Spanish readers adored noble-Moor tales precisely as they suppressed Morisco culture

Evidence

How are we to explain the strange contradiction that tales about noble Moors proved so popular precisely in a period (let us say 1560 onward) when energetic measures were being put into effect to make sure that the Morisco New Converts abandoned everything reminiscent of their Islamic past, when the last social vestiges capable of reminding Spaniards of medieval tolerant coexistence (convivencia) in the peninsula were being dismantled? — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 944

Categorization

• QUESTION: Harvey poses this contradiction as an open puzzle. The tension between literary nostalgia for Moors and active persecution of living Moriscos deserves further investigation.
• SEED: Could seed an essay on how societies simultaneously romanticize and persecute a minority — nostalgia for the ‘noble savage’ while erasing the actual community.