurisdiction expanded to include the Moriscos, in addition to anyone accused of blasphemy, heresy, bigamy, and witchcraft, among a series of other “offenses” against the sacraments.³⁵ The Granadan tribunal would have been active during Ruiz’s childhood, and she may have had neighbors whose lives were affected by its reach. While sworn to secrecy about their experiences in the inquisitorial prisons, and during interrogations, confessants very likely shared strategies for dealing with inquisitors after their release.

In delineating its jurisdiction, the Inquisition removed from priests the power to absolve sins of heresy, requiring them to direct potential heretics to one of the tribunals. Only the Inquisition had the power to absolve sins of heresy, utilizing preoccupations with salvation to its advantage. Being caught in an ambivalent position between Islam and Catholicism, and the dilemma of choosing the “true” law that would lead to salvation, was not an infrequent anxiety voiced by converts from Islam.³⁶ The Inquisition exploited Morisco preoccupations with salvation by claiming to bestow absolution from sin and salvation by hearing confessions.

The punishments that the Inquisition inflicted on Moriscos for quotidian lapses in Catholic practice reveal the extent of its deployment of the image of the confessional, through its vocabulary of salvation. Spared the harsher penalties incurred by those convicted of outright political dissidence, most Moriscos received the more common sentences of “absolution” and “reconciliation.” These lesser sentences often involved what inquisitors referred to as “spiritual penance” that included reciting certain prayers and receiving religious instruction. Instruction in Catholicism became a way for inquisitors to regulate and impose a self-representation on confessants, which they might not necessarily have shared.

By soliciting confessions, inquisitors were simultaneously involved in producing a body of knowledge about Muslim and Morisco practices, accounts of which they circulated to other tribunals, including those in Spanish America once they were founded in Lima (1570), Mexico City (1571), and Cartagena de Indias (1610). The questions that the tribunals asked of Moriscos reflect similar, albeit subtler, aspects of the Inquisition’s aims to procure a large body of information about them. Inquisitorial inquiries in these trials extended surveillance into the home. Through inquisitors’ questions, the internal space of the home became politicized as a site for potentially subversive activity, where Morisco women could teach their children about Islam and encourage their family to uphold dietary practices and observe holidays.³⁷

To obtain declarations of these practices, inquisitors would demand that those testifying, “scour their memory and relieve their conscience by telling the entire truth of everything they might have done or said, or seen done or said to people, that is or might appear to be against our Holy Catholic Faith and evangelical law.”³⁸ They would also imprison confessants and require them to return to the courtroom during the course of several days or months to continue testifying. In this way, inquisitors would be certain that they had extracted all the information that they could.

The questions inquisitors asked of suspected Moriscos paralleled their interpretation of the Five Pillars of Islam, the steps every devout Muslim was obligated to follow. The Five Pillars include the shahada, or profession of faith, the salat, or praying five times daily, zakah, or almsgiving, fasting during Ramadan, and making the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca.³⁹ In her study of African Muslims enslaved in the Americas, Sylviane A. Diouf demonstrates how they continued to practice their faith despite the challenges of enslavement. Diouf suggests that “despite being far outnumbered by Christians, polytheists, and animists, they preserved a distinctive lifestyle built on religious cohesiveness, cultural self-confidence, and discipline.”⁴⁰ The Spanish inquisitorial records contain many references to the important prayers professing faith in Islam, as well as almsgiving and fasting. The hajj is the only Pillar that does not appear in the available inquisitorial documentation, and it was not a requirement for Muslims who were financially or otherwise unable to travel to Mecca. However, some evidence suggests that despite travel prohibitions, a few Moriscos managed to undertake the journey.⁴¹

When trying Moriscos, inquisitors had at their disposal a lengthy list of practices that they considered evidence of “Islamismo.” This list of thirty-six points against Moriscos, compiled by the fifth Inquisitor General Alfonso Manrique, contains accusations concerning both their perceived religious beliefs and customary practices.⁴² These points, echoed in the promulgations of Spanish synods and the writings of Spanish theologians depicting Moriscos and Islam, also appear in the early edicts of grace preached across Spanish American towns in the newly established inquisitorial tribunals. Several points on Manrique’s list informed inquisitors’ opinions on the case of Juan de Burgos, a Morisco who was tried before the Toledo tribunal after having held a party for his friends. According to Manrique, “With respect to the heretical mahometanizing Moriscos, let [Christians] be ordered to denounce the following acts and sayings: … If they have circumcised their sons and given them Muslim names or expressed a desire that others participate in their naming…. If they have sung Muslim songs and done zambras or dances, and leilas or songs using prohibited instruments.”⁴³

The trial against Juan de Burgos highlights the inquisitorial prosecution of a number of these practices. In 1538 Burgos, his wife Julia, and a number of their friends gathered together at his house for “the zambra where they were dancing and singing in Arabic, and there they all ate dinner together.”⁴⁴ The Morisca slave Catalina’s testimony reflects the course of events that night: “Around the time of the Christmas that just passed, there came to this city of Burgos Moriscos from Seville and they went to spend the night in the house of Julia. This witness, having been asleep in her bed, was called by Juan de Burgos…. [They] went to the house of the said Juan de Burgos … and there … [they] did the zambra, playing a cane like a flute, with atabalejos, and dancing barefoot and singing and speaking in Arabic.”⁴⁵ Catalina added, “The two Moriscos called the said Julia Fatima and the said Julia called her husband Nazar … and this witness was called Fiasea by the said Julia and her husband, and that all these names were spoken there that night, and also they were spoken outside when they encountered each other, talking in Arabic.”⁴⁶ These images of dancing zambras, conversing in Arabic, and maintaining Arabic names provide insights into the vitality of Morisco social networks. (See Figure 4.) Conflating religious and ethnic diversity with disloyalty and political dissent, Spanish authorities came to interpret social gatherings as underlying a larger subversive trend.

Peninsular officials feared that travel and movement would facilitate communication among Moriscos, allowing religious beliefs and practices to be reignited in communities across Spain, and eventually spread to Spanish America. The spaces created by these encounters could provide opportunities for individuals such as Julia and Juan de Burgos, Catalina, and their Morisco visitors to exchange ideas about religion and politics, and even engage in teaching Islam. Furthermore, slaves in an urban environment like Catalina were often mobile and participated actively in social networks. The policies that authorities put into place in Spain reflected their anxieties about the ability of Moriscos to continue to practice Islam in a variety of new settings. After the expulsion of the alfaquíes from Spain during the first waves of repression in the early sixteenth century, devout Morisco parents often took charge in teaching their children about Islam. Nonetheless, they faced many challenges to the cohesiveness of their families, especially following the second Alpujarras uprising when royal policies enabled the forced resettlement of Granadan Moriscos amidst old Christian communities across Spain. Many women and older children were enslaved during the rebellion, and children too young to be enslaved legally were sent to live with old Christian families until they reached the age of twenty, so that they could be reeducated.⁴⁷ This larger peninsular context would have an impact on the numbers and lives of the Morisco women who crossed the Atlantic as slaves.

Figure 1. Morisco dance from Christoph Weiditz’s Trachtenbuch.

Some Granadan Moriscos received instruction in Islam from their families before the second Alpujarras uprising. In 1570 Elena, an eighteen-year-old slave of the count of Chinchón captured during the uprising, testified before the Toledo inquisitorial tribunal that while living at home as a young girl she would pray daily, “until she left the law [Islam], and it was during five or six years that she was taught by her grandfather whose name was Benito, and her father.” Elena further related that “her grandfather also taught her to read algarravia, and that she knows how to read a little bit.”⁴⁸ Some of the enslaved Moriscas found themselves serving in noble households. While there is no evidence to suggest Elena ever left Spain, the fourth Count of Chinchón, Luis Jerónimo Fernández de Cabrera y Bobadilla, served as viceroy of Peru from 1628–38. His royal license to travel issued in 1628 includes the licenses and permissions for his household and servants to accompany him. Among the eighty persons allowed to set sail with the new viceroy to Peru appear the names of Joan Jerónimo and his wife Casilda, “free new Christians of the berberisco nation,” and Ana and Antonio, two berberisco slaves, despite being among those prohibited to pass to the Indies.⁴⁹

