Spanish Islam, 1350-1614 (Renaissance and Reformation)

Introduction

By 1350 Christian kings had reconquered most of the territory that would eventually become Spain from Muslim rule, with the exception of Granada in the south. Thousands of Muslims chose to stay in Spain under Christian jurisdiction, and in the late medieval period these mudejars (“those allowed to remain”) formed a legally constituted religious minority, as did the Spanish Jews. In the decades following the fall of Granada in 1492, however, the Catholic rulers of Castile and Aragon, now joined in dynastic union, ordered the baptism of all Muslims in their Spanish realms. The Moriscos, as baptized Muslims came to be known, occupied a problematic space in Spanish society. Officially Catholic, they nonetheless drew the suspicion of inquisitors, who saw them as crypto-Muslims, and the evangelical efforts of churchmen seeking their “true” conversion. Nominally subjects of the Spanish Crown, even so the Moriscos found themselves accused of gathering weapons and conspiring with the dreaded Ottoman Turks. The century-long Morisco era came to a close in 1609–1614, when King Philip III ordered the wholesale expulsion of the “New Christians” from Spain, condemning them all as traitors and heretics. The stark language of the decree elided the evident diversity of the Moriscos, in dress, language, and customs, and their many ties to the “Old Christian” community. In recent years scholars have addressed the subject of Spanish Islam in the period 1350–1614 from multiple angles, including surveys, regional studies, literary approaches, and inquisitorial examinations. This scholarship has revealed a spectrum of responses to Christian rule among mudejars and Moriscos, from assimilation to accommodation to resistance. The study of late medieval and early modern Spain thus holds important implications for the broader question of Christian-Muslim relations in the West. This annotated bibliography, in keeping with the objectives of the series, is intended as an introduction to the key works on the subject for researchers and students. As such it is highly selective, and emphasizes work in English. Curious readers will find ample suggestions for further reading in these studies’ bibliographies.

Surveys

In the early 20th century, the Spanish historian Pascual Boronat and the Philadelphian Henry Charles Lea published sharply contrasting histories of the Moriscos. Boronat characterized the New Christians as obstinate crypto-Muslims and traitors to the Crown, and defended Philip III’s expulsion decree as justified in light of the Moriscos’ fundamental antagonism to Christianity and Spanish society. Lea recognized the continued practice of Islam among the Moriscos, but attributed this to the inconsistent policies of Old Christian authorities, decrying the inquisitorial and ecclesiastical persecution that undermined the medieval status quo of toleration. In recent decades, new surveys of Christian-Muslim relations in 1350–1614 reflect a greater sensitivity to regional distinctions and international connections, in parallel to the “Four Kingdoms” approach to British history in the Tudor-Stuart era. In geographic scope, works such as Catlos 2015 build upon earlier studies of Spanish Islam including MacKay 1977 and Fletcher 2006 by expanding the focus beyond the Iberian Peninsula. Though few today would accept Boronat’s view of the Moriscos as an Ottoman army in waiting, works such as Chejne 1983, Harvey 1992, and Harvey 2005 have shown the many connections between Spain and the Islamic world, particularly the Maghreb. Bandits, corsairs, traders, diplomats, and galley slaves moved throughout the Mediterranean world, connecting the diaspora of Muslims in Spain to North Africa and the Ottoman Empire (just as a diaspora of Spaniards inhabited the presidios, ports, and prisons of the Islamic world). Domínguez Ortiz and Vincent 1993 captured the tragedy of the expulsion, but as Bernabé Pons 2009 elaborates, the expelled Moriscos landed in destinations from Orán and Algiers, to the eastern Mediterranean, to the New World. In its transnationalism, the historiography of Spanish Islam reflects the broader trends in our understanding of late medieval and early modern Spain.

