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The Handless Maiden: Moriscos and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Spain

2006; Oxford University Press; Volume: CXXI; Issue: 492 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/ehr/cel167

1477-4534

Hunter R. Rawlings,

Islamic Finance and Banking Studies

The Handless Maiden turns the tables on the traditional history of the encounter between Christians and Moslems in southern Spain (from their forced conversion in 1502 to their expulsion in 1609), as recorded in official state papers, by approaching the subject from the personal experience of the minority morisco population and specifically through the lives of morisco women. Perry challenges the common assumption that moriscas were submissive members of a culture dominated by its own men as well as by the victorious Christian authorities. Instead she demonstrates that, far from passively accepting their fate as an oppressed female minority in a patriarchal society, they became active participants in preserving their Islamic culture and identity from enforced assimilation. During the course of the sixteenth century morisco difference came to be perceived from the centralised state's point of view as deviance that needed to be rooted out. In their strategy for survival, morisco women transformed their homes into ‘cells of resistance’ where they taught Arabic prayers to their children and preserved Islamic holy days, fasts and customs, using the bonds of family and kinship to sustain their way of life and survive waves of oppression. They thus defied the imposition of religious orthodoxy as well as the assigned role prescribed to them as women. Perry refers to the wearing of the veil as a vital mechanism that allowed the morisca to preserve her cultural identity behind a mask of anonymity and impenetrability. Morisco men on the other hand, whose lives regularly took them outside the home, were more inclined to feign conversion and, superficially at least, accommodate themselves to the Christian authorities rather than suffer persecution. Ancient myths and legends of successful resistance are identified as providing the morisco community, and in particular its women, with the strength and determination to defy their oppressors. They include the story of the princess Carcayona who refused to observe the rule of passive obedience for females and had her hands amputated as punishment (later miraculously restored by Allah); the case of Leonor de Morales, denounced to the Inquisition for proselytising and whose own husband testified against her, but who refused under torture to confess to her ‘sins’; and the account of Zarçamodonia, who took an active warrior role in the 1568 Alpujarras revolt in Granada, where she reportedly instilled fear into Christian soldiers. Myths and legends such as these, as well as the architectural heritage built by their forefathers, empowered the weak to persist in their struggle and resist the destruction of their historical memory. By their actions, and the fact that expulsion was ultimately the only solution that could be found, they revealed the ineffectiveness of the Christianisation programme and the weakness of church-state policy that underpinned it. Perry argues that the morisco experience in early modern Spain—a story of cultural and religious empowerment with political implications—is one that continues to have resonance in the modern era.