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The Moors are the Muslim African and Berber inhabitants of the western Mediterranean and western Sahara, including the Maghreb (the coastal and mountain lands of present day Morocco and Algeria , and Tunisia although Tunisia often is separately called ''Ifriqiya'' after the former Roman province of ''Africa'' ); Al-Andalus (the former Islamic sovereign areas now the region of Andalucia in southern Spain, as well as central Spain and Portugal ); lands of the Sahara western to central ( Mauritania and Mali , southern Morocco and Algeria, parts of Niger , Chad , and Libya ); and, the strait cities of Gibraltar , and Ceuta and Melilla ; as well as perhaps the Canary Islands and Sicily . During the medieval period, the word ''Moor'' could be used to refer to a Africa n Muslim from these areas, as well as generally to an Arab , or Berber (original inhabitants of Northern Africa). HISTORY Although the ''Moors'' came to be by definition Muslim, the name ''Moor'' pre-dates Islam. Perhaps it derives from the small armies from the east. Especially memorable was that led by Kahina the Berber prophetess of the Awras, during 690-701. Yet by the 92nd Lunar Year after the Hijra , the Arab Muslims had prevailed across North Africa."The conquest of North Africa and Berber resistance" in ''General History of Africa'' (UNESCO / Univ.of Calif. 1992) III: 118-129, at 124-126; Abun-Nasr, ''A History of the Maghrib'' (Cambridge Univ. 1971) at 70; Brett and Fentress, ''The Berbers'' (Blackwell 1996) at 85; Tarrasse, ''A History of Morocco'' (Casablanca: Atlantides 1952) at 50-51. The words Islam and Muslims appeared only after Muhammad became a prophet around 600AD) In 711 AD, the Moors{Muslims} conquered Visigothics , mainly Christian Hispania . Under their leader, an African Berber General named Tariq Ibn-Ziyad , they brought most of the Iberian Peninsula under Islamic rule in an eight-year campaign. They moved northeast across the Pyrenees Mountains but were defeated by the Frank , Charles Martel , at the Battle Of Poitier in 732 AD. The Moorish state fell into Civil Conflict in the 750s . The Moors ruled in the Iberian Peninsula , except for areas in the northwest (such as Asturias , where they were defeated at the battle of Covadonga ) and the largely Basque Regions in the Pyrenees, and in North Africa for several decades. Though the number of "Moors" remained small many native inhabitants reverted to Islam. According to Ronald Segal, author of ''Islam's Black Slaves''Ronald Segal, ''Islam's Black Slaves'' (2003), Atlantic Books, ISBN 1-90380981-9, some 5.6 million of Iberia's 7 million inhabitants were Muslim by 1200 AD, virtually all of them native inhabitants. The persecution and forced conversion to Catholicism of the Muslim population during the time of the Catholic Reconquista in the second part of the 15th century, causing a mass exodus are considered the main reasons why their number shrank to one-third by 1600. As a sign of decline, the country had broken up into a number of mostly Islamic Fiefdoms , which were partly consolidated under the Caliphate Of Cordoba . A Christian enclave from the Muslim conquest in Asturias , a small Visigothic northwestern Spanish kingdom, initiated conflicts in earnest between Christian and Muslim in the 10th century AD. Christian states based in the north and west slowly extended their power over the rest of Iberia. The Navarre , Galicia , León , Portugal , Aragón , Catalonia or '' Marca Hispanica '', and Castile in fits and starts began a process of expansion and internal consolidation during the next several centuries under the flag of Reconquista . In 1212, a coalition of Christian kings under the leadership of Alfonso VIII Of Castile drove the Muslims from Central Iberia. However, the Moorish Kingdom of Granada continued for three more centuries in the southern Iberian peninsula. This kingdom is known in modern time for magnificent architectural works such as the Alhambra palace. On January 2 , 1492 , the leader of the last Muslim stronghold in Granada surrendered to armies of a recently united Christian Spain (after the marriage of Ferdinand II Of Aragon and Isabella I Of Castile ). The remaining Muslims and Jews were forced to leave Spain, forced to convert to Roman Catholic Christianity or be murdered for not doing so.. In 1480, Isabella and Ferdinand instituted the Inquisition In Spain , as one of many changes to the role of the church instituted by the monarchs. The Inquisition was aimed mostly at Jews and Muslims who had overtly converted to Christianity but were thought to be practicing their faiths secretly -- known