Ottoman History Podcast - Moriscos and the Early Modern Mediterranean

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Mayte Green-Mercado hosted by Brittany White | In 1609, King Phillip III of Spain signed an edict to expel a community known as the Moriscos from the Iberian Peninsula. The Moriscos were Muslims forcibly converted to Christianity during the 16th century, after Christian kingdoms displaced the last remaining Muslim rulers in Iberia. The persecution and erasure of the Moriscos following the Reconquista are well documented in the historiography, where alongside Iberian Jews, they appear as victims of the fall of Islamic al-Andalus. But in this episode of Ottoman History Podcast, we’ll explore what these events looked like through the eyes of the Moriscos themselves and study their roles as political actors in the momentous political shifts of the 16th century. In this conversation with Mayte Green-Mercado about her book Visions of Deliverance, we discuss the circulation of Muslim and crypto-Muslim apocalyptic texts, known as jofores; and how these texts were catalysts for morisco political mobilization against the Spanish crown. We chart the formal and informal networks of communication between Moriscos, the Ottoman Empire, and the broader Mediterranean world. And we reflect on the challenges and benefits of using biased sources like the records of the Inquisition alongside other material. « Click for More »

In 1609, King Philip III of Spain signed an edict to expel a community known as the Moriscos from the Iberian Peninsula. The Moriscos were Muslims forcibly converted to Christianity during the 16th century, after Christian kingdoms displaced the last remaining Muslim rulers in Iberia. The persecution and erasure of the Moriscos following the Reconquista are well documented in the historiography, where alongside Iberian Jews, they appear as victims of the fall of Islamic al-Andalus. They appear as victims of the fall of Islamic al-Andalus. But in this episode of Deliverance, we

discussed the circulation of Muslim and crypto-Muslim apocalyptic texts, known as hofores, and how these texts were catalysts for Morisco political mobilization against the Spanish crown. We chart formal and informal networks of communication between Moriscos, the Ottoman Empire, and the broader Mediterranean world, and we reflect on the challenges and benefits of using biased sources like the records of the Inquisition alongside other material. I'm Brittany White. Stay tuned. So thank you for spending some time with us today to talk about your book, Visions of Deliverance. Just tell us a little bit about who the Moriscos are, and particularly about the diversity of political thought, language, and religious practices within the community. We can really begin to talk about Moriscos in the 16th century.

really begin to talk about Moriscos in the 16th century, to refer to these Iberian Muslims who were forced to convert to Catholicism in the first couple of decades of the 16th century. So we can't really talk about a single Morisco community, but rather we can think about Moriscos whose culture, language, religious practices varied significantly. And it was mainly according to geography and the history of Muslims and Muslim-Christian interactions in Iberia since the Middle Ages. And so, for example, we know that due to their close contact with Christians, Mudejars and Mudejars were these Muslims living under Christian rule in Castile, in the kingdom of Castile, had, for example, adopted the language of their neighbors, their Christian neighbors. And after the forced conversions of these Muslims in Castile, and this happened around 1501, these moriscos, these former Muslims now known as moriscos, spoke like

Christians, dressed like Christians, etc. And we see the same type of phenomenon in the kingdom of Aragon in northern Iberia. But then we have other moriscos, for example, those in Granada, which was, as you know, the last Muslim kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula. These new Christians, and these new Christians were also forcibly baptized in 1501, but these new Christians spoke Arabic, and they dressed in a manner that was different from the inhabitants of Castile or other Moriscos in other parts of the peninsula. And we have a similar phenomenon in the Kingdom of Valencia, where Moriscos continued to speak Arabic after the forced conversions, and these Muslims were forced to be baptized around 1519-1521,

and they lived in separate rural communities that were isolated from other Christians, and therefore they were able to preserve their language and cultural practices, etc. to preserve their language and cultural practices, etc. When it comes to religious practices, we also have the same kind of diversity. So we have some moriscos who converted to Catholicism and lived as Christians. And then we have others who continued practicing Islam in secret. And then among those moriscos who were Christians, there are also varying levels of knowledge of religion and the same can be said for those crypto-Muslims.