The Moriscas’ testimonies also show how individuals continued to observe Islamic fasts and religious holidays in Spain, with varying degrees of commitment and participation. Elena, the slave of the count of Chinchón, declared that she “fasted during Ramadan and observed Fridays, dressing herself in a clean shirt.”⁵⁰ She described the two times she had observed the holy month of Ramadan, saying that “each lasted an entire month of not eating during the entire day until the star came out at night, and that at midnight they got up … moistening their mouths with a little water, and then they would go to sleep.”⁵¹ Another Morisca slave, María de Andrada, also spoke of Ramadan when she informed Spanish inquisitors how her father had taught her to observe “the fasts of the Muslims … on the days which were customary for the Muslims, not eating during the entire day until the night when the first star appeared in the heavens. Later, at dawn, they would take a jar of water and wash themselves under their arms, and their hands and ears and feet, each of these things three times.”⁵²

In Mexico City, María Ruiz similarly recalled before inquisitors how, when she was a child in Albolote before the Alpujarras rebellion, her mother had taught her to fast during Ramadan. She participated in the fasts “two or three times, but she did not continue with them because, as such a young girl, she became hungry and ate…. Her mother carried out the said fasts with other women in the neighborhood … and they were cautious around her, and her mother told her not to talk about the fasts … because if she did they would be burned.”⁵³ Other Morisco parents in Spain were similarly cautious, delaying their children’s instruction in Islam until they were old enough to be discreet around old Christians and not rouse the suspicion of inquisitors.⁵⁴ The contrasting accounts of María Ruiz, Elena, and María de Andrada portray differing approaches and strategies taken by parents in the Alpujarras to raise their children in light of increasing inquisitorial scrutiny.

Spanish inquisitors also stigmatized certain dietary restrictions and practices, collecting numerous examples of their observance. Evidence of abstention from pork and meats not butchered in the manner licit in Islam and consuming foods such as couscous appear repeatedly in inquisitorial accusations against Moriscos in Spain. In this way, inquisitors conflated foods prepared in the halal manner with dishes like couscous that had no religious significance but that they associated with Muslims. Before the Toledo tribunal, María de Andrada also recalled that when she was living with her family prior to the Alpujarras rebellion, her father had told her, “She could not eat fowl or any other thing unless it was killed with the ceremony mandated by the law of Muhammad, for which [her father] took a knife, and she does not remember well to which part of the heavens he turned and said certain words, and cut the throats of the fowl, and she saw them butchered with this ceremony, and because she was a young girl, she does not remember the words which were said.”⁵⁵ Knowledge of dietary practices was passed on clandestinely within families and communities, despite the now obligatory participation of Moriscos in Catholic feast days. Andrada described a conversation she had had with other Moriscas while attending Mass. During this encounter, which may have taken place in the back rows of the church, they lamented, “That it was their great misfortune to have come to this land where they were made to go to communion and [Andrada] said what a shame … and [the Moriscas] also said that the sacrament was nothing but a piece of bread. They also asked her if she ate bacon, and replying that she did not, they said that she was doing a good thing to not eat it because it was against the law of Muhammad and otherwise she would not be saved, and [they advised her] that she also not drink wine because it was against the same law, and she would not be saved. They said that they neither ate bacon nor drank wine for the same reason.”⁵⁶ In the eyes of Spanish inquisitors, Moriscos who recited Islamic prayers, engaged in ritual bathing, and exchanged words in Arabic were committing subversive acts. In Toledo in 1530 a slave named Pedro testified against another slave, Isabel. Pedro accused Isabel of having spoken to him in the “Arabic language and this witness [Pedro] did not want to reply unless it was in the Castilian language, and because of this the said slave Isabel reprimanded this witness a great deal, asking him why he did not speak the Morisco language.”⁵⁷ When summoned to testify and asked whether she had ever spoken in algarravia, Isabel responded that she had several times while reciting a prayer, invoking God. The testimonies of later Morisca slaves in Toledo during the 1570s, after the Alpujarras rebellion, continue to suggest the persistence of algarravia. Angela de Hernández, an eleven-year-old slave of the princess of Portugal, declared that she could speak “some algarravia,” although her parents, as a precaution, had taught her Christian prayers and had taken her to church “with the other small children, and she does not know anything about the sect of the Muslims because they would not teach her.”⁵⁸ Andrada presented another aspect of maintaining language through prayer. She confessed that her father “taught her to say certain words, putting her hands next to her ears, which were es hedu alehilla la huete es hedu mohamat reculala … and these same words she would say during the times in the morning when she would wash herself as she had said, and [the words] mean that God is our savior and Muhammad is very dear to Him.”⁵⁹ The prayer that Andrada confessed to saying each morning was the shahada, the first Pillar of Islam. Sylviane Diouf argues that the shahada, which she transcribes as La-ilaha ill’l-Lah Muhammadan rasul-ul-lah, and translates as “there is not another God but God and Muhammad is His Prophet,” was significant in its recitation by enslaved African Muslims in the Americas.⁶⁰ By praying the shahada in spite of a tightly controlled environment, Muslim slaves affirmed their faith daily, implicitly rejecting the conversion to Christianity many had been forced to accept after their enslavement.⁶¹

