Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614 9780226319650

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MUSLIMS IN SPAIN

1500 TO 1614

M US L I M S I N S PA I N

1500 TO 1614

L. P. HARVEY

The University of Chicago Press C H I C A G O

A N D

L O N D O N

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London  C 2005 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2005 Paperback edition 2006 Printed in the United States of America 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06

2 3 4 5

ISBN: 0-226-31963-6 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-31964-3 (paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-31964-4 (paper) The University of Chicago Press gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States Universities toward the publication of this book. Title page illustration: detail from Hoefnagel’s engraving of Granada (1565). Courtesy of the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Harvey, L. P. (Leonard Patrick) Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614 / L. P. Harvey p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-226-31963-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Moriscos—History. 2. Muslims—Spain—History. 3. Spain—History—Ferdinand and Isabella, 1479–1516. 4. Spain—History—House of Austria, 1516–1700. I. Title. DP104.H37 2005 946 .04 088297—dc22

2004015747

∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the 

American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Preface Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

The Beginnings of Crypto-Islam in the Iberian Peninsula Spain’s Muslims under a New Order The Muslims of Aragon and Valencia up to Their Forcible Conversion Crypto-Muslims in the Lands of the Crowns of Castile and Aragon, 1525–1560 The Intellectual Life of Spain’s Clandestine Muslims Crisis and War: Granada, 1567–1571 Assimilation or Rejection? The 1570s and 1580s The Last Books Written in Arabic in al-Andalus and the Question of Assimilation Expulsion International Relations Aftermath Hornachos: A Special Case

Appendices I Religious Freedom and the Modern Spanish Constitution II “Morisco” and “Mudejar” in Glosses by Alonso del Castillo III The Sacromonte Texts IV Góngora on the Sacromonte V Some Specimen Official Texts Relating to the Expulsion of the Moriscos VI The Moriscos of the Canaries and the Guanches VII The Literature of Self-Justification after the Expulsion: A Specimen VIII Popular Reactions to the Expulsion Bibliography Index

vii xi xiii 1 45 79 102 122 204 238 264 291 332 353 369

379 380 382 399 401 411 413 417 421 443

Preface

This history begins in 1500 or, perhaps more precisely, on December 18, 1499. On that day the inhabitants of what was then the principal Muslim quarter of the city of Granada, the Albaic´ın, exasperated with the failure of the Castilian authorities to respect certain fundamental clauses of the terms whereby the city had been surrendered eight years earlier (in particular, failure to keep the promises made to respect their right to live as Muslims), rose in revolt and took over their part of the city. In their own narrow and winding streets the populace easily established control, but theirs was a singularly ill-prepared revolt which collapsed within three days ( just when disaffection was beginning to spread outside the city to the mountainous expanses of the Alpujarras, for example, where things went differently). Order was swiftly restored in the Albaic´ın, so what happened in Granada between December 1499 and January 1500 might well by now be remembered, if at all, as a merely local affair, an urban riot stifled by firm police action were it not that it marks a significant divide in the history of the Iberian Peninsula as a whole and the beginning of a process that led to the end of Spanish Islam altogether, 114 years later. For centuries before the end of 1499, the Christian monarchs of the various Spanish kingdoms had ruled over Muslim as well as Christian subjects, and Muslims had had a secure and accepted place in Spanish life. It is true that in certain places and from time to time antagonism against Muslims might manifest itself, but there was never any doubt: they belonged in the land where they were born. In the great medieval Poema de Mio Cid the words “Moors and Christians’’ are to be taken simply to mean “everybody.’’ But from early 1500 onward, there begins in earnest the process whereby Spain’s Muslims were to be eliminated from Spanish society. First they were obliged to convert to Christianity— not all of them at the same time; as we will see, it was not until the mid-1520s that the last Muslims were forced into compliance, then in

viii Preface

the rest of the sixteenth century there followed periods of persecution, and finally there came the total elimination of Muslims from Spanish soil: the Expulsion of 1609–1614. In theory, at least, no Muslims were left whatsoever after that, and in fact so few did remain that we can say that to all intents and purposes 1614 brought an end to Islam in Spain. Some Western historians, when dealing with the communities of forcible converts who came into existence as a consequence of these events, tend to see them as exotic and strange, almost out of place in their own homeland, and marginal to the great events of the Hispanic imperial drama which was being played out over the face of the globe at this time. As for what has been written about them in Arabic, it has to be said that until the pioneering work of the Egyptian scholar Muhammad