Portuguese Muslims escaped slavery by negotiating overland departure

Evidence

The Portuguese Muslims were therefore well advised to avoid if they could a similar fate, and to keep clear of the Lisbon docks if at all possible. They opted instead to negotiate permission to leave overland. As we have seen, their probable fate if they had tried to leave by sea would have been slavery: they had no guarantee that shipping could be found before the deadline, indeed, it was unlikely in the extreme that they would all have managed to secure passages. The centuries-old community of Portuguese Muslims was in this way brought to an end overnight, but at least the children of the Portuguese Muslims were spared the dreadful fate inflicted on the children of the Jews. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 124 (#expands, via linked claim)

Opinion in that body was divided. Much earlier precedents for the expulsion of the Jews were adduced in the debate, but there were absolutely no parallels to adduce for such treatment of Muslims. That the pope himself tolerated Jews in the territories over which he ruled directly was of course a powerful argument against expulsion of the Jews from Portugal, but the other side in the debate, some of those speaking could list many countries from which Jews had already been driven out: England, France, Scotland, and Sweden, among others. The petulance of the speech with which Manuel cut through this inconclusive debate is striking, even when filtered through Dami˜ao de Gois’s reporting: “I am not concerned with the law,” the young king said: “I have made a vow (devoc¸ ˜ao) to do this, and my orders are to be carried out.” He seems to be implying that he had made a promise to his bride-to-be, and he would not be deflected from carrying it out. Before these particular marriage negotiations with the Castilian emissaries, Manuel had not been given to displays of piety. There is absolutely no indication that he had earlier held the creation of an all-Christian kingdom as a cherished objective of his own. We can only conclude that the Castilian negotiators used the leverage provided by his desire (for whatever reason) to finalize the marriage contract in order to impose on their Portuguese neighbor a religious policy that was theirs, rather than his. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 115 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Portuguese Muslims avoided enslavement by negotiating overland exit instead of sea passage — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 124; Castilian Muslims in 1500 lost the real conversion-or-exile choice Portuguese Muslims still had; An enslaved Muslim feigned Christian conversion to serve his own repatriation interests — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 362 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Portuguese Muslims avoided enslavement by negotiating overland exit instead of sea passage #expands (0.97) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 124
• Castilian negotiators imposed Portuguese Muslim expulsion via marriage leverage #complicates (0.76) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 115