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The term Moor is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim populations of the Maghreb, al-Andalus, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a single, distinct or self-defined people. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica observed that the term had "no real ethnological value." Europeans of the Middle Ages and the early modern period variously applied the name to Arabs, Berbers, and Muslim Europeans.
Moriscos were former Muslims and their descendants whom the Roman Catholic Church and the Spanish Crown commanded to convert to Christianity or face compulsory exile after Spain outlawed the open practice of Islam by its sizeable Muslim population in the early 16th century.
Crypto-Judaism is the secret adherence to Judaism while publicly professing to be of another faith; practitioners are referred to as "crypto-Jews".
In Islam, Taqiya or Taqiyya is a precautionary dissimulation or denial of religious belief and practice. Generally, taqiyya is the action of committing a sinful act for a pious goal.
New Christian was a socio-religious designation and legal distinction in the Spanish Empire and the Portuguese Empire. The term was used from the 15th century onwards primarily to describe the descendants of the Sephardic Jews and Moors baptised into the Catholic Church following the Alhambra Decree. The Alhambra Decree of 1492, also known as the Edict of Expulsion, was an anti-Jewish law made by the Catholic Monarchs upon the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula. It required Jews to convert to Catholicism or be expelled from Spain. Most of the history of the "New Christians" refers to the Jewish converts, who were generally known as Conversos while the Muslim converts were known as Moriscos.
The Alhambra Decree was an edict issued on 31 March 1492, by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain ordering the expulsion of practicing Jews from the Crowns of Castile and Aragon and its territories and possessions by 31 July of that year. The primary purpose was to eliminate the influence of practicing Jews on Spain's large formerly-Jewish converso New Christian population, to ensure the latter and their descendants did not revert to Judaism. Over half of Spain's Jews had converted as a result of the religious persecution and pogroms which occurred in 1391. Due to continuing attacks, around 50,000 more had converted by 1415. A further number of those remaining chose to convert to avoid expulsion. As a result of the Alhambra decree and persecution in the years leading up to the expulsion of Spain's estimated 300,000 Jewish origin population, a total of over 200,000 had converted to Catholicism to remain in Spain, and between 40,000 and 100,000 remained Jewish and suffered expulsion. An unknown number of the expelled eventually succumbed to the pressures of life in exile away from formerly-Jewish relatives and networks back in Spain, and so converted to Catholicism to be allowed to return in the years following expulsion.:17
The Goa Inquisition was an extension of the Portuguese Inquisition in Portuguese India. Its objective was to enforce Catholic Orthodoxy and allegiance to the Apostolic See of Rome (Pontifex). Conversions took place through the Goan Inquisition with the persecution of Hindus and the destruction of Hindu temples. The inquisition primarily focused on the New Christians accused of secretly practicing their former religions, and Old Christians accused of involvement in the Protestant Revolution of the 16th century. It was established in 1560, briefly suppressed from 1774 to 1778, continued thereafter until it was finally abolished in 1812. Forced conversions led to crypto-Hinduism with those accused of it imprisoned and depending on the criminal charge, could even be sentenced to death if convicted. The Inquisitors also seized and burnt any books written in Sanskrit, Dutch, English, or Konkani, on the suspicions that they contained deviationist or Protestant material.
Crypto-Christianity is the secret practice of Christianity, usually while attempting to camouflage it as another faith or observing the rituals of another religion publicly. In places and time periods where Christians were persecuted or Christianity was outlawed, instances of crypto-Christianity have surfaced.
Forced conversion is the adoption of a religion or irreligion under duress. Someone who has been forced to convert to a different religion or irreligion may continue, covertly, to adhere to the beliefs and practices which were originally held, while outwardly behaving as a convert. Crypto-Jews, Crypto-Christians, Crypto-Muslims and Crypto-Pagans are historical examples of the latter.
Old Christian was a social and law-effective category used in the Iberian Peninsula from the late 15th and early 16th century onwards, to distinguish Portuguese and Spanish people attested as having cleanliness of blood, known as Limpieza de sangre, from the populations categorized as New Christian. 'New Christian' refer to mainly persons of partial or full Jewish or Moorish (Muslim) descent who converted to Christianity, and their descendants.
