This was inspired by the other thread about a surviving Moorish state, but I didn't want to derail it. With a POD after 1483, create a Moorish or Arabo-Andalusian cultural group in Iberia, by which I mean a group with significant Arab-Berber influence, whose culture is pretty close to that of the Emirate of Granada, with a language close to one of the "Andalusian languages" (Mozarabic, Andalusi Arabic, or a Berber language) or a North African language (Maghrebi Arabic, etc.), that survives within a predominantly Christian state. Bonus points if they are mostly Muslims, and more bonus points if they last until 2014.
AHC:Moorish cultural group in the Iberian Peninsula
- Thread starter 'Ezana
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One unlikely possibility is to have the Moors convert peacefully and accept Ferdinand as king rather than be defeated an expelled. You could create a third kingdom of Spain that way, which would maintain its own culture and identity within a larger Spain similar to the way Catalan lives on. By accepting Catholicism and Spain's rule without a fight there's much less pressure on them to abandon their culture after they convert like there was OTL.
Another more plausible option to me would be for Spain to continue their Reconquesta across to Africa (possibly with a POD where the Hapsburgs don't take the crown?). A series of short term successes leads to a small percentage of the Muslim population converting to Christianity. Later when the Ottomans push Spain back the new Christians face repression and hostility and flee to Spain.
With the nature of the Catholic Monarchs and such a late POD I think it would be very difficult to maintain an actively Muslim population within a Catholic Spain.
Another more plausible option to me would be for Spain to continue their Reconquesta across to Africa (possibly with a POD where the Hapsburgs don't take the crown?). A series of short term successes leads to a small percentage of the Muslim population converting to Christianity. Later when the Ottomans push Spain back the new Christians face repression and hostility and flee to Spain.
With the nature of the Catholic Monarchs and such a late POD I think it would be very difficult to maintain an actively Muslim population within a Catholic Spain.
That's pretty hard. Arab language was so tied religious and politically to Islam that its presence itself would be seen as contrary to any royal authority.
If it's close to Grenada Emirate, that's only harder : at this point Nasrid culture was essentially the same than in Morroco, without real "Andalusian" part in the tin.
A surviving Moriscos community *could* do it, but they would have to be hugely hispanized, christianized, with Arabo-Islamic roots being negated up to the XIX or XXth century. And that as well is going to be hard : IOTL they refused any real integration (forced or not), and you'd have to make radical changes to bypass that.
Basically :
- No Reformation. Any kind of serious religious crisis concerning Spain even remotly closely would make distinct groups looking a threat to royal and societal authority.
- Earlier and more important Inquisition in Spain : I know it may looks counter-intuitive to some, but Spanish Inquisition, once removed the dark spanish legend, wasn't a behemoth of sick monks torturing virgins while making Monty Python jokes.
While as ruthless than their secular counterparts, they actually made more by-the-rules inquiries and decision (royal justice tended to be...expeditive). Not meaning they were particularly just, critically by modern standards, but they were far from pushing to blood for the blood throne (well, except in Americas, but that's another case there).
An earlier Inquisition means as well an institution more closely controlled by papacy and religious hierarchy rather than, as IOTL, being dominated by royal authority. It could mean a stronger religious focus on Moriscos, being more about orthodoxy and actual presence of religious institution among them (as well crushing crypto-Islamism) than simply dealing with the consequences of these lacking.
More strong installation of religious orders in Andalusia, for instance.
- Forced displacement of moriscos : Too many at the same place (representing 40% of the population in some region). By forcing moriscos and coversos alike to move out to, say Galicia or Navarre, you'd reduce the chance of forming a strong communauty with a strong common identity.
In short : being ruthless and focused on them right from the start.
Don't get me wrong : at best, you'll had an handful of elders that still speak something looking remotly to Arab in 2014.
If it's close to Grenada Emirate, that's only harder : at this point Nasrid culture was essentially the same than in Morroco, without real "Andalusian" part in the tin.
A surviving Moriscos community *could* do it, but they would have to be hugely hispanized, christianized, with Arabo-Islamic roots being negated up to the XIX or XXth century. And that as well is going to be hard : IOTL they refused any real integration (forced or not), and you'd have to make radical changes to bypass that.
Basically :
- No Reformation. Any kind of serious religious crisis concerning Spain even remotly closely would make distinct groups looking a threat to royal and societal authority.
- Earlier and more important Inquisition in Spain : I know it may looks counter-intuitive to some, but Spanish Inquisition, once removed the dark spanish legend, wasn't a behemoth of sick monks torturing virgins while making Monty Python jokes.
While as ruthless than their secular counterparts, they actually made more by-the-rules inquiries and decision (royal justice tended to be...expeditive). Not meaning they were particularly just, critically by modern standards, but they were far from pushing to blood for the blood throne (well, except in Americas, but that's another case there).