GROWING SUSPICION: THE SECOND ALPUJARRAS UPRISING AND ITS AFTERMATH

In 1568 a large Morisco community in the Sierra de Alpujarras in Granada responded violently to the expanding currents of repression and surveillance. During the course of these “wars of Granada,” many Moriscos were captured and sold to various regions across Spain. Some enslaved Moriscos were also taken to Spanish America. Their individual displacement foreshadowed the expulsion and dispersal of Granada’s Moriscos, which was decreed officially in 1571 after the Alpujarras rebellion was suppressed. Because men were more likely to be killed during rebellions, a majority of the Moriscos who were enslaved were women.⁶² This second “Guerra de las Alpujarras” had a profound impact on both Moriscos and old Christians across the Iberian world.

The Alpujarras rebellion had lasting repercussions because it resulted in the first diaspora of the more orthodox Granadan Moriscos among the diverse Morisco communities in other regions of the Peninsula. Large numbers of displaced Granadan Moriscos, who were among the last forced converts in Spain, carried Islamic beliefs and practices with them to other towns and cities. The presence of small concentrations of individuals whose commitment to Catholicism was deemed less than secure created the propensity for the wider old Christian community to conflate both groups and label all Moriscos, regardless of geographic diversity, as potential Muslims and rebels. Rumors spread across various municipalities that their local Morisco populations could similarly rise up against old Christians and invite the Ottomans to invade Spain.

The accounts told by the Granadan Morisca slaves to Toledo inquisitors illuminate aspects of the Alpujarras uprising, its aftermath, and the enslavement they suffered. María Agueda stated, “Being in the place called Veneacir in the house of her parents, there came to the said place the Muslims who had risen up…. Afterwards they went to the Sierra with the others, where this confessant remained for about six or seven months until she was captured and taken to Córdoba to the house of a certain Captain Borja.”⁶³ Agueda stated that she had always been a good Christian and had known nothing about Islam until the uprising. However, she claimed that Muslims in the Sierra soon taught her “things of the sect of Muhammad, telling her that the said sect was good and that in it they could serve God and be saved, and this confessant took these things to be true and believed what they told her. They showed her how to fast the fasts of the Muslims, not eating during the entire day until night, and they did the guadoc and the zala, washing their faces and entire bodies and raising and lowering their heads and hands, and prayed Muslim prayers.”⁶⁴ Two other Morisca slaves also described the events that took place during the Alpujarras uprising, their testimonies emphasizing a strong Muslim presence in the province. In 1570, María, a twelve-year-old slave of the count of Chinchón, testified, “All the people whom she knew from her country were Muslims, and she knew this because they communicated with one another, and they are all in the Sierra. Others are captives, and she does not know where they are now.”⁶⁵ Elena, the eighteen-year-old slave of the count of Chinchón, told inquisitors that before she was enslaved and instructed in Catholicism she practiced Islam “in her land with her parents and brothers and with the entire community, because she knew that they were all Muslims and that they communicated with one another and that the entire place rose up and climbed to the Sierra.”⁶⁶