We know, for example, that the Granada moriscos and likely the Valencian Moriscos and likely the Valencia and Moriscos, who still spoke Arabic, had a deeper knowledge of Islam than perhaps crypto-Muslims in Castile or Aragon, who did not have access to the language of religious texts. And these religious texts were written in aljamiyado? Not all of them. So the moriscos of Granada and Valencia read Arabic and wrote Arabic. And so we find morisco texts or texts produced during the morisco period that were in Arabic. And then the aljamiyado phenomenon, which is the use of Arabic characters to render romance languages, was mainly used by mudéjars and moriscos in Castile and in Aragon. You say that your book does span the 16th century, and it's a history of moriscos through an apocalyptic lens.

And it's a history of moriscos through an apocalyptic lens. And you look at morisco prognosticative texts or morisco prophecies called jofores. They're religious texts. But you argue that they're also tied to political discourse, rebellion, and upheaval. Can you give us an example of one of those apocalyptic prophecies? I should say first that these texts that I'm referring to were written so the moriscos drew both from Christian apocalyptic texts, medieval Christian apocalyptic texts, and also from Islamic apocalyptic texts. So some of these hofores, for example,

are written as if they were hadiths, sayings, actions, tacit approvals of the Prophet, and they predict what will happen at the end of time. So an example of one of these apocalyptic hadiths is the Prophet one day is sitting with his companions, and one of the companions asks the prophet what will happen at the end of times. The prophet then begins to weep, and the texts are very descriptive. The prophet wets his beard with his tears, talking about what will happen at the end of times. And they ask the prophet, why are you crying? And he says something like, I'm crying because the Lord has shown me an island called Andalusia, which will be the last island where, which will be populated by Islam and the first place where Islam will be banished. Wow, that's beautiful. Yeah, it's really beautiful and really emotional, no?

And then the prophet also describes that those inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula are the or the strangers of his community. And at times he says that they have forsaken the reading of the Quran and that's why God is punishing them. And so this is one type of k Christian apocalyptic texts. We have, for example, the case of French Franciscan prophet John of Rupesissa and his prophecy, Vademecum in Tribulatione, where the Moriscos take this text and read the predictions about the destruction of the church and the predictions about the punishments of Christians in a crypto-Muslim light, if you will.

And these are really interesting texts because God punishes the church and punishes Christians at the hands of Antichrist, punishes the church and punishes Christians at the hands of Antichrist. But this Antichrist is represented as a Muslim Mahdi or as a Muslim power. Interesting. And so I have to imagine that the Castilian kingdom doesn't take too kindly to the circulation of these hojores. Can you tell me a little bit about how they're being perceived by the Christian rulers of this kingdom? So Christians know about these morisco texts. They are aware that moriscos circulate these texts.

And in fact, there is a chronicle of the expulsion that talks about how moriscos used to read the prophecies of, pseudo-prophecies of Saint Isidore of Seville, for example, but that they misunderstood these prophecies, which is really interesting. But one of the things that we see throughout the 16th century is that Catholic authorities begin to equate the reading of these texts with not only morisco apostasy, so that these are signs that the moriscos have returned to their Muslim faith, but as I discuss in the text, they begin to view these as political texts that moriscos are using to galvanize support for insurrections against the catholic authorities royal authorities and also against the inquisition

a lot of um the news that we have about these texts and how they circulated uh among the moriscos is through uh inquisition sources testimonies that Moriscos give that mention these texts. But as I just described, we also have the physical texts that were written in Aljamiado. So some of these texts lead to the Alpujarras Rebellion. Can you tell us what the rebellion is and how it came about and what were the social and political implications afterwards? It was a very bloody two-year insurrection mounted by moriscos in the Kingdom of Granada as a result of or as a response to a series of measures that were passed in 1567 that sought to curb or to erase Morisco cultural signs such as the use of Arabic language, dress, baths, Morisco music, and all of the signs that were somehow associated by the