respectively as Marrano s and Morisco s -- as well as at heretics who rejected Roman Catholic orthodoxy, including alumbras who practiced a kind of mysticism or spiritualism. They were an important portion of the peasants in some territories, like Aragon , Valencia or Andalusia , until their systematic expulsion in the years from 1609 to 1614. Henri Lapeyre has estimated that this affected 300,000 out of a total of 8 million inhabitants of the peninsula at the time.See History of Al-Andalus In the meantime, the tide of Islam had rolled not just westward to Iberia, but also eastward, through India , the Malayan Peninsula , and Indonesia up to Mindanao -—one of the major islands of an Archipelago which the Spaniards had reached during their voyages westward from the New World . By 1521, the ships of Magellan and other Spanish expeditioners had themselves reached that island archipelago, which they named Las Islas De Filipinas , after Philip II Of Spain . In Mindanao, the Spaniards also named these Kris -bearing people as Moros or 'Moors'. Today in the Philippines, this ethnic group of people in Mindanao who are generally Muslims are called 'Moros'. This identification of Islamic people as Moros persists in the modern Spanish Language spoken in Spain; and as Mouros in the modern Portuguese Language . See Reconquista , and Maure . According to historian specialist of Spain history, Aline Angoustures. ''L'Espagne'' page 17. Le cavalier bleu, 2004. ISBN 2-84670-078-8 says that the Berbers were about 400,000 and the Arabs about 40,000 in Spain. RELIGIOUS RELATIONS The initial rule of the Moors in the Iberian peninsula under this Caliphate of Cordoba is generally regarded as tolerant in its acceptance of Christians, Muslim s and Jew s living in the same territories, though in various periods Jews were expelled and Christians relegated to a kind of second class status. The Caliphate Of Córdoba collapsed in 1031 and the Islamic territory in Iberia came to be ruled by North African Moors of the Almoravid Dynasty . This second stage started an era of Moorish rulers guided by a version of Islam that left behind the tolerant practices of the past. ARCHITECTURE " in Córdoba , Spain represent some of the pinnacles of the Moorish architectures.]] Moorish Iberia excelled in city planning; the sophistication of their cities was astonishing. According to one historian, Cordova "had 471 mosques and 300 public baths … the number of houses of the great and noble were 63,000 and 200,077 of the common people. There were … upwards of 80,000 shops. Water from the mountain was distributed through every corner and quarter of the city by means of leaden pipes into basins of different shapes, made of the purest gold, the finest silver, or plated brass as well into vast lakes, curious tanks, amazing reservoirs and fountains of Grecian marble." The houses of Cordova were air conditioned in the summer by "ingeniously arranged draughts of fresh air drawn from the garden over beds of flowers, chosen for their perfume, warmed in winter by hot air conveyed through pipes bedded in the walls." This list of impressive works includes lamp posts that lit their streets at night to grand palaces, such as the one called Azzahra with its 15,000 doors.Ivan Van Sertima, ''The Golden Age of the Moor (Journal of African Civilizations, Vol 11, Fall 1991)'', Transaction Publishers, 1991, ISBN 1-56000-581-5 During the height of the Caliphate of Córdoba, the city of Córdoba proper was one of the major capitals in Europe and one of the most cosmopolitan cities of its time. ETYMOLOGY "Moor" comes from the Greek word ''mauros'' (greek - "μαύρος", plural "μαύροι"), meaning "black" or "very dark", which in Latin became ''Mauro'' (plural ''Mauri''). However, anthropologists have noted that these terms are very subjective. "In the Romance languages (Spanish, French, and Italian) of Medieval Europe, Moor was translated as Moro, Moir and Mor. Derivatives of the word Moor may be found even today in these same languages. In Spanish, for example, the word for blackberry is mora- a noun which originally meant Moorish woman. Also in Spanish, the adjective for dark-complexioned, which now means brunette, is moreno. We find similar legacy in the French language. In French moricaud means dark-skinned or blackamoor, while morillon means black grape. Again, as in Italian, mora means Negro or Moorish female. Also in Italian, mora means blackberry, while moraiola means black olive." In German, "Mohr" is an old-fashioned word for a black person. In some, but certainly not all, cases, Moors were described as ''fuscus''. Due to the relevance of this population in the Iberian peninsula