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

'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, September 2009<br /><br />'Blood and Faith is 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.' --Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University<br /><br />'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.' --David Levering Lewis, Professor of History, NYU and author of God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215-

Who remembers the last survivors of Muslim Spain, whom Spaniards contemptuously called Moriscos ( little Moors )? Impressive research on them has appeared in the last 30 years, yet until now, none of it has escaped beyond the walls of the academic ghetto. Matthew Carr s well-balanced and comprehensive book brings the story of their tragic fate to a wider public. Blood and Faith is a splendid work of synthesis. The story begins with the 10-year war a crusade to conquer the Moorish Kingdom of Granada. The Christian victory in 1492 signalled the beginning of the long ethnic cleansing of Holy Spain. Spanish Jews were the first victims; they were quickly forced into exile. The other ethnic and religious minority in the Iberian peninsula, the Muslim Moors, posed a more complex problem. Moors had lived for centuries in Spain and were valued for their hard work and expertise as farmers and craftsmen. Every noble landlord knew the old saying Whoever has a Moor has gold, and aristocratic fortunes were built on a simple basis: The more Moors, the more profit. The slow breakdown of this living- together (convivencia) began with the conquest of Granada. In 1492, the Muslim Granadinos were unwillingly incorporated into Christian Spain, but this brought nothing but trouble. Most fought an unremitting rear-guard action in defense of their culture, Islamic faith and social institutions, resisting a forced conversion to Christianity by any possible means. They posed a real danger to Christian Spain. Granada s long coastline offered an open frontier to the Ottoman Turks, Spain s mortal enemies. In 1568, after repeated small revolts, a civil war of unceasing savagery erupted. It was bloodily suppressed by 1571, and thereafter there was no going back on either side. As many as 80,000 Muslims men, women and children were deported deep into the Christian heartland. Yet this provided no solution. Some contemporary writers had contrasted the peaceable Moors of Aragon and Castile with the savage Moors of Granada, but this distinction soon became irrelevant. All Muslims, peaceable or savage, were increasingly regarded by their Christian neighbors as malign and dangerous. What was a Morisco in their eyes? A murderer, highwayman or bandit. All Moriscos became pollutants of Roman Catholic Spain, with their secret Islamic rituals and contempt for the values of the majority. And like the Jews in 1492 they were impure, their blood self-evidently corrupting; their very presence in Spain was an abomination. Over the next four decades, Spanish officials planned the purgation of the Muslim threat. Every remote possibility was canvassed drowning, castration, exposure on the icy shores of Newfoundland. As time passed, the government s resolution hardened: it was no longer a matter of if but of when and how. Finally, from 1609 to 1614, an estimated 300,000 Muslims were marched to the coasts and put on ships for North Africa. Carr, the author of A History of Terrorism, charts this steady breakdown, though without demonizing either Christian or Muslim. He suggests that the growth of mutual mistrust and the spiral of increasing violence were the igniting spark of the final expulsion. Yet it is impossible to read this book without sensing its resonance in our own time. In his epilogue, A Warning From History?, Carr s message is stark. The current language of outrage in Europe indulging prophecies of imminent demographic doom brought on by fertile Muslims is heading toward the idea of an agreeable holocaust, which is what a 17th-century Dominican friar called Spain s final solution to its insoluble problem. We should know better. --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.' --David Levering Lewis, Professor of History, NYU and author of God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215-

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