The Morisco Diaspora and the Morisco Networks across the Mediterranean (The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World, 86)

Book info: The Morisco Diaspora and the Morisco Networks across the Mediterranean (The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World, 86) (Hardcover, 392 pages) – Brill, 2025. Language: English.

The expulsion of the Moriscos from Habsburg Spain between 1609 and 1614 represents the largest expulsion of a minority in Europe in the early modern period, an important episode of ethