Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Expulsió dels Moriscos at Vinaros

The music is Morisco music, found on Iberian Garden, Vol. 1 by Altramar. The piece is Muwashshah: Mā li-l-muwallah, 1113-1198.

This music takes place at the beautiful gardens along the Guadalquiver, near Cordoba. This is during the "convivencia" under Alfonso X (El Sabio - The Wise), the time before Granda fell: when Christians, Moslems and Jews lived at peace with each other. Muwashshah are songs in poetic form, with instrumental interludes in the form of Ibn Bājja (Avempace): 1470-1520. This is Morisco art.
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Expulsio dels Moriscos Vinaros
Expulsió dels Moriscos at Vinaros
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There being 80,000 Spaniards [Moriscos and Mudéjares, and a small percentage of Huguenote Lutherans], crazed by being torn from their wives and children and stripped of their property; they would at once return [to Spain} to regain them." This was no small logistics problem: food, water, illness, plague, etc. Upon debarcation, would there not be more logistics problems? 1 Order would require troops (tercios, c. 8000) to overcome resistance, the troops transported by galleys, timed properly to arrive at the embarcation ports. 2 Several groups of people would require multiple embarcations and take time (months). Moriscos would charter separate vessels, some ship masters and crew engaging in piracy (extortion of property, murder of Moriscos, enslaving of Moriscos, separation of children from parents, landing the Moriscos or desert islands), requirements of thousands of nodrizas (wet nurses for infants). 3 Troops required to protect Moriscos from Old christians robing and murdering them for their property. 4 Rapacious soldiers expected plunder, sacked Morisco villages, murdered the men or sold the men as galley-slaves, outraged the women, sold women and children into slavery. 5 Crown commissioners fleeced the Moriscos, making them pay for drinking water in the brooks or for the shade of trees during their journey to ports of embarcation. 6 "The king, who was deriving large sums from confiscations and exactions imposed on those whom he was driving from their homes, ...". "[R]eturned exiles [were] despatched some to galleys, others to the quicksilver (Mercury) mines of Almaden ..." 7 However, there still remained Moriscos in Mallorca, Menorca, the Canaries and Sardinia. 8

1   "The Moriscos of Spain: Their Conversion amd Expulsion", Lea, Henry; p. 311
2   ibid., pp. 319, 320
3   ibid., pp. 321-323 (footnote #1), 362
4   ibid., p. 329
5   ibid., pp. 335, 336
6   ibid., p. 339
7   ibid., pp. 353, 354
8   ibid., p. 358

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