Aragon’s fuerista aristocracy allied with its Morisco population to preserve Islamic culture.

Evidence

There continued to exist throughout the sixteenth century a linkage between the old fuerista aristocracy of the kingdom and the Morisco subject population, and certainly until the end of our period this region was the one in all the peninsula where conditions proved most propitious for the preservation of vestiges of Islamic culture. Regional differences as between Valencia, Catalonia, and Aragon proper subsisted. Nevertheless, the Morisco problem was handled in broadly similar ways in the various areas belonging to the Crown of Aragon. All the nuevos convertidos de moros, all the Moriscos, to use the modern historian’s term, were now on the same legal footing, even though in some areas, it was true that various complicities might tend to alleviate the sufferings of the crypto-Muslims, and various feuds might exacerbate them. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 505

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the theme of regional minority protection under a dominant crown — parallels with colonial proxy governance patterns in Islamic Spain studies and caste-like stratification elsewhere.