Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain

by Matthew Carr

Overview

A centuries-old story with remarkable contemporary resonance, Blood and Faith is celebrated journalist Matthew Carr's riveting and “richly detailed” (Choice) chronicle of what was, by 1614, the largest act of ethnic cleansing in European history.

Months after King Philip III of Spain signed an edict in 1609 denouncing the Muslim inhabitants of Spain as heretics, traitors, and apostates, the entire Muslim population of Spain was given three days to leave Spanish territory, on threat of death. In the brutal and traumatic exodus that followed, entire families and communities were forced to abandon homes and villages where they had lived for generations, leaving their property in the hands of their Christian neighbors. By 1613, an estimated 300,000 Muslims had been removed from Spanish territory.

Blood and Faith presents a remarkable window onto a little known period of modern Europe—a complex tale of competing faiths and beliefs, cultural oppression, and resistance against over-whelming odds that sheds new light on national identity and Islam.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781595586407
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	07/05/2011
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Matthew Carr is a writer, broadcaster, and journalist and the author of The Infernal Machine: A History of Terrorism and the acclaimed memoir My Father's House. He lives in Derbyshire, England.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction ix

Prologue: "The End of Spain's Calamities" 1

Part I Conquest to Conversion

1 The Iberian Exception 13

2 The Victors 25

3 The Vanquished 40

4 Broken Promises: Granada 1492-1500 52

5 Rebellion and Conversion 62

6 Faith Triumphant 70

7 The Last Redoubt: Aragon 1520-1526 80

Part II One Flock, One Shepherd

8 A "House Full of Snakes and Scorpions" 93

9 Parallel Lives 104

10 Dangerous Times: 1556-1568 118

11 The Granada Pragmatic 131

12 "A Dirty Little War" 141

13 Defeat and Punishment 153

Part III Catastrophe

14 The Great Fear 167

15 "The Vilest of People" 183

16 Toward Expulsion 202

17 "An Imminent Danger": 1598-1609 215

18 The "Agreeable Holocaust" 233

19 Secrecy and Deception 248

20 A Perfect Conclusion? 1611-1614 265

21 The Reckoning 279

Epilogue: A Warning from History? 293

Notes 309

Bibliography 327

Index 337

Editorial Reviews

Offers a grim lesson about religious and racial repression in our contemporary age of contested faiths.”
—David Levering Lewis, author of God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215

“Carr deftly narrates the complex events leading up to this little-known but horrific episode as a warning against religious intolerance and xenophobia.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A fascinating account of perhaps the first major episode of European ethnic cleansing and, just as importantly, the story of the beginning of the conviction that 'blood' matters more than belief; a conviction that led, in the end, to modern racism.”
—Kwame Anthony Appiah

From the Publisher

The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 is a well-known tragedy. Less well-known is the later expulsion in 1609 of the descendants of the Moors, who had ruled Spain for centuries. Carr (The Infernal Machine: A History of Terrorism) examines the uneasy coexistence of Christians and Muslims beginning in 1492, when Spain was united under the Christian Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. Over the next century, Christian leaders grew less and less tolerant of Iberian Muslims, requiring them to convert to Catholicism. In April 1609, this growing intolerance culminated in an edict accusing these converts, known as Moriscos, of heresy and apostasy and decreeing their expulsion. Over the next five years, an estimated 350,000 Muslims were forced to abandon their homes; many died on the journey to the ships that would take them to North Africa, and many others were terrorized, raped, robbed and killed by forces that were supposed to protect them. Carr deftly narrates the complex events leading up to this little-known but horrific episode as a warning against religious intolerance and xenophobia. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly