Moriscos (, ; ; Spanish for "Moorish") 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 (termed mudéjar) in the early 16th century.
The Unified Portuguese and Spanish monarchs mistrusted Moriscos and feared that they would prompt new invasions from the Ottoman Empire after the Fall of Constantinople. So between 1609 and 1614 they began to expel them systematically from the various kingdoms of the united realm. The most severe expulsions occurred in the eastern Kingdom of Valencia. The exact number of Moriscos present in Spain prior to expulsion is unknown and can only be guessed on the basis of official records of the edict of expulsion. Furthermore, the overall success of the expulsion is subject to academic debate, with estimates on the proportion of those who avoided expulsion or returned to Spain ranging from 5% to 40%. The large majority of those permanently expelled settled on the western fringe of the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Morocco. The last mass prosecution against Moriscos for crypto-Islamic practices occurred in Granada in 1727, with most of those convicted receiving relatively light sentences.
In Spanish, morisco was also used in official colonial-era documentation in Spanish America to denote mixed-race castas: the children of relations between Spanish men and women of mixed African-European ancestry.
Name and etymology
The label morisco for Muslims who converted to Christianity began to appear in texts in the first half of the sixteenth century, though use of the term at this time was limited. Usage became widespread in Christian sources during the second half of the century, but it was unclear whether Moriscos adopted the term. In their texts, it was more common for them to speak of themselves simply as muslimes (Muslims); in later periods, they may have begun to accept the label. In modern times, the label is in widespread use in Spanish literature and adopted by other languages, including Modern Standard Arabic (in which it appears as al-Mūrīskiyyūn / al-Mōrīskiyyūn ()).
The word morisco appears in twelfth-century Castilian texts as an adjective for the noun moro. These two words are comparable to the English adjective "Moorish" and noun "Moor". Mediaeval Castilians used the words in the general senses of "Muslim" or an "Arabic-speaker" as in the case of Muslim converts; the words continued to be used in these older meanings even after the more specific meaning of morisco (which does not have a corresponding noun) became widespread.
According to L. P. Harvey, the two different meanings of the word morisco have resulted in mistakes when modern scholars misread historical text containing morisco in the older meaning, as having the newer meaning. In the early years after the forced conversions, the Christians used the terms "new Christians", "new converts", or the longer "new Christians, converted from Moors" (nuevos christianos convertidos de moros; to distinguish from those converted from Judaism) to refer to this group.
In 1517, the word morisco became a "category" added to the array of cultural and religious identities that existed at the time, used to identify Muslim converts to Christianity in Granada and Castille. The term was a pejorative adaptation of the adjective morisco ("Moorish"). It soon became the standard term to refer to all former Muslims in Spain.
In Spanish America, morisco (or morisca, in feminine form) was used to identify a racial category: a mixed-race casta, the child of a Spaniard (español) and a mulatto (offspring of a Spaniard and a negro, generally a lighter-complexioned person with some African ancestry). The term appears in colonial-era marriage registers identifying individuals and in eighteenth-century casta paintings.
Demographics
There is no universally agreed figure of Morisco population. Estimates vary because of the lack of precise census. In addition, the Moriscos avoided registration and authorities in order to appear as members of the majority Spanish population. Furthermore, the populations would have fluctuated, due to such factors as birth rates, conquests, conversions, relocations, and emigration.