during the Middle Ages, this term may have entered English—and other European languages less exposed to this group—via its Spanish cognate ''moro''. The Moors, during the Middle Ages and as late as the 17th century, were described as being black, dark skinned, or swarthy in complexion. Modern texts, such as Webster's New World Dictionary, groups all moors together under the terms Arab and Berber which has caused individuals to omit the association with Africans that are racially considered "black". Considering that Berbers were a mixture of various shades of diverse nomadic groups comprising East Africans, North Africans, West Africans and Sub-Saharan Africans the claims of racial heritage being of one specific group are at best dubious. Today, it is the lighter inhabitants of Morocco and Mauretania that are called "Moors". In Spanish usage, "Moro" (Moor) came to have an even broader usage, to mean "Muslims" in general (just as "Rumi", "from the Eastern Roman Empire ", came to mean "Christian" in many Arabic dialects); thus the Moro s of Mindanao in the Philippines , and the Morisco s of Granada . Moro is also used to describe all things dark as in "Moor", "moreno" and it has led to many European surnames such as "Moore", "De Muaro", and so on. The Milan ese Duke Ludovico Il Moro was so-called because of his swarthy complexion. HUMAN POPULATION GENETICS Dr. '' differentiation, not foreign influxes. Of course foreign influxes certainly had an impact: Phoenician, Greek, Roman Vandal and Arab migration had some impact from 900 BCE to 730 CE. But they did not replace the indigenous Berber population. Haplotype V is a trait found among more than 2/3 of the modern Berbers in North Africa and is indigenous to this area. This trait is also found in high frequencies in Andalusia (as much as 40%). North African Berber and Arab Influences in the Western Mediterranean Revealed by Y-Chromosome DNA Haplotypes Human Biology , Volume 78, Number 3, June 2006, pp. 307–316. Moreover, about 7% of the population of Spain, including 14% of Andalusians, have been found to have this haplotype (69% of the Berbers in Morocco do-see Lucotte and Mercier on these genetic studies). Since Homo sapiens have lived in Africa longer than anywhere else, and given the size and different environments of the continent, it is easy to conclude that phenotype diversity there would be greater than elsewhere. Everyone from fair-skinned, blue-eyed Berbers to West Africans with " Negroid " features to East Africans of Ethiopia with elongated features can all be rooted in the African continent itself rather than in invasion. The differences between modern Egyptians, Algerians, Ethiopians, Nigerians, and Sudanese exist for the same reasons they do between Chinese, Indians, and Arabs: intracontinental diversification over tens of thousands of years. Albert Hourani, author of ''History of the Arab Peoples'', sums up the state of current knowledge: :The expansion of the Banu Hilal and other Arab tribes (13th century), like the initial Arab conquests, does not seem to have involved sufficiently large numbers to transform the make-up of the Maghrebs population. OTHER MOORS IN HISTORY
PRESENT-DAY MOORS Beside its usage in historical context Moor and '''Moorish''' ( Arabic dialect, inhabiting Islamic Republic Of Mauritania and parts of Morocco , Western Sahara , Algeria , Niger and Mali . In modern, colloquial Spanish the sometimes pejorative term "Moro" refers to any person who practices Islam , especially those born in the Maghreb or those born in Spain of Moroccan or Algerian heritage. Similarly, in modern, colloquial Portuguese the term "Mouro" is used as a derogatory term by citizens of Northern Portugal to refer to the inhabitants of the southern areas of the country, although "Mouro" is also an Enchanted people and "Moura" also means ''stone'' in Northern Portugal. This usage has also been maintained in the Philippines , a former Spanish colony, where the local Muslim population in the Southern islands are called (and call themselves) "Moros" (see Muslim Filipino ), a term introduced by the Spanish colonizers. The Muslims in Sri Lanka trace their ancestry to the Arabic Moors that invaded North Africa in 640AD, although their name originated with the Portuguese who were in Sri Lanka for a time. The majority of the moors can be found in the Central Hills ( Akurana , Kandy , Gampola ), eastern Sri Lanka and the capital city of Colombo . Many urban centers and educational institutions have been founded in Sri Lanka by the Moors including Azhar College , Akurana ; Zahira College , Colombo, etc.. SEE ALSO
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