Moors
The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of Muslim (and earlier non-Muslim) people of Berber and Arab descent from North Africa, some of whom came to inhabit the Iberian Peninsula (which they termed Al Andalus, comprising most of modern Spain and Portugal). Moors are not distinct or self defined people but an appellation applied by medieval and early modern Europeans primarily to Berbers, but also Arabs, and Muslim Iberians.[The Moors? Ross Brann, Cornell University. ]Andalusi Arabic sources, as opposed to later Mudejar and Morisco sources in Aljamiado and medieval Spanish texts, neither refer to individuals as Moors nor recognize any such group, community or culture. As early as 1911, mainstream scholars have recognized that "The term Moors has no real ethnological value."[Moors, Britannica Encyclopedia (1911) p.811 of original.]
In the Spanish language, the term for Moors is moro; in Portuguese the word is mouro. There consequently seems to have been some confusion about the relationship of the word moro/mouro with the word moreno (which means tanned or dark or brown-skinned; in origin the term was used to refer to a person with brown or black hair color, regardless of skin or eye color - synonym for Brunette, nowadays both meanings co-exist). However, the two words have different etymological roots, and the Moors, though most were probably swarthy, were not "negro".[Irene Marsha Silverblatt, Modern Inquisitions, (Duke University Press: 2004), p.257][Stephen Birmingham, The Grandees: America's Sephardic Elite, (Harper & Row: 1971), p.32]
The Al Andalus Moors of the late Medieval era inhabited the Iberian Peninsula after the Arab conquests of the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates, and the final Umayyad conquest of Hispania. These conquests stretched south to modern-day Mauritania, Western Sahara, and West African countries as far south as the Senegal River. Earlier, the Classical Romans interacted (and later conquered) Mauretania, a state in what is now Algeria. The people of the region are remembered in Classical literature as the Mauri. This name, not their own, was applied by cultures north of the Mediterranean.
The term, or variations thereof, was later used by European traders and explorers of the 16th to 18th centuries to designate ethnic Berber and Arab groups speaking the Hassaniya Arabic dialect, today inhabiting Mauritania and parts of Algeria, Western Sahara, Morocco, Niger and Mali. This is the genesis of the name of the modern Islamic Republic of Mauritania, first applied during French Colonial rule. A variation of the term is still used in the Philippines to designate some Muslim populations.
Speakers of European languages have historically designated a number of ethnic groups "Moors". In modern Iberia, the word remains associated with those of Morrocan ethnicity living in Europe, and is considered pejorative. It is sometimes used in a wider context to describe any person from North Africa. Similarly, in Spanish, the cognate moro is considered a racist and derogative term. But the Spanish still use it and even think of it as a neutral word in local sayings such as "no hay moros en la costa" (lit. "there are no Moors on the coast," meaning "the coast is clear").
Etymology
Moor is believed to come from the Greek word mauros (Greek orthography µa?, plural µa?), meaning "black" or "very dark". In Latin it became maurus (plural mauri). In the Medieval Romance languages (such as Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Italian), the root appeared with such forms as mouro, moro,, moir, and mor. Derivatives are found in today's versions of the languages. Through nominalization, the root has always referred to various things conveniently identified by their dark color, for example, blackberries. Moreno, from the Latin root, can mean "tanned" in Spain and Portugal and "black person" or a "mulatto" in Cuba and other Spanish-speaking countries, as in Portuguese speaking Brazil. Also in Spanish, morapio is a humorous name for "wine", specially that has not been "baptized" with water, i.e., pure unadulterated wine.
In Spanish usage, moro ("Moor") came to have an even broader usage, to moros of Mindanao in the Philippines, and the moriscos of Granada. Moro is also used to describe all things dark, as in "Moor", "moreno", etc.; and it has led to many European surnames such as Moore, Mauro, Moura, and so on. The Milanese Duke Ludovico Il Moro was so-called because of his dark complexion.
This name could be also derived from the name of the one of the strongest dynasties in Islamic Iberia: the Almoravids, in Arabic Al-Murabitun or Al Moorabiteen 1060-1146 who ruled the northern western parts of Africa and some parts of Iberia. The name of Al Morabiteen was likely abbreviated to Moors with usage.
