Blood and Faith
The Purging of Muslim Spain, 1492-1614
Matthew Carr
A riveting and richly detailed chronicle of what was, by 1614, the largest act of ethnic cleansing in European history.
New edition.
Description
In April 1609,
King Philip III of Spain signed an edict denouncing the Muslim inhabitants of
Spain as heretics, traitors, and apostates. Later that year, the entire Muslim
population of Spain was given three days to leave Spanish territory or else be
killed. In a brutal and traumatic exodus, entire families were obliged to
abandon homes and villages where they had lived for generations, leaving their
property in the hands of their Christian neighbours. In Aragon and Catalonia,
Muslims were escorted by government commissioners who forced them to pay
whenever they drank or rested. For five years the expulsion ground on, until an
estimated 300,000 Muslims had been removed from Spanish territory, 5 per cent
of the total population. By 1614 Spain had successfully implemented what was
then the largest act of ethnic cleansing in European history, and Muslim Spain
had effectively ceased to exist.
Blood and Faith is a riveting
chronicle of this virtually unknown episode, set against the vivid historical
backdrop of the history of Muslim Spain. It offers a remarkable window onto a
little-known period in modern Europe—a rich and complex tale of competing
faiths and beliefs, of cultural oppression and resistance against overwhelming
odds.
Reviews
‘Well-balanced and comprehensive … Blood and Faith is a splendid work of synthesis. …
it is impossible to read this book without sensing its resonance in our own
time.’ — New York Times
‘In this first comprehensive appreciation in many
decades of the Muslim expulsion from Spain, Blood and Faith meticulously
recaptures the fateful self-mutilation of a society that might have become
Europe’s first multicultural nation and offers a grim lesson about religious
and racial repression in our contemporary age of contested faiths.’ ––
Professor David Levering Lewis, author of God’s Crucible: Islam and the
Making of Europe, 570-1215
‘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. In an age when so may people, on both
“sides”, believe we face an historic confrontation between Christendom and
Islam, it is essential to place the relations between these two global
Abrahamic religions in a wider historical framework. This book does that
eloquently and judiciously.’ — Professor
Kwame Anthony Appiah, Princeton University
‘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.’ — Publishers Weekly
‘Eloquently written and
carefully researched, Blood and Faith is
an important new study that synthesises much important scholarship on the
moriscos, until now inaccessible to an English readership, and makes us aware
of historical precedents to current ideological and cultural conflicts.’
— European History Quarterly
Author
Matthew Carr is a freelance journalist
whose work has appeared in The Observer, The Guardian, The New York Timesand
on BBC Radio. He is the author of The Infernal Machine: An
Alternative History of Terrorism; Fortress Europe: Inside the War
Against Immigration; and The Devils of Cardona.
© Hurst Publishers, 2014 • 41 Great Russell Street • London WC1B 3PL
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