Moors

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Moorish Ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I of England
Moorish Ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I of England

The Moors were the medieval Muslim inhabitants of al-Andalus (the Iberian Peninsula including present day Gibraltar, Spain and Portugal) as well as the Maghreb and western Africa, whose culture is often called Moorish. The word was also used more generally in Europe to refer to anyone of Arab,Berber or North African descent The name Moors derives from the ancient tribe of the Maure and their kingdom, Mauretania.

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[edit] History

In 711, the Moors conquered Visigothics, mainly Christian Hispania. Under their leader, an African Berber general named Tariq ibn-Ziyad, they brought most of the Iberian Peninsula under Islamic rule in an eight-year campaign. They moved northeast across the Pyrenees Mountains but were defeated by the Frank, Charles Martel, at the Battle of Poitier in 732. The Moorish state fell into civil conflict in the 750s. The Moors ruled in the Iberian peninsula, except for areas in the northwest (such as Asturias, where they were defeated at the battle of Covadonga) and the largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees, and in North Africa for several decades. Though the number of "Moors" remained small, they gained large numbers of converts. According to Ronald Segal, author of Islam's Black Slaves[1], some 5.6 million of Iberia's 7 million inhabitants were Muslim by 1200, virtually all of them native inhabitants. The persecutions of these Muslim populations and their massive exodus at the time of the Catholic reconquista in the second part of the 15th Century are considered the main reasons why their number shrank to one-third by 1600.

As a sign of decline, the country had broken up into a number of mostly Islamic fiefdoms, which were partly consolidated under the Caliphate of Cordoba.

A Christian enclave from the Muslim conquest in Asturias, a small Visigothic northwestern Spanish kingdom, initiated conflicts in earnest between Christian and Muslim in the 10th century. Christian states based in the north and west slowly extended their power over the rest of Iberia. The Navarre, Galicia, León, Portugal, Aragón, Catalonia or Marca Hispanica, and Castile in fits and starts began a process of expansion and internal consolidation during the next several centuries under the flag of Reconquista.

In 1212, a coalition of Christian kings under the leadership of Alfonso VIII of Castile drove the Muslims from Central Iberia. However, the Moorish Kingdom of Granada continued for three more centuries in the southern Iberian peninsula. This kingdom is known in modern time for magnificent architectural works such as the Alhambra palace. On January 2, 1492, the leader of the last Muslim stronghold in Granada surrendered to armies of a recently united Christian Spain (after the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile). The remaining Muslims and Jews were forced to leave Iberia, to die or to convert to Roman Catholic Christianity. In 1480, Isabella and Ferdinand instituted the Inquisition in Spain, as one of many changes to the role of the church instituted by the monarchs. The Inquisition was aimed mostly at Jews and Muslims who had overtly converted to Christianity but were thought to be practicing their faiths secretly -- known respectively as marranos and moriscos -- as well as at heretics who rejected Roman Catholic orthodoxy, including alumbras who practiced a kind of mysticism or spiritualism. They were an important portion of the peasants in some territories, like Aragon, Valencia or Andalusia, until their systematic expulsion in the years from 1609 to 1614. Henri Lapeyre has estimated that this affected 300,000 out of a total of 8 million inhabitants of the peninsula at the time.[2]

In the meantime, the tide of Islam had rolled not just westward to Iberia, but also eastward, through India, the Malayan peninsula, and Indonesia up to Mindanao-—one of the major islands of an archipelago which the Spaniards had reached during their voyages westward from the New World. By 1521, the ships of Magellan and other Spanish expeditioners had themselves reached that island archipelago, which they named Las Islas de Filipinas, after Philip II of Spain. In Mindanao, the Spaniards also named these kris-bearing people as Moros or 'Moors'. Today in the Philippines, this ethnic group of people in Mindanao who are generally Muslims are called 'Moros'. This identification of Islamic people as Moros persists in the modern Spanish language spoken in Spain. See Reconquista.

[edit] Religious relations

The initial rule of the Moors in the Iberian peninsula under this Caliphate of Cordoba is generally regarded as tolerant in its acceptance of Christians, Muslims and Jews living in the same territories, though in various periods Jews were expelled and Christians relegated to a kind of 2nd class status. The Caliphate of Córdoba collapsed in 1031 and the Islamic territory in Iberia came to be ruled by North African Moors of the Almoravid Dynasty. This second stage started an era of Moors rulers guided by a more orthodox Islam leaving behind a part of the tolerant practices of the past.

