(Major sites of conflict during the Second War of the Alpujarras, 1568-1571)Īside from this rebellion, the Moriscos were frequently accused throughout the sixteenth century-not without some justification-of collaborating with the Ottomans and North African Barbary corsairs in their raids against the Spanish coast. One of his worst atrocities was to raze the town of Galera, to the east of Granada, and to sprinkle it with salt, having slaughtered 2,500 people, including 400 women and children.Following the rebellion, during which tens of thousands of Moriscos and Old Christians had perished, as many as 80,000 Andalusīs/Moriscos from Granada were forcibly deported and dispersed throughout the Kingdom of Castile. The uprising was brutally suppressed by Don Juan of Austria after nearly three years. 1556–1598) dispatched his half-brother Don Juan of Austria (d. As a result of this rebellion, the King of Spain, Philip II (r. Various atrocities were committed by the rebels against Christians-including many Andalusīs who had embraced Christianity-and priests were particularly singled out as a symbol of the Inquisition. The rebellion was one of the most violent affairs of the sixteenth century. This led to the outbreak, in 1568, of a major rebellion in the Kingdom of Granada which then spread to the Alpujarras mountains and lasted until 1571.ĭuring the course of this rebellion, thousands of Moriscos openly repudiated Christianity, took up arms against the Spanish government and sought the aid of the Ottomans. This coincided with an increasing amount of repression against the Moriscos in Granada, where, along with the Kingdom of Valencia, one of the biggest Andalusī communities in Spain resided. Around 1566/1567, additional legislation was introduced that essentially banned many of the cultural practices of the Andalusīs, including their dress, names, traditional festivals, and even dances, while any use of the Arabic language itself, whether written or spoken, was officially criminalized. Those who were discovered were subjected to interrogation and torture by the Inquisition before being executed at least several thousand individuals were subjected to this over the course of the sixteenth century. (Panels showing the Conversion of the Muslims of Granada in 1501, Altar, Royal Chapel, Granada) Despite this legislation, many (perhaps even most) of these individuals held firm to their former beliefs, practicing dissimulation ( taqīyyah)-a practice legitimized by a 1504 fatwa by the Mufti of Oran Ahmad ibn Abī Juma‘a-and adhering in secret to their cultural and religious practices. The Spanish government as well as the Church and Inquisition threatened any who continued to adhere to Islam-in any shape or form-with the death penalty, which usually meant being burned at the stake. The new population of New Christians, as they were called, were referred to (derogatorily) as Moriscos. Following the forcible conversion of the Andalusī Muslims of Granada in 1501 (which I have described elsewhere ), similar edicts of conversion were promulgated that forced the Muslims populations of Castile (1502), Navarre (1515) and the Crown of Aragón (1526) to convert to Christianity, thereby criminalizing Islam as a public religion in the Iberian peninsula for the first time in 800 years.
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