Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain (26 page)
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Authors: Matthew Carr
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BOOK: Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain
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12
“A Dirty Little War”
Of all Spain’s civil wars, few have been bloodier and more savage than the Morisco revolt known to history as the War of the Alpujarras. As in 1500–1501, the epicenter of the rebellion was the great natural fortress of the Alpujarras Mountains, but the second war was infinitely more destructive and extensive than its predecessor. In its absence of elementary notions of humanity or morality, its greed, vengeance, and murderous ethnic and religious passions, the rebellion anticipated the European religious wars of the seventeenth century. The cascade of massacres and sieges, ambushes, and mutual atrocities was depicted in grim detail by the Granadan soldier and historian Luis de Mármol Carvajal, whose
Historia de la rebelión y castigo de los moriscos del reino de Granada
(History of the Rebellion and Punishment of the Moriscos of the Kingdom of Granada, 1600) contains the most comprehensive—if not the most objective—narrative account of the war. An Arabic speaker and a veteran of Spain’s North African wars, Mármol fought on the Christian side during the rebellion and witnessed many of the events he described. A more critical account of the Christian conduct of the war was contained in Diego Hurtado de Mendoza’s
La Guerra de Granada
(The War in Granada), which circulated for years in manuscript form before its first publication in 1627. The uncle of Granada’s then captain-general the Marquis of Mondéjar, and a former diplomat, soldier, and poet, Mendoza was exiled to his childhood home in the Alhambra in the early stages of the revolt after a violent altercation at Philip’s court.
Historia de la rebelión y castigo de los moriscos del reino de Granada
(History of the Rebellion and Punishment of the Moriscos of the Kingdom of Granada, 1600) contains the most comprehensive—if not the most objective—narrative account of the war. An Arabic speaker and a veteran of Spain’s North African wars, Mármol fought on the Christian side during the rebellion and witnessed many of the events he described. A more critical account of the Christian conduct of the war was contained in Diego Hurtado de Mendoza’s
La Guerra de Granada
(The War in Granada), which circulated for years in manuscript form before its first publication in 1627. The uncle of Granada’s then captain-general the Marquis of Mondéjar, and a former diplomat, soldier, and poet, Mendoza was exiled to his childhood home in the Alhambra in the early stages of the revolt after a violent altercation at Philip’s court.
Though too old to fight himself, he observed firsthand a conflict that he called a “dirty little war” and depicted its follies and disasters in a taut and acid prose that recalled the histories of his great model, Tacitus. The rebellion was also chronicled by the extraordinary Murcian shoemaker, soldier, and poet, Ginés Pérez de Hita, in his fusion of novelistic fiction, balladry, and narrative history,
La Guerra de los Moriscos
(The War of the Moriscos, 1619). Like Mármol, Pérez de Hita fought with the Christian armies, and like Mendoza, he was strongly critical of the Christian conduct of the war. But unlike his Granadan contemporary, his disgust with the behavior of his own side is strongly infused with pro-Morisco sympathies and a romantic “Maurophiliac” nostalgia for Granada’s Moorish past. More than four centuries later, these three very different histories remain the main source of reference for a vicious war that presented Hapsburg Spain with one of its gravest security crises of the century and ultimately brought about the end of Morisco Granada.
La Guerra de los Moriscos
(The War of the Moriscos, 1619). Like Mármol, Pérez de Hita fought with the Christian armies, and like Mendoza, he was strongly critical of the Christian conduct of the war. But unlike his Granadan contemporary, his disgust with the behavior of his own side is strongly infused with pro-Morisco sympathies and a romantic “Maurophiliac” nostalgia for Granada’s Moorish past. More than four centuries later, these three very different histories remain the main source of reference for a vicious war that presented Hapsburg Spain with one of its gravest security crises of the century and ultimately brought about the end of Morisco Granada.