Catholic authorities with an adherence to the Muslim religion. But this was not the only thing that Moriscos were responding to. Moriscos were also responding to the confiscation of lands that was taking place in Granada at the time. Also, the fact that Moriscos could not bear, no longer bear arms. And so, there were a series of restrictions against the Morisco population in the Kingdom of Granada. And the Moriscos interpreted these as the Catholic king, Philip II, breaking pacts that had been established with the Morisco community and therefore as an illegitimate ruler. And therefore they needed to respond to that. And so they fought

for two years, and during this revolt, we know both through Christian sources, through chronicles of the rebellion, and also through testimonies, for example, Morisco testimonies before the Inquisition, and we also have texts, that Morisco circulated these apocalyptic texts. and in collaboration with what are known as al-Faqis or the religious leaders of the crypto-Muslim community. And we know about the ways in which these texts circulated. So some testimonies talk about how Moriscos would gather and read these texts out loud before and during the rebellion, which is really amazing information that we have about the circulation of knowledge during this period. And one of the things that I argue in the book is that these texts were deployed particularly in moments when Moriscos, some groups of Moriscos, were not ready to engage in fighting, whether it was because they were more vulnerable, because they didn't believe in the cause. The circulation of these texts also speak to us about the different Morisco communities

that I talked about before, and also different political agendas and also fractures within the Morisco community. And one of the things that these texts try to do is to recreate a Muslim community in the Iberian Peninsula. These texts that were circulated during the war predicted that Muslim Mediterranean powers would come to the Iberian Peninsula and help Moriscos recover the land. And so the aim of these texts, or the political vision behind these texts was the restoration of Islam in the Iberian Peninsula.

Before we go on to talk about how the Morisco community was kind of connected to the wider Mediterranean world, I have to ask, do you have a favorite hofor? It's very difficult. Oh, it's very difficult. It's very, very difficult to say, because I really do love the one, the hofor that I was mentioning earlier about Muhammad weeping, speaking to his companions and weeping for the Morisco community. for the Morisco community. The way that the Morisco community sees itself in these texts is devastating, but at the same time sort of reflects the political agency of this community. I also really love, and this one is more connected to the Mediterranean, an alhamiyado text that is known as the Alwasiyya del Gran Turco, which is a text that at first hand doesn't seem to be an apocalyptic text, but it is a text that

is written purportedly by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, and it is presented as a mirror for princes, and it is addressed to one of the sultan's son, and it talks about what it means to be a good ruler. And in it, we see reflected both Ottoman political principles, we see reflected both Ottoman political principles, but also Morisco ideals for what a good ruler is. And so I'm really, really interested in that text because of the different layers that it expresses, both the religious dimension and apocalyptic dimension

and also the political dimension. In my work, one of the things that I try to do, and this is one of the reasons why I'm so interested in apocalyptic texts, is to try to recover a morisco political culture, which is something that we know about, but looking at the texts and how they circulated allows us to see sort of the production and the process of production and circulation of political ideas.

But yes, I love that prophecy about the prophet. It was beautiful. I also love the way in which Moriscos adapt, take Christian texts and re-elaborate them to reflect their own concerns. So how they reread these texts that predict punishment of Christians in Iberia. They reflect the destruction of Spain. And it also reflects a lot of Morisco agency in these texts. So I like all of them, I have to say. I can't pick one or the other. I should say, though, that these texts are very cryptic. They're very difficult to read. And in fact, they're very difficult to translate because even in the Spanish original or the Aljamiyado original, there are many things that are very unclear. But this is true with all apocalyptic texts from all traditions, whether they are written in Latin or in Castilian or even in Arabic. There's always

this level of ambiguity that the apocalyptic texts leave. They leave enough room for interpretation, multiple levels of interpretation, and they want to be deliberately ambiguous. And that becomes very difficult when you're trying to translate these texts. I'm sure. So when you're in the archive, are you you're reading, I guess, 16th century Spanish and sometimes in an Arabic in an Arabic script and then deciphering these symbols and kind of very ambiguous language at the same time? that today, not when I started doing research for my dissertation, that ended up being this book, but today, most if not all of these texts have been published. I do consult these manuscripts in libraries in Spain. There's one in one of the series of texts also at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and they are written in aljamiyado. And so I am reading these Aragonese or Castilian texts that have a very