The impact of the Alpujarras rebellion and subsequent enslavement of Granadan Moriscos was also felt across Spanish America. Some Moriscos, especially women captured during this uprising were taken to the Americas to serve individuals with temporary travel licenses from the Casa de Contratación. Others became galley slaves and were transported to the Caribbean with the idea that they would remain on the ships and not disembark. Nonetheless, a few were able to gain their freedom. They carried with them memories of peninsular exchanges that paralleled those described in the Spanish inquisitorial sources.

DEBATES OVER EXPULSION

According to many accounts, relationships between new and old Christians deteriorated quickly on the Peninsula, between the second Alpujarras uprising and the expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain between 1609 and 1614. However, no consensus existed at the time among Spanish authorities concerning what policies to apply to the Morisco population.⁶⁷ While Philip III and his council made the ultimate decision to expel the Moriscos, it was by no means clear from the outset that expulsion would be the outcome of the deliberations over Morisco policies. There was no generalized or popular clamor to expel the Moriscos but rather a series of ill-conceived policy decisions pushed by a small number of vocal proponents at court.⁶⁸ Growing evidence suggests that not all communities felt threatened by their Morisco neighbors, who became integrated into local activities, and informally there may have been many exchanges between old and new Christians.⁶⁹ During the final decades of the sixteenth century, however, ecclesiastical and secular authorities debated measures that they could apply to the Moriscos. Connected to these debates over policy were heated discussions about who the Moriscos really were—faithful Christian subjects or disloyal crypto-Muslims and apostates.

Persistent rumors that the Moriscos would ally with foreign powers, whether Ottoman, French, or British, led some old Christians to regard them with suspicion.⁷⁰ Those in favor of expulsion were convinced the Valencian Moriscos posed a real threat to Spain, in light of war with France and growing tensions with the Ottoman Empire, and were likely to ally with foreign powers. Stephen Haliczer charts the problematic placement of the concept of loyalty in sixteenth-century Spanish ideology, demonstrating that it permeated accusations leveled against the Moriscos. By the beginning of the seventeenth century “religious conformity had become synonymous with political loyalty in the Catholic states of Europe. In this process, the Moriscos were the earliest but by no means the only victims.”⁷¹ Perceived by many authorities as being unassimilated, Moriscos were cast as subversives in official discourses about the Spanish nation. Increasing paranoia during the second half of the sixteenth century, fed by not entirely unsubstantiated rumors that Moriscos were involved in plots to join the Turks or the French as a “fifth column” to invade Spain, prompted even tighter controls. In Seville in 1580, rumors abounded that the large resettled Granadan Morisco population was on the verge of rebellion.⁷² Officials obtained confessions through torture of the accused Moriscos that they were planning a revolt and moved swiftly to restrict the movement of the Moriscos. This situation increased the severity of the rumors, as many of Seville’s inhabitants told stories about acts of violence committed by their Morisco neighbors.⁷³ While evidence exists that a few individuals were in early stages of plotting insurrection, the broader Morisco community that had nothing to do with this bore the brunt of the suspicions and reprisals.⁷⁴ Rumors of rebellion persisted in communities across Spain, and the Inquisition assumed the position of collecting information about Moriscos’ activities, tailoring questions to varying degrees of perceived political threat. For example, the Zaragoza tribunal prepared a questionnaire “designed specifically to test the loyalty of the Moriscos and find out if they were preparing for revolt.”⁷⁵