After so many months of rumor and expectation, the rebels finally struck their first blow on a snowy Christmas Eve in 1568, when a detachment of Christian soldiers billeted in the Morisco village of Cádiar were quietly murdered in their beds. This news had not reached the Granadan capital by the following night, by which time thousands of Moriscos were poised to descend on the city from the Alpujarra Mountains and take the Christian population by surprise in the midst of their Christmas celebrations. Had the assault taken place as planned, the poorly defended Granadan capital would probably have been overwhelmed, and the revolt might have had a different outcome, but the plan was called off at the last minute after heavy snows made the roads almost impassable. Instead a hundred or so
monfíes
led by a dyer and former prisoner of the Inquisition named Farax Aben Farax slipped into Granada in the early hours in the midst of the blizzard and made their way directly to the Albaicín. Playing hornpipes and other musical instruments and proclaiming the name of Muhammad, the
monfíes
marched through the streets, urging the Morisco inhabitants to come out of their homes and join them. Farax’s men had brought rope ladders with the intention of scaling the walls of the Alhambra, but the residents of the Albaicín were unimpressed by the low rebel turnout and refused to come out and join them. Disgusted and frustrated by the lack of response, the
monfíes
tried to storm the Morisco
colegio
established by the Jesuits, but they were unable to break down the doors and withdrew to the Alpujarras as news of their presence reached the Christian authorities in the city.
monfíes
led by a dyer and former prisoner of the Inquisition named Farax Aben Farax slipped into Granada in the early hours in the midst of the blizzard and made their way directly to the Albaicín. Playing hornpipes and other musical instruments and proclaiming the name of Muhammad, the
monfíes
marched through the streets, urging the Morisco inhabitants to come out of their homes and join them. Farax’s men had brought rope ladders with the intention of scaling the walls of the Alhambra, but the residents of the Albaicín were unimpressed by the low rebel turnout and refused to come out and join them. Disgusted and frustrated by the lack of response, the
monfíes
tried to storm the Morisco
colegio
established by the Jesuits, but they were unable to break down the doors and withdrew to the Alpujarras as news of their presence reached the Christian authorities in the city.
Over the next few days, the rebellion spread rapidly throughout the towns and villages of the Alpujarras, and the Moriscos proceeded to exact a terrible retribution on the Christian population. Priests, sacristans, monks, and secular officials were stripped naked, led through the streets with their hands tied behind their backs, and used for live target practice with muskets and crossbows. But the cruelest punishments were reserved for members of the clergy. Some priests had crosses carved on their faces before they were stabbed and hacked to death. Others had gunpowder forced into their ears or mouths that was then set alight, or were boiled alive in vats of oil, or handed over to Morisca women, who stabbed them with knives and needles or stoned them to death.
In some villages, the Moriscos parodied the religious rituals that had been forced upon them, dressing themselves in priestly vestments as they tormented their victims. At Luchar de Andarax, the local priest was tied to a chair in front of the church altar, while his sacristans were ordered to read out the register of Moriscos that had previously been used to check attendance at mass. One by one the former members of his congregation stepped forward and slapped and punched their former tormentor or spat in his face, after which the priest’s eyes and tongue were cut out and he was forced to eat them. At the village of Jarayrata, a sacristan with a reputation for drunkenness who had once fined his Morisco parishioners for not attending mass had his head cut off and placed in a vat of wine. In the Augustine monastery at Guecija, according to Hurtado de Mendoza, Moriscos poured boiling olive oil into the drains of the building where the monks had taken refuge, “helping themselves to the abundance of olive oil which God has made grown in those parts in order to fry and drown his friars.”
In little more than six days, the rebels killed some three thousand Christians, of all ages and both sexes, as these horrific scenes were replicated in villages across the Alpujarras. According to Christian legend, the rebels offered to spare their victims if they renounced their faith, but no Christian accepted this offer. The Granadan Church later attempted to have these “martyrs of the Alpujarras” collectively canonized, but these appeals were only successful in the case of Marcos Criado, a monk from the village of Lapeza, whose heart was said to have been cut out and found to have the name of Jesus miraculously inscribed upon it.
The brutality of these killings shocked Christian Spain, which generally saw them as a confirmation of Muslim barbarity and anti-Catholic hatred. Philip himself later wrote, “Just to see what the Moriscos did at the time they rebelled, killing so many priests and Christians, would be sufficient to justify a tough line with these people”—an observation that ignored his own disastrous contribution to the rebellion.
