Robinson Crusoe’s character Xury was a Morisco, named by letter confusion

Evidence

Readers of Robinson Crusoe may recall that before Defoe’s hero ever reaches his island, he has a completely separate adventure in North Africa and is for some time held captive in “Sallee.” Robinson Crusoe would never have escaped from slavery there without the help of a boy called Xury, about whom we are told that he was a “Maresco.” I have no doubt that Defoe meant to convey that he was a Morisco, and perhaps the form arose at the outset out of no more than a graphic confusion between the letters o and a. (Defoe has the boy sold off by Crusoe when they reach Brazil, which seems a very poor reward for the services he had rendered!) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1661

Categorization

• CANDY: A light literary-historical morsel: a Robinson Crusoe character turns out to be a Morisco, the boy sold off by Crusoe as a poor reward.
• FICTION: The image of a Morisco boy in 17th-century Atlantic slavery could seed a short story combining the Sallee corsair world with the colonial slave trade.