Spain’s Ethnic Cleansing of the Muslim Moriscos

In April 1609 one of the darkest chapters in Spanish history unfolded when the Habsburg king Philip III secretly authorized the expulsion of the entire Muslim population of Iberia. Over the next four and a half years, approximately 300,000 men, women and children known pejoratively as ‘Moriscos’ or ‘half-Moors’ were forcibly removed from Spanish territory in what was then the largest ethnic deportation in European history. In its combination of bureaucracy and deployment of military force to remove an unwanted population, the expulsion anticipated the more recent phenomenon of ‘ethnic cleansing’. Today, at a time of tension between the Islamic world and the West, the 400th anniversary of the expulsion is a fitting occasion to recall this traumatic episode.

Like the forced exodus of Spanish Jewry in 1492, the removal of the Moriscos reflected the ruthless commitment of Spain’s rulers to a religiously homogeneous society in the triumphant aftermath of the Reconquista. Where Spanish Jews had been given the choice between exile and conversion to Christianity, the Moriscos were baptized Christians whose initial incorporation into the faith followed the conquest of Granada by the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella in January 1492. The fall of the last Muslim enclave in Spain was followed by surprisingly magnanimous surrender terms, which allowed the Muslim population to practise its religion and maintain its laws and customs.

These agreements amounted to an extension of the medieval arrangements conceded to their co-religionists elsewhere in Spain and appeared to envisage a future of co-existence between Islam and Catholicism. In the immediate postwar period, the Granada ‘capitulations’ were generally observed by the kingdom’s benign archbishop Hernando de Talavera, whose efforts to convert Granadan Muslims to Christianity were restricted to persuasion and example.  

This dispensation lasted until the autumn of 1499, when the fanatical archbishop of Toledo, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, accompanied the royal court to Granada and remained behind to assist Hernando. Impatient with the results achieved by his more temperate colleague, Jiménez began to use more coercive methods, including imprisonment, which soon alienated the Muslim population and provoked a full-scale rebellion with its centre in the Alpujarras mountains of Andalucia. In the pacification campaign that followed, the Catholic Monarchs took the fateful decision to oblige all Granada’s Muslims to convert to Christianity or leave the country.

In 1502 Isabella extended the same choice to her Muslim subjects in Castile. Between 1520 and 1526, the Muslims of Valencia, Aragon and Catalonia were also transformed into ‘New Christians’ when Spain’s first Habsburg monarch, Charles of Ghent, approved the forced conversions of thousands of Muslims carried out during a vicious anti-feudal rebellion in Valencia. By the end of 1526 all Spain’s Muslims had become nominal Christians and outward manifestations of Islamic worship were forbidden. The Spanish authorities were under no illusions about the sincerity of these ‘converts’, but they believed that they would gradually come to embrace Christianity ‘in their hearts’.  

These aspirations proved to be optimistic. Though some Moriscos did eventually become ‘good and faithful Christians’, the majority paid lip-service to Catholicism while remaining faithful to their religious and cultural traditions. Such defiance took clandestine forms; some Moriscos washed the chrism from their baptized children in order to neutralize the Christian sacrament and carried out secret circumcision and name-giving ceremonies. Others prayed and worshiped in secret and buried their dead in accordance with Muslim rather than Christian precepts.

The gulf between Morisco ‘New Christians’ and ‘Old Christian’ Spain was not made less by an incoherent policy of evangelization, which oscillated between persecution and discrimination, exploitation and neglect. Some Morisco parishes went for months without ever seeing a priest; others were ruthlessly fleeced by corrupt clergymen and officials, who charged them fees for administering the sacraments and fined them for transgressions. Spain’s secular and ecclesiastical authorities were never able to summon up the political will to remedy these abuses. Nor were they able to counter the bitter anti-Muslim prejudice. Christian attitudes towards the former Moors were complex and often contradictory. On the one hand, the sobriety and industriousness of the Moriscos made them valued economic assets to Spanish employers and landowners. At the same time they were often regarded as conquered infidels and a reminder of a shameful and despised Islamic past that was considered a deviation from Spain’s authentic Christian heritage.

This fixation with religious purity was often accompanied by a tendency to regard any expression of Morisco cultural difference as evidence of continued adherence to the ‘sect of Muhammad’: the use of Arabic, dietary practices, dances, songs and clothing. The wearing of the veil or the almalafa by Morisco women was a particular obsession in 16th-century Spain. Given the contemporary associations of the hijab in Europe, there is some irony in the fact that the covered female face was often regarded as a potential cover for secret romantic assignations and female promiscuity. The Muslim fondness for public bathing was associated by Spanish officialdom with ‘Moorish’ sensuality as well as Islamic religious ablution.