strong Aragonese flavor written in Arabic script, but also these texts incorporate a lot of Arabic words so interesting all words that are related to religion to God to the prophet to angels to to prayer, these are all, these words are all left in Arabic, or at least a Hispanized Arabic, or an Arabized Spanish, I suppose you can also say. It's a two-way street. Yeah, but they, so they are written in al-Hamiyado, and then we have also found, And then we have also found, and these are appended to Inquisition sources, Arabic versions of these hofores as well. We have the texts on the one hand, and on the other hand, one of the things that I tried to do was see how these texts were circulating

by looking at testimonies in Inquisition sources. looking at testimonies in Inquisition sources. So we hear in the voices of Moriscos these texts, aljamiado texts that are repeated before the Inquisitors, sometimes under torture, sometimes voluntarily. But we can hear through these Inquisition texts the voices of moriscos. Now, were these texts, when they were recited, was there like a poetic or, I guess, song element to it? Or were they read like any other literature?

So some are, some are not. So some are delivered as sermons during Friday prayer. And they read a little bit like sermons. sermons during Friday prayer, and they read a little bit like sermons. And sometimes they read a little bit like apocalyptic hadiths in Arabic. And then some are actually in verse form. And so we have them in Arabic verse form as well. And so they're very varied texts as well. And I think that really reflects the moriscos and who they were and their diversity as well. I want to go back to AlbasWasir the Grand Turco. Could you explain what that specific hofar is and how it shows a connectedness to the wider Mediterranean world at the time? So this is an al-Hamiyado text. It is known as the Wasir or will of the Grand Turk or the Great Turk.

It was purportedly penned by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II. As I mentioned before, it is framed as a mirror for princes. It is addressed to one of the Sultan's son. We don't know which son, and we know little about who copied this text, so we don't really know a lot about the Alhamiyado version of this text. The text itself alleges that it was drawn from the copy, a copy that this Viceroy of Sicily, Don Lope Jimenez de Urrea, possessed and he supposedly sent this text to his wife who was living in Spain at the time. This is what the text, sort of the preamble of the text, tells us. We don't have any more information. And in fact, when you look at

the purported date of this text, it is unlikely that Don Lope Jimenez de Urrea might have had this text. We don't really know too much about it. But in any case, the text begins by the sultan sort of enumerating the principles of good governance that a good ruler should exercise. And what I find most interesting in this text is that some of those principles that are enumerated are directly of interest to the moriscos. So, for example, there is this idea that a good ruler should not force his subjects to convert. Okay. And this is very directly related to the experience of Moriscos. But it is really interesting because it's put in the mouth of the Ottoman Sultan,

Mehmed II, the conqueror, right? And another one is, for example, this idea that a ruler should not break pacts with his subjects, pacts that a ruler has made, that a ruler should not break the law if it goes against the interests of his subjects. And these were all things that when moriscos either rebelled during the Alpujarras revolt, or when they were planning to rebel,

they were stating these as causes for rebellion so that this makes a legitimate ruler. This is how a legitimate ruler should behave. ruler should behave. And if they break these pacts or they force subjects to convert, then it is legitimate to rebel. And so for the purposes of my study, I was very interested in an apocalyptic element at the end of this text. And I argue in the book that it is this apocalyptic element that connects Morisco apocalyptic text to the wider Mediterranean and to a broader Mediterranean apocalyptic culture. So according to the text,