1
Diego Hurtado de Mendoza was one of the few observers to recognize the responsibility of Christian society itself, writing, “These crimes were committed partly by people whom we had persecuted for vengeance, partly by the
monfíes
whose way of life had so conditioned them to cruelty that cruelty had become part of their natures.”
2
The rage of the Moriscos was not only directed against people; the rebels also burned church buildings and destroyed what was inside them, smashing crucifixes and statues with hammers, vandalizing altars, and in one case dragging the baptismal font outside into the street to be used as a drinking trough for animals. To many Spanish Christians, this onslaught echoed the “iconoclastic fury” that spread through the Netherlands in the summer of 1566, when Calvinist mobs rampaged through Catholic churches, destroying stained-glass windows and statues of Christ and the Virgin. The Moriscos of the Alpujarras may or may not have been aware of the Council of Trent’s emphasis on devotional imagery, but they had nevertheless experienced these statues and images as symbols of oppression in their daily lives, and their destruction was both a rejection of what they stood for and an act of violent catharsis.
1
Diego Hurtado de Mendoza was one of the few observers to recognize the responsibility of Christian society itself, writing, “These crimes were committed partly by people whom we had persecuted for vengeance, partly by the
monfíes
whose way of life had so conditioned them to cruelty that cruelty had become part of their natures.”
2
The rage of the Moriscos was not only directed against people; the rebels also burned church buildings and destroyed what was inside them, smashing crucifixes and statues with hammers, vandalizing altars, and in one case dragging the baptismal font outside into the street to be used as a drinking trough for animals. To many Spanish Christians, this onslaught echoed the “iconoclastic fury” that spread through the Netherlands in the summer of 1566, when Calvinist mobs rampaged through Catholic churches, destroying stained-glass windows and statues of Christ and the Virgin. The Moriscos of the Alpujarras may or may not have been aware of the Council of Trent’s emphasis on devotional imagery, but they had nevertheless experienced these statues and images as symbols of oppression in their daily lives, and their destruction was both a rejection of what they stood for and an act of violent catharsis.
The repudiation of Catholicism was accompanied by the reassertion of Islam, as Moriscos of all social classes openly worshipped as Muslims for the first time in seventy years. Lady Constanca López, a Morisca noblewoman from Aben Humeya’s home village of Valor, was later tried by the Inquisition for praying and praising Muhammad in public early in the rebellion. According to the Inquisition, Lady Constanca used pieces of the destroyed retablo from her local church for firewood and told her Christian neighbors, “What do you think? That the world is always going to be yours? And because you dress us in a certain way, we have to be Christian? Underneath it all, we have done and will do what we want, because we were Moors, and Moors we shall remain.”
3
Many Moriscos were undoubtedly motivated by similar sentiments, but their behavior was not always in accordance with Islamic religious tradition, according to Mármol:
3
Many Moriscos were undoubtedly motivated by similar sentiments, but their behavior was not always in accordance with Islamic religious tradition, according to Mármol:
It was astonishing to see how well instructed they were, young and old, in their damned sect; they said prayers to Muhammad, they conducted processions and prayers. The married women exposed their breasts, and the maidens their heads; and letting their hair fall around their shoulders they danced publicly in the streets, embracing the men as young bucks danced before them waving their handkerchiefs in the air, shouting at the top of their voices that now the time of innocence had arrived.
4
Not all Moriscos took part in this “time of innocence.” Many Moriscos refused to join the revolt and some genuine Morisco converts to Christianity were killed because they refused to renounce their faith. Nor were Christians always killed. Most Christians were imprisoned or kept as hostages, and there were cases in which Moriscos helped their friends and neighbors escape. At Órgiva, the Christian population managed to take refuge in the local church and hold off several Morisco attacks. As Hurtado de Mendoza observed, some of the worst atrocities were carried out by
monfíes
, particularly the bandit chieftain Farax Aben Farax, whose name soon became a byword for cruelty in Christian Granada. At the beginning of January, Aben Humeya called a halt to these massacres in an attempt to impose a semblance of order on the rebellion, even as the inevitable Christian counteroffensive unfolded.
monfíes
, particularly the bandit chieftain Farax Aben Farax, whose name soon became a byword for cruelty in Christian Granada. At the beginning of January, Aben Humeya called a halt to these massacres in an attempt to impose a semblance of order on the rebellion, even as the inevitable Christian counteroffensive unfolded.