An earlier Inquisition means as well an institution more closely controlled by papacy and religious hierarchy rather than, as IOTL, being dominated by royal authority. It could mean a stronger religious focus on Moriscos, being more about orthodoxy and actual presence of religious institution among them (as well crushing crypto-Islamism) than simply dealing with the consequences of these lacking.
More strong installation of religious orders in Andalusia, for instance.
- Forced displacement of moriscos : Too many at the same place (representing 40% of the population in some region). By forcing moriscos and coversos alike to move out to, say Galicia or Navarre, you'd reduce the chance of forming a strong communauty with a strong common identity.
In short : being ruthless and focused on them right from the start.
Don't get me wrong : at best, you'll had an handful of elders that still speak something looking remotly to Arab in 2014.
I like both of your scenarios. With regards to your comment about the Muslim population, do you think that a form of crypto-Islam could somehow survive in Spain? Maybe with the first scenario, crypto-Islam survives in Granada due to less cultural pressure?
@LSCatilina: It seems rather hard to indefinitely prevent Catholicism from splintering eventually. Is there a way to promote religious toleration in Spain like the kind that existed in Poland at the time? As to the point you made about the Inquisition, would an earlier Inquisition be more tolerant towards local cultures and focus more on religious than cultural conversion, like many missionaries did in the New World?
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I like this proposition, and it's seems doable (less Habsbourg less than a TL where Spain doesn't get involved in Americas and where Portugal is. After all you had an historical tendency to reconquista-nize North Africa IOTL). But wouldn't these population be in small numbers and easily hispanized?
You don't promote religious tolerance indefinitly on a state from legitimacy was hugely (if not entierly) based on reconquering land on another religion.
As for preventing Catholicism to splinter, well it's easier than you seem to think : not that heresies or small groups can't pop once, but they were generally surrounded and crushed. Church reformations in the XVth century were pretty much doable, while pontifical and clerical prestige was still a thing, and it may be just enough to prevent a Reformation-like to happen, or at least to delay it significantly (at the point of having High Church-like splits, and not something too radical).
There's three issues :
1) Religious tolerance against a religion that was targeted as First Threat of the Year during centuries is going to be hard, critically when it founded the very identity of Spain.
Arab wasn't just a culture and a language that happened to exist in Spain, as Catalan or Galician. It was a culture and a language hugely tied up with Islam, even on Arabo-Berber point of view. Stripping it out of minds was a goal, not a by-product.
2) Spanish Inquisition IOTL was under royal thumb. Basically, they acted along political lines more than on their own agenda. My proposal wasn't to make it more tolerent, but more independent, and more focused on conversion and de-islamization from the start.
3) Inquisition in Americas during the contact and conquest era. prooved being really harsh when not murderous (basically fitting most of clichés on the question). Granted, it was outside the political scope and hugely criticized. But that's not gonna help.
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Thanks for the response, it's really detailed. In reference to Escape Zeppelin's idea, you could potentially get a lot more people converting to Christianity and fleeing to Spain if the Ottomans are particularly brutal in their reconquest, like if a general tries to use the "bellum se ipsum alet" strategy.
To respond to each of the three issues:
1) If religious tolerance and Arabic are out, would it be possible to have a Berber language or Mozarabic survive without the religious identity attached to Arabic?
2 and 3) With the reference to the Americas, I was referring to things such as the Nahuatl dictionaries written by priests in Mexico. From what I understand, for about a century after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, Nahuatl was the lingua franca of the area and a lot of Nahuatl books were published then. Based upon how they helped spread Nahuatl, it seems like the missionaries in Mexico were less concerned with making Spanish-speaking Christians and were content with Nahuatl-speaking Christians (could be wrong there). So I was wondering if the missionaries in Iberia could do the same.
I won't see Ottomans being brutal for the sake of it : they won't need it with a really good casus belli and with a likely support of the overwelming part of the population.
Even if a larger part of population christianize, if they flee to Spain, they would be quickly assimilated, in my opinion.
Well, Berbers were pretty much arabized culturally and linguistically at this point. I'm not really sure you still had native Arabo-Andalusian that still spoke Berber after the first two centuries. Remember that Romance speech was fledging by the Xth (and probably extinct by the XIIIth), and they had a far larger population to begin with.
Mexico basically collapsed and didn't offered much resistance, critically with the help of local allies. It did help that the first responsibles were sensible (as holding to the traditional stance on witches : they're loonies, not actual witches)
But Moriscos will provide (as they did IOTL) an huge resistance against evangelization. The best similar exemple on this is Diego de Landa on Maya. That didn't went well for them, except making them even more hostile to christianize up to nowadays.
That's really an instance where you can't really rule out most of aspect of the dark legend mentioned above. Let alone, Inquisition wasn't really a tolerant institution. Of course it pretty much get normalized with reinforcement of hierarchical power, but not immediatly.