Throughout the 16th century, the Spanish authorities attempted to eradicate these differences in what amounted to a policy of forced assimilation. Moriscos were fined, imprisoned and sometimes executed by the Inquisition for eating couscous, for refusing to drink wine, for bathing in their own homes, and for concealing books containing extracts of the Koran or anthologies of Islamic lore. Such persecution was driven by fear as well as hatred. Not only were the Moriscos seen as a threat to Spain’s religious unity, they were also regarded as a potential fifth column at a time of bloody conflict between Christendom and the Ottoman Empire. This struggle was particularly intense in the western Mediterranean, where Spanish interests were directly threatened by the Ottomans and their North African vassals.

Suspicions of the Moriscos were fuelled by real and imagined contacts between Spain’s former Muslims and the North African corsairs who raided Spanish coastal towns and shipping during the 16th century. The contacts were often exaggerated by poor intelligence, rumours and preconceived assumptions about Morisco hostility.

In these circumstances, Spain’s rulers saw the assimilation of the Moriscos not merely as a religious obligation but as a matter of state security. A turning point occurred in 1566 when Philip II enacted a repressive edict which banned the use of Arabic in Granada, together with Morisco dances, songs and clothing. This edict provoked another uprising in the Alpujarras mountains in 1568 that was even bloodier than its predecessor. For more than two years, Spanish troops fought Morisco insurgents, supported by Moorish and Turkish volunteers from North Africa, in a chaotic and savage conflict that was marked by horrific atrocities on both sides.   Eventually Spain’s superior resources prevailed. In the closing stages of the war in 1570, Philip ordered the forcible relocation of tens of thousands of Granadan Moriscos to Castile.

In the wake of the Granada rebellion, the Moriscos became an increasingly marginalized and anomalous presence in Counter-Reformation Spain. Christian hostility was exacerbated by the belief that Morisco numbers were steadily increasing in relation to Christians. While Christians went to war and venerated celibacy, it was argued, the ‘carnal’ Moriscos married younger and had larger families and would soon be in a position to overwhelm Christian society. Historians have demonstrated that these perceptions were exaggerated, and even absurd, but they were nevertheless routinely invoked by Spanish officials in their elaboration of the Morisco threat.

By the end of the 16th century, leading statesmen and churchmen, most notably the powerful archbishop of Valencia, Juan de Ribera, were arguing that the Moriscos could never be incorporated into Christianity and constituted a mortal threat to the state. But, after decades of repression and the absence of any formal mechanisms for the transmission of Islam, there was evidence to suggest that many Moriscos were in fact beginning to embrace Christianity.

Despite this evidence, the upper echelons of the Spanish Church and state persisted in seeing the Moriscos as a single collective enemy that was intent on the destruction of Spain. At meetings of Philip’s ministers, in letters and official memoranda, Spanish officials coolly discussed a range of solutions to Spain’s ‘Morisco question’, from physical extermination to internment and enslavement. The bishop of Segorbe in Valencia recommended that the Moriscos should be castrated and sterilized and sent to Newfoundland to die out. Another official proposed that the Morisco population should be loaded onto ships and drowned.

Physical removal rather than extermination eventually emerged as the most viable option. In 1582 expulsion was recommended by the Council of State for the first time, but it took nearly 30 years before it was carried out. This delay was partly due to theological reservations about expelling baptized Christians to Muslim lands and to the lack of available military and naval forces as a result of Philip’s wars with Protestant Europe.

The pressure for expulsion grew stronger at the beginning of the 17th century, when the weak government of Philip III and his corrupt and all-powerful chief minister, the Duke of Lerma, began to revisit the various solutions already proposed. The renewed attention given to the Morisco question coincided with a rare period of relative peace, which made expulsion logistically feasible. On April 4th, 1609, Philip formally approved a phased expulsion, beginning in Valencia, three days before the signing of a truce with Dutch rebels, which lasted 12 years.

Throughout the summer, Spanish officials worked secretly to prepare for the expulsion from the designation of the ports of departure to the deployment of soldiers, militia and naval forces and the commissioning of foreign ships to assist the transportations. The expulsion was not made public until September 24th, when town criers in Valencia announced that all Muslims were to make their way to ports designated by the authorities within three days, on pain of death.

In some parts of Valencia, the king’s edict was greeted with relief by Spain’s former Muslims, who saw exile as a better alternative to their continued existence in a hostile Christian state. But there was also grief and despair, as entire families and communities were obliged to abandon their homes and villages, leaving their property in the hands of their Christian neighbours and unscrupulous profiteers. Despite their official escorts, many Moriscos were attacked and robbed on the roads by predatory Christian bands. Thousands had their children forcibly taken from them to be brought up as Christians or sold as slaves. Others were murdered before they reached the coast.