Bernabé Pons, Luis F. Los moriscos: Conflicto, expulsión y diáspora. Madrid: Catarata, 2009.
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This recent survey follows the structure of its subtitle closely, examining societal conflict, expulsion, and dispersion of Moriscos in turn. By tracing the fate of the exiles after 1609, be it acceptance in the Ottoman Empire, persecution in the Maghreb, or quiet assimilation back in Spain, Bernabé Pons reveals the underlying tensions of the Morisco century.
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Catlos, Brian. Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom: c. 1050–1614. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
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This ambitious and comprehensively researched survey assesses the Muslims of Spain from the mudejar era through the end of the Morisco century. Key themes include regional diversity and conflict within Muslim communities, the changing legal status of Muslims and Moriscos under Christian rule, and the concept of diaspora between the age of al-Andalus and the expulsion of the Moriscos.
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Chejne, Anwar. Islam and the West: The Moriscos, a Cultural and Social History. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983.
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For many years the only English-language survey of the Moriscos other than Henry Charles Lea’s (1901), Chejne’s work draws upon the aljamiado literature (Romance language works rendered in Arabic characters) to paint a portrait of a quietly defiant Islamic society under Christian rule. While more recent research using other types of documents has fleshed out considerably our understanding of the Moriscos, this remains valuable for its discussion of Morisco engagement with Islamic writings and traditions.
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Domínguez Ortiz, Antonio, and Bernard Vincent. Historia de los moriscos: Vida y tragedia de una minoría. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1993.
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This Spanish-language survey, first published in 1978, defines the Moriscos as Muslims who conformed to Christianity in public while maintaining their beliefs in private. Tracing the history of Morisco policy from the fall of Granada through the Inquisitorial era, the authors depict the expulsion as the culmination of the tragic persecution of a religious minority.
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Fletcher, Richard. Moorish Spain. Oakland: University of California Press, 2006.
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Fletcher’s highly readable survey, written with minimal scholarly apparatus for a general audience, begins by tracing the Western idea of a tolerant, philosophical al-Andalus, before drawing this into question through sober analysis. Privileging social and cultural history over political narrative, Moorish Spain offers an engaging if selective introduction to medieval Spain.
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Harvey, L. P. Islamic Spain, 1250–1500. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
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L. P. Harvey’s surveys of Islamic Spain provide a valuable complement to previous studies by drawing upon Arabic language sources, several of which appear in translation as well. The first volume paints a vivid portrait of Islamic rule in Granada and of Muslim communities in reconquered areas during the two and a half centuries prior to 1492, with greater emphasis upon political and religious history than society or economics.
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Harvey, L. P. Muslims in Spain, 1500–1614. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226319650.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Harvey’s latter study makes the case for the persistence of Islam among Moriscos after 1500, utilizing the aljamiado literature to explore their clandestine lives. Muslims in Spain, however, neglects to engage recent work arguing for accommodation and assimilation among many Morisco communities.
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MacKay, Angus. Spain in the Middle Ages: From Frontier to Empire, 1000–1500. London: Macmillan, 1977.
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The late 1970s witnessed the publication of a flurry of surveys of medieval Spain, by O’Callaghan, Hillgarth, and others. MacKay’s remains the most readable and a useful point of departure for more recent studies. Adopting as his organizing principle the frontier, MacKay examines first the Reconquest and then the evolution toward empire. Though this work focuses too heavily upon politics in Castile, it offers a valuable transition from earlier debates over Spanish national character to later works that expanded the definition of “frontier.”
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Regional Works

More so than either Boronat or Lea, recent regional studies of Spanish Islam demonstrate great sensitivity to diversity and change over time among Spanish Muslims and their descendants. By the 15th century most of Iberia had long since been reconquered, but the continued presence of Nasrid Granada in the south held implications for the Muslims living under Christian rule. Even after the fall of Granada this hybridity persisted due to the inconsistent implementation of forced baptisms, separated by two decades between Granada and Castile (1501–1502) and the Kingdom of Aragon (1521–1528). The comparatively isolated and numerically greater communities of Moriscos in Valencia, furthermore, differed from the smaller populations of New Christians in Castile; the dispersal of the Granadan Moriscos after the suppression of the second Granadan revolt in 1568–1570 furthermore complicated this situation. The exemptions, exceptions, and evasions that followed the expulsion decree reflected the variegated geography of Morisco Spain.

Ingram, Kevin, ed. The Conversos and Moriscos in Late Medieval Spain and Beyond. 3 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2009–2016.
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This series compiles peer-reviewed articles based on papers presented at the Saint Louis University–Madrid conference in Spain. The three volumes include articles arranged by theme, such as Old Christian–New Christian relations; immigration and the circulation of religious minorities; and literary representations of conversos and Moriscos.
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Aragon

Meyerson 1991 and Benítez Sánchez-Blanco 2001 explore the complexity of royal policy in Valencia in the mudejar and Morisco eras, respectively. Ehlers 2006 places the effort to evangelize—or expel—the Valencian Moriscos within the context of the Catholic Reformation. Miller 2008 examines the Muslims of Aragon via their religious leaders, and Halavais 2002 turns to the Aragonese Moriscos under the Inquisition.

Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, Rafael. Heroicas decisiones: La monarquía católica y los moriscos valencianos. Valencia, Spain: Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 2001.
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This examination of royal policy in the region that emerged as the epicenter of Morisco Spain after the 1560s deftly navigates through the thicket of memoranda, committee reports, and royal decrees, tracing the arc of baptism (Charles V), evangelization (Philip II), and expulsion (Philip III).
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Ehlers, Benjamin. Between Christians and Moriscos: Juan de Ribera and Religious Reform in Valencia, 1568–1614. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
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Inspired by the Council of Trent, the Archbishop Ribera attempted to implement an ambitious reform program following his arrival in Valencia. He generated considerably more support among Old Christians than among Moriscos, who comprised one-third of his diocese. Over the course of his forty-two-year episcopate, Ribera shifted from idealism to cynical pragmatism, ultimately establishing himself as a key advocate and apologist for the expulsion of the Moriscos.
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Halavais, Mary. Like Wheat to the Miller: Community, Convivencia, and the Construction of Morisco Identity in Sixteenth-Century Aragon. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
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Like Wheat to the Miller makes the case that the Aragonese Inquisition imposed the categories of Morisco and Old Christian upon a community that had shown a pattern of accommodation and peaceful co-existence prior to the 16th century. The notarial records of Teruel upon which this study is based do not necessarily reflect greater concerns such as the Ottoman Turks and the rebellion in Granada, but they do provide a valuable corrective to the more conflictive vision that arises from Inquisitorial sources.
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Meyerson, Mark D. The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel: Between Coexistence and Crusade. Oakland: University of California Press, 1991.
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Meyerson’s rich study of mudejar society in Valencia reveals a world of farmers, merchants, and artisans with significant ties to the Old Christian community. This work challenges the traditional view of Ferdinand as a ruler determined to build a Catholic kingdom in Aragon, arguing rather that the Catholic kings responded accordingly to widely divergent circumstances in Aragon, Castile, and Granada.
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Miller, Kathryn. Guardians of Islam: Religious Authority and Muslim Communities of Late Medieval Spain. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.
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Drawing upon fatwa, sermons, and court documents, Miller argues that the faqihs of 15th-century Aragon adapted and preserved Islamic culture to their circumstances under Christian rule. Through exhortation, the liberation of slaves, and the redemption of captives, Muslim leaders maintained a network of ties to the Islamic world that transcended the political boundaries of Aragon.
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Castile and Granada

Tueller 2002 argues for the assimilation of Moriscos across Castile via resistance to the expulsion decree, whereas Dadson 2007 offers a richly detailed portrait of the integrated community in the town of Villarrubia. García Pedraza 2002 demonstrates acculturation in Granada by examining death mores, and Berco 2002 uses court documents from Toledo to make the case for local collaboration between Christians and Moriscos despite the harsh rhetoric of royal decrees.

Berco, Cristian. “Revealing the Other: Moriscos, Crime, and Local Politics in Toledo’s Hinterland in the Late Sixteenth Century.” Medieval Encounters 8.2–3 (2002): 135–159.
DOI: 10.1163/15700670260497024Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This case study of a group of Moriscos acquitted of murder in Toledo reveals the fault lines between stark discrimination, as found in royal decrees and in fears of a Muslim invasion, and the more nuanced view of Christian-Morisco interactions that arose amid local disputes in secular courts.
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Dadson, Trevor. Los moriscos de Villarrubia de los Ojos (siglos XV-XVIII): Historia de una minoría asimilada, expulsada y reintegrada. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2007.
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Dadson’s meticulously detailed study of the Moriscos in this Castilian town defies the common conception of crypto-Muslims persecuted and then exiled from Spain. Dadson demonstrates rather the high degree of assimilation in Villarrubia de los Ojos, where Moriscos served as priests and rarely appeared before the Inquisition. Despite three successive attempts at expulsion in 1611–1613, the majority of the town’s Moriscos either remained or returned, integrating into Spanish society over the centuries.
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García Pedraza, Amalia. Actitudes ante la muerte en la Granada del siglo XVI: Los moriscos que quisieren salvarse. Granada, Spain: Universidad de Granada, 2002.
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García Pedraza forms part of the generation of historians who have demonstrated the diversity of Morisco responses to life in an inquisitorial age. Focusing on death mores, Actitudes ante la muerte examines the gradual acculturation of the Moriscos through Christian and Muslim conceptions of the más allá (great beyond), as well as wills and funerary rites.
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Tueller, James B. Good and Faithful Christians: Moriscos and Catholicism in Early Modern Spain. New Orleans, LA: University Press of the South, 2002.
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Despite its title, this work addresses primarily the Morisco communities of Castile, less numerous and more assimilated on the whole than their counterparts in Aragon and Valencia. Tueller uses documents such as petitions to exempt individual Moriscos from the expulsion decree to shed light upon Moriscos who protested their Catholic faith with the support of their Old Christian priests and neighbors.
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Literary Studies

