A small isolated Muslim population carved out a self-governing enclave inside Christian Spain.

Evidence

It is not only the reports that come to us from the Franciscans of the town that indicate that the place was rapidly turning into a near no-go area for non-Moriscos. One rumor had it that the town had its own paid assassin who carried out death sentences for it. Certainly it was the alleged lawlessness of the Hornacheros that led at the close of the century to a prominent judge, L´opez Madera, being sent there on a special mission as described below. In our present age it is perhaps easier for us than it was for historians of confident imperialist times to understand how, by ruthless determination, a small isolated population may have been able to demarcate its own space and defend that space with remarkable success, against apparently overwhelmingly strong forces. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1694

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes enclave-autonomy dynamics from Milgrom’s law-merchant chapter and modern self-governing minority districts.
• SEED: An essay angle: extra-legal self-governing enclaves — how small populations enforce ‘no-go’ boundaries against far larger states, from Hornachos to modern gang-controlled neighborhoods.
• DEEPTHINKING: The counterintuitive claim that petite populations can demarcate and defend their own space against vastly stronger forces, via ruthless determination — a paradigm-shifting idea about how power actually distributes on the ground.