Moors

The Moors were the medieval Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta.

The Moors invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711 and called the territory Al-Andalus, an area which at its peak included what is today Gibraltar, most of Spain and Portugal, and parts of Southern France. There was also a Moorish presence in what is now Southern Italy, primarily in Sicily. They occupied Mazara on Sicily in 827^[1] and in 1224 were expelled to the settlement of Lucera, which was destroyed in 1300. The religious difference of the Moorish Muslims led to a centuries-long conflict with the Christian kingdoms of Europe, called in Spain the Reconquista. The fall of Granada in 1492 saw the end of Muslim rule in Iberia.

The term "Moors" has also been used in Europe in a broader sense to refer to Muslims,^[2] especially those of Arab or Berber descent, whether living in Spain or North Africa.^[3] During the colonial era the Portuguese introduced the names "Ceylon Moors" and "Indian Moors", in Sri Lanka. The Bengali Muslims were called Moors.^[4] Moors are not a distinct or self-defined people.^[5] Medieval and early modern Europeans applied the name to Arabs, Berbers, Muslim Europeans and Sub-Saharan Africans.^[6]

The Moors came from the North African country of Morocco and crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to get into the Iberian Peninsula. The Moors were initially of Arab and Berber descent at the time of the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the early 8th century, but later came to include people of mixed heritage, and Iberian Christian converts to Islam were known by the Arabs as Muwalladun or Muladi.^[7][8]

In the languages of Europe, a number of associated ethnic groups have been historically designated as "Moors". In the modern Iberian Peninsula, "Moor" is sometimes colloquially applied to any person from North Africa, but some people consider this usage of the term pejorative,^[2] whether in the Spanish version "moro", or in the Portuguese version "mouro".

Name

Etymology

The Romans interacted with (and later conquered) parts of Mauretania, a state that covered modern Morocco, western Algeria, and the Spanish cities Ceuta and Melilla during the classical period. The people of the region were noted in Classical literature as Mauri, which means "Moors" when translated from Latin to English.^[9] It is often common in modern times to apply the appellation of "Moor" or "Moors" to North Africans, especially Moroccans, although some find this derogatory.

Isidore of Seville, writing in the seventh century, claimed that the Latin word Maurus was derived from the Greek mauron, μαύρον, which is the Greek word for black.^[10]

Modern meanings

In the Medieval Romance languages (such as Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian), the Latin word took such forms as mouro, moro, moir, mor and maur. From denoting a specific Berber people in western Libya, the name acquired more general meaning in the Romance languages during the medieval period, partly developing a general meaning of "Muslim", partly (much like "Saracens") taking a religious meaning of "infidels" in the context of the Crusades and the Reconquista.

Beside its usage in historical context, Moor and Moorish (Italian and Spanish: moro, French: maure, Portuguese: mouro, Romanian: maur) is used to designate an ethnic group speaking the Hassaniya Arabic dialect. They inhabit Mauritania and parts of Algeria, Western Sahara, Tunisia, Morocco, Niger and Mali. In Niger and Mali, these peoples are also known as the Azawagh Arabs, after the Azawagh region of the Sahara.^[11]

In Spain, modern colloquial Spanish use of the term "Moro" is derogatory for Moroccans in particular^{[12][13][14][15][16]} and North Africans in general. Similarly, in modern, colloquial Portuguese, the term "Mouro" was primarily used as a designation for North Africans and secondarily as a derogatory and ironic term by northern Portuguese to refer to the inhabitants of the southern parts of the country (Lisbon, Alentejo and Algarve). However, this designation has gained more acceptance in the south.

In the Philippines, a former Spanish colony, many modern Filipinos call the large, local Muslim minority concentrated in Mindanao and other southern islands Moros. The word is a catch-all term, as Moro may come from several distinct ethno-linguistic groups such as the Maranao. The term was introduced by Spanish colonisers, and has since appropriated by Filipino Muslims as an endonym, with many self-identifying as members of the Bangsamoro ("Moro Nation").