The traditional distinction between linguists, interested in questions of language and usage, and historians examining the broader context has broken down through the careful study of documents in all the languages of Iberia. Alvarez 2007 uses the aljamiado literature to open a window into the religious lives of the Moriscos and provide a corrective to Inquisitorial and ecclesiastical sources. In a similar vein, the traditional view of Arabic influences on Golden Age literature (López-Baralt 1992) has been revised in work such as Childers 2012 and Fuchs 2009, which explore movement across cultural and religious boundaries. Fastrup 2012 and Marchante-Aragón 2008 exemplify research that situates early modern plays, novels, and poetry amid contemporary conceptions of honor and cultural identity.

Alvarez, Lourdes María. “Prophecies of Apocalypse in Sixteenth-Century Morisco Writings and the Wondrous Tale of Tamīm al-Dārī.” Medieval Encounters 13 (2007): 566–601.
DOI: 10.1163/157006707X222786Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Alvarez’s article offers an excellent analysis of a 16th-century aljamiado text. Drawing on both travel narratives and apocalyptic traditions of the Hadith, the manuscript offers a tale of a journey and return, implying that Moriscos who persisted in their faithful observance would be delivered from persecution. The article includes an English translation of the wondrous tale.
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Childers, William. “Cervantes in Moriscolandia.” Cervantes 32.1 (Spring 2012): 277–290.
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This review essay places Carroll Johnson’s Transliterating a Culture: Cervantes and the Moriscos, edited by Mark Groundland (2009), in the context of other recent work on the theme of cultural mestizaje. Part I, chapter 9 of Don Quixote famously introduces the idea that the tales of the knight-errant derive from Cide Hamete’s history, translated from Arabic by a Morisco. Childers explores the implications of this recurring theme in recent Morisco historiography, with particular reference to the movements of Moriscos, both geographically and between categories of assimilated and apostate, Spanish and Other.
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Fastrup, Anne. “Cross-Cultural Movement in the Name of Honour: Renegades, Honour and State in Miguel de Cervantes’ Barbary Plays.” Bulletin of Spanish Studies 84.3 (2012): 347–367.
DOI: 10.1080/14753820.2012.674234Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Fastrup’s article offers an alternative to the argument that Cervantes’s work, in its explorations of hybridity, resisted attempts by the Spanish church and state to impose mono-cultural constructions of identity. Fastrup maintains that the Castilian state had limited power to shape the cultural identity of its peoples, particularly in far-flung posts such as Orán and Algiers, where several of Cervantes’s stories unfold. Focusing rather on the concept of honor, she sees in works such as Los tratos de Argel a lament for the plight of Spaniards who receive insufficient protection from the state.
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Fuchs, Barbara. Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2009.
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Cutting against the grain of definitions that associate Spanish identity with blood purity, Fuchs examines rather the many ways in which Andalusi customs—clothing, language, architecture, culture—influenced Spanish self-fashioning. Foreigners identified practices such as sitting on low benches as exotic, and Spanish authorities often attempted to ban Moorish clothing, but these anxieties existed in tension with a fascination with luxury goods, and more chivalric depictions of Muslims in works such as Abencerraje.
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López-Baralt, Luce. “The Legacy of Islam in Spanish Literature.” In The Legacy of Muslim Spain. Edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, 505–552. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1992.
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Though some of its conclusions have been revised since its 1992 publication, this essay remains a valuable introduction to the influence of Arabic literature upon the works of canonical figures such as Cervantes and Teresa of Avila.
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Marchante-Aragón, Lucas A. “The King, the Nation, and the Moor: Imperial Spectacle and the Rejection of Hybridity in ‘The Masque of the Expulsion of the Moriscos.’” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 8.1 (Spring–Summer 2008): 98–133.
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This article views a 1617 representation of the expulsion of the Moriscos through the lens of anthropology and postcolonial studies. In Mira de Amescua’s “Masque,” the Duke of Lerma attempted to solidify his (precarious) position as Philip III’s favorite, ritually associating the establishment of the Spanish nation with his role in eliminating threats to the Old Christian hegemony.
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Muslims, Jews, and Christians

