History has been extremely harsh with the Moriscos. The heirs of the brilliant civilization of the country of al-Andalus (or, as we recently said, Arab-Moorish Andalusia), they were forced to abandon this glorious heritage in order to be considered good subjects of the Spanish kings. The guardians of the traditions and customs of Islam that had existed in the Iberian Peninsula for almost 800 years, they were forcibly converted to Catholicism. Being largely Hispanicized (in language, religion, and way of life), they were nevertheless considered neither true Spaniards nor faithful Christians, constantly suspected of treason to "God and the King ". The Inquisition persecuted them, the authorities did not trust them, and the people among whom they lived did not look upon them as compatriots. The Morisci were mainly descendants of the indigenous inhabitants of the peninsula: the total number of Arabs and Berbers who came here in the VIII century did not exceed 50 thousand, while the local inhabitants (Latinized descendants of the Iberians, Lusitanians, Celts, Visigoths, etc.) was about 6 million people [Problems of Arab culture..., 1987, p. 258]. Of course, among the later additions to the ethnic composition of the population of al-Andalus were Arab, but in terms of numbers they were lost in the abundance of other migrants (including slaves and prisoners of war mainly from the Mediterranean countries), mainly Normans, Greeks, Slavs, natives of Sicily and Calabria, Corsica and Provence. As for the Berbers, who invaded al-Andalus in the tenth century as soldiers of mercenary troops, then soldiers and administrators, who subjugated the country of the Almoravids and Almohads, their contribution was insignificant: by that time the Andalusian Moors as a special ethnic group had mostly already been formed, including at the expense of the Berbers who came with the Arabs in the eighth century. They were separated from later newcomers from the Maghreb (usually still living in trib ... Read more