[edit] Architecture

The arches of red-and-white stripes inside the "La Mezquita" in Córdoba, Spain represent some of the pinnacles of the Moorish architectures.
The arches of red-and-white stripes inside the "La Mezquita" in Córdoba, Spain represent some of the pinnacles of the Moorish architectures.

Moorish Iberia excelled in city planning; the sophistication of their cities was astonishing. According to one historian, Cordova "had 471 mosques and 300 public baths … the number of houses of the great and noble were 63,000 and 200,077 of the common people. There were … upwards of 80,000 shops. Water from the mountain was distributed through every corner and quarter of the city by means of leaden pipes into basins of different shapes, made of the purest gold, the finest silver, or plated brass as well into vast lakes, curios tanks, amazing reservoirs and fountains of Grecian marble." The houses of Cordova were air conditioned in the summer by "ingeniously arranged draughts of fresh air drawn from the garden over beds of flowers, chosen for their perfume, warmed in winter by hot air conveyed through pipes bedded in the walls." This list of impressive works includes lamp posts that lit their streets at night to grand palaces, such as the one called Azzahra with its 15,000 doors.[3] Without a doubt, during the height of the Caliphate of Córdoba, the city of Córdoba proper was one of the major capitals in Europe and probably the most cosmopolitan city of its time.

[edit] Origins

The Roman Term "Maur" described the native inhabitants of North Africa west of modern Tunisia. Ancient to modern authors, as well as portraits, show them with a variety of features, just as the modern population contains. This was contrasted with other peoples described as "Aethiopes", or Ethiopians, who lived further south, and Egyptians, or "Aegyptus". As described above, they composed a variety of peoples in this region who probably had origins in the Sahara when it desiccated in the late Holocene period. Whether they were light skinned and blond hair, dark skinned, or somewhere in between, Dr. Keita has noted that this diversity was indigenous to the North African region, and not the result of foreign settlement (Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs).

Tariq ibn-Ziyad, born of a Berber chief, rose to the rank of general in the Moorish army and led an invasion to Iberia. On April 30, 711, Tariq and his forces landed on the Mediterranean coast of the peninsula with 7,000 troops. He immediately ordered the burning of the boats. This was done to assure his troops that there would either be victory or death.

[edit] Etymology

"Moor" comes from the Greek word mauros (plural mauroi), meaning "black" or "very dark", which in Latin became Mauro (plural Mauri). However, anthropologists have noted that these terms are very subjective. The Latin word for black was not mauro but niger, or fusco for “very dark”. In some, but certainly not all, cases, Moors were described as fuscus. Due to the relevance of this population in the Iberian peninsula during the Middle Ages, this term may have entered English—and other European languages less exposed to this group—via its Spanish cognate moro. It is important to emphasize that the Greeks and Romans clearly saw black-skinned Africans as a separate group of people. This was highlighted in the Greek word Aithiops, meaning, literally, a dark-skinned person (from aithi-, "burnt" and ops, "face; visage"). The word was applied only to some Ethiopians and to certain other dark and black-skinned Africans. With a few poetical exceptions, it was not applied to Egyptians or to inhabitants of northwest Africa, such as Carthaginians, Numidians, or Moors.

The derivative Maures described the peoples of North Africa in the Maghreb (west of modern Tunisia). Moors were distinguished from what the Greeks labeled "Aethiopes", or Ethiopians.[citation needed] Herodotus in his “the Histories” described two types of northern Africans: the light skinned Garamentes of northern Libya and the dark-skinned, “Trogdolyte Ethiopians” in the southern Fezzan and northeast Africa . In Frank Snowden’s book “Before Color Prejudice” the Garamentes were sometimes spoken of as “white Ethiopians”: “Melanogaetuli (black Gaetuli) and Leukaethiopes (white Ethiopians, versus "Aethiopes". This matches later terms that distinguished "Moors' from "blackamoors". Some Garamentes did live in the modern Fezzan of northwestern Africa and were described by Lucan as nigri (black), furvi (swarthy) and other diverse adjectives. According to the 1st century AD Roman poet Manilius, Moors represented a wide spectrum of color schemes with: Ethiopians, the darkest; Indians, less sunburned; Egyptians, mildly dark; and the Mauri, the lightest.[citation needed] Herodotus and many of his contemporaries commonly refered to Egyptians and Nubians as Ethiopians. To the Greeks, modern Ethiopia was known as Abbasynia. The very word Nubile, meaning "Young and Beautiful," is derived from the Greek word for the Nubian peoples, whom the Greeks considered to be quite handsome as did the Egyptians as attested to in many of their romantic poems.

