Moors

A self-depiction by the Muslims in Iberia. Taken from the Tale of Bayad and Riyad

The Moors were the medieval Muslim inhabitants of Morocco, western Algeria, Western Sahara, Mauritania, the Iberian Peninsula, Septimania, Sicily and Malta. The Moors called their Iberian territory Al-Andalus, an area comprising Gibraltar, much of what is now Spain and Portugal, and part of France. There was also a Moorish presence in present-day southern Italy after they occupied Mazara in 827 until their last settlement of Lucera was destroyed in 1300. The religious difference of the Moorish Muslims led to a centuries-long conflict with the Christian kingdoms of Europe called the Reconquista. The Fall of Granada in 1492 saw the end of the Muslim presence in Iberia.

The term "Moors" has also been used in Europe in a broader sense to refer to anyone of Arab or African descent, whether living in Spain or North Africa. Moors are not a distinct or self-defined people. Medieval and early modern Europeans applied the name to the Berbers, North African Arabs, Muslim Iberians and West Africans from Mali and Niger who had been absorbed into the Almoravid dynasty. Mainstream scholars observed in 1911 that "The term 'Moors' has no real ethnological value."

The Andalusian Moors of the late Medieval era inhabited the Iberian Peninsula after the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the early 8th century. The Moors' rule stretched at times as far as modern-day Mauritania, West African countries, and the Senegal River.

Earlier, the Classical Romans interacted with (and later conquered) parts of Mauretania, a state that covered northern portions of modern Morocco and much of north western and central Algeria during the classical period. The people of the region were noted in Classical literature as the Mauri. Today such groups inhabit Mauritania and parts of Algeria, Western Sahara, Morocco, Niger and Mali. In the languages of Europe, a number of associated ethnic groups have been historically designated as "Moors". In modern Iberia, the term is applied to people of Moroccan ethnicity. "Moor" is sometimes colloquially applied to any person from North Africa, but some people consider this usage of the term pejorative, especially its Spanish version "moro".

Etymology

In Latin, the word Maurus (plural Mauri) is in origin an ethnonym, the name of the Mauri people who were also eponymous of the Mauretania province of the Roman empire on the northwestern fringe of Africa. The Latin form of the name is adapted from Greek ethnography, where the people was known Mauroi (Μαῦροι). The Greek name has been speculatively connected to the adjective ἀμαυρός, meaning "dark; faint, dim".

In the Medieval Romance languages (such as Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian), the Latin word tooksuch forms as mouro, moro, moir, mor and maur.

Through nominalization, the root has taken on a variety of meanings. Moreno, from the Latin root, can mean dark-skinned in Spain and Portugal, as well as in Brazil. Also in Spanish, morapio is a humorous name for "wine", especially that which has not been "baptized" or mixed with water, i.e., pure unadulterated wine. Among Spanish speakers, moro ("Moor") came to have a broader meaning, applied to both Moros of Mindanao in the Philippines, and the moriscos of Granada. Moro is refers to all things dark, as in "Moor", moreno, etc. It was used as a nickname; for instance, the Milanese Duke Ludovico Sforza was called Il Moro because of his dark complexion.

In Portugal and Spain, mouro (feminine, moura) may also refer to supernatural beings known as enchanted moura, where "moor" implies 'alien' and 'non-Christian'; These beings were siren-like fairies with golden or reddish hair and a fair face. They were believed to have magical properties. From this root, the name moor is also applied to unbaptized children, meaning not Christian. In Basque, mairu means moor and also refers to a mythical people.

Mauri people of ancient Mauretania

See also: Roman-Moorish kingdoms

Eastern Hemisphere in 476 CE, showing the Mauri kingdoms after the fall of Rome.

Although the Moors came to be identified as Muslim, the term Mauri pre-dates Islam. It derives from the small Numidian Kingdom of Maure of the 3rd century BCE in what is now northern central and western part of Algeria and a part of northern Morocco. The name was applied to people of the entire region. "They were called Maurisi by the Greeks", wrote Strabo, "and Mauri by the Romans." During that age, the Mauri or Moors were trading partners of Carthage, the independent city state founded by Phoenicians. During the second Punic war between Carthage and Rome, two Mauri Numidian kings took different sides, Syphax with Carthage, Masinissa with the Romans, decisively so at Zama.

Thereafter, the Mauri entered into treaties with Rome. King Jugurtha responded to violence against merchants with war. Juba, a later king, was a friend of Rome. Eventually, the Roman Empire incorporated the region as the provinces of Mauretania Caesariensis and Mauretania Tingitana. The area around Carthage was already part of the province of Africa. Roman rule was effective enough so that these provinces became integrated into the empire.