Throughout the autumn and winter of 1609/10, Spanish and foreign merchant ships transported the Moriscos to their destinations in North Africa. Their arrivals at their ports of departure and the numbers of passengers on each ship were meticulously recorded in official lists to ensure that the purification was as complete as possible. The fate of these exiles received less careful official consideration. Many never reached the opposite shore. Some were killed by pirates. Others were robbed and murdered by their Christian crews. Thousands died of starvation in their countries of arrival or were massacred by nomadic Muslim tribes who, ironically, regarded the Moriscos as Christians and apostates.

In October, two simultaneous Morisco rebellions broke out in the Valencian hinterland and were suppressed with brutal efficiency. By the end of 1609 the Moriscos had been largely expelled from Valencia and the expulsion was now extended in piecemeal fashion to the rest of Spain. It met with strong opposition from some leading Spanish churchmen and members of the aristocracy, who insisted that the Moriscos were fulfilling their religious obligations and criticized the decision to expel them. But the king and his chief minister remained implacably committed to the goal of religious purity and insisted that all Moriscos should be expelled ‘without exception’.

Some Moriscos did manage to avoid expulsion, sometimes with the help of their Christian neighbours. Others returned to Spain in secret, only to be expelled again. The majority were transported to North Africa or driven overland across the Pyrenees, where they subsequently made their way to North Africa, Turkey and the Middle East.

This painful and frustrating process of identifying and expelling the Moriscos dragged on across Spain until the spring of 1614, when Philip’s exhausted ministers exhorted the king to bring the expulsion to a close. Even before it was over, the Habsburg court and a plethora of semi-official apologists attempted to present the expulsion as a glorious ‘victory’ that heralded a new era of religious purity. Within a few years, however, many Spaniards had begun to question the wisdom of expelling one of the most productive sectors of the population. Though the economic consequences of the expulsion were not as catastrophic nationally as some commentators once imagined, the removal of the Moriscos left a legacy of economic stagnation in parts of rural Valencia and Aragon from which both kingdoms took many years to recover.

To some historians this immense human tragedy was the inevitable consequence of a 16th-century ‘clash of civilizations’. Supporters of the expulsion, such as the influential 19th-century Spanish historian Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, have argued that its negative short-term impact,  brutality and inhumanity were counterbalanced by its decisive importance in securing Spain’s national and racial identity. Such debates are relevant to our own era.

In various European countries, the Muslim presence is sometimes perceived as a mortal threat to Europe’s ‘Judeo-Christian’ civilization. As in the 16th century, these narratives weave culture, religion and national security in their imagination of the Muslim ‘enemy’. Where Catholic Spain once saw Morisco bathing habits as a sign of sexual licentiousness, prospective Muslim immigrants applying for Dutch citizenship have to undergo civic integration tests during which they are shown pictures of topless sunbathers in order to test their willingness to interact with ‘core’ European values.

Where 16th-century Spain feared an alliance between Moriscos and the Barbary corsairs, some proponents of ‘social cohesion’ today depict a continent pockmarked with terrorist strongholds and Muslim ‘no-go’ areas. Where 16th-century Spaniards once anguished over the demographic growth of the Moriscos, some commentators depict a nightmare future in which an ageing European population succumbs to rising Muslim birthrates and becomes an Islamic colony of ‘Eurabia’.

As in the 16th century, these perceptions have more to do with subjective prejudices than objective evidence. Once the province of the far-right, such ideas are edging towards the mainstream. Across Europe, many governments, including those of Germany and Denmark, have begun to impose increasingly stringent citizenship tests on the Dutch model, which require prospective Muslim immigrants to prove their willingness to accept European core values of secularism and liberal ‘tolerance’.

Some commentators, including Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, former Archbishop of Bologna, have proposed a halt to Muslim immigration. Others, such as the Scandinavian-based literary critic Bruce Bawer, have advocated deportation as one  possible solution to Europe’s ‘Islamic problem’. At present such voices can be found on the political margins, but that may not always be the case as both conservative and liberal commentators reject ‘failed’ or ‘misguided’ policies of multiculturalism in favour of a monolithic and tendentious notion of national identity. In these circumstances the purging of Muslim Spain is a salutary reminder of what can happen when a society allows its own fear and bigotry to represent an essentially powerless minority as a threat to its existence.

Matt Carr is the author of the books Unknown Soldiers: How Terrorism Transformed the Modern World (New Press, 2008) and the forthcoming Blood and Faith: the Purging of Muslim Spain 1492-1614.