Religious Dissent and Minorities: The Morisco Age

Abstract

In 1502, having expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492—the same year in which the conquest of the Islamic kingdom of Granada had been completed— Ferdinand and Isabel issued a decree ordering all Muslims living in the kingdom of Castile to convert to Christianity. This new edict reproduced almost to the letter the law that had offered Spanish Jews a choice between expulsion and conversion, but it differed in that the conditions it set for leaving the kingdom made exile virtually impossible. In 1526 this law was extended to cover Muslims living in the territories of Aragon and Valencia, thereby putting an end to the legal existence of Muslims in the Christian kingdoms of Iberia, where, known as Mudejars, they had lived throughout the entire medieval period.