History of the Reign of Philip the Second King of Spain, Vol. 3 / And Biographical & Critical Miscellanies

by William Hickling Prescott

The Castilian chroniclers have endeavoured to fix a deep stain on his memory, by charging him with the murder of El Habaqui, and with the refusal to execute the treaty to which he had given his sanction. But, in criticising the conduct of Aben-Aboo, we must not forget the race from which he sprung, or the nature of its institutions. He was a despot, and a despot of the Oriental type. He was placed in a situation—much against his will, it may be added—which gave him absolute control over the lives and fortunes of his people. His word was their law. He passed the sentence, and enforced its execution. El Habaqui he adjudged to be a traitor; and, in sentencing him to the bowstring, he inflicted on him only a traitor's doom.

With regard to the treaty, he spoke of himself as betrayed, saying that its provisions were not such as he had intended. And when we consider that the instrument was written in the Spanish tongue; that it was drafted by a Spaniard; finally, that the principal Morisco agent who subscribed the treaty was altogether in the Spanish interest, as the favours heaped on him without measure too plainly proved, it can hardly be doubted that there were good grounds for the assertion of Aben-Aboo. From the hour of his accession, he seems to have devoted himself to the great work of securing the independence of his people. He could scarcely have agreed to a treaty which was to leave that people in even a worse state than before the rebellion. From what we know of his character, we may more reasonably conclude that he was sincere when he told the Spanish envoy, Palacios, who had come to press the execution of the treaty, and to remind him of the royal promises of grace, that "his people might do as they listed, but, for himself, he would rather live and die a Mussulman than possess all the favours which the king of Spain could heap on him." His deeds corresponded with his words; and, desperate as was his condition, he still continued to bid defiance to the Spanish government, until he was cut off by the hand of a traitor.

The death of Aben-Aboo severed the last bond which held the remnant of the Moriscoes together. In a few years the sword, famine, and the gallows had exterminated the outcasts who still lurked in the fastnesses of the mountains. Their places were gradually occupied by Christians, drawn thither by the favourable terms which the government offered to settlers. But it was long before the wasted and famine-stricken territory could make a suitable return to the labours of the colonists. They were ignorant of the country, and were altogether deficient in the agricultural skill necessary for turning its unpromising places to the best account. The Spaniard, adventurous as he was, and reckless of danger and difficulty in the pursuit of gain, was impatient of the humble drudgery required for the tillage of the soil; and many a valley and hill-side which, under the Moriscoes, had bloomed with all the rich embroidery of cultivation, now relapsed into its primitive barrenness.

The exiles carried their superior skill and industry into the various provinces where they were sent. Scattered as they were, and wide apart, the presence of the Moriscoes was sure to be revealed by the more minute and elaborate culture of the soil, as the secret course of the mountain-stream is betrayed by the brighter green of the meadow. With their skill in husbandry they combined a familiarity with various kinds of handicraft, especially those requiring dexterity and fineness of execution, that was unknown to the Spaniards. As the natural result of this superiority, the products of their labour were more abundant, and could be afforded at a cheaper rate than those of their neighbours. Yet this industry was exerted under every disadvantage which a most cruel legislation could impose on it. It would be hard to find in the pages of history a more flagrant example of the oppression of a conquered race, than that afforded by the laws of this period in reference to the Moriscoes. The odious law of 1566, which led to the insurrection, was put in full force. By this the national songs and dances, the peculiar baths of the Moriscoes, the fêtes and ceremonies which had come down to them from their ancestors, were interdicted under heavy penalties. By another ordinance, dated October 6, 1572, still more cruel and absurd, they were forbidden to speak or to write the Arabic, under penalty of thirty days' imprisonment in irons for the first offence, double that term for the second, and for the third a hundred lashes and four years' confinement in the galleys. By another monstrous provision in the same edict, whoever read, or even had in his possession, a work written or printed in the Arabic, was to be punished with a hundred stripes and four years in the galleys. Any contract or public instrument made in that tongue was to be void, and the parties to it were condemned to receive two hundred lashes and to tug at the oar for six years.[281]

FORTUNES OF THE MORISCOES.

But the most oppressive part of this terrible ordinance related to the residence of the Moriscoes. No one was allowed to change his abode, or to leave the parish or district assigned to him, without permission from the regular authorities. Whoever did so, and was apprehended beyond these limits, was to be punished with a hundred lashes and four years' imprisonment in the galleys. Should he be found within ten leagues of Granada, he was condemned, if between ten and seventeen years of age, to toil as a galley-slave the rest of his days; if above seventeen, he was sentenced to death![282] On the escape of a Morisco from his limits, the hue and cry was to be raised, as for the pursuit of a criminal. Even his own family were required to report his absence to the magistrate; and in case of their failure to do this, although it should be his wife or his children, says the law, they incurred the penalty of a whipping and a month's imprisonment in the common gaol.[283]

Yet, in the face of these atrocious enactments, we find the Moriscoes occasionally making their escape into the province of Valencia, where numbers of their countrymen were living as serfs on the estates of the great nobles, under whose powerful protection they enjoyed a degree of comfort, if not of independence, unknown to their race in other parts of the country. Some few, also, finding their way to the coast, succeeded in crossing the sea to Barbary. The very severity of the law served in some measure to defeat its execution. Indeed, Philip, in more than one instance in which he deemed that the edicts pressed too heavily on his Moorish vassals, judged it expedient to mitigate the penalty, or even to dispense with it altogether,—an act of leniency which seems to have found little favour with his Castilian subjects.[284]

Yet, strange to say, under this iron system, the spirit of the Moriscoes, which had been crushed by their long sufferings in the war of the rebellion, gradually rose again as they found a shelter in their new homes, and resumed their former habits of quiet industry. Though deprived of their customary amusements, their fêtes, their songs, and their dances,—though debarred from the use of the language which they had lisped from the cradle, which embodied their national traditions, and was associated with their fondest recollections,—they were said to be cheerful, and even gay. They lived to a good age, and examples of longevity were found among them, to which it was not easy to find a parallel among the Spaniards. The Moorish stock, like the Jewish, seems to have thriven under persecution.[285]

One would be glad to find any authentic data for an account of the actual population at the time of their expulsion from Granada. But I have met with none. They must have been sorely thinned by the war of the insurrection and the countless woes it brought upon the country. One fact is mentioned by the chroniclers, which shows that the number of the exiles must have been very considerable. The small remnant still left in Granada, with its lovely vega and the valley of Lecrin, alone furnished, we are told, over six thousand.[286] In the places to which they were transported they continued to multiply to such an extent that the Cortes of Castile, in the latter part of the century, petitioned the king not to allow the census to be taken, lest it might disclose to the Moriscoes the alarming secret of their increase of numbers.[287] Such a petition shows, as strongly as language can show, the terror in which the Spaniards still stood of this persecuted race.

Yet the Moriscoes were scattered over the country in small and isolated masses, hemmed in all around by the Spaniards. They were transplanted to the interior, where, at a distance from the coast, they had no means of communicating with their brethren of Africa. They were without weapons of any kind; and, confined to their several districts, they had not the power of acting in concert together. There would seem to have been little to fear from a people so situated. But the weakest individual, who feels that his wrongs are too great to be forgiven, may well become an object of dread to the person who has wronged him.