According to the older versions of the Oxford English Dictionary, the Moors, during the Middle Ages and as late as the 17th century, were described as being black, dark skinned, or swarthy in complexion. Modern texts, such as Webster's New World Dictionary, groups all moors together under the terms Arab and Berber which has caused individuals to omit the association with Africans that are racially considered "black". Considering that Berbers were a mixture of various shades of diverse nomadic groups comprised of East Africans, North Africans, West Africans and Sub-Saharan Africans the claims of racial heritage being of one specific group are at best dubious. Today, it is the lighter inhabitants of Morocco and Mauretania that are called "Moors".

In Spanish usage, "Moro" (Moor) came to have an even broader usage, to mean "Muslims" in general (just as "Rumi", "from the Eastern Roman Empire", came to mean "Christian" in many Arabic dialects); thus the Moros of Mindanao in the Philippines, and the Moriscos of Granada. Moro is also used to describe all things dark as in "Moor", "moreno" and it has led to many European surnames such as "Moore", "De Muaro", and so on. The Milanese Duke Ludovico Il Moro was so-called because of his swarthy complexion.

Until the early 20th century "Moor" was often used by Western geographers to refer to "mixed" Arab-Berber North Africans, especially of the towns, as distinct from supposedly more pure-blooded Arabs and Berbers; thus the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica defines "Moor" as "the name which, as at present used, is loosely applied to any native of Morocco, but in its stricter sense only to the townsmen of mixed descent. In this sense it is also used of the Muslim townsmen in the other Barbary states." But even then, it recognized that "the term Moors has no real ethnological value."


[edit] Human population genetics

Dr. Shomarka Keita, a biological anthropologist from Howard University, has suggested that populations in Carthage circa 200 BC and northern Algeria 1500 BCE were very diverse. As a group, they plotted closest to the populations of Northern Egypt and intermediate to Northern Europeans and tropical Africans. Keita stated “The data supported the comments from ancient authors observed by classicists: everything from “fair-skinned blonds to peoples who were dark skinned ‘Ethiopian’ or part Ethiopian in appearance.” Modern evidence showed a similar diversity among present North Africans, suggesting that migrations did not affect this area[citation needed]. Moreover, this “diversity” of phenotypes and peoples was probably due to “in situ” differentiation, not foreign influxes. Of course foreign influxes certainly had an impact: Phoenician, Greek, Roman Vandal and Arab migration had some impact from 900 BCE to 730 AD. But they did not replace the indigenous Berber population.

Haplotype V is a trait found among more than 2/3 of the modern Berbers in North Africa and is indigenous to this area. This trait is also found in high frequencies in Andalusia (as much as 40%)[4]. Moreover, about 7% of the population of Spain, including 14% of Andalusians, have been found to have this haplotype (69% of the Berbers in Morocco do-see Lucotte and Mercier on these genetic studies).

Since Homo sapiens have lived in Africa longer than anywhere else, and given the size and different environments of the continent, it is easy to conclude that phenotype diversity there would be greater than elsewhere. Everyone from fair-skinned, blue-eyed Berbers to West Africans with "Negroid" features to East Africans of Ethiopia with elongated features can all be rooted in the African continent itself rather than in invasion. The differences between modern Egyptians, Algerians, Ethiopians, Nigerians, and Sudanese exist for the same reasons they do between Chinese, Indians, and Arabs: intracontinental diversification over tens of thousands of years. Albert Hourani, author of “History of the Arab Peoples”, sums up the state of current knowledge: “The expansion of the Banu Hilal and other Arab tribes (13th century), like the initial Arab conquests, does not seem to have involved sufficiently large numbers to transform the make-up of the Maghrebs population.”

