Moriscos destroyed their own books to keep them out of court evidence.

Evidence

Prudent Moriscos will have destroyed many volumes before they could be used in the courts as evidence against them. Particularly in the opening years of the sixteenth century, when refugees could leave Spain more easily, prized codices would be taken out of the country by those emigrating. Nevertheless, it is possible to speak with considerable confidence of the range of written material available to Spain’s Muslims after 1500. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 677

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to book-burning and evidence-destruction dynamics in other persecuted religious minorities, e.g. crypto-Judaism, and to The Library: A Fragile History’s account of survival bias in what texts reach us.