Mehmed II predicts that his son will feed barley to his horse at the altar of St. Peter and Paul before being crowned in Constantinople. And I was very struck by this image of the Sultan feeding his horse barley at the altar of St. Peter. barley at the altar of St. Peter. And it took me back to an article that I had read as a graduate student, written by my advisor, Cornell Fleischer, discussing a prognostication related to Suleiman the Magnificent that cites a Venetian source that presents Suleiman as watering and feeding his horse at the altar of Saint Peter. This particular Ottoman version of the prophecy is recorded in an Ottoman chronicle titled Gurbet Name Sultan Cem, the tale of exile of Cem Sultan. And this text records what are ostensibly several conversations

that seem like a polemical in nature between Cem Sultan and Pope Innocent VIII, the text mentions this particular prophecy predicting an Ottoman takeover of Rome, okay? Oh, wow. And so, this is precisely what the Al-Hamiyado text is also telling us. We don't know exactly what the chain of transmission was. So that makes it a little bit tricky to look at the trajectory of this prophecy between the Iberian Peninsula, Venice, and Istanbul. But we do know that this text circulated among Moriscos. So this is not just a text that Moriscos copied and never read. We have, for example, testimonies by Moriscos before the Inquisition that talk specifically about the Ottoman Sultan who is going to go to Rome, water his horse, and then end up coming to the Iberian Peninsula, or feeding this apocalyptic motif, and they were expecting and hoping that the Ottomans would in fact come and help the Moriscos in a potential insurrection.

So speaking of that, the communication between Morisco community and Ottomans, this is not just through like the circulation of these texts. Oftentimes, it seems like the Morisco community is sending unofficial emissaries and requesting support for their rebellions. The Ottomans are also cultivating Morisco networks in Spain to destabilize the Habsburgs. So there's a lot of inter-imperial intrigue. And you analyze that through Al-Waziyah del Gran Turco. Yes, I analyze that both through the Al-Waziyah del Gran Turco, but also through the uses and deployment of apocalyptic prophecies in contexts where Moriscos are seeking to galvanize support for a rebellion. In these texts, the Ottoman

Sultan features prominently and so these texts are also talking about how the Ottomans are gonna come and help Moriscos, but we also know that Moriscos were in fact sending people and the people who were going to Istanbul were not ordinary people. These were members of Morisco, what were recognized at the time as Morisco elites. These were wealthy Moriscos. Most of these families were merchants who had the means and had the connections around the Mediterranean to engage in this type of communication. And so they were traveling to North Africa. And also, we know that they were traveling to Istanbul and delivering letters that were basically begging for the support of the Sultan and also promising

money. They were saying, you know, you are the leader of the Ummah. We are part of your Ummah. It is your duty to help us, but we are also prepared to furnish X amount of money for you to send men and send arms so that we can stage this insurrection. So they were also making promises. And how does the Ottoman Empire respond to these requests? Do they ever receive the help? They were entertaining the Moriscos, and they were also making promises of their own, promises that we know were never fulfilled and that aid was never delivered. But we have to see this episode within the broader context of the Ottoman-Habsburg rivalry for the control of the Mediterranean. So this is not just an isolated case of these crazy moriscos who were there trying to get the support of the Ottoman Sultan, but actually this has to be understood within this broader context. We also

know, for example, that Philip II was trying to do exactly the same thing with Christian subjects of the Ottomans in the Balkans. And so, this was a way in which sort of a proxy war that was being fought or that was being at least conceived of, even if it was never actually realized, right? Even if it didn't happen, these strong powers in the Mediterranean were looking at the others' subject as potential allies in a proxy internal war against the enemy. But we know that this never happened for the Moriscos. And in fact, Moriscos were very much aware that the Ottomans might never come. And so, sometimes we see testimonies of Moriscos before the Inquisition, where they're saying,

yes, and I was telling him not to believe these stories. The Ottoman is never going to come and basically like waste his time with us. But there were others who were saying, yes, we have these prophecies that are promising that the Ottoman Sultan is going to come. And so we need to trust in God's word. And so this is one of the ways in which these prophecies are helping to galvanize support for this cause. I'll say one more thing, and it is that the Moriscos were also using apocalyptic language to communicate both with the Ottomans and also, as I discuss in one of the chapters of the book, with other enemies of the Spanish crown, for example, the French King Henry IV, using this language, messianic language, as a political language. And so they say, it is written in our prophecies that it is you who has been chosen by God to come and aid us. So they're using this

language very strategically in a political way, also to communicate both with the Ottomans and with the French. So you've alluded to this before, but there are riffs in the Morisco community. And you write about an informant named Luis Moreno. Can you tell us a little bit about him and his story? Yes, there were several Morisco informants. Luis Moreno wasn't the only one. But these were Moriscos who at times served as double agents. So they were informants about the things that the Moriscos were planning to the Inquisitors, and they were also informants to the Morisco communities about what the Inquisitors were planning.

