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Updated: May 5, 2025
As it proved, however, the heroic Aben-Aboo did not die, but lived to play a leading part in the war. With kindly treatment of the Moriscos he would probably have given no more trouble, but the Spanish proved utterly merciless, their soldiers raging through the mountains, and committing the foulest acts of outrage and rapine. In Granada a frightful deed was committed.
The city itself is very Moorish in appearance, with its narrow tortuous streets and gloomy buildings, but I know of no remarkable legacy of the Moors there. All this district was inhabited by the Moriscos or Christianized Moors as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century, and there must their descendants live still, although no longer distinguished from true sons of the soil.
Yet this benefit to agriculture did not appeal to the ruling powers in Spain. The Moriscos were not Spaniards, and could not easily become so while deprived of all civil rights. While nominally Christian, there was a suspicion that at heart they were still Moslems. And their relations to the Moors of Africa and possible league with the corsairs of the Mediterranean aroused distrust.
The rules for allowing witnesses for the prosecution were lax; those for rejecting witnesses for the defence were rigid. Jews, Moriscos, and servants could give evidence against the prisoner but not for him, and the same rule applied to kinsmen to the fourth degree. The principle on which the Inquisition proceeded was that better a hundred innocent should suffer than one guilty person escape.
The Moriscos became the most skilful and industrious agriculturists of Spain, but they were an alien element of the population and from time to time irritating edicts were issued for their control. In 1560 the Moriscos were forbidden to employ African slaves, for fear that they might make infidels of them. This was a severe annoyance, for the wealthy farmers depended on the labor of these slaves.
Then, contrary to orders and heedless of the signal gun which summoned them on board, the soldiery dispersed about the town in search of pillage, and, being taken at a disadvantage by the Turks and Moriscos of the place, were driven in confusion down to the beach, only to perceive Doria's galleys rapidly pulling away. Nine hundred were slaughtered on the seashore and six hundred made prisoners.
In 1500 this policy was adopted in Granada; in 1502, by royal edict signed by Isabella, it was applied to all the dominions of the Castilian crown; and in 1525 it was promulgated in Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia. As a result many of the Moors emigrated to Africa; the rest became Moriscos that is to say, Christians in religion, although Moors in blood.
A large number of the leading Moriscos, about one hundred and fifty in all, had been seized and imprisoned, being held as hostages for the good behavior of their friends. Here, on a night in March, the prison was entered by a body of Spaniards, who assailed the unfortunate captives, arms in hand, and began an indiscriminate massacre.
Under Philip III., a timid and incapable king, the final act came. He was induced to sign an edict for the expulsion of the Moriscos, and this quiet and industrious people, a million in number, were in 1610, like the Jews before them, forced to leave their homes in Spain. It is not necessary to repeat the story of the suffering which necessarily followed so barbarous an act.
What has been said of the circumstances attending the expulsion of the Jews will suffice. That of the Moriscos was not so inhuman in its consequences, but it was serious enough. Fortunately, in view of the intense impolicy and deep intolerance indicated in the act, its evil effects reacted upon its advocates. To the Moriscos the suffering was personal; to Spain it was national.
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