Moreno can mean dark-skinned in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and the Philippines. Also in Spanish, morapio is a humorous name for "wine", especially that which has not been "baptized" or mixed with water, i.e., pure unadulterated wine. Among Spanish speakers, moro ("Moor") came to have a broader meaning, applied to both Filipino Moros from Mindanao, and the moriscos of Granada. Moro refers to all things dark, as in "Moor", moreno, etc. It was used as a nickname; for instance, the Milanese Duke Ludovico Sforza was called Il Moro because of his dark complexion.

In Portugal and Spain, mouro (feminine, moura) may refer to supernatural beings known as enchanted moura, where "moor" implies 'alien' and 'non-Christian'. These beings were siren-like fairies with golden or reddish hair and a fair face. They were believed to have magical properties.^[17] From this root, the name moor is applied to unbaptized children, meaning not Christian.^[18][19] In Basque, mairu means moor and also refers to a mythical people.^[20]

Within the context of Portuguese colonization, in Sri Lanka (Portuguese Ceylon), Muslims of Arab origin are called Ceylon Moors not to be confused with "Indian Moors" of Sri Lanka (see Sri Lankan Moors). Sri Lankan Moors (combination of "Ceylon Moors" and "Indian Moors") are 12% of the population. The Ceylon Moors (unlike the Indian Moors) in Sri Lanka are descendants of Arab traders who settled there in the mid-6th century. When the Portuguese arrived in the early 16th century, they labelled all the Muslims in the island as Moors as they saw some of them resembling the Moors in North Africa. The Sri Lankan government to this day identifies the Muslims in Sri Lanka as "Sri Lankan Moors" sub-categorised into "Ceylon Moors" and "Indian Moors".^[21]

The Goan Muslims — a minority community who follow Islam in the western Indian coastal state of Goa — are commonly referred as Moir (Konkani: मैर) by Goan Catholics and Hindus.^[a] Moir is derived from the Portuguese word mouro (Moor).

Moors of the Maghreb

Over the course of the late 600s-early 700s, the Muslim caliphate, established after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, underwent a period of rapid expansion. In 647, 40,000 Arabs forced the Byzantine governor to submit and pay tribute, but failed to permanently occupy the region.^[22] After an interlude during which the Muslims fought a civil war, the invasions resumed in 665, seizing Byzantine North Africa up to Bugia over the course of a series of campaigns, which took until 689. A Byzantine counterattack largely expelled the Arabs, but left the region vulnerable. Intermittent war over the inland provinces of Norrth Africa continued for the next two decades. Further civil war delayed the continuation of full-scale further conquest, but an Arab assault took Carthage and held it against a Byzantine counterattack once this began.

Although a Christian and pagan Berber rebellion pushed out the Arabs temporarily, the Romanized urban population preferred the Arabs to the Berbers and welcomed a renewed and final conquest which left North Africa in Muslim hands by 698, save only Ceuta. Over the next decades, the Berber and urban populations of North Africa gradually converted to Islam, although for separate reasons.^[23] The Arab language was also adopted. Initially, the Arabs required only the subordination of these peoples rather than their assimilation, a process which took a considerable time.^[23] The groups that inhabited the Maghreb following this process became known collectively as Moors. Although the Berbers would later expel their Arab overlords from the Maghreb and form temporarily independent states, that failed to dislodge the usage of the collective term.

Moors of Iberia

In 711 CE, the now Islamic Moors of Arab and Berber descent came from the North African country of Morocco and crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to get into the Iberian Peninsula and in a series of raids conquered Visigothic Christian Hispania.^[24] Their general, Tariq ibn-Ziyad, brought most of Iberia under Islamic rule in an eight-year campaign. They moved northeast across the Pyrenees Mountains, but were defeated by the Frank Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers in 732.