Debates over whether the Moriscos could remain in Spain wrestled with questions concerning the legitimacy of their baptism, their lineage, their actions as Christians, and ultimately how these issues contributed to or detracted from their membership in the emerging Spanish nation. Valencian Archbishop Juan de Ribera’s frustrated attempts to minister to the old Christian population in his diocese and improve the Catholic instruction of the Morisco population led him to become an ardent proponent of expulsion.⁷⁶ In 1602, Ribera addressed a petition to Philip III in which he cast the Moriscos as traitors. Invoking a number of racialized accusations, Ribera depicted the Moriscos as bandits, “avaricious” hoarders of gold, and unrepentant Muslims who were “wizened trees, full of knots of heresy.”⁷⁷ Ribera’s arguments pushed Philip III to move away from previous royal policies supporting the evangelization campaigns and to carry out the expulsion at a time when he was reorienting his foreign policy away from northern Europe and toward the Mediterranean.⁷⁸

Catholic Apologists envisioned the expulsion as the culmination of centuries of Reconquest, and they crafted histories to fit this notion. They cast Philip III as “Emperor of the Last Days,” drawing on strains of millennial prophecy that were circulating in Spain during the late sixteenth century, in order to formulate arguments justifying the excision of the Moriscos from the body politic.⁷⁹ In light of writers such as the Humanist Pedro de Valencia who emphasized the injustice of the expulsion and the harm that would come to the king’s conscience in carrying out such a deed, Catholic Apologists worked hard to legitimize expulsion. In these histories, writers such as Jaime Bleda and Pedro Aznar Cardona presented Spain as the “foremost Christian nation” and Spaniards as a new Chosen People, a line of thinking that was also linked to discourses to justify conquest and Spain’s title to the New World.⁸⁰

The authors of treatises debating whether it was justified to expel the Moriscos applied racializing arguments to them. The treatises illustrate how Moriscos were perceived by jurists and theologians at the level of imperial policy in ways that had repercussions on the ground across the Spanish world. Writers on both sides invoked Divine Providence in assessing the Spanish Empire and used medical imagery to describe the Moriscos, albeit to very different ends.⁸¹ A vehement apologist for the expulsion, Pedro Aznar Cardona wrote that many well-educated men esteem “a bitter purgative to expel bad humors, from which valued health follows, even while they loathe the bitterness of the medium.”⁸² He cast Christ as a “celestial doctor” who could cure the “pestilential Mohammedan sect” with the sacraments, which the Moriscos refused due to their obstinate nature.⁸³ Aznar Cardona proclaimed, “What cannot be cured by delicate unguents, oils, or softness, should be cured by a rigorous cauterization by fire.”⁸⁴ As a result, Philip III issued an order that would “tear from their roots and extricate such fruitless weeds of bitter and mortal effects, unworthy of … occupying such a holy and fruitful land.”⁸⁵ In contrast, Pedro de Valencia advocated in his treatise the “mixture” (permixtion) or intermarriage between Moriscos and old Christians in order to fully assimilate them. Writing to advise Philip III against expelling the Moriscos, Valencia proposed a series of measures to incorporate them into Spanish Christian society and thereby decrease their threat to the Spanish Empire. Valencia wrote that Spain should be very worried about Moriscos acting as spies for the Turks because they were enemies of Christians as a result of their “lineage and nation that has professed … genuine hatred from Ishmael … toward all the children of Sara.”⁸⁶ Following the biblical narrative, contemporary jurists and theologians traced Morisco genealogies to Ishmael, Abraham’s first son who was cast out of his father’s house alongside his mother Hagar, Sarah’s slave. In a twist on the standard account of Abraham’s wife Sarah’s jealousy, which reveals how writers could recast biblical narratives for their own purposes, Aznar Cardona claimed Ishmael’s expulsion from his father’s home was due to his idolatrous practices. This led Aznar Cardona to specifically list and label Ishmael’s descendants, including Muhammad, as inherently “idolatrous.”⁸⁷ In contrast, Valencia argued that Morisco assimilation was nevertheless possible if they were permitted entry into honorable public and ecclesiastical offices because they had lived in Spain for nine hundred years: “With respect to their natural complexion, and by consequence their wit, condition, and spirit, they are Spaniards like the rest.”⁸⁸ If resettled in communities across Spain, adequately catechized, and married into old Christian families, the Moriscos would become Spaniards, and “their lineage would be lost with their name.”⁸⁹ Otherwise, if Spanish families continued to be “stained by razas, they would never lose the label and name of Moriscos … There would be no more old Christians.”⁹⁰ To Valencia, customs and education were more important than blood: “Thus, when you take away … infamy, we should not be afraid that Spanish blood is infected by mixture with that of the Muslims; many have had this since ancient times, and it does not harm them … The popular opinion to the contrary is ridiculous and very damaging.”⁹¹ However, many jurists failed to share Valencia’s view.

