Christian antislavery decrees reveal black African ancestry in Spanish Muslim communities

Evidence

There were decrees made by the Christian authorities against continued Muslim ownership of such slaves, not, we may take it, out of any desire to stamp out slavery as an intrinsically evil institution (for ownership of slaves was not unknown among Christians inside Spain, as well as overseas in the plantations). The ban arose from fear that Muslim masters would be in a position to proselytize and to win for their religion souls that might otherwise have come to belong to Christ. Such concern by the Christians shows that, up to the end of the fifteenth century, there continued to be some black African contribution to the gene pool of the Muslim communities, particularly in Granada. The extent of that contribution may have been enhanced by the structures of the Islamic family, and these structures seem to have in part survived the enforced conversions. In the theory of Islamic law, Muslim females could only marry Muslim males, and in general practice Muslims did tend only to marry other Muslims, so any fresh genetic elements entering the community’s gene pool from outside would tend to be retained within it. It was possibly the element from black Africa, even though it was a small one, that reinforced the tendency for Spanish Christian writers to characterize the “moros” as in complexion more “Moreno” (brunette, dark, swarthy) than Christians. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 80

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reading list emphasis on how minority communities’ marriage endogamy preserves genetic markers that outsiders read as racial difference.