The Moorish state fell into civil conflict in 739 that lasted until 743, the conflict is known as the Berber Revolt. The Berbers revolted against the Arab aristocracy due to the oppression of them by the Arab ruling class. The Moors ruled in North Africa and in most of the Iberian peninsula for several centuries and the Umayyad Arab aristocracy ruled all the way from Damascus to Spain.^[25] Ibn Hazm the Moor polymath mentions how many of the Moor Caliphs in the Umayyad and Córdoba caliphates themselves had fair hair and light eyes.^[26] Ibn Hazm mentions not only did he prefer blondes, but also mentions how there was much shown interest in blondes in Al-Andalus amongst the rulers and regular Muslims. He specifically says this about the Moor Córdoba rulers:

All the Caliphs of the Banu Marwan (God have mercy on their souls!), and especially the sons of al-Nasir, were without variation or exception disposed by nature to prefer blondes. I have myself seen them, and known others who had seen their forebears, from the days of al-Nasir's reign down to the present day; every one of them has been fair-haired, taking after their mothers, so that this has become a hereditary trait with them; all but Sulaiman al-Zafir (God have mercy on him!), whom I remember to have had black ringlets and a black beard. As for al-Nasir and al-Hakam al-Mustansir (may God be pleased with them!), I have been informed by my late father, the vizier, as well as by others, that both of them were blond and blue-eyed. The same is true of Hisham al-Mu'aiyad, Muhammad al-Mahdi, and `Abd al-Rahman al-Murtada (may God be merciful to them all!); I saw them myself many times, and had the honour of being received by them, and I remarked that they all had fair hair and blue eyes.^[27]

The language spoken in the parts of the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim rule was Andalusian Arabic, a variety of the Arabic language; the language became extinct after the Expulsion of the Moriscos, but Arabic influence can be found in the Spanish language of today. The Muslims were resisted in parts of the Iberian Peninsula in areas of the northwest (such as Asturias, where they were defeated at the battle of Covadonga) and the largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees. Though the number of Moorish colonists was small, many native Iberian inhabitants converted to Islam. According to Ronald Segal, by 1000, some 5,000,000 of Iberia's 7,000,000 inhabitants, most of them descended from indigenous Iberian converts, were Muslim. There were also Sub-Saharan Africans who had been absorbed into Al-Andalus to be used as soldiers and slaves. The Berber and Sub-Saharan African soldiers were known as "tangerines" because they were imported through Tangier.^[28][29]

In a process of decline, Al Andalus had broken up into a number of Islamic-ruled fiefdoms, or taifas, which were partly consolidated under the Caliphate of Córdoba.

The Asturias, a small northwestern Christian Iberian kingdom, initiated the Reconquista (the Reconquest) soon after the Islamic conquest in the 8th century. Christian states based in the north and west slowly extended their power over the rest of Iberia. The Navarre, the Galicia, the León, the Portugal, the Aragón, the Marca Hispánica, and the Castile began a process of expansion and internal consolidation during the next several centuries under the flag of Reconquista.

In 1212, a coalition of Christian kings under the leadership of Alfonso VIII of Castile drove the Muslims from Central Iberia. The Portuguese side of the Reconquista ended in 1249 with the conquest of the Algarve (Arabic الغرب – Al-Gharb) under Afonso III. He was the first Portuguese monarch to claim the title "King of Portugal and the Algarve".

The Moorish Kingdom of Granada continued for three more centuries in southern Iberia. On January 2, 1492, the leader of the last Muslim stronghold in Granada surrendered to the armies of a recently united Christian Spain (after the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragón and Isabella I of Castile, the Catholic Monarchs). They forced the remaining Jews to leave Spain, convert to Roman Catholic Christianity or be killed for not doing so. To exert social and religious control, in 1480, Isabella and Ferdinand agreed to allow the Inquisition in Spain. Granada's Muslim population rebelled in 1499. The revolt lasted until early 1501, giving the Castilian authorities an excuse to void the terms of the Treaty of Granada (1491). In 1501, Castilian authorities delivered an ultimatum to Granada's Muslims: they could either convert to Christianity or be expelled.