The forced baptisms of Muslims might represent a theological watershed from our perspective, but in the 1500s these sacraments gave rise to a sustained struggle over their effectiveness and implications. More so than Boronat or Lea, recent historians have also engaged the diversity of approaches and responses to this incongruity, among both Old Christians and New. Boronat celebrated the advocates for expulsion, who became apologists after the fact, but they did not speak for all churchmen. Bishops, humanists, and Inquisitors continued to push for evangelization—including, in some cases, in the Arabic language—both in the mudejar era, as with Juan de Segovia (Wolf 2014), and right up until 1609. Where others saw the salvation of the body politic, these critics saw the loss of potential converts. The Old Christian laity, moreover, interacted with mudejars and Moriscos in ways that went far beyond denouncing them to the Inquisition. Echevarría 2013 argues for the retention of Islamic practices among mudejars, whereas Remensnyder 2011 and García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano 2013 demonstrate Morisco adoption of Christian traditions. As business partners, as neighbors, as allies and rivals in factional disputes, as marriage partners, Old Christians and Moriscos were intertwined to an extent that casts doubt upon the very existence of any “Spain” that excludes one or the other.

Echevarría, Ana. “Islamic Confraternities and Funerary Practices: Hallmarks of Mudejar Identity in the Iberian Peninsula?” Al-Masaq 25.3 (2013): 345–368.
DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2013.845519Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
To what extent were Muslims living under Christian rule able to retain the religious practices of their forebears? “Islamic Confraternities” offers an interdisciplinary response to this pivotal question, drawing on classical Arabic sources, late medieval aljamiado literature, the proceedings of a Muslim confraternity in Toledo (c. 1400–1420), and archaeological remains recently unearthed along the banks of the River Adaja in Avila. Echevarría argues that the evidence reflects a careful attempt to adhere to Islamic burial norms, led by a learned elite who still displayed a working knowledge of classical Arabic.
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García-Arenal, Mercedes, and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano. The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2013.
DOI: 10.1163/9789004250291Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Complementing recent work by David Coleman and A. Katie Harris on the construction of Christian Granada, the authors use the “discovery” of a series of forged leaden books as a vehicle to explore the connection between the Arabic language and Spanish Islam. The first section focuses on the noble, educated Moriscos who evidently created the books, to establish a shared past with their Old Christian neighbors. García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano then turn to subsequent understandings of Spain’s Islamic past in the age of reason, presenting a deeply researched critique of early modern Orientalism.
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Remensnyder, Amy. “Beyond Muslim and Christian: The Moriscos’ Marian Scriptures.” Journal of Medieval & Early Modern Studies 41.3 (Fall 2011): 545–576.
DOI: 10.1215/10829636-1363945Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Recent scholarship on the cult of the Virgin Mary in both Spain and the New World has explored the importance of Marian apparitions to local communities, who integrated pre-Christian and indigenous elements into the veneration of Mary. Remensnyder demonstrates that the Moriscos participated in the cult of Mary as well, inspired by the frequent invocations of Mary as a loving mother in the famous lead books unearthed in late 16th-century Granada.
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Wolf, Anne Marie. Juan de Segovia and the Fight for Peace: Christians and Muslims in the Fifteenth Century. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014.
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Best known as a conciliarist through his participation in the Council of Basel, Juan de Segovia emerges here rather as an advocate for converting Muslims through dialogue and persuasion. Hewing closely to her subject’s influences and writings, Wolf establishes the importance of both Juan’s studies at Salamanca and his experiences among the mudejars of Castile in the 1420s. Juan de Segovia’s work provided a scriptural and ecclesiological basis for the call for peaceful engagement and evangelization.
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Persecution and Expulsion

