Moor

The term "Moor" has its roots in the Latin word Maurus, coined by the ancient Romans to identify the people of the kingdom of Mauritania in western North Africa. It has also been historically used in Europe to designate Muslim people, particularly those that ruled large regions of the Iberian Peninsula from 711 to 1492. In time, the use of term expanded to encompass dark-skinned Muslim people of African origin in general. "Saracen" became synonymous with Moor, especially in Italy, although in Spain and Portugal, a difference was usually marked between Berber Moors from the Maghreb and others. The region previously known as the Maghreb is today’s Republic of Mauritania, Morocco, Algiers, Libya, Tunis, and Western Sahara.

Brief History

The region of Hispania, formerly a Roman outpost, was ruled by Visigoths when it was conquered by Muslim warriors from the Umayyad Caliphate in 711. The conquest of the Iberian Peninsula—today’s Spain and Portugal—developed through many years, and the Moors eventually dominated most of the Iberian Peninsula and, briefly, some cities of southern France. The conquest sparked centuries of warfare between Christians and Muslims, as well as profound and complex political, religious, artistic, and cultural interactions. To date, the Islamic influence remains strong in the arts, gastronomy, language, and culture of Hispanic societies worldwide.

The rule of the Moors in Spain ended in 1492, with the defeat of the emirate of Granada by the forces of the Catholic kings of Castile and Aragon, Isabella and Ferdinand. The Muslim population of Granada was forced to convert to Catholicism or be exiled. Moors who converted to Christianity were known as Moriscos and continued to suffer persecution and discrimination by Spanish authorities for a long time.

Throughout Europe, the concept of "Moor" had different—although related—connotations. In Spain there were different gradations to the term, depending upon cultural and geographic factors: whether the person so designated lived in Christian Spain, Moorish Spain, or Africa, and whether they were considered friends or foes. In Elizabethan culture, the term Moor or Saracen was used to designate Muslim Africans in general, whom they had often encountered during the era of the Crusades.

Moors were frequently depicted in Western artistic productions through the centuries, representations that were rife with stereotypes. They appear, for instance, in works such as the Spanish medieval play The Victories of Sagamor, the Spanish epic poem El Cid, the French epic poem La Chanson de Roland, in Shakespeare’s play Othello, The Moor of Venice, Mozart’s opera Abduction from the Seraglio, and Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra and Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, among many other works.

By the beginning of the modern era, Moors were also depicted in popular European decorative arts, sometimes known as "Blackamoors." These were representations of African males in exotic attire, which appeared in paintings, statues, pottery, jewelry, and other ornaments. As an important element of Spanish culture, Moors appeared in performance traditions, such as the dances known as Morescas.

Overview

Muslims ruled a large sector of the Iberian Peninsula between the eighth and the late fifteenth centuries. In 711, Muslim forces, composed of North African Arabs and Berbers, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and invaded the Iberian Peninsula, taking advantage of a political crisis among the weakened Visigoths who ruled the region. These Berbers and Arabs came to be known in the region as Moors.

The forces were led by military leader Tariq ibn Ziyad, a representative of Umayyad caliph Musa ibn Nusayr. Aided on occasion by locals discontent with Visigothic rule, Muslims triumphed at the Battle of Guadalete over the last Visigoth king, Roderic. Their territorial expansion continued almost unopposed, easily overrunning most of the Hispanic lands, except for the northern Spanish region of Cantabria and the Pyrenees. During most of their rule, they faced skirmishes between Christian lords and other Moors, until a series of pacts and treaties brought a fragile and often broken peace.

Most of the lands under Islamic rule became a new province of the Umayyad caliphate—or Muslim empire—named Al-Andalus. Al-Andalus was ruled by emirs who served the caliphate, headquartered in Damascus. The Moorish expansion was checked at the north, in Covadonga; they managed to penetrate southern France, where they were defeated by the Frankish forces in Poitiers in 732. This marked the border of Moorish dominions in southern Europe. Peace, however, proved fragile and elusive. Moors conformed along tribal alliances and rejected centralized ruling, which led to constant territorial conflicts among themselves, often in partnerships with Christian allies or vassal states, and against opposing Christian forces to the north.

During the first century of their rule, under Abd-al-Rahman I, the Moorish provinces became independent of the Damascus caliphate and established the Iberian Muslim capital in Cordoba. After years of internal conflicts, a schism divided Al-Andalus and Cordoba, leading to the breakdown of the Spanish caliphate in 1031.

Gradually, Christian rulers began to gain victories against the Islamic Almoravid dynasty and Almohad dynasty, beginning with the capture of Toledo by Alphonse VI, king of Leon and Castile in 1085. Cordoba fell to Christian forces in 1236; in 1249, Alphonse III of Portugal captured the Algarve, in southern Portugal. The emirate of Granada, the last bastion of Muslim rule in the peninsula, became a vassal state of the crown of Castile. In 1429, Muhammad XII of Granada, also known as Boabdil, was defeated and exiled by the forces of Isabella of Castile, ending Muslim rule in Spain.

During their rule, Muslims built magnificent structures such as palaces, gardens, and mosques, leaving their imprimatur on the outstanding beauty of the architecture and ornaments of the region. One of the most important examples of "Moorish" architecture is the palatial complex of the Alhambra in Granada.

Muslim culture in Iberia also exerted a strong influence in music, poetry, fashion, gastronomy, and many other aspects of science and culture. Moreover, Moorish Spain in the Middle Ages was a prosperous and progressive society when the rest of Europe remained mired in decline. Spain became an important hub of the arts and sciences under the Moors, ahead of the rest of Europe in disciplines such as medicine and mathematics. Moors also made the Iberian deserts flourish with crops such as vines and olive groves, changing the economy and agriculture of the Iberian Peninsula forever.

Bibliography

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Basset, Rene. Moorish Literature: Romantic Ballads, Tales of Berbers, Stories of Kabyles, Folklore and Traditions. Ulan, 2012. Print.

Bovill, E. W., and Robin Hallett. The Golden Trade of the Moors: West African Kingdoms in the Fourteenth Century. Princeton: Wiener, 1995. Print.

Burleigh, Nina. "The Enduring Echoes of Moorish Spain." The New York Times, 30 Aug. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/travel/spain-travel-moorish-arab.html. Accessed 28 Oct. 2024.

Clarke, Nicola. The Muslim Conquest of Iberia: Medieval Arabic Narratives. London: Routledge, 2013. Print.

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Fletcher, Richard. Moorish Spain. Oakland: U of California P, 2006.

Lane-Poole, Stanley. The Story of the Moors after Spain. Eworld, 2012. Print.

---. The Story of the Moors in Spain. Giniger, 2013. Print.

Menocal, Maria Rosa. The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain.New York: Back Bay, 2003. Print.

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