In 1609 the Consejo de Estado moved to expel the Valencian Moriscos, summoning the Italian galleys to Mallorca and sending galleons to patrol the North African coastline to prevent resistance or attempts to aid the Moriscos.⁹² The expulsion decree for the Valencian Moriscos, made public on 22 September 1609, presented their exile as a merciful alternative to the punishment of what was ruled to be the Moriscos’ collective lèse majesté (lesa Magestad diuina y humana) due to their persistence as “heretical apostates.”⁹³ This decree also provided exemptions for some Moriscos to remain in Spain. Those protected from expulsion included children under four years of age and their parents or guardians, children under six years of age if their father was an old Christian, and Moriscos who had been living “for a considerable amount of time” among old Christians, without returning to their aljamas, and who had obtained a license from their local prelate confirming that they were receiving the sacraments.⁹⁴

The period of expulsion lasted approximately five years, from 1609–14, as Moriscos from communities across Spain were assembled at port cities and forced onto ships. Parents fought separation from their children, who were to be raised by old Christian families if they were under the age of seven.⁹⁵ Some Moriscos applied for exemption from exile on the basis of marriage to an old Christian, or having filed a petition for old Christian status.⁹⁶ The expulsion decrees were publicized at various points during this period, as an increasingly restricted group of Moriscos remained immune while new categories were deemed subject to expulsion.⁹⁷ Reports of abuses and violence against the departing Moriscos also reached Philip III, but he did not intervene.⁹⁸

EXILES AND EMIGRATION TO NORTH AFRICA: PATTERNS ON A SPANISH FRONTIER

Why did some Moriscos emigrate to the Americas, rather than to North Africa? Some answers can be found by examining Moriscos’ varying responses to the expulsion decrees. Some embraced exile in the Maghreb while others made every attempt possible to remain in or return to Spain.⁹⁹ Some Moriscos traveled to France briefly, before recrossing the Pyrenees and hiding out in Spanish mountain towns. Rising suspicion among the French who perceived them to be potentially treacherous Spaniards, led Moriscos in France also to attempt to move to Italy or settle among communities of Spanish Morisco exiles in the Maghreb.¹⁰⁰ Evidence that a number of individuals labeled Moriscos practiced Christianity and considered themselves Spaniards suggests that they may have hoped to forge new lives for themselves across the Atlantic, where there was less surveillance, rather than emigrate to North Africa both before and after the expulsion. In the Americas, they could continue to try to identify themselves as Spaniards, by claiming old Christian status, and if they gained honors or encomiendas, they could establish themselves among the local elite. In North Africa, the Morisco exiles received mixed reception. Even those who considered themselves to be good Muslims were perceived by many across the Gibraltar straits as lacking orthodoxy and in need of immediate instruction in Islam. Moriscos formed their own communities in Morocco, Tunisia, and Salé, which became a corsairing republic, and were also encouraged by Ottoman bureaucrats to settle in Ottoman lands to counterbalance more rebellious and malcontent local populations.¹⁰¹ Writings of Morisco exiles in North Africa reflected their regionally divergent experiences. Aragonese Moriscos expressed a desire for religious hybridity, blending Christianity with Islam, whereas many Granadans who had already experienced waves of expulsion and resettlement on the Peninsula reasserted their faith in Islam and retained resentment toward Spain.¹⁰² These differences in experience are also reflected in cases of Moriscos in Spanish America following the expulsion.