The Inquisition was aimed mostly at Jews and Muslims who had overtly converted to Christianity but were thought to be practicing their faiths secretly. They were respectively called marranos and moriscos. However, in 1567 King Philip II directed Moriscos to give up their Arabic names and traditional dress, and prohibited the use of the Arabic language. In reaction, there was a Morisco uprising in the Alpujarras from 1568 to 1571. In the years from 1609 to 1614, the government expelled Moriscos. The historian Henri Lapeyre estimated that this affected 300,000 out of an estimated total of 8 million inhabitants.^[30]

Many Muslims converted to Christianity and remained permanently in Iberia. This is indicated by a "high mean proportion of ancestry from North African (10.6%)" that "attests to a high level of religious conversion (whether voluntary or enforced), driven by historical episodes of social and religious intolerance, that ultimately led to the integration of descendants."^[31][32]

In the meantime, the tide of Islam had rolled not just to Iberia, but also eastward, through India, the Malayan peninsula, and Indonesia up to the Philippines. This was one of the major islands of an archipelago which the Spaniards had reached during their voyages westward from the New World. By 1521, the ships of Magellan had reached that island archipelago, which they named Las Islas Filipinas, after Philip II of Spain. In Mindanao, the Spaniards named the kris-bearing people as Moros or 'Moors'. Today in the Philippines, this ethnic group of people in Mindanao, who are generally Muslims, are called 'Moros'. This identification of Islamic people as Moros persists in the modern Spanish language spoken in Spain, and as Mouros in the modern Portuguese language. See Reconquista, and Maure.

According to historian Richard A. Fletcher,^[33] "the number of Arabs who settled in Iberia was very small. 'Moorish' Iberia does at least have the merit of reminding us that the bulk of the invaders and settlers were Moors, i.e., Berbers from Algeria and Morocco."

The initial rule of the Moors in the Iberian peninsula under this Caliphate of Córdoba is regarded as tolerant in its acceptance of Christians, Muslims and Jews living in the same territories. The Caliphate of Córdoba collapsed in 1031 and the Islamic territory in Iberia fell under the rule of the Almohad dynasty in 1153. This second stage inaugurated an era of Moorish rulers guided by a version of Islam that left behind the tolerant practices of the past.^[34]

• Othello, the Moor and Desdemona, his Venetian wife, from William Shakespeare's play Othello

• "Batalla del Puig" (c. 1410-1420), depicting a battle from the Reconquista

• Tariq ibn-Ziyad was the Moorish general who led the conquest of Visigothic Spain in the early 8th century

• Moors in Spain playing chess, from the Book of Games

• The Moors request permission from James I of Aragón

• "Wild Men and Moors" tapestry, c. 1400

• Moorish and Christian army readying for battle, taken from The Cantigas de Santa María

• Moorish and Christian Reconquista battle, taken from The Cantigas de Santa María

• Christian and Moor playing lutes, 13th century

• Riyad the Moor receiving a letter from Shanul in Hadith Bayad wa Riyad

• Depiction of Moorish cavalry troops, taken from The Cantigas de Santa María

• Moors dividing the spoils, taken from The Cantigas de Santa María

• Muhammad XII of Granada, last Muslim sultan in Spain

• Leo Africanus, born in Granada

Moors of Sicily

The first Muslim conquest of Sicily and parts of southern Italy lasted 75 years (827–902); the language spoken in Sicily under Muslim rule was Siculo-Arabic. By 827, Sicily was almost entirely in control of the Aghlabids with the exception of some minor strongholds in the rugged interior until 909 when it was then replaced by Shiite Fatimids. Four years later, the Fatimid governor was ousted from Palermo when the island declared its independence under Emir Ahmed ibn-Kohrob.

