Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain [Hardcover]

Victory was not enough. Once control was wrested from the Moors, the Spanish monarchs wanted a Christian country. Perhaps they believed they were doing God's work or perhaps they feared or hated the "other". Whatever the initial impetus, what began with a quest for religious purity devolved into acts of incredible cruelty.

Each element, such as the idea that silencing people equals converting them, to dehumanizing minorities to the stellar detachment of the officials who ultimately drafted the expulsion plans, has relevance for today. Carr has a good discussion of this at the end.

Carr shows how everyday people fared in this purge. There were winners and losers. There are almost no Morisco winners. Whether they left their homes in tears or with heads held high, the odds were heavily against a successful relocation. Carr tells individual stories. Many who left with little had clothes stolen off their backs and/or soon died of hunger or thirst. The wealthy were vulnerable to pirates and greedy transport providers. Many were sold into slavery.

Winners included those who purchased Morisco lands at bargain prices, those who stole from the fleeing Moriscos, those who owed money or property to Moriscos. Christian losers include those who relied on the Morisco labor (both manual and professional) and those who loaned Moriscos money. In the broader picture, Spain lost due to no longer having the cultural and economic contributions of the Moors and to public and international opinion.

Was the act of taking children from parents to raise them as Christians a humanitarian act? What of giving children under 4 the choice as to whether to say in Spain and live with Christian families or leave the country with their parents? Is a woman who marries and "Old Christian" or joins a convent to avoid expulsion a "winner"? What are the expectations that a coerced conversion is a sincere conversion? How was a large segment of the population, already "un" and undereducated to learn a new language without teachers?

Carr tells a stunning story. His avoidance of sensational terms makes it all the more compelling. He takes the broad concepts and shows many examples of how this played out in individuals lives.

I recommend this for all history readers interested purges/pogroms or this particular period of Spanish history.

In the spring of 711 a general named Tariq Ibn Ziyad and an army of seven thousand Berber warriors raided the Iberian Peninsula. While some historians maintain that this excursion into Catholic Spain was a simple raid, in reality the raiders stayed and settled becoming a permanent part of the population. Thus began the creation of Muslim Spain and a legacy that lasted until 1609. Some would argue that the incursion into Spain nearly 1300 years ago by these Muslim raiders is still working itself out.

Thus begins Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain by Matthew Carr. In a book that is timely and no less relevant today, Carr explains the dynamics that operated on the Iberian Peninsula where three religions openly worshipped. Christians, Jews, and Muslims managed to coexist and prosper and together created much of what we see today as Spanish Culture. While the Jews were initially welcomed into Spain, the Muslims fought their way in, the fact is that for a period of time all three religions existed in a spirit of tolerance.

Carr examines the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 and the impact it had on all of Spain, not just the Jews. This launched the Spanish Inquisition a time of unbelievable cruelty and hopelessness. "Become a Catholic or face torture or expulsion" This same choice was provided to the Moors a little more than a century later. These conversions were not completely successful and a number of revolts throughout Spain occurred.

Carr does a wonderful job at explaining the complications involved in expelling a large percent of the population. The ties that linked the three faiths/cultures were often complex and not easy to define. Clothing serves as a case in point. For the Muslim women, clothing was a managed affair. For men, the issue was less defining. According to Carr both Muslim and Christian men could be found wearing the clothes of the other's culture. It was often impossible to merely look at a man and know which God he worshipped.

While the entire book is interesting, perhaps the most important chapter in the book is the Epilogue: A Warning from History? While both the expulsions of the Jews and the later expulsions of the Muslims was a cruel act, one can understand the pressures that the rulers felt at the time. While modern Spain has become more enlightened and more tolerant, that same feeling didn't exist in seventeenth century Spain. The tolerance of modern Spain can be seen in the country's reaction to the Madrid subway bombings in 2004. But the pressure to seek Muslim conversions to Catholicism with the intent to make assimilation easier is present even today.

Blood and Faith is a relevant read today made so by the events we read in the news almost everyday.

I highly recommend.

Peace always.

Spain has roots from its conquest of the Moors nearly a thousand years ago. "Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain" tells the story of the end of this chapter in Muslim history, as King Philip reclaims Spain as a Christian nation by ordering the Muslims to leave Spain, a place they had at that point called home for hundreds of years. A tragic tale of Christian and Islamic relations, "Blood and Faith" is a must read for those who want to better understand religious relations in European History.

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