During the Christian era, two prominent Berber churchmen were Tertullian and St. Augustine. After the fall of Rome, the Germanic kingdom of the Vandals ruled much of the area.

Neither Vandal nor Byzantine could extend effective rule; the interior remained under Mauri Berber control. For more than 50 years, the Berbers resisted Arab armies from the east. Among its memorable resistance were the forces led by Kahina, the Berber prophetess of the Awras, during 690–701. By 700 CE, or the 92nd lunar year after the Hijra, the Arab Muslims dominated North Africa.

Moors is also a term used to identify Muslims in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan Moors are 12% of the population of Sri Lanka and they are predominantly followers of Islam. The Moors in Sri Lanka are descendants of Arab traders who settled in Sri Lanka in the mid-6th century as they were attracted to the scenic beauty of Serendib as they called it. When the Portuguese arrived in the early 16th century, they labelled the Muslims in the island as Moors as they saw them resembling the Moors in North Africa with whom they had been in contact. The Sri Lankan government to this day identifies the Muslims in Sri Lanka as Ceylon Moors (A. Hussein 'From where did the moors come from?', http://www.lankalibrary.com/cul/muslims/moors.htm).

Moors of Iberia

Further information: Umayyad conquest of Hispania and Al-Andalus

File:Spanish reconquista.gif

Progress of the Reconquista (790–1300).

In 711 CE, the now Islamic Moors conquered Visigothic Christian Hispania. Their general, Tariq ibn-Ziyad, brought most of Iberia 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 Poitiers in 732.

The Moorish state fell into civil conflict in the 750s. The Moors ruled in North Africa and in most of the Iberian peninsula for several decades. They were resisted in areas in the northwest (such as Asturias, where they were defeated at the battle of Covadonga) and the largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees. Though the number of Moor colonists was small, many native Iberian inhabitants converted to Islam. According to Ronald Segal, by 1000, some 5 million of Iberia's 7 million inhabitants, nearly all native inhabitants, were Muslim.

In a process of decline, the Al Andalus had broken up into a number of Islamic-ruled fiefdoms, or taifas, which were partly consolidated under the Caliphate of Córdoba.

Coat of arms of Alcanadre. La Rioja, Spain. Depicting slayed heads of the Moors

The Asturias, a small northwestern Christian Iberian kingdom, initiated the Reconquista (the "reconquest") soon after the Islamic conquest in the 8th century. Christian states based in the north and west slowly extended their power over the rest of Iberia. Navarre, Galicia, León, Portugal, Aragón, Marca Hispanica, and Castile began a process of expansion and internal consolidation during the next several centuries under the flag of Reconquista.

Reconstruction of costumes of Moorish nobility from a German book published in 1880

In 1212, a coalition of Christian kings under the leadership of Alfonso VIII of Castile drove the Muslims from Central Iberia. The Portuguese side of the Reconquista ended in 1249 with the conquest of the Algarve (Arabic الغرب — Al-Gharb) under Afonso III. He was the first Portuguese monarch to claim the title "King of Portugal and the Algarve".

The Moorish Kingdom of Granada continued for three more centuries in southern Iberia. 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 Catholic Monarchs). They forced the remaining Muslims and Jews to leave Spain, convert to Roman Catholic Christianity or be killed for not doing so. To exert social and religious control, in 1480, Isabella and Ferdinand agreed to allow the Inquisition in Spain.

The Inquisition was aimed mostly at Jews and Muslims who had overtly converted to Christianity but were thought to be practicing their faiths secretly. They were respectively called marranos and moriscos. The Inquisition also attacked heretics who rejected Roman Catholic orthodoxy, including alumbras, who practiced a personal mysticism or spiritualism. The latter represented a significant portion of the peasants in some territories, such as Aragon, Valencia or Andalusia. In the years from 1609 to 1614, the government expelled such subjects. The historian Henri Lapeyre estimated that this affected 300,000 out of an estimated total of 8 million inhabitants.

Christian and Moor playing chess, from The Book of Games of Alfonso X, c. 1285

Many Muslims converted to Christianity and remained permanently in Iberia. This is indicated by a "high mean proportion of ancestry from North African (10.6%)" that "attests to a high level of religious conversion (whether voluntary or enforced), driven by historical episodes of social and religious intolerance, that ultimately led to the integration of descendants.".

