CHAPTER FIVE

THE EXPULSION OF THE MUSLIMS FROM PORTUGAL: THE FORGOTTEN PERSECUTION

The expulsion of the Muslim minority from Portugal has always been overshadowed by the forced conversion of the Jews. Contemporary Por- tuguese chronicles barely refer to it and Jewish sources never mention the fact that the expulsion edict also affected Muslims. Modern studies rarely, if ever, mention it. To a large extent this silence is due to the total absence of any Muslim sources that might shed light on this event. The obscurity that surrounds the expulsion of the Portuguese Muslims is all the more striking as the event itself is so very surprising. Manuel’s decision to expel his Muslim subjects is difficult to understand and was a totally unprecedented act. Throughout the Iberian Peninsula, Muslim communities continued to be tolerated until 1502 in Castile, 1516 in Navarre and 1525−6 in the Crown of Aragon. It is impossible to find any parallels, or precedents, in other regions where Muslim communities lived under Christian rule. On the island of Sicily, conquered by Muslims armies in 827 and then by the Chris- tian Norman rulers of southern Italy in the final decade of the eleventh century, a sizeable Muslim population continued to live under Christian rule until the thirteenth century. A Muslim revolt on the island resulted in the deportation, by Emperor Frederick II (1197−1250), of large num- ber of these rebels and their families to the southern Italian town of Lucera in 1224. By 1300 the remaining Muslims on the island had been largely assimilated. On the Italian mainland, Frederick II and his suc- cessor Manfred (1258−1266) employed the isolated Muslims of Lucera as their personal bodyguard. The Muslims of Lucera continued to be tolerated after Charles I of Anjou (1266−1285) had conquered southern Italy and killed Manfred but his son Charles II (1285−1309) disbanded the colony in 1300 and reduced its inhabitants to slavery.1

1 On the Muslims of Sicily: D. S. H. Abulafia, “The end of Muslim Sicily”, Muslims under Latin Rule 1100−1300, ed. J. M. Powell (Princeton, 1990), 103−133; A. Metcalfe, “The Muslims of Sicily under Christian rule”, The Society of Norman Italy, eds. G. A. Loud and A. Metcalfe (Leiden, 2002), 289−317 and, by the same author, Muslims and 242 chapter five

In the Iberian Peninsula itself, the only previous instance of Muslims being expelled on a large scale by a Christian ruler was that which fol- lowed the revolt of the newly conquered Muslim population of Anda- lucía and Murcia between 1262 and 1264. Even then, King Alfonso X of Castile (1252−1284) only expelled the Muslim population of those areas who had rebelled against him but not those residing in other parts of his realm such as Toledo and the towns of the Duero Valley. In Mur- cia the Muslim rebels, who were defeated in 1265−6 not by the King of Castile but on his behalf by his father-in-law King James I of Ara- gon (1213−1270), were dealt with more leniently and allowed to remain there with their property, customs and laws. When Alfonso X took pos- session of Murcia, he encouraged the settlement of Christians in the region but respected the treaties negotiated by his father-in-law. Many Muslims subsequently left Murcia for Granada or North Africa but this emigration was not due to Royal pressure.2 In the lands of the Crown of Aragon, revolts by the Muslims of Valencia resulted in some population displacement but King James I did not attempt to implement any wide- spread expulsions. The acute shortage of Christian colonists meant that Muslim manpower was simply too precious to the new conquerors to be dispensed with in punitive expulsions.3 In all these cases, the drastic measures of Christian rulers towards their Muslim subjects were provoked by revolts and the need to safe- guard against further insurrections. The Portuguese expulsion of 1496−7, however, differs starkly from all these precedents. It was the first time that a Christian ruler ordered all the Muslim subjects of his realm to leave without any apparent provocation. There are important questions

Christians in Norman Sicily. Arabic speakers and the end of Islam (London, 2003). On the Muslim colony of Lucera: D. S. H. Abulafia, “Monarchs and minorities in the Christian western Mediterranean around 1300: Lucera and its analogues”, Christendom and its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution and Rebellion, 1100–1300, ed. Scott Waugh and Peter Diehl (Cambridge, 1996), 234−263; J. Taylor, Muslims in Medieval Italy. The Colony at Lucera (Lanham, 2003). 2 J. O’Callaghan, “The Mudéjars of Castile and Portugal in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries”, Muslims under Latin Rule 1100−1300, ed. J. M. Powell (Princeton, 1990), 11−56 and S. Thacker and J. Escobar, Chronicle of Alfonso X (Kentucky, 2002), 49−62. 3 On the Muslim revolts in Valencia see the articles by Robert I. Burns: “The crusade against al-Azraq: A thirteenth-century Mudéjar revolt in international perspective”, American Historical Review, 93 (1988), 80−106; “A lost crusade: unpublished bulls of Innocent IV on al-Azraq’s revolt in thirteenth-century Spain”, Catholic History Review, 74 (1988), 440−449; “Al-Azraq’s surrender treaty with Jaume I and prince Alfonso in 1245: Arabic text and Valencian context”, Der Islam, 66 (1989), 1−37.