And so they were double agents in a way. And Luis Moreno in particular is at the center of this rebellion conspiracy that takes place after the Alpujarras revolt between 1573, 75, and 1580. And it is a moment when, after the Alpujarras revolt, the Moriscos are still trying to get help from the Ottomans to stage an insurrection, not in Granada, but rather now in Valencia in Aragon. I should say one thing, though, because you had asked me before, and I didn't answer this about the significance of the Alpujarras revolt for the Morisco community.

The Alpujarras revolt was a kind of watershed moment for all of the Moriscos. The Alpujarras Revolt was a kind of watershed moment for all of the Moriscos in the Iberian Peninsula. After the rebellion, Granada and Moriscos were expelled from the Kingdom of Granada and dispersed throughout the Iberian Peninsula. Most of them ended up in the Kingdom of Castile, but some of them ended up in Valencia or in Aragon. And this was very important for, on the one hand, the religious instruction of moriscos in Arabic and in reading the Quran, etc., the presence of these Granada moriscos, but also the inquisitors feared that this Granada element

would sort of destabilize the Morisco communities of Aragón and Valencia because they would incite these communities to rebel, okay? It is for this reason, and people like Luis Moreno that some scholars have doubted the veracity of this conspiracy and that believe that this was all made up by the inquisitors or that we should really be careful in believing the idea that moriscos were actually planning to rebel. But Luis Moreno, going back to him, he begins telling the inquisitors, he's a morisco, he's a morisco who is well connected to the prominent moriscos that I was talking about before, these merchants and wealthy moriscos. He has a lot of information about what is happening and he begins feeding this information to the inquisitors,

telling the inquisitors that the Moriscos want to rebel. As a result of Luis Moreno's testimonies, many of those Morisco elites were imprisoned by the inquisition. And as a result of the testimonies of another Morisco who was actually making up another insurrection, some of these Morisco elites ended up being executed. informants like Gil Perez, which I discuss in one of the chapters, really tells us both about the cohesion of the Morisco community, but also of rifts within the Morisco community. And so it's very interesting. Luis Moreno's case is very interesting because he ended up being tried by the Inquisition in the end and appearing in an auto de fe in the 1580s. And he was actually accused of and he confessed to living as a crypto Muslim.

Oh, wow. So the testimonies that he's giving are very, I argue, are reliable because he was a crypto-Muslim and he knew the community well and he was well infiltrated. We don't know exactly why he was doing this. We know, for example, about the other person I was mentioning, Gil Perez, that he was getting paid by the inquisitors to do this. So there was a financial transaction there that was important to him. Luis Moreno is more, it's more difficult to know what his motivations were. Apparently, though, he had very good relations with his lord, with his seniorial lord, the owner of the lands in which he lived. And it seems that it was his lord, the one who was pushing him to give these testimonies to the inquisitors. Okay. So it also reflects the vulnerability that these moriscos had vis-a-vis the Christian authorities.

And so in a way, Luis Moreno provides really, really valuable information, but at the same time, he really served as a good tool for the inquisitors whose aim was to break the Morisco communities from within. So ultimately, after years of rebellion and oppression, the Moriscos are expelled from Iberia. The Ottomans never come, like you mentioned, and they're expelled in 1609. So how did they understand their expulsion through this apocalyptic lens?

