Memory and Mutilation: The Case of the Moriscos

Abstract

Pain jostled hope in the historical memory of Moriscos. The Hispano-Muslims who had to convert to Christianity or leave their Iberian homes in the early sixteenth century recalled the painful memory of defeat in 1492, when Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in Iberia, fell to Christian armies. Yet Fernando and Isabel had initially held out hope to the defeated Muslims as they promised in the 1492 terms of surrender that their new Muslim subjects would be free to practice their own faith.¹ Within a decade, however, vigorous official attempts to convert Muslims sparked a revolt that spread throughout the kingdom of Granada. As Christian soldiers defeated the rebellion in 1501, Isabel issued the decree that all Muslims must convert to Christianity or leave her Castilian kingdoms. Many Muslims left, but others remained and accepted baptism. Thousands gathered in fields where Christian clerics flung holy water to baptize them.² Over the next century, these “New Christians” and their descendants, who in the middle decades of the sixteenth century increasingly came to be called Moriscos (“moor-like,” or “little Moors”), endured various forms of persecution and oppression.