Mudejars and Moriscos demonstrated a wide range of responses to life under Christian rule. As Haliczer 1990 demonstrates, a Valencian family might accept baptism, or sign a treaty with the Inquisition, or pay an extra tax to a noble, with the understanding that these actions would allow them to quietly perpetuate the de facto toleration of the mudejar era. A Castilian Morisco might marry an Old Christian, seek office in the local government, and assimilate in dress and language to advance his status, per the Morisco chapter in Monter 1990. A Granadan Morisca might teach her children Muslim prayers and retain the customs and traditions of her ancestors in private space (Perry 2005). The collected articles in García-Arenal and Wiegers 2014 and the study of Pedro de Valencia and his adversaries in the debate over expulsion (Magnier 2010) explore the causes, justifications, and consequences of 1609–1614. From assimilation, to accommodation, to resistance and rebellion, the responses of Moriscos to the expulsion decree mirrored their many responses to their incongruous situation.

García-Arenal, Mercedes, and Gerard Wiegers, eds. The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2014.
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Developed from a 2009 conference, this collected volume examines the debates that preceded the expulsion of the Moriscos, the implementation of the decree in 1609–1614, and the fate of Moriscos who either evaded the decree or scattered around the Mediterranean world.
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Haliczer, Stephen. Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478–1834. Oakland: University of California Press, 1990.
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Though not dedicated exclusively to the Moriscos, this study devotes great attention to the nuevos convertidos on account of their prevalence in Valencia. Haliczer adopts a sociological approach to the Inquisition, examining the power struggle between the royal council, the Inquisitors, and the local interests who served as familiars, accusers, and witnesses. The prosecution of Moriscos proved problematic because of protection from Valencian nobles who profited from their labor and often overlooked their apostasy.
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Magnier, Grace. Pedro de Valencia and the Catholic Apologists of the Expulsion of the Moriscos: Visions of Christianity and Kingship. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010.
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Magnier’s study gives equal time to the advocates for expulsion, who used anti-Islamic invective to define the Moriscos as traitors and heretics, and the humanist Pedro de Valencia, who drew on his classical training to argue for the gradual assimilation of the Moriscos. By contrast to the exclusionary arguments of the (primarily) clerical proponents of expulsion, the royal chronicler Pedro de Valencia developed an Erasmian case for Christian charity, and invoked ancient Rome in promoting permixtion or dispersing Moriscos among Old Christians.
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Monter, William. Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511523434Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Frontiers of Heresy argues that we must venture beyond Toledo to find the trials and populations that defined the Inquisition. From the Basque lands to the Mediterranean tribunals, Monter traces the persecution of those at the edges of Spanish society, and the comparative protection of those within it. In this model the Moriscos often fared worse than those converts from Judaism who assimilated to a greater degree, or groups such as the Roma who fell outside the fold altogether.
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Perry, Mary Elizabeth. The Handless Maiden: Moriscos and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Spain. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
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The Handless Maiden’s opening chapters paint a vivid portrait of the daily lives of Moriscos in Inquisitorial Spain, with particular emphasis upon women and their key role in clandestine religious observance. The Granada rebellion of 1568–1571 provides the pivot to Perry’s discussion of politics and the broader debate over the Morisco “problem,” culminating in the expulsion. Though the sources do not allow for a sustained analysis of Morisco women in the latter half, this work nonetheless makes a strong case for resistance and agency among a persecuted minority.
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Primary and Online Sources

The publication of primary sources on mudejar and Morisco Spain reflects the expanding focus of the broader scholarship on these eras, including regional works (Barletta 2007), literary studies (Fuchs, et al. 2014), interfaith relations (Constable 2011), and connections to the Mediterranean world (Garcés 2011 and van Koningsveld, et al. 1997).

