Morisco mountain bandits blurred the line between outlaws and freedom fighters

Evidence

In our period, the readiness of some desperate/desperado Moriscos (monfies was the term in Granada) to take to the hills and defy the Christian authorities meant that the borderline between criminal outlaws and heroic freedom fighters is not easy to draw. That among Moriscos in the sixteenth century some dissidents should take to the hills, adopt a life of banditry, is scarcely surprising. But as we will see, there was banditry, too, on the other side. And the old order, which had provided some form of security to crypto-Muslim populations, ceased to function. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1178

Categorization

• XREF: The outlaw/freedom-fighter boundary echoes the milicianos and resistance framing seen in recent creative work; also resonates with the bandit studies literature (Hobsbawm) not yet in the library.
• DEFINE: ‘Monfíes’ is introduced as the Granada term for Morisco bandits/outlaws.
• ADDENDUM: The breakdown of feudal protection that pushed Moriscos to banditry is a case study of a security system collapsing — parallel to how ritual sacrifice stabilized stratified societies in the Sacrifice article, here protection stabilizes an oppressed minority until it fails.