A satirical anti-Morisco pamphlet mocked the expelled community with deliberately bad commercial advice.

Evidence

Descendents of Ishmael, disinherited from God’s succor in beauteous Spain by divine inspiration and sacred Providence because God in His own country (en su patria) will have none of those who have displayed such stubborn attachment to their own rites and apostasies … There are two well-founded reasons for the confiscation of your possessions and for turning them to ashes—because you are traitors and because you are heretics. You are leaving Spain, because, ungrateful folk that you are, you decided after eight hundred years to pay your dues. And since your reward is to be obliged to make what you can from your livestock (this being granted to you as a concession), I, as your friend, (in the way that a cat is friend of all rats), am writing this memorandum for your sakes: after all, we do share the same fatherland. It will help you to know which commodities are most in demand, for you are going into foreign lands. My advice, then, is, if you go to France, invest your fortune in linen; Rouen and Holland, cloth; and if to England, you should know that there is great demand for woolen cloth, baize, and friezes. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1909

Categorization

• CANDY: The ‘cat is friend of all rats’ line and the absurd market advice (furs to Guinea, saints’ lives and crucifixes to Barbary) is darkly funny and tweetable.