In the meantime, the tide of Islam had rolled not just to Iberia, but also eastward, through India, the Malayan peninsula, and Indonesia up to the Philippines. This was 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 explorers had reached that island archipelago, which they named Las Islas de Filipinas, after Philip II of Spain. In Mindanao, the Spaniards named the 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, and as Mouros in the modern Portuguese language. See Reconquista, and Maure.

According to historian Richard A. Fletcher, 'the number of Arabs who settled in Iberia was very small. "Moorish" Iberia does at least have the merit of reminding us that the bulk of the invaders and settlers were Moors, i.e. Berbers from Algeria and Morocco.'

• 
  Reconquista
• 
  The Moors request permission from James I of Aragon
• 
  Christian and Moor playing lute, 13th century
• 
  Muhammad XII of Granada, last Moorish sultan in Spain
• 
  Leo Africanus, born in Granada

Moors of Sicily

See also: History of Islam in southern Italy and Arab-Norman culture

Muslim musicians at the court of the Norman King Roger II of Sicily.

The first Muslim conquest of Sicily and parts of southern Italy lasted 75 years (827–902). By 827, Sicily was almost entirely in control of the Aghlabids with the exception of some minor strongholds in the rugged interior until 909 when it was then replaced by Shiite Fatimids. Four years later, the Fatimid governor was ousted from Palermo when the island declared its independence under Emir Ahmed ibn-Kohrob.

In 1038, a Byzantine army under George Maniaces crossed the strait of Messina. This included a corps of Normans which saved the situation in the first clash against the Muslims from Messina. After another decisive victory in the summer of 1040, Maniaces halted his march to lay siege to Syracuse. Despite his conquest of the latter, Maniaces was removed from his position, and the subsequent Muslim counter-offensive reconquered all the cities captured by the Byzantines.

The Norman Robert Guiscard, son of Tancred, invaded Sicily in 1060. The island was split between three Arab emirs, and the majority Christian population rose up against the ruling Muslims. One year later, Messina fell, and in 1072, Palermo was taken by the Normans. The loss of the cities, each with a splendid harbor, dealt a severe blow to Muslim power on the island. Eventually all of Sicily was taken. In 1091, Noto in the southern tip of Sicily and the island of Malta, the last Arab strongholds, fell to the Christians.

Islamic authors would marvel at the tolerance of the Norman kings of Sicily. Ibn al-Athir wrote: "They [the Muslims] were treated kindly, and they were protected, even against the Franks. Because of that, they had great love for king Roger."

Many repressive measures were introduced by Frederick II to please the popes who were intolerant of Islam in the heart of Christendom. This resulted in a rebellion by Sicilian Muslims, which in turn triggered organized resistance and systematic reprisals and marked the final chapter of Islam in Sicily. The Muslim problem characterized Hohenstaufen rule in Sicily under Henry VI and his son Frederick II. The complete eviction of Muslims and the annihilation of Islam in Sicily was completed by the late 1240s when the final deportations to Lucera took place.

Modern age

Beside its usage in historical context, Moor and Moorish (Italian and Spanish: moro, French: maure, Portuguese: mouro, Romanian: maur) is used to designate an ethnic group speaking the Hassaniya Arabic dialect. They inhabit Mauritania and parts of Algeria, Western Sahara, Tunisia, Morocco, Niger and Mali. In Niger and Mali, these peoples are also known as the Azawagh Arabs, after the Azawagh region of the Sahara.

In Spain, modern colloquial Spanish use of the term "Moro" is derogatory for Moroccans in particular and North Africans in general. Similarly, in modern, colloquial Portuguese, the term "Mouro" was primarily used as a designation for North Africans and secondarily as a derogatory and ironic term by northern Portuguese to refer to the inhabitants of the southern parts of the country (Lisbon, Alentejo and Algarve). However, this designation has gained more acceptance in the South.

In the Philippines, a former Spanish colony, many residents call the local Muslim population in the Southern islands Moros. They also self-identify that way (see Muslim Filipino). The term was introduced by the Spanish colonizers. Within the context of Portuguese colonization, in Sri Lanka (Portuguese Ceylon), Muslims of Arab origin are called Moors (see Sri Lankan Moors).

Religious relations

The initial rule of the Moors in the Iberian peninsula under this Caliphate of Córdoba is regarded as tolerant in its acceptance of Christians, Muslims and Jews living in the same territories. The Caliphate of Córdoba collapsed in 1031 and the Islamic territory in Iberia fell under the rule of the Almoravid dynasty. This second stage inaugurated an era of Moorish rulers guided by a version of Islam that left behind the tolerant practices of the past.