In 1038, a Byzantine army under George Maniaces crossed the strait of Messina. This included a corps of Normans which saved the situation in the first clash against the Muslims from Messina. After another decisive victory in the summer of 1040, Maniaces halted his march to lay siege to Syracuse. Despite his conquest of the latter, Maniaces was removed from his position, and the subsequent Muslim counter-offensive reconquered all the cities captured by the Byzantines.

The Norman Robert Guiscard, son of Tancred, invaded Sicily in 1060. The island was split between three Arab emirs, and the Christian population in many parts of the island rose up against the ruling Muslims. One year later, Messina fell, and in 1072, Palermo was taken by the Normans. The loss of the cities, each with a splendid harbor, dealt a severe blow to Muslim power on the island. Eventually all of Sicily was taken. In 1091, Noto in the southern tip of Sicily and the island of Malta, the last Arab strongholds, fell to the Christians.

Islamic authors would marvel at the tolerance of the Norman kings of Sicily. Ibn al-Athir wrote: "They [the Muslims] were treated kindly, and they were protected, even against the Franks. Because of that, they had great love for King Roger."^[35]

Many repressive measures were introduced by Lucera took place.

Architecture

Moorish architecture is the articulated Islamic architecture of North Africa and parts of Spain and Portugal where the Moors were dominant between 711 and 1492. The best surviving examples are La Mezquita in Córdoba and the Alhambra palace in Granada (mainly 1338–1390),^[36] and also the Giralda in Seville (1184).^[37] Other notable examples include the ruined palace city of Medina Azahara (936–1010), the church (former mosque) San Cristo de la Luz in Toledo, the Aljafería in Saragossa and baths at for example Ronda and Alhama de Granada.

Moors in heraldry

Moors—or more frequently their heads, often crowned—appear with some frequency in medieval European heraldry. The term ascribed to them in Anglo-Norman blazon (the language of English heraldry) is maure, though they are also sometimes called moore, blackmoor, blackamoor or negro.^[38] Maures appear in European heraldry from at least as early as the 13th century,^[39] and some have been attested as early as the 11th century in Italy,^[39] where they have persisted in the local heraldry and vexillology well into modern times in Corsica and Sardinia.

Armigers bearing moors or moors' heads may have adopted them for any of several reasons, to include symbolizing military victories in the Crusades, as a pun on the bearer's name in the canting arms of Morese, Negri, Saraceni, etc., or in the case of Frederick II, possibly to demonstrate the reach of his empire.^[39] The arms of Pope Benedict XVI feature a moor's head, crowned and collared red, in reference to the arms of Freising, Germany.^[40] In the case of Corsica and Sardinia, the blindfolded moors' heads in the four quarters have long been said to represent the four Moorish emirs who were defeated by Peter I of Aragon in the 11th century, the four moors' heads around a cross having been adopted to the arms of Aragon around 1281–1387, and Corsica and Sardinia having come under the dominion of the king of Aragon in 1297.^[41] In Corsica, the blindfolds were lifted to the brow in the 18th century as a way of expressing the island's newfound independence.^[42]

The use of Moors (and particularly their heads) as a heraldic symbol has been deprecated in modern North America,^[43] where racial stereotypes have been influenced by a history of Trans-Atlantic slave trade and racial segregation, and applicants to the College of Arms of the Society for Creative Anachronism are urged to use them delicately to avoid creating offensive images.^[44]

Population

Populations in Carthage circa 200 BC and northern Algeria 1500 BC were diverse. As a group, they plotted closest to the populations of Northern Egypt and intermediate to Northern Europeans and tropical Africans: "the data supported the comments from ancient authors observed by classicists: everything from fair-skinned blonds to peoples who were dark-skinned 'Ethiopian' or part Ethiopian in appearance."^[45] Modern evidence shows a similar diversity among present North Africans. Moreover, this diversity of phenotypes and peoples was probably due to in situ differentiation, not foreign influxes. Foreign influxes are thought to have had an impact on population make-up, but did not replace the indigenous Berber population.^[46]