[edit] Historical images

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  • In pictures from Islamic Iberia during the 7th to 15th centuries, the Moors are portrayed , with some exceptions, looking no different than the native Iberians (distinguished only by their dress). Dark Skinned and East Africans were called “Zanj”.
  • When the Arabs arrived in North Africa during the 7th century AD, ending the Greco-Roman period, they also used various terms to describe the Berbers of this region. However, it was the area south of Egypt and the Berber-populations that was called “Bilad-al-Sudan” or “land of the blacks”, not the coastal regions.
  • There are also many pictures to be found of Berbers and Moors of obvious sub-Saharan African descent.

(See also: Berber people Origin and Berber people Libyans & Numidians)

[edit] Other Moors in history

  • Macrinus, 164-218, a Moorish officer, prefect of the Praetorian Guard under Caracalla. He became the first Roman emperor who was not a senator in 217-18.
  • Estevanico, also referred to as "Stephen the Moor", explorer of what is now the southwest of the United States in the service of Spain.
  • Gildo was a Moorish chieftain who instigated a rebellion against the Roman Empire in 398.
  • Lusius Quietus was a Roman general and governor of Iudaea in 117. Originally a Moorish prince, his military ability won him the favor of Trajan, who even designated him as his successor. During the emperor's Parthian campaign, the numerous Jewish inhabitants of Babylonia revolted and were relentlessly suppressed by Quietus, who was rewarded by being appointed governor of Judea. Restlessness in Palestine caused Trajan to send his favorite, as a legate of consular rank, to Judea, where he continued his sanguinary course.
  • Saint Benedict the Moor (1526–1589) Benedict was born of African parents who were slaves on an estate near Messina, Sicily. Though of the lowest social rank, they are typically perceived as noble in heart and mind. As a baby, Benedict was freed by his master and, as a young boy, he showed such a devout and gentle disposition that he was called the "Holy Moor". While working in the fields one day, some neighbors taunted him on account of his race and parentage. His meek demeanor greatly impressed a Franciscan hermit who was passing by and who uttered the prophetic words: "You ridicule a poor Negro now; before long you will hear great things of him." Wishing to join these hermits, Benedict sold his meager belongings and gave the proceeds to the poor and then entered the community. After the death of the superior, Benedict was chosen his successor, though greatly against his will. When Pope Pius IV ordered all hermits to disband or join some Order, Benedict became a Friar Minor of the Observance at Palermo, and was made a cook. He was happy in this work since it enabled him to perform many little acts of kindness toward the others. His brethren were greatly edified by the saintly cook, especially when they saw angels at times helping him in his work. The Chapter of 1578 made him guardian, or superior, of the friary, though he protested that he was not a priest and, in fact, could neither read nor write. He was a model superior, however, and won the esteem and obedience as well as the love of his subjects. As superior, he gave free rein to his love for the poor, and no matter how openhanded he was, the food never seemed to give out. After serving as superior, he was made novice master, and to this difficult post he brought gifts that were evidently infused: he was able to instruct with an amazing knowledge of theology and to read the hearts of others. At his request, he was relieved of his office and again made cook, but he was no longer an obscure Brother, for thousands flocked to the friary, seeking cures or alms or counsel and help. He died after a brief illness, having foretold the hour of his death. His veneration has spread throughout the world, and the Negroes of North America have chosen him their patron. [5]
  • St. Maurice, the Knight of the Holy Lance, is regarded as the greatest patron saint of the Holy Roman Empire. Rumored to be a Roman commander of Egyptian descent, Maurice is said to have gained sainthood after refusing to have his legion massacre a Christian uprising. Honored as early as 460, St. Maurice has had numerous artworks and structures—even a castle—dedicated to him. The existence of nearly three hundred major images of St. Maurice have been catalogued, and even today his veneration is seen within numerous cathedrals in eastern Germany. He is also the Patron Saint of the United States infantry, with the highest honor given to a member of the Association of the United States Infantry being the "Order of Saint Maurice."
  • Alessandro de' Medici (July 22, 1510 – January 6, 1537) called "il Moro" ("the Moor") by his contemporaries was the Duke of Penne and also Duke of Florence (from 1532) and ruler of Florence from 1530 until 1537). Though illegitimate, he was the last of the "senior" branch of the Medici to rule Florence and the first to be hereditary duke. Historians (such as Christopher Hibbert) believe he had been born to a black serving-woman in the Medici household, identified in documents as Simonetta da Collavechio. The nickname is said to derive from his features (Hibbert 1999: 236). Contemporary portraits depict his full lips and coppery skin - he still has descendants (via his own illegitimate children) among many European royal and noble families.