Architecture

Main article: Moorish architecture

Interior of the Mezquita, Córdoba

Moorish architecture is the articulated Islamic architecture of North Africa and parts of Spain and Portugal where the Moors were dominant between 711 and 1492. The best surviving examples are La Mezquita in Córdoba and the Alhambra palace (mainly 1338–1390), and also the Giralda in 1184. Other notable examples include the ruined palace city of Medina Azahara (936–1010), the church (former mosque) San Cristo de la Luz in Toledo, the Aljafería in Saragossa and baths at for example Ronda and Alhama de Granada.

Heraldry

Arms of the great Bristol merchant and shipper William II Canynges(d.1474), as depicted on his canopied tomb in St Mary Redcliffe Church, showing the couped heads of three Moors wreathed at the temples

Moors—or more frequently their heads, often crowned—appear with some frequency in medieval European heraldry. The term ascribed to them in Anglo-Norman blazon (the language of English heraldry) is maure, though they are also sometimes called moore, blackmoor, blackamoor, or negro. Maures appear in European heraldry from at least as early as the 13th century, and some have been attested as early as the 11th century in Italy, where they have persisted in the local heraldry and vexillology well into modern times in Corsica and Sardinia. Armigers bearing moors or moors' heads may have adopted them for any of several reasons, to include symbolizing military victories in the Crusades, as a pun on the bearer's name in the canting arms of Morese, Negri, Saraceni, etc., or in the case of Frederick II, possibly to demonstrate the reach of his empire. The arms of Pope Benedict XVI feature a moor's head, crowned and collared red.

Population genetics

See also: Berbers § Genetic evidence

Shomarka Keita, a biological anthropologist from Howard University, has claimed that populations in Carthage circa 200 BC and northern Algeria 1500 BC were very diverse. As a group, they plotted closest to the populations of Northern Egypt and intermediate to Northern Europeans and tropical Africans. Keita claimed that "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. 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 but they did not replace the indigenous Berber population.

The Y chromosome p49a,f TaqI Haplotype V, which corresponds to Y haplogroup E1b1b1b (M81) —formerly E3b1b, E3b2 and colloquially referred to as the "Berber marker"— has been found among 68.9% of modern Berbers in North Africa and as high as 80% in one group. It is believed to be about 5,600 years old, and to have arrived with the Neolithic expansion from the Near East. M81 is not found in Sub-Saharan Africa. This haplotype has also been observed in as high as 40% of one small group of Andalusians tested. Generally it appears at much lower frequencies among Iberian populations, and lower as distance from North Africa increases.

Y DNA haplogroup E1b1b (formerly E3b) predominates among North African populations; its E1b1b1b subgroup (M81) is identified especially with Berbers.

Notable Moors

Averroes, a Moorish polymath, was the founder of the Averroism school of philosophy, and influential in the rise of secular thought in Western Europe.

See also: List of Berbers and List of Arab scientists and scholars

• Tariq ibn Ziyad, Moorish general who defeated the Visigoths and conquered Hispania in 711.
• Abd ar-Rahman I, founder of the Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba in 756; along with its succeeding Caliphate of Córdoba, the dynasty ruled Islamic Spain for three centuries.
• Ibn al-Qūṭiyya, Andalusian historian and grammarian.
• Yahya al-Laithi, Andalusian scholar who introduced the Maliki school of jurisprudence in Al-Andalus.
• Abbas Ibn Firnas, 810–887, Berber inventor and aviator who invented an early parachute and made the first attempt at controlled flight with a hang glider.
• Maslamah Ibn Ahmad al-Majriti, died 1007, Andalusian writer believed to have been the author of the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity and the Picatrix.
• Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis), Andalusian physician and surgeon who established the discipline of surgery as a profession with his Al-Tasrif in 1000.
• Said Al-Andalusi, 1029–1070, Andalusian Qadi, historian, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer.
• Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī (Arzachel), 1029–1087, Andalusian astronomer and engineer who developed the equatorium and universal (latitude-independent) astrolabe and compiled a Zij later used as a basis for the Tables of Toledo.
• Artephius, circa 1126, Andalusian scientist known as the author of numerous works of Alchemical texts, now extant only in Latin.
• Ibn Bajjah (Avempace), died 1138, Andalusian physicist and polymath whose theory of motion, including the concept of a reaction force, influenced the development of classical mechanics.
• Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar), 1091–1161, Andalusian physician and polymath who discovered the existence of parasites and pioneered experimental surgery.
• Muhammad al-Idrisi, circa 1100–1166, Moorish geographer and polymath who drew the Tabula Rogeriana, the most accurate world map in pre-modern times.
• Ibn Tufail, circa 1105–1185, Arabic writer and polymath who wrote Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, the first philosophical novel.
• Averroes (Ibn Rushd), 1126–1198, classical Islamic philosopher and polymath who wrote The Incoherence of the Incoherence and the most extensive Aristotelian commentaries, and established the school of Averroism.
• Ibn al-Baitar, died 1248, Andalusian botanist and pharmacist who compiled the most extensive pharmacopoeia and botanical compilation in pre-modern times.
• Ibn Khaldun, a pioneer of the social sciences and forerunner of sociology, historiography and economics, who wrote the Muqaddimah in 1377.
• Abū al-Hasan ibn Alī al-Qalasādī, 1412–1486, Moorish mathematician who took the first steps toward the introduction of algebraic symbolism.
• Leo Africanus, 1494–1554, Andalusian geographer, author and diplomat, who was captured by Spanish pirates and sold as a slave, but later baptized and freed.
• Estevanico, also referred to as "Stephen the Moor", was an explorer in the service of Spain of what is now the southwest of the United States.

Bibliography

This section's bibliographical information is not fully provided. If you know these sources and can provide full information, you can help Wikipedia by completing it.

• Jan R. Carew. Rape of Paradise: Columbus and the birth of racism in America. Brooklyn, NY: A&B Books, c. 1994.
• David Brion Davis, "Slavery: White, Black, Muslim, Christian." New York Review of Books, vol. 48, #11 July 5, 2001. Do not have exact pages.
• Herodotus, The Histories
• Shomark O. Y. Keita, "Genetic Haplotyes in North Africa"
• Shomarka O. Y. Keita, "Studies of ancient crania from northern Africa." American Journal of Physical Anthropology 83:35-48 1990.
• Shomarka O. Y. Keita, "Further studies of crania from ancient northern Africa: an analysis of crania from First Dynasty Egyptian tombs, using multiple discriminant functions." American Journal of Physical Anthropology 87: 345-54, 1992.
• Shomarka O. Y. Keita, "Black Athena: race, Bernal and Snowden." Arethusa 26: 295-314, 1993.
• Bernard Lewis, "The Middle East".
• Bernard Lewis. The Muslim Discovery of Europe. NY: Norton, 1982. Also an article with the same title published in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 20(1/3): 409-16, 1957.
• Bernard Lewis, "Race and Slavery in Islam".
• Stanley Lane-Poole, assisted by E. J. W. Gibb and Arthur Gilman. The Story of Turkey. NY: Putnam, 1888.
• Stanley Lane-Poole. The Story of the Barbary Corsairs. NY: Putnam,1890.
• Stanley Lane-Poole, The History of the Moors in Spain.
• J. A. (Joel Augustus) Rogers. Nature Knows No Color Line: research into the Negro ancestry in the white race. New York: 1952.
• Ronald Segal. Islam's Black Slaves: the other Black diaspora. NY: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2001.
• Ivan Van Sertima, ed. The Golden Age of the Moor. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1992. (Journal of African civilizations, vol. 11).
• Frank Snowden. Before Color Prejudice: the ancient view of blacks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983.
• Frank Snowden. Blacks in antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman experience. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1970.
• David M. Goldenberg. The Curse of Ham: race and slavery in early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, c2003.
• Lucotte and Mercier, various genetic studies
• Eva Borreguero. "The Moors Are Coming, the Moors Are Coming! Encounters with Muslims in Contemporary Spain." p. 417-32 in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 2006, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 417–32.
• "The Moors" by Ross Brann, published on New York University website.

See also

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External links

• Moorsgate.com
• Pbs.org
• Encyclopedia - Britannica Online Encyclopedia (2006)
• Moors, Classic Encyclopedia (1911)
• Khalid Amine, Moroccan Shakespeare: From Moors to Moroccans. Paper presented at an International Conference Organized by The Postgraduate School of Critical Theory and Cultural Studies, University of Nottingham, and The British Council, Morocco, 12–14 April 2001.
• Heraldry: The Moor's Head, Hidden Histories - African in Medieval and Renaissance Art, Victoria and Albert Museum (n.d)
• Sean Cavazos-Kottke. Othello's Predecessors: Moors in Renaissance Popular Literature: (outline). Folger Shakespeare Library, 1998.