To Live like a Moor: Christian Perceptions of Muslim Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain by Olivia Remie Constable (review)

Under the inquisitorial regime of sixteenth-century Spain, New Christians had to defend the idea that the practices that made them culturally distinct from Old Christians had nothing to do with Islam. The sincerity of their faith in Christianity fell under suspicion if they dyed their fingers with henna, insisted on veiling their hair and faces with almalafas, took regular baths, preferred the meat of circumcised butchers, enjoyed figs and eggplants, or fried dough to make buñuelos. Legislation designed to eradicate such "crypto-Islamic" customs spurred converts to Christianity from Granada, such as the notable Francisco Núñez Muley, to plead for the survival of a vanishing "Moorish" culture. According to Constable's last book, published posthumously, the "early modern" laws and edicts that culminated in the expulsion of the descendants of Andalusian Muslims did not radically break with the past. Rather, they extended "medieval" rules that had aimed to make the religious identity of Muslims, Jews, and Christians visually apparent.

Unfortunately, Constable died before finishing this marvelous book. She did not have the time to write a conclusion. In the introduction, she emphasized historical continuities in Iberian Christian perceptions of symbols of Islamic affiliation before and after the forced conversions of Muslims. In the conclusion, she could easily have emphasized historical changes: To Live like a Moor actually presents a wealth of evidence to suggest that Christians in reconquered territories gradually drifted from tolerating and even imitating various elements of a "Moorish" way of life to despising and ultimately purging from their midst everything and everyone that struck them as superficially "Islamic."