Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614 (review)

The timeliness of L. P. Harvey's seminal study on the Muslims in Spain cannot be overstated. Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614 represents the author's intense research and reflects a remarkable exploration of the history and literature of Muslim communities in the Iberian Peninsula. It also continues in the tradition of his earlier Islamic Spain, 1250 to 1500 in terms of the depth and range of scholarship, analytical skills, and moral clarity. Harvey is professor emeritus of Spanish at the University of London and a fellow of King's College. His credentials are impeccable and his use of sources remarkably lucid. There is no escaping the present through this historical study. It provokes complex and incommodious questions about contemporary Islam and Europe through the tumultuous upheavals and injustices of the past.

The story begins with the Christian conquest of Granada and a Muslim rebellion in 1500 that provoked a response from the ruling Christian authorities, leading to conversions of the Muslim population. The forced conversions led to the creation of a new religious class, the Moriscos, who were converts from Islam to Christianity. The conversions, more by force than by proselytizing, ended by 1526, and many continued to regard themselves Muslim and to practice their religion under extremely difficult and strenuous conditions. Muslims in Spain is a story, according to the author, of the final century of Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula and an effort to trace what happened from the time Muslims were forcibly converted to Christianity up to the end of 1614, culminating in their expulsion from Spain. Harvey's study examines this process of conversion, assimilation, and finally expulsion, focusing on the beginnings and development of crypto-Islam in the Iberian Peninsula, the surviving form of Islam in Spain.

The author describes the story in the following terms: It was not until 1500 that Muslims in Spain had to confront the problem of what to do about the threat of conversion under duress. The conquest year of 1492 had been a landmark year, certainly, but whereas the conquest of Granada bought the end of the last bastion of political autonomy for Muslims in the peninsula, it did not bring about any forcible conversions. After 1492 all up and down the length and breadth of Spain Muslims practiced and enjoyed freedom to worship as their forefathers had worshipped. Those rights were in most cases entrenched not just in a single constitutional instrument but also in an array of capitulations, charters, coronation oaths, and other formal guarantees.

The history of Muslims in Spain and the various interpretations of conversions remains the subject of disagreement. Harvey reminds us that the circumstances under which public worship, according to the religion of Islam, was brought to an end in the Iberian Peninsula are interpreted differently by Muslims and Christians. Here the author examines the treatment of Muslims under the terms of the capitulation of the city of Granada in 1492, suggesting that the vanquished in battle could have expected to be treated favorably. That treatment included the rights to be left in possession of most of their property and to continue to worship God as they saw fit. However, this favorable treatment was dependent on total military and political submission. Although Harvey is correct to point out that the equal treatment of Muslims, in the sense of their not suffering expropriations and their being able to continue to live in their homes and practice their religion, is not alien to the modern mind, it was a rather innovative and unique policy for the fifteenth century. Unfortunately, the author does not explore further the texts of the capitulations and their significance for European understanding of self and the other. Harvey's examination of the self-understanding and the tensions between Christians and Muslims in Spain takes place against a background of emerging tensions in the Mediterranean, with the rising power of the Turks and threats to the prevailing European qua Christian order. There...