Sephardic Jews in India are Iberian Jews who settled in many coastal towns of India, in Goa and Damaon, Madras and, primarily and for the longest period, on the Malabar coast in Cochin. After the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India in the 1498, a number of Sephardic Jews fled Antisemitism in Iberia which had culminated in the Edict of Expulsion in 1492 and Persecution of Jews and Muslims by Manuel I of Portugal. They settled in Portuguese Indian trading places so that they could continue practicing Judaism secretly while still remaining within the Portuguese Empire. After the Portuguese Inquisition was established, an additional number of falsely-converted Sephardic Jews made sea voyages to settle in India, because it would then be difficult for the Inquisition to investigate and punish them. They spoke the vernacular language of their kingdom and some of them also Arabic.
On 5 December 1496, King Manuel I of Portugal signed the decree of expulsion of Jews and Muslims to take effect by the end of October of the next year.
The Oran fatwa was a responsum fatwa, or an Islamic legal opinion, issued in 1502 to address the crisis that occurred when Muslims in the Crown of Castile were forced to convert to Christianity in 1500–1502. The fatwa sets out detailed relaxations of the sharia requirements, allowing the Muslims to conform outwardly to Christianity and perform acts that are ordinarily forbidden in Islamic law, when necessary to survive. It includes relaxed instructions for fulfilling the ritual prayers, the ritual charity, and the ritual ablution, and recommendations when obliged to violate Islamic law, such as worshipping as Christians, committing blasphemy, and consuming pork and wine.
Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Abi Jum'ah al-Maghrawi al-Wahrani was an Algerian Maliki scholar of Islamic law, active in the Maghreb from the end of the fifteenth century until his death. He was identified as the author of the 1504 fatwa commonly named the Oran fatwa, instructing the Muslims in Spain about how to secretly practice Islam, and granting comprehensive dispensations for them to publicly conform to Christianity and performing acts normally forbidden in Islam when necessary to survive. Because of his authorship of the fatwa he is often referred to as "the Mufti of Oran", although he likely issued the fatwa in Fez, not in Oran and he did not have any official capacity in either city.
Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Wansharisi was an Algerian Berber Muslim theologian and jurist of the Maliki school around the time of the fall of Granada. He was one of the leading authorities on the issues of Iberian Muslims living under Christian rule.
The Young Man of Arévalo was a Morisco crypto-Muslim author from Arévalo, Castile who was the most productive known Islamic author in Spain during the period after the forced conversion of Muslims there. He traveled widely across Spain to visit crypto-Muslim communities and wrote several works about Islam which includes accounts from his travels. His real identity and dates of birth and death are unknown, but most of his travels took place in the first half of the sixteenth century.
Leonard Patrick Harvey was a British historian and professor. He held lectureships in Spanish at Oxford University (1956–58), Southampton (1958–60), and Queen Mary College, London (1960–63), was Head of the Spanish Department at Queen Mary College from 1963 to 1973 and Cervantes Professor of Spanish at King's College, London, in 1983, until his retirement in 1990.
The forced conversions of Muslims in Spain were enacted through a series of edicts outlawing Islam in the lands of the Spanish Monarchy. This persecution was pursued by three Spanish kingdoms during the early 16th century: the Crown of Castile in 1500–1502, followed by Navarre in 1515–1516, and lastly the Crown of Aragon in 1523–1526.
Crypto-Hinduism is the secret adherence to Hinduism while publicly professing to be of another faith; practitioners are referred to as "crypto-Hindus". Crypto-Hinduism was observed during a period of forced religious conversions in South Asia, as well as suspected against Hindus who were forcibly converted to the religion of the invaders or colonizers. Many crypto-Hindus were arrested for practicing Hinduism after professing to have converted to Christianity, some sentenced to death for being a crypto-Hindu such as in colonial Portuguese Goa.
Mudéjar were Muslims who remained in Iberia in the late medieval period following the Christian reconquest. It is also a term for Mudejar art, which was much influenced by Islamic art, but produced typically by Christian craftsmen for Christian patrons.
References
- ↑ Crewe, Ryan (2015). "Transpacific Mestizo: Religion and Caste in the Worlds of a Moluccan Prisoner of the Mexican Inquisition". Itinerario. 39 (3): 463–485. doi:10.1017/S0165115315000893. ISSN 0165-1153. S2CID 152076833.
- ↑ Harvey, L. P. (1992). Islamic Spain, 1250 to 1500. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-31962-9.
- ↑ Akiner, Shirin (1986). Islamic Peoples Of The Soviet Union. Routledge. pp. 431–432. ISBN 978-1-136-14274-1.
- ↑ Bennigsen, Alexandre; Wimbush, S. Enders (1986). Muslims of the Soviet Empire: A Guide. Indiana University Press. p. 234. ISBN 978-0-253-33958-4.
