Local Tunisian elites resisted Ottoman protection of Morisco refugees

Evidence

Besides his studies of the positive aspects of Tunisian policies toward the Moriscos, it is one of the merits of Temimi’s investigations that he has also documented the existence in Tunis of a counter-current, of the resistance to the pro-Morisco policy of the Sublime Porte that local interests in Tunisia eventually mounted. The Ottoman regime was not a closely integrated centralized empire, but the complaints coming from Moriscos in Tunisia to Istanbul prompted a firman dated July 9, 1615, in which Ahmet I, reproving the beylerbey Yusuf, wrote: “The situation [of the Morisco minority] has grown considerably worse because new taxes have been imposed, including some from which local people are exempt. Their situation is even worse than it was under the unbelievers… . How are we to accept these injustices committed against those who had to flee from the unbeliever to seek refuge in our territories?” (Temimi 1993b, 36). Istanbul in this way sought to ensure good treatment for the refugees, but if in Tunisia the local powers came to perceive some of the Morisco leadership as a threat to them, it was obviously the Moriscos who had to yield and not their hosts. Central Ottoman backing was of limited use, for it was among local Tunisians that the Moriscos had to make their new life. Under Uthman’s successor Yusuf, local impatience with the immigrants surfaced. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1647

Categorization

• XREF: Contrast with the standard narrative of Muslim refuge in North Africa as a safe haven — echoes the current book’s broader theme of expulsion’s aftermath, and parallels how receiving societies elsewhere resented refugee populations.
• QUESTION: The Ottoman firman itself treats Morisco conditions under Muslim hosts as worse than under the ‘unbelievers’ — worth chasing how exile historiography weighs Christian persecution vs. Muslim host indifference.