Moors in popular culture

• In a bubble boy over a misspelt Trivial Pursuit answer, which claims that it was the "Moops" who invaded Spain in the 8th century.
• The title character in William Shakespeare's play Othello is a Moor. The character has been played by various thespians in different forms of entertainment.
• In the film True Romance, there is a scene about the Moors invading Sicily.
• The 2009 documentary film, Journey to Mecca, follows the travels of the Moorish explorer Ibn Battuta from his native country of Morocco to Mecca for the Hajj in 1325.

Notable Moors

• Tariq ibn Ziyad, Moorish general who defeated the Visigoths and conquered Hispania in 711.
• Abd ar-Rahman I, founder of the Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba in 756; along with its succeeding Caliphate of Córdoba, the dynasty ruled Islamic Iberia for three centuries.
• Ibn al-Qūṭiyya, Andalusian historian and grammarian.
• Yahya al-Laithi, Andalusian scholar who introduced the Maliki school of jurisprudence in Al-Andalus.
• Abbas Ibn Firnas, 810–887, Berber inventor and aviator who invented an early parachute and made the first attempt at controlled flight with a hang glider.
• Maslamah Ibn Ahmad al-Majriti, died 1007, Andalusian writer believed to have been the author of the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity and the Picatrix.
• Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis), Andalusian physician and surgeon who established the discipline of surgery as a profession with his Al-Tasrif in 1000.
• Said Al-Andalusi, 1029–1070, Andalusian Qadi, historian, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer.
• Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī (Arzachel), 1029–1087, Andalusian astronomer and engineer who developed the equatorium and universal (latitude-independent) astrolabe and compiled a Zij later used as a basis for the Tables of Toledo.
• Artephius, circa 1126, Andalusian scientist known as the author of numerous works of Alchemical texts, now extant only in Latin.
• Ibn Bajjah (Avempace), died 1138, Andalusian physicist and polymath whose theory of motion, including the concept of a reaction force, influenced the development of classical mechanics.
• Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar), 1091–1161, Andalusian physician and polymath who discovered the existence of parasites and pioneered experimental surgery.
• Muhammad al-Idrisi, circa 1100–1166, Moorish geographer and polymath who drew the Tabula Rogeriana, the most accurate world map in pre-modern times.
• Ibn Tufail, circa 1105–1185, Arabic writer and polymath who wrote Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, the first philosophical novel.
• Averroes (Ibn Rushd), 1126–1198, classical Islamic philosopher and polymath who wrote The Incoherence of the Incoherence and the most extensive Aristotelian commentaries, and established the school of Averroism.
• Ibn al-Baitar, died 1248, Andalusian botanist and pharmacist who compiled the most extensive pharmacopoeia and botanical compilation in pre-modern times.
• Ibn Khaldun, a pioneer of the social sciences and forerunner of sociology, historiography and economics, who wrote the Muqaddimah in 1377.
• Abū al-Hasan ibn Alī al-Qalasādī, 1412–1486, Moorish mathematician who took the first steps toward the introduction of algebraic symbolism.
• Leo Africanus, 1494–1554, Andalusian geographer, author and diplomat, who was captured by Spanish pirates and sold as a slave, but later baptized and freed.
• Estevanico, also referred to as "Stephen the Moor", was an explorer in the service of Spain of what is now the southwest of the United States.
• Ibn Battuta, an Islamic scholar and Moorish explorer who is generally considered one of the greatest travellers of all time.
• Ibn Hazm, a Moorish polymath who was considered one of the leading thinkers of the Muslim World and is widely acknowledged as the father of Comparative religion studies.
• Ibn Idhari, a Moorish historian who was the author of (Al-Bayan al-Mughrib) an important medieval text on the history of the Maghreb and Iberia.