The failure to seize the Granadan capital was a major blow to the rebellion, which soon became apparent when the Marquis of Mondéjar rode out of the city in pursuit of the rebels on January 3, with a hastily assembled force of two thousand infantry and cavalrymen. Within a week, Mondéjar’s forces had restored control over the insurgent villages of the vega and reached the single bridge across the Tablate Gorge that offered the only route into the Alpujarras. On finding that the rebels had removed most of the timbers from the bridge, making it virtually impassable, a Franciscan friar holding a sword in one hand and a crucifix in the other led a group of Christian soldiers across the precarious framework, while Morisco harquebusiers and crossbowmen peppered them from the opposite slope. These soldiers eventually managed to drive the rebels back and reconstructed the bridge, so that Mondéjar’s men were able to advance unopposed across the Lecrín Valley to relieve the beleaguered Christians at Órgiva, who had resisted a Morisco assault for seventeen days and were on the brink of starvation.
Mondéjar now moved with great speed and decisiveness against the heartland of the rebellion in the former Moorish administrative districts, or
tahas
, between Órgiva and the Sierra Nevada. With temperatures below zero and blizzards alternating with heavy rain, the Christian troops climbed up into these mountains and engaged the rebels in a series of short and brutal battles. In craggy ravines and remote summits, the old battle cries of Saint James and Muhammad once again mingled with the cries of wounded and dying men, the clash of pikes and swords and the crack of muskets as Christians clashed with Morisco men, women, and even children. Despite their command of the terrain, the Moriscos lacked military training, weapons, and experience, and often fought with nothing but stones.
tahas
, between Órgiva and the Sierra Nevada. With temperatures below zero and blizzards alternating with heavy rain, the Christian troops climbed up into these mountains and engaged the rebels in a series of short and brutal battles. In craggy ravines and remote summits, the old battle cries of Saint James and Muhammad once again mingled with the cries of wounded and dying men, the clash of pikes and swords and the crack of muskets as Christians clashed with Morisco men, women, and even children. Despite their command of the terrain, the Moriscos lacked military training, weapons, and experience, and often fought with nothing but stones.
As a consequence, Mondéjar’s forces soon gained the upper hand and proceeded to reimpose their authority over the rebel villages with ruthless and clinical efficiency. Following a Christian assault on a fortified Morisco position at Los Guajares, the captain-general had the survivors massacred. At the village of Jubíles, dozens of Morisco prisoners were killed in cold blood when they tried to prevent an attempted rape by a Christian soldier. As the Morisco villages fell before the remorseless Christian advance, the rebels retreated into the snow-capped heights, taking their families and their Christian captives with them, with Mondéjar’s forces in hot pursuit. By the end of January, the rebellion was close to defeat, thanks to the captain-general’s rapid response. Aben Humeya’s forces had dwindled to a few hundred isolated fighters in the high mountains, and some of his senior commanders were already considering surrender. Across the Alpujarras, Moriscos sued for peace and appealed to Mondéjar for mercy.
The captain-general generally responded positively to these overtures, promising amnesties and guarantees of safe conduct to Moriscos who had not been directly involved in killing Christians. At this point, the revolt might have ended, but Mondéjar’s political enemies in Granada now began to send reports to Philip and Espinosa accusing him of failing to prosecute the war effectively and being too conciliatory toward the rebels. Mondéjar was too absorbed in military operations in the Alpujarras to counter these accusations, which nevertheless found a receptive audience in the Spanish court. News of the Morisco rebellion was particularly unwelcome at a time when Flanders was still seething with sedition despite the brutal crackdown carried out by the Duke of Alva and his “Council of Troubles” the previous summer. Philip feared—with good reason—that the Morisco revolt might give succor to Spain’s enemies and instructed his viceroy in Naples on January 20, that “It would be good to keep the Granada business secret.”
5
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