[edit] Present-day Moors

Beside its usage in historical context Moor and Moorish (Italian and Spanish: moro, French: maure, Portuguese: mouro / moiro) is used to designate an ethnic group speaking the Hassaniya Arabic dialect, inhabiting Islamic Republic of Mauritania and parts of Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria, Niger and Mali.

In modern, colloquial Spanish the term "Moro" refers to any person who practices Islam, especially those born in the Maghreb or those born in Spain of Moroccan or Algerian heritage. Similarly, in modern, colloquial Portuguese the term "Mouro" is used as a derogatory term by citizens of Northern Portugal to refer to the inhabitants of the southern areas of the country.

This usage has also been maintained in the Philippines, a former Spanish colony, where the local Muslim population in the Southern islands are called (and call themselves) "Moros" (see Muslim Filipino).

The Muslims in Sri Lanka trace their ancestry to the Arabic Moors that invaded North Africa in 640CE. The majority of the moors can be found in the Central Hills ( Akurana,Kandy,Gampola), Eastern and the Capital city of Colombo. Many educational Instituuions have been founded in Sri Lanka by the moors including Azhar College Akurana, Zahira College, Colombo etc.,[citation needed]. Historically, European scholars have divided the Moors into two groups: African, and European-Arab Moors. (Arabic: البيضان, transliterated: al-bīḍānī) are nomads of Arabo-Berber origin. This represented the smallest group within the Moorish population. Moors were all one class and culture. Although darker skinned African Moors made up the majority of this group, race and ethnic division did not exist amongst Moors and there was no distinction in regards to race.[citation needed]

[edit] Moors in popular culture

  • A popular Cuban dish, consisting of white rice and black beans, is named "Cristianitos y Moros;" the rice representing the fair-skinned Christians, and the beans, the darker-skinned Moors.
  • Stephen Colbert references a battle involving in the Moors on the Daily Show's March 27 2007 episode.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Ronald Segal, Islam's Black Slaves (2003), Atlantic Books, ISBN 1-90380981-9
  2. ^ See History of Al-Andalus
  3. ^ Ivan Van Sertima, The Golden Age of the Moor (Journal of African Civilizations, Vol 11, Fall 1991), Transaction Publishers, 1991, ISBN 1-56000-581-5
  4. ^ North African Berber and Arab Influences in the Western Mediterranean Revealed by Y-Chromosome DNA Haplotypes Human Biology - Volume 78, Number 3, June 2006, pp. 307-316
  5. ^ A Saint A Day by Berchman's Bittle, O. F. M. Cap. published by The Bruce Publishing Company, ©1958
  6. ^ The English ethnologist and antiquarian scholar Gerald Massey writing in 1881 in his massive two-volume text, A Book of the Beginnings

[edit] Bibliography

  • Jan Carew, Rape of Paradise
  • David Brion Davis, "Slavery: Black, White, Muslim, Christian"
  • Herodotus, "The Histories"
  • Shomark O.Y. Keita, "Genetic Haplotyes in North Africa"
  • Shomark O.Y. Keita, "Craniometric Data from North Africa
  • Shomark O.Y. Keita, "Further Craniometric Data from North Africa"
  • Shomark O.Y. Keita, "Bernal vs. Snowden"
  • Bernard Lewis, "The Middle East"
  • Bernard Lewis, "The Muslim Discovery of Europe"
  • Bernard Lewis, "Race and Slavery in Islam"
  • Stanley Lane-Poole, Turkey (1888) -
  • Stanley Lane-Poole, The Barbary Cosairs (1890) -
  • Stanley Lane-Poole, The History of the Moors in Spain
  • J.A. Rogers, Nature Knows no Color Line
  • Ronald Segal, "Islam's Black Slaves"*
  • Ivan Van Sertima, The Golden Age of the Moor
  • Frank Snowdon, "Before Color Prejudice"
  • Frank Snowdon, "Blacks in Antiquity"
  • David M. Goldenberg "The Curse of Ham"
  • Lucotte and Mercier- see various genetic studies

[edit] External links

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