Overview
Although the Moors came to be associated with Muslims, the name Moor pre-dates Islam. It derives from the small Numidian Kingdom of Maure of the 3rd century BC in what is now northern central and western part of Algeria and a part of northern Morocco.[Michael Brett and Elizabeth Fentress, The Berbers at 25 & 77; Gabriel Camps, Les Berberes (Edisud 1996) at 20-21, 25] The name came to be applied to people of the entire region. "They were called Maurisi by the Greeks," wrote Strabo, "and Mauri by the Romans."[Strabo, Geographica (c.17 A.D.) at XVIII,3,ii (cited by Rene Basset in Moorish Literature (N.Y., Collier 1901) at iii.] During that age, the Maure or Moors were trading partners of Carthage, the independent city state founded by Phoenicians. During the second Punic war between Carthage and Rome, two Moorish Numidian kings took different sides, Syphax with Carthage, Masinissa with the Romans, decisively so at Zama. Thereafter, the Moors entered into treaties with Rome. Under King Jugurtha collateral violence against merchants brought war. Juba, a later king, was a friend of Rome. Eventually, the region was incorporated into the Roman Empire as the provinces of Mauretania Caesariensis and Mauretania Tingitana; the area around Carthage already being the province of Africa. Roman rule was beneficial and effective enough so that these provinces became fully 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; a century later they were displaced by Byzantine incursions. Neither Vandal nor Byzantine exercised an effective rule, the interior being under Moorish Berber control.[Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib (Cambridge Univ., 1971) at 27, 38 & 43; Michael Brett and Elizabeth Fentress, The Berbers (Blackwell 1996) at 14, 24, 41-54; Henri Terrasse, History of Morocco (Casablanca: Atlantides 1952) at 39-49, esp. 43-44; Serge Lancel, Carthage (Librairie Artheme Fayard 1992, Blackwell 1995) at 396-401; Glenn Markoe, The Phoenicians (Univ.of California 2000) at 54-56.] The Berbers resisted for over 50 years Arab armies from the east. Especially memorable was that led by Kahina the Berber prophetess of the Awras, during 690-701. Yet by the 92nd lunar year after the Hijra, the Arab Muslims had prevailed across North Africa["The conquest of North Africa and Berber resistance" in General History of Africa].
The Moors of Iberia
In 711 AD, the now Islamic Moors conquered Visigothic Christian Hispania. Under their leader, a Berber general named Tariq ibn-Ziyad, they 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 Poitier in 732 AD. The Moorish state fell into civil conflict in the 750s. The Moors ruled in the Iberian peninsula, except for areas in the northwest (such as Asturias, where they were defeated at the battle of Covadonga) and the largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees, and in North Africa for several decades. Though the number of original "Moors" remained small, many native Iberian inhabitants converted to Islam. According to Ronald Segal[Ronald Segal, Islam's Black Slaves (2003), Atlantic Books, ISBN 1-90380981-9], some 5.6 million of Iberia's 7 million inhabitants were Muslim by 1200 AD, virtually all of them native inhabitants. The persecution and forced conversion to Catholicism of the Muslim population during the time of the Christian Reconquista in the second part of the 15th century, causing a mass exodus, are considered the main reasons why their number shrank to one-third by 1600.
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 Cordoba.
A Christian enclave from the Muslim conquest in Asturias, a small northwestern Iberian kingdom, initiated the Reconquista (the "reconquest") practically immediately 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. The Navarre, Galicia, León, Portugal, Aragón, Catalonia or Marca Hispanica, and Castile in fits and starts began a process of expansion and internal consolidation during the next several centuries under the flag of Reconquista.
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? — Al-Gharb) under Afonso III, the first Portuguese monarch to claim the title King of Portugal and the Algarve. However, the Moorish Kingdom of Granada continued for three more centuries in the southern Iberia. This kingdom is known in modern times for magnificent architectural works such as the Alhambra palace. 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). The remaining Muslims and Jews were forced to leave Spain, forced to convert to Roman Catholic Christianity or be killed for not doing so. In 1480, Isabella and Ferdinand instituted the Inquisition in Spain, as one of many changes to the role of the church instituted by the monarchs. The Inquisition was aimed mostly at Jews and Muslims who had overtly converted to Christianity but were thought to be practicing their faiths secretly - known respectively as marranos and moriscos - as well as at heretics who rejected Roman Catholic orthodoxy, including alumbras who practiced a kind of mysticism or spiritualism. They were an important portion of the peasants in some territories, like Aragon, Valencia or Andalusia, until their systematic expulsion in the years from 1609 to 1614. Henri Lapeyre has estimated that this affected 300,000 out of a total of 8 million inhabitants of the peninsula at the time.[See History of Al-Andalus]
In the meantime, the tide of Islam had rolled not just westward to Iberia, but also eastward, through India, the Malayan peninsula, and Indonesia up to Mindanao- 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 expeditioners had themselves reached that island archipelago, which they named Las Islas de Filipinas, after Philip II of Spain. In Mindanao, the Spaniards also named these 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[Richard Fletcher. Moorish Spain p10. University of California Press. 1993. ISBN 978-0520084964], '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 Morocco.' [specialist of Spain history, Aline Angoustures. L'Espagne page 17. Le cavalier bleu, 2004. ISBN 2-84670-078-8] says that the Berbers were about 900,000 and the Arabs about 90,000 in Iberia.
Modern age
Beside its usage in historical context Moor and Moorish (Italian and Spanish: moro, French: maure, Portuguese: mouro / moiro, Romanian: maur) is used to designate an ethnic group speaking the Hassaniya Arabic dialect, inhabiting Mauritania and parts of Algeria, Western Sahara, Morocco, Niger and Mali. In Niger and Mali, these peoples are also know as the Azawagh Arabs, after the Azawagh region of the Sahara. [For an introduction to the culture of the Azawagh Arabs, see: Rebecca Popenoe. Feeding Desire - Fatness, Beauty and Sexuality among a Saharan People. Routledge, London (2003) ISBN 0415280966]
In modern, colloquial Spanish the sometimes pejorative term "Moro" refers to any Arab. Similarly, in modern, colloquial Portuguese the term "Mouro" is used as a derogatory term by northern Portuguese to refer to the inhabitants of the southern parts of the country (the Alentejo and
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