Morisco - Expulsion

Expulsion

At the instigation of the Duke of Lerma and the Viceroy of Valencia, Archbishop Juan de Ribera, Philip III expelled the moriscos from Spain between 1609 (Valencia) and 1614 (Castile). They were ordered to depart "under the pain of death and confiscation, without trial or sentence... to take with them no money, bullion, jewels or bills of exchange... just what they could carry." Estimates for the number expelled have varied, although contemporary accounts set the number at around 300,000 (about 4% of the Spanish population). The majority were expelled from the Crown of Aragon (modern day Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia), particularly from Valencia, where Morisco communities remained large, visible and cohesive; and Christian animosity was acute, particularly for economic reasons. Some historians have blamed the subsequent economic collapse of the Spanish Eastern Mediterranean coast on the region's inability to replace Morisco workers successfully with Christian newcomers. Many villages were totally abandoned as a result. New laborers were fewer in number and were not as familiar with local agricultural techniques. In the Kingdom of Castille (including Andalusia, Murcia and the former kingdom of Granada), by contrast, the scale of Morisco expulsion was much less severe. This was due to the fact that their presence was less felt as they made up a considerably smaller percentage of the total population, as well as the government ordered internal dispersion of Morisco communities after the War of the Alpujarras, making them a less distinct group that soon began to merge with and disappear into the wider society.

Adult Moriscos were often assumed to be covert Muslims (i.e. crypto-Muslims), but expelling their children presented Catholic Spain with a dilemma. As the children had all been baptized, the government could not legally or morally transport them to Muslim lands. Some authorities proposed that children should be forcibly separated from their parents, but sheer numbers showed this to be impractical. Consequently, the official destination of the expellees was generally stated to be France (more specifically Marseille). After the assassination of Henry IV in 1610, about 150,000 moriscos went there. Most of the Moriscos migrated from Marseille to North Africa, with only about 40,000 settling permanently in France.

The overwhelming majority of the refugees settled in Muslim-held lands, mostly in the Ottoman Empire (Algeria and Tunisia) or Morocco. However they were ill-fitted with their Spanish language and European customs.

During the reign of Sultan Mohammed ash-Sheikh (1554–1557), the Turkish danger was felt on the eastern borders of Morocco and the sovereign, even though a hero of the holy war against Christians, showed a great political realism by becoming an ally of the King of Spain, still the champion of Christianity. Everything changed from 1609, when King Philip III of Spain decided to expel the Moriscos which, numbering about three hundred thousand, were Muslims who had remained Christian. Rebels, always ready to rise, they vigorously refused to convert and formed a state within a state. The danger was that with the Turkish pressing from the east, the Spanish authorities, who saw in them a "potential danger", decided to expel them, mainly to Morocco…. —Bernard Lugan, Histoire du Maroc: Le Maroc et L'Occident du XVIe au XXe Siecle

Scholars have noted that many Moriscos joined the Barbary Corsairs, who had a network of bases from Morocco to Libya. In the Corsair Republic of Sale, they became independent of Moroccan authorities and profitted of trade and piracy. Also, Morisco mercenaries in the service of the Moroccan sultan, using arquebuses, crossed the Sahara and conquered Timbuktu and the Niger Curve in 1591. Their descendants formed the ethnic group of the Arma. A Morisco worked as a military advisor for Sultan Al-Ashraf Tumanbay II of Egypt (the last Egyptian Mamluk Sultan) during his struggle against the Ottoman invasion in 1517 led by Sultan Selim I. The Morisco military advisor advised Sultan Tumanbay to use infantry armed with guns instead of depending on cavalries. Arabic sources recorded that Moriscos of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt joined Ottoman armies. Many Moriscos of Egypt joined the army in the time of Muhammad Ali of Egypt.

Numerous Moriscos remained in Spain, living among the Christian population. Some stayed on for genuine religious reasons, some for merely economic reasons. It is estimated that in the kingdom of Granada alone, between 10,000 and 15,000 Moriscos remained after the general expulsion of 1609.

The number of Moriscos which remained following the edict is subject to historical debate, although recent historians agree both that the original morisco population and the number of them who avoided expulsion is higher than was previously thought.

According to Professor Dwight Reynolds "perhaps the most shocking thing in the expulsion is they were not actually expelling Arabs nor were they expelling Berbers. The huge majority of the people that were being expelled, by blood, by DNA if you will, were as Iberian as their Christian cousins in the North who were kicking them out of Peninsula".