And of course, you have the specificity of Arab, compared to Mesoamerican languages.
It all comes down to Arab being a political and liturgic language. It's the language God used to say the Qu'ran. It have a far more important place in Arabo-Islamic societies than Latin ever hard in Christiendom.
Using Arab in a non-Islamic medieval society was showing its roots with Islam, conciously or not.
You're probably right. A work-around option is the creation of Spanish-Christian enclaves in Morocco similar to Spain's possessions there now. While not in Iberia itself it is ruled by Spain. Christians who are are culturally North African retreat to Spanish controlled cities on the coast as the Ottomans advance. Culturally they remain non-Spanish but because of their religion they maintain their allegiance to the Spanish crown, viewing it as a defense against their Muslim neighbors. Because of their density and distance from Spain they might retain their culture and language. Of course that's not actually in Spain as the challenge called for...
But what you did is still probably one of the best solution for the OP (you need to twist them a bit sometimes)
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
Or . . . make it more gentle as it were (and I realize that's almost a contradiction in terms!)
So, the Inquisition is not concerned with Jewish persons. If you're a Jew, that's fine. And it's not concerned with Moslem persons. If you're a Moslem, that's fine.
What the Inquisition is concerned about is a steady stream of reports and rumors that a number of priests, nuns, and monks are actually atheists, agnostics, heretics, mystics, pantheists, and whatnot! Well, they're going to follow up on these reports. They are going to talk to these people and make them answer for themselves. And if they're not good Catholics, they're going to kick them the heck out of the profession!
And this is as far as it extents, firing people from their jobs. This instead of burning people at the stake or torturing people. Nor even excommunicating people from the Church, just that they can no longer follow their vocation, and sometimes merely suspended.
So, it's a lighter mistake. It's a lesser downward spiral, which can be more quickly recovered from.
===================
PS I like the idea of remnant cultures existing, and even flourishing.
That's missing the point of Inquisition.
Long story short, it was created not as an instrument of self-criticism, but to crush heresy (and Judaism, that was understood as such since the 1210's) as being seen as a social threat (basically, in a society that base itself on one religion, and where both royal and pontifical power grow, understanding themselves trough roman law, non-christian bodies were seen as an annoyance if not a threat to society and authority).
You had inquisitorial inquiries and even trials on disciplinar matters IOTL, but the Inquisition as an institution was created against Heresy (including Non-Christianism as a whole)
You could make Inquisition nicer than regular justice (and admittedly, in the great lines, it was, would it be because they actually go trough a trial process and limited use of harsh punishments and torture) but making it somewhere else than an institution devoted to this would at best require several PoDs since the Xth, that could as well butterfly away Moriscos.
It's to be noted that the actual inquisitorial trials resulting on death on a stake are limited (I merge there the "condamned is killed before being burned", the "condamned is asphyxied before burning" and the more rare "actually burnt"). Maybe 1% of the trials end as death condamnation, 4/6% in some specific periods (considering you had several mass executions in these periods)
While being killed for religious matters is clearly not the definition of "nice", it's to be compared to temporal matters on it that were far more expeditive (for exemple, the number of witches executed in Germany represent roughly 423% of the number of witches executed in Spain)
The problem isn't the killing part, or having the Church not being nice, it's the social (heck, even structural) refusal of late medieval Castille (and globally Europe) to deal with religious communauties other than itself, and the refusal of Moriscos to either acknowledge Christian takeover.
From that you have all a building of mutual hatred that ended badly for Moriscos as they had the lower end from the start : arguably, two societies that want to have nothing to do with each other, violently reject the very idea to accept it wasn't going to end well. You can still see this today, unfortunatly.
If we're to deal with Spain only, breaking Moriscos as an organized and unified communauty is the only way I can see to allow a more important Arabic legacy in Spain. (that is quite important IOTL)
Long story short, it was created not as an instrument of self-criticism, but to crush heresy (and Judaism, that was understood as such since the 1210's) as being seen as a social threat (basically, in a society that base itself on one religion, and where both royal and pontifical power grow, understanding themselves trough roman law, non-christian bodies were seen as an annoyance if not a threat to society and authority).
You had inquisitorial inquiries and even trials on disciplinar matters IOTL, but the Inquisition as an institution was created against Heresy (including Non-Christianism as a whole)
You could make Inquisition nicer than regular justice (and admittedly, in the great lines, it was, would it be because they actually go trough a trial process and limited use of harsh punishments and torture) but making it somewhere else than an institution devoted to this would at best require several PoDs since the Xth, that could as well butterfly away Moriscos.
That was actually somewhat the case with inhabilitas. Its usual consequences were being ruined and living in misery.
Actually, Inquisition didn't killed anyone itself : technically the secular punishments were gave by the temporal authority. Of course both juridictions co-operated but it means that Inquisitorial trials were relying on, say royal authority to function and had eventually less and less room for purely religious punishments.