See also

Adarga Al-Andalus Alhambra Almohad dynasty Almoravid dynasty Averroes

Barbary pirate Berber people Böszörmény Caliphate of Córdoba Emirate of Granada History of North Africa

History of Portugal History of Spain Islam in Spain Marinid dynasty Moorish architecture Moorish Revival

Moorish Science Temple of America Morisco Nasrid dynasty Orientalism

Notes

References

Bibliography

This section's bibliographical information is not fully provided. If you know these sources and can provide full information, you can help WorldHeritage by completing it.

• Jan R. Carew. Rape of Paradise: Columbus and the birth of racism in America. Brooklyn, NY: A&B Books, c. 1994.
• David Brion Davis, "Slavery: White, Black, Muslim, Christian." New York Review of Books, vol. 48, #11 July 5, 2001. Do not have exact pages.
• Herodotus, The Histories
• Shomark O. Y. Keita, "Genetic Haplotypes in North Africa"
• Shomarka O. Y. Keita, "Studies of ancient crania from northern Africa." American Journal of Physical Anthropology 83:35-48 1990.
• Shomarka O. Y. Keita, "Further studies of crania from ancient northern Africa: an analysis of crania from First Dynasty Egyptian tombs, using multiple discriminant functions." American Journal of Physical Anthropology 87: 345-54, 1992.
• Shomarka O. Y. Keita, "Black Athena: race, Bernal and Snowden." Arethusa 26: 295-314, 1993.
• Bernard Lewis, "The Middle East".
• Bernard Lewis. The Muslim Discovery of Europe. NY: Norton, 1982. Also an article with the same title published in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 20(1/3): 409-16, 1957.
• Bernard Lewis, "Race and Slavery in Islam".
• Stanley Lane-Poole, assisted by E. J. W. Gibb and Arthur Gilman. The Story of Turkey. NY: Putnam, 1888.
• Stanley Lane-Poole. The Story of the Barbary Corsairs. NY: Putnam,1890.
• Stanley Lane-Poole, The History of the Moors in Spain.
• J. A. (Joel Augustus) Rogers. Nature Knows No Color Line: research into the Negro ancestry in the white race. New York: 1952.
• Ronald Segal. Islam's Black Slaves: the other Black diaspora. NY: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2001.
• Ivan Van Sertima, ed. The Golden Age of the Moor. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1992. (Journal of African civilizations, vol. 11).
• Frank Snowden. Before Color Prejudice: the ancient view of blacks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983.
• Frank Snowden. Blacks in antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman experience. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1970.
• David M. Goldenberg. The Curse of Ham: race and slavery in early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, c2003.
• Lucotte and Mercier, various genetic studies
• Eva Borreguero. "The Moors Are Coming, the Moors Are Coming! Encounters with Muslims in Contemporary Spain." p. 417-32 in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 2006, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 417–32.

External links

• "The Moors" by Ross Brann, published on New York University website.
• Secret Seal: On the image of the Blackamoor in European Heraldry, a PBS article.
• Encyclopedia - Britannica Online Encyclopedia (2006)
• Moors, Classic Encyclopedia (1911)
• Khalid Amine, Moroccan Shakespeare: From Moors to Moroccans. Paper presented at an International Conference Organized by The Postgraduate School of Critical Theory and Cultural Studies, University of Nottingham, and The British Council, Morocco, 12–14 April 2001.
• Africans in Medieval & Renaissance Art: The Moor's Head, Victoria and Albert Museum (n.d)
• Sean Cavazos-Kottke. Othello's Predecessors: Moors in Renaissance Popular Literature: (outline). Folger Shakespeare Library, 1998.

Tribal hegemony in the former Western Roman Empire from the decline of Rome to 843 Huns 376–454 Vandals 406–534 Visigoths 410–711 Franks 509–843 Ostrogoths 493–553 Byzantines 553–568 Lombards 568–774 Moors 711–1492