How did this reading differ from previous apocalyptic understandings of their experiences and their future. When it came time to write about the experience of expulsion, Moriscos understood this process, I suppose, in a providentialist light, as they had interpreted their whole history as a community in the Iberian Peninsula. They wrote about how God had placed the idea in the heart of the Spanish king, Philip III, and in the hearts of the counselors to expel the Moriscos so that they could finally go and live as Muslims in Muslim lands. And so they interpret this expulsion in a way in a positive light, right? Not necessarily as a punishment of God, but actually as a reward that God was granting them

for being steadfast in their religion and for enduring all of the difficulties that they had by having to live as Christians in a Christian land. And so, in a way, it's different from the previous understandings because while the previous understandings were attempting to recreate Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula, now they were looking at the expulsion as God's will and as God selecting this community as their chosen ones uh the dear their dear ones right who were going to be and i'm going to use this with scare quotes sort of redeemed or saved at the end of times right because now they were going to go and live in muslim lands We know, though, that that process of going and living in Muslim lands was very difficult for Morisco's right.

But it's really interesting the way that the community continues to see itself as a community after the expulsion and now living in Muslim lands. Yeah, when I read that part, I thought, oh, I felt I knew what was going to happen. And but throughout the book, I was rooting for them regardless the entire time. And you get to the epilogue and I was like, well, that's that's a really nice way to put a silver lining on it. It's a nice way to put a silver lining on it. It's a nice way to put a silver lining exactly and I also uh throughout while doing research and while writing uh this book also rooted for the Moriscos and see uh and try to really recover this agency and political culture uh and try to stay away from characterizations of moriscos as marginalized or as minor actors

in the Mediterranean stage. In addition to the Aljamiano text, you use documents produced by the Inquisition, as you've mentioned, and you say that many scholars have called those sources too biased. I think in the book you say that they use the term that they're rotten, that they're just spoiled and no good. But you have a different take on this. How can

historians use Inquisition documents? And how can the Al-Hamiyallot texts in the Inquisition records kind of be read together? There is this idea, and this is interesting because it's a sort of a And this is interesting because it's sort of a disciplinary divide between literary scholars and historians, where a lot of literary scholars have deemed Inquisition sources as too biased, or they use the term fuentes envenenadas, poisoned sources, right? fuentes envenenadas, poisoned sources, right? And that in order to write the story of moriscos, we should be very careful with using those sources because they are biased, because at times they were produced

while moriscos were under torture. There's a broad scholarship, not just Iberian, that shows very clearly how rich the Inquisition material is. And one of the ways in which I deal with this question of the bias in Inquisition sources is by reading them alongside other material. When I first started this research, I started from the Aljamiado texts. And one of the things that I was trying to figure out was, first of all, whether the Moriscos were aware of these texts, whether they circulated at all, in which contexts they circulated. And the Inquisition material allowed me to start tracing the circulation of these texts in the peninsula.

And once I started, it was a type of work that was like looking for a needle in a haystack because it was going through Inquisition paper after Inquisition paper after dossier trying to look for mentions of hofores, mentions of prophecies, and so once I started identifying when they were mentioned, then I started being able to reconstruct the contexts, right? But the way in which I read these texts together is by trying to see when those aljamiyado texts and how they are mentioned by moriscos. I not only use Inquisition sources, I also use historical chronicles. I use diplomatic correspondence.

also use historical chronicles, I use diplomatic correspondence, I use other types of material that allow me to confirm not only what is being said by the Inquisition sources, but also what is being said in the aljamiyado texts. So, for example, a good example of the way in which I do this, I think, is what I tried to do in Chapter 3 with this motif of the Alwasía del Gran Turco. I begin from an Inquisition source, a Morisco testimony, repeating this idea that the Ottoman is going to go and water and feed his horse in St. Peter. From there, I move to the Alhamiyado text that mentions this particular motif. And then I go to an Ottoman chronicle that also mentions this text. And so I think we have to be, as historians, careful with the ways in which we use Inquisition sources.

They are by no means neutral. They have some poison there. It is true. But I believe that looking at them and reading them alongside other material can help us understand all of these sets of sources better. That concludes our interview with Maite Green Mercado about visions of deliverance, moriscos and the politics of prophecy

in the early modern Mediterranean. If you're looking to learn more about the moriscos, visit our website, ottomanhistorypodcast.com, where you'll find a quick link to the book as well as other resources in this interview's bibliography. You'll also find tons of other episodes on the Ottoman Empire in the early modern world. That's all for now. I'm Brittany White. Thanks for listening. Thank you.