It's to be noted that the actual inquisitorial trials resulting on death on a stake are limited (I merge there the "condamned is killed before being burned", the "condamned is asphyxied before burning" and the more rare "actually burnt"). Maybe 1% of the trials end as death condamnation, 4/6% in some specific periods (considering you had several mass executions in these periods)
While being killed for religious matters is clearly not the definition of "nice", it's to be compared to temporal matters on it that were far more expeditive (for exemple, the number of witches executed in Germany represent roughly 423% of the number of witches executed in Spain)
The problem isn't the killing part, or having the Church not being nice, it's the social (heck, even structural) refusal of late medieval Castille (and globally Europe) to deal with religious communauties other than itself, and the refusal of Moriscos to either acknowledge Christian takeover.
From that you have all a building of mutual hatred that ended badly for Moriscos as they had the lower end from the start : arguably, two societies that want to have nothing to do with each other, violently reject the very idea to accept it wasn't going to end well. You can still see this today, unfortunatly.
If we're to deal with Spain only, breaking Moriscos as an organized and unified communauty is the only way I can see to allow a more important Arabic legacy in Spain. (that is quite important IOTL)
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libbrit
Banned
If wikipedia is right, this is what happened to the last Sultan of Grenada
If this agreement involves Muhammad and his sons converting to christianity and swearing fealty to Ferdinand or Isabella-perhaps eventually having the throne taken from him, but retaining a position as a local lord of the area, then that arguably solves your problem.
If this agreement involves Muhammad and his sons converting to christianity and swearing fealty to Ferdinand or Isabella-perhaps eventually having the throne taken from him, but retaining a position as a local lord of the area, then that arguably solves your problem.
Are you seeing anything in my post that would even remotly point to a support or white washing of religious persecution?Of small comfort to anyone killed as a result of the Inquisition, of course...
I know it's a loaded subject (and we can thanks a particularly retarded historiography as well than questionable or criminal practices), but I think that pointing out that it wasn't as dark and Mordor-esque cliché can only help for the OP and a better historical enlightement (for one, I think that when history is re-writed, critically when it comes to demonization, it's never for good reasons : as in, it's not because a group do horrible things that the supposedly "nice" one doesn't do far worse.)
(It may be sarcasm, in this case sorry : I'm not really good at spotting it)
He would be killed on spot, someone would replaces him if not rule of the mob. The guy already knew three of four rebellions against him and succession in late Grenada was already a musical chairs game.
The sultan legitimacy (or any Islamic Hispanic ruler for that matter) was based on three things : being Muslim, leading raids against Christians, and not being a vassal of Christians (it cost many rulers, as Yusuf IV, their power).
Not sarcasm. More like dry, ironic, black-humor. I'm very un-sarcastic for someone holding a UK passport.
I will say that the whole apparatus of church and state as it was applied to my co-ethnics might have seemed somewhat "Mordoresque" to those dispossessed and expelled. But that is not so much about the Inquisition, of course, as the anti-Semitic policies of Los Reyes Católicos.
But the Inquisition has been painted as black when in reality it was more a very dark shade of gray. In other words, I agree that presenting a more accurate historical account should always trump the more "romantic" popular notions.
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GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
Yes, I'm aware I missed the point of the 'Inquisition' and painted an optimistic picture of how things could have been different and need not have been so bad. You know, Eugen Weber talked about Francis Assisi and how he talked to birds and was playful. And then he talked about this guy who was one of the founders of the Dominican Order, listed some adjectives, and added 'not at all playful.' I think even fifty years out, the Inquisition may have been avoidable. I mean, fifty years is a lot of time historically and a lot of events can happen.
The bigger problem was that a greater number of supposed witches were killed in Germany than in Spain. This point is very well taken. Suspicion of women and especially of female sexuality, in a variety of religious cultures. It could be a woman who's bipolar, or who's Aspie (Asperger's Syndrome), or who's a better business person or tradesperson than the average male, or who's different or quirky in any way, or more talented than the average male in some way and thus threatening because of that, and then following a natural disaster or an upsurge of religious dogma, might be at risk of scapegoating. This is a serious situation, in a variety of cultures. A real challenge to find PODs where this doesn't occur.
The bigger problem was that a greater number of supposed witches were killed in Germany than in Spain. This point is very well taken. Suspicion of women and especially of female sexuality, in a variety of religious cultures. It could be a woman who's bipolar, or who's Aspie (Asperger's Syndrome), or who's a better business person or tradesperson than the average male, or who's different or quirky in any way, or more talented than the average male in some way and thus threatening because of that, and then following a natural disaster or an upsurge of religious dogma, might be at risk of scapegoating. This is a serious situation, in a variety of cultures. A real challenge to find PODs where this doesn't occur.
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