Baptism did not erase Morisco wedding customs that authorities banned.

Evidence

Weddings were to be celebrated in the “Old Christian” way: no henna decorative designs on the skin, no cutting of the hair (it is difficult to say why this should be regulated, unless it refers to the traditional shaving or removal of pubic hair in preparation for the wedding night), “nor the other things they normally do,” except that they might have zambras (celebratory dances) on the eve of the ceremony and on the day of the ceremony itself. An interesting concession, presumably the authorities realized they would never be able to enforce a total ban on dancing. On feast days the newly converted were to keep their front doors open so that magistrates could enter and make sure that the people there were not still working. In church, women were to leave their faces entirely uncovered. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 286

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The authorities’ grudging concession of zambras parallels how sumptuary and dress-policing regimes in the immodesty article had to bend to resistances they could not fully crush.
• SEED: The ‘zambras allowed because unenforceable’ logic is a lovely case study for an essay on how colonial regulations concede what they cannot police — what gets legalized because suppression fails.