In 1623 inquisitors in the Spanish American port city of Cartagena de Indias encountered a Morisco slave in the galleys whose case suggests the diversity of Moriscos’ attitudes toward belonging to a community following the expulsion. Francisco Martínez presented himself voluntarily before the Cartagena tribunal, claiming he had been born in Murcia and was a baptized Catholic before he and his parents had been expelled with other Moriscos to North Africa. He described how “upon entering the sea they declared themselves Muslims, and they treated him as such. Within two months of their arrival in Algiers, they made him get circumcised, and although he was a grown boy of sixteen or seventeen years of age, he did not dare to resist. They tried to teach him the suras and the zala, and they made him do them many times, but he was always so firm in the faith, that they did not make him renounce it. He considered the sect of Muhammad as coarse and cruel, and every time he could, he interacted with Christians. After three or four years he left as a corsair with the intention of arriving in the land of the Christians.”¹⁰³ Martínez claimed he was captured near the Portuguese coast where he tried to appeal unsuccessfully to the Inquisition to allow him to return to Spain and to Christianity but did not have time to make his case. He thus waited to denounce himself until after his arrival in Cartagena de Indias. Inquisitors ruled that he should receive instruction in a local monastery because “it seemed that he spoke from his heart and told the truth in all things.”¹⁰⁴

In a contrasting case, on 30 March 1625 the inquisitor Doctor Agustín de Ugarte Saravia addressed a letter to the Supreme Council of the Inquisition in Madrid. In it, he described how “six or seven Moriscos, of those who had been expelled from Castile” had reached the port of Cartagena de Indias in the galleys.¹⁰⁵ They had been captured by the Spanish during a corsairing raid off the North African coast and enslaved on a galley force that was headed for the Caribbean. Ugarte Saravia expressed confusion about the Inquisition’s jurisdiction over them because they had been expelled when they were “young men who were sixteen and eighteen years old. They were circumcised in Berbería, and today they live on the said galleys in the sect of Muhammad and its belief, confessing that they are Muslims and not Christians.”¹⁰⁶ Muslims were not subject to the Inquisition, whereas Moriscos—as converts to Christianity from Islam—could be tried as apostates if they were suspected of practicing Islam. Ugarte Saravia wrote that he presumed they had been baptized as children in Spain and should therefore be considered renegades. His argument was complicated by the fact that they were royal slaves, and their removal from the galleys would present a loss to the king. He therefore requested a ruling from higher authorities in Spain. The inquisitors in Cartagena received the Suprema’s reply in 1630, ordering them not to proceed against “the Moriscos who, having been expelled from the Catholic kingdoms of his majesty, were captured as corsairs or who in any other way come to them as slaves or [who] are in his majesty’s galleys professing to be Muslims.”¹⁰⁷

***

Whether reaching the Americas as the servants of powerful Spaniards, as galley slaves, or as free but clandestine emigrants, Moriscos settled in the New World despite travel restrictions. Many were caught or denounced, but others like María Ruiz appeared voluntarily before the Inquisition for a variety of reasons. They were concerned about their religious identity and social standing, as were Spanish authorities.

In their policies toward Moriscos, Spanish ecclesiastical authorities framed their debates in terms of essentialized notions of what it meant to be a Morisco. Inquisitors, bishops, missionaries, and local parish priests collected information about the Moriscos residing under their jurisdiction in order to better carry out campaigns to convert and Christianize them. Their visions of Moriscos became polarized, presenting them as either potential converts to Catholicism who needed proper instruction, echoing the program of Tridentine reforms that called for well-trained priests and the creation of institutions to administer to the new Christian population, as well as improve instruction of the old Christian population. Another more sinister vision of Moriscos, one that eventually gave way to expulsion, cast them as unrepentant Muslims whose cultural and religious differences would render them traitors to Spain and prompt them to ally with the Ottoman Turks.

Ecclesiastical authorities carried out similar programs in the far reaches of the Spanish Empire, as they encountered new peoples and attempted to bring them into the folds of the Catholic faith. Beyond official discourses, the reach and impact of these policies on the ground, on both sides of the Atlantic, as applied to Moriscos, Africans, and indigenous peoples, had vastly ranging consequences. Early modern Spaniards grappled with how to incorporate new categories of people into their emerging empire. At the same time, individuals labeled Morisco attempted to wrestle with the images applied to them, in their own attempts to secure status across the Iberian world.