Barletta, Vincent, ed. and trans. A Memorandum for the President of the Royal Audiencia and Chancery Court of the City and Kingdom of Granada. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007.
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In 1567, fearful of a government crackdown on Islamic practices in Granada, the Morisco leader Francisco Núñez Muley issued an impassioned and subtly argued plea on behalf of his people. Defining their differences in dress, language, and custom as cultural rather than religious, Núñez Muley defended the Granadan Moriscos as loyal subjects of the Crown. This well-edited translation presents an alternative vision of Morisco society at the twilight of their time in Granada.
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Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain.
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This website, created by the Unity Productions nonprofit foundation, features timelines and videos exploring Islamic Spain, Andalusi Society, and the accomplishments of the land of three faiths.
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Constable, Olivia Remie, ed. Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources. 2d ed. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2011.
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The second edition of this thorough and carefully selected volume of documents provides students and scholars with multiple perspectives on Spanish Islam from the Muslim conquest to the mudejar era. At every turn, Constable offers documents that challenge the reader to explore such vital issues as the reasons behind the fall of the Visigothic kingdom, Christian-Muslim polemics and theology, and the legal status of Peoples of the Book under Muslim and subsequently Christian rule.
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Cowans, Jon, ed. Early Modern Spain: A Documentary History. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2003.
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This invaluable collection of primary sources includes key documents in English on the Morisco era, such as the surrender treaty of the Kingdom of Granada, the 1609 decree of expulsion of the Moriscos, and contemporary views of the Moriscos and their exile.
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Early Modern Spanish History Notes.
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Though not dedicated exclusively to religion, this website maintained by Scott K. Taylor is searchable and includes many references to work on the mudejars and Moriscos.
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Fuchs, Barbara, Larissa Brewer-García, and Aaron J. Ilika, eds. “The Abencerraje” and “Ozmín and Daraja”: Two Sixteenth-Century Novellas from Spain. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2014.
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If on one hand Habsburg Spain was heir to a polemical tradition that offered a scathing portrayal of Muslims as carnal, these two novellas reflect a contrasting literary tradition that idealized the dreaded Saracens as chivalric heroes. These expertly rendered translations, buttressed with an insightful critical apparatus and supplementary documents, bring these tales to English-speaking audiences.
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Garcés, Maria Antonia, ed. An Early Modern Dialogue with Islam: Antonio de Sosa’s Topography of Algiers (1612). Translated by Diana de Armas Wilson. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011.
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An expertly rendered translation with essential critical apparatus, this edition provides English-language readers with a wide-ranging eyewitness account of the cultural life of Algiers in the later 16th century. This world of corsairs, renegade Christians, and captives unfolded in close communication with Spanish merchants and exiles.
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García-Arenal, Mercedes. Los Moriscos. Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1975.
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A Spanish-language collection of documents of the late 15th to early 17th century, ranging from government decrees to inquisitorial sources.
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Homza, Lu Ann, ed. The Spanish Inquisition, 1478–1614: An Anthology of Sources. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2006.
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Homza’s Inquisition reader, in addition to its rich portrait of the institution that influenced the contours of Spanish society in the Morisco century, offers a detailed account of an auto de fé in Granada following the second rebellion of the Alpujarras (1571).
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Kagan, Richard, and Abigail Dyer, ed. and trans. Inquisitorial Inquiries: Brief Lives of Secret Jews & Other Heretics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
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Amid the trials of conversos and other accused heretics, the confession of Diego Díaz, a former Morisco who risked life and limb to return to Spain after the 1609 expulsion, features an account of his captivity and public conformity to Islam in Algiers—all the while, as he later claimed to the Inquisition, maintaining his Christian faith in secrecy.
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Smith, Colin. Christians and Moors in Spain. Vols. 1–2. Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips, 1988–1992.
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The first two volumes in this series offer primarily Christian views of interfaith relations in Spain, 711–1150 (vol. I) and 1195–1614 (vol. II), whereas the third installment, edited by Charles Melville and Ahmad Ubaydli, provides Muslim perspectives. Documents include accounts of battles, legal codes and lawsuits, and chronicles such as Eulogius’s martyrology of Isaac of Tábanos, a Christian executed by the Muslim authorities of Córdoba in 851.
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van Koningsveld, P. S., Q. al-Samarrai, and G. A. Wiegers, ed. and trans. Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn ʿalá ‘l-qawm al-kāfirīn (The supporter of religion against the infidels). Historical study, critical edition & annotated translation. Madrid: CSIC, 1997.
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Al-Hajari (d. c. 1640), an exile from Spain to North Africa, returned to France and Northern Europe to negotiate safe conducts for other expelled Moriscos and to debate theology with Orientalists. Despite his criticisms of Spanish policy, Al-Hajari’s account demonstrates a remarkable sensitivity to distinctions among the various Christians he encountered.