Copyright by Elizabeth Woodhead Nutting 2014 The Dissertation Committee for Elizabeth Woodhead Nutting Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Morisco Survival: Gender, Conversion, and Migration in the Early Modern Mediterranean, 1492-1659 Committee: Denise A. Spellberg, Supervisor Julie Hardwick Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra Benjamin Brower Miriam Bodian Geraldine Heng Morisco Survival: Gender, Conversion, and Migration in the Early Modern Mediterranean, 1492-1659 by Elizabeth Woodhead Nutting, B.A.; B.A; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2014 For my grandparents: Bill, Gwen, Woody, and Adma. Acknowledgements I am grateful for the assistance and support of many people and institutions. First, I would like to thank my advisor, Denise Spellberg, whose tireless assistance throughout my graduate career has unfailingly made my work better than it was before. I am grateful for her insightful comments and unwavering encouragement. I have had the priviledge of working with many wonderful faculty members at the University of Texas. Julie Hardwick has consistently provided new sources of inspiration since my first year of graduate school. Benjamin Brower helped me to begin to see the bigger picture at a crucial moment in the writing process. Miriam Bodian, Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, and Geraldine Heng provided additional helpful suggestions. It is thanks to Samer Ali and Kristen Brustad that I acquired the language skills that made this dissertation possible. My graduate work would not have been possible without financial and institutional support. I wish to thank the History Department at the University of Texas for two fellowship years as well as summer funding. I also thank the Institute for Historical Studies, which provided financial support, a scholarly community, and a chance to present my work during my final year of writing. The Graduate School provided an additional semester of support. The Center for Middle Eastern Studies provided a FLAS fellowship to improve my Arabic and the Medieval Studies Program at the University of Texas provided summer research support. A research grant from the American Institute for Maghreb Studies supported me during my fieldwork in Morocco. The Mellon Summer Institute in Spanish Paleography provided invaluable training. I would also like to thank the Escuela de Estudios Árabes in Granada for institutional v support during my time in Spain and the library at the Casa de Velázquez for providing me with books and a place to write in Madrid. My research abroad was facilitated by the assistance of many individuals and institutions. I would like to thank the staff at all of the archives I visited: the Bibliothèque Nationale in Rabat, the Bibliothèque Generale et Archives in Tetouan, the Archivo General de Simancas, the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid, the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, and the Archivo Histórico de la Alhambra in Granada. In particular, I would like to thank Ali al-Raissouni for sharing his deep knowledge of the Moriscos of northern Morocco and Amalia García Pedraza for helping me find a valuable source at the Colegio Notarial de Granada. My time abroad was enriched by the scholars and friends I met there who provided encouragement, inspiration, and friendship: Jeremy Ledger, Erin Twohig, Kevin Schluter, and Ariela Marcus-Sells among others. I consider myself very fortunate to have been a part of the genuinely friendly graduate student community of the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin. Many friends read and commented on drafts of chapters or discussed ideas at length over a pint or a cup of coffee: Laurie Wood, Hadi Hosainy, Lior Sternfeld, Mikiya Koyagi, Shaz Ahmadi, Shari Silzell, Mehmet Celik, Chris Rose, Chloe Ireton, and Kristie Flannery. Dharitri Bhattacharjee, Rachel Ozanne, Susan Zakaib, Ellen McAmis, and Christine Baker made my graduate school years a joy. Jennifer Jiggetts and Katie Filardo made sure I had fun when I was in DC. I owe much of my success to the support of my family. My parents provided untiring assistance (of all kinds) and encouragement. Both of my father’s parents died vi while I was in graduate school. I know they would be proud and they will be missed at graduation. I thank my Sittu and my sisters, Halley and Madeleine, for their love and humor. Finally, I wish to thank Andrés for making Madrid home and for his love, patience, and unwavering support. vii Morisco Survival: Gender, Conversion, and Migration in the Early Modern Mediterranean, 1492-1659 Elizabeth Woodhead Nutting, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2014 Supervisor: Denise A. Spellberg In the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Western Mediterranean, Moriscos were Christians whose ancestors had been Muslims. The term came into use in Spanish following the first forced baptisms in the Iberian Peninsula after the 1492 Spanish conquest of Granada, the last Muslim-ruled kingdom in Spain. Old Christians used “Morisco,” often pejoratively, to refer to a group of people whose religious, political, and cultural allegiances were suspect. The Spanish crown finally solved the “Morisco problem” by expelling every Morisco from Spain with a series of edicts between 1609 and 1614. The expelled Moriscos scattered around the Mediterranean and beyond, eventually losing the designation “Morisco” as they assimilated into their new homes as either Christians or Muslims. Previous scholars have approached the Moriscos from a Spanish national historiographical context and have focused on the question of the Moriscos’ “true” religious identity. This dissertation puts new archival evidence in conversation with better-known printed material in both Arabic and Spanish to examine the socio-economic viii history of Morisco men and women in a transnational context that expands our understanding of who the Moriscos were and the varied strategies they used to survive in a changing Mediterranean world. This dissertation makes three central arguments about Morisco survival from a range of contexts that highlight the variety of Morisco responses to persecution and violence and to emphasize how Moriscos adapted to changing circumstances over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. First, Moriscos in Granada relied on the centrality of Morisco (and especially Morisca) labor to survive in a changing political world, but their economic leverage only lasted a few generations until they were expelled from the Kingdom in 1570. Second, Moriscos in Valencia increasingly relied on resistance as tension increased during the last decades of the sixteenth century and coexistence became increasingly dangerous and impossible. Third, Moriscos in the Mediterranean diaspora and beyond found survival even more difficult than their predecessors in Spain. Separation from communities and families made Moriscos particularly vulnerable and they relied on increasingly desperate strategies to survive. Throughout, gender and class determined the range of both challenges and opportunities. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ................................................................................................... xii Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................... 1 Who Were the Moriscos? .................................................................................... 6 Terminology .................................................................................................... 6 (Re)conquest and Religious Diversity in Medieval Iberia ............................ 11 The Conquest of Granada ............................................................................. 14 The Baptism of the Moriscos in Castile and Aragon .................................... 19 Historiography .................................................................................................. 20 The Early Modern Mediterranean: Bazaar or Battlefield? ........................... 20 The “Morisco Question” ............................................................................... 26 Morisca Women ............................................................................................ 31 Moriscos after 1614 ...................................................................................... 34 Comparisons: The Jewish Case .................................................................... 40 Sources and Methodology ................................................................................. 42 Organization ...................................................................................................... 45 Chapter 2: Muslim Families, Labor, and Survival in Granada, 1492-1570 .............. 48 Historiography and Sources .............................................................................. 51 Kingdom of Silk ................................................................................................ 56 Granadan Women and Silk Production ............................................................. 60 Women and Silk Production through Conquest: 1492-1570 ........................ 65 Silk in Morisco Households: The Inventarios de Bienes Moriscos .................. 69 Conquering the Kingdom of Silk ...................................................................... 74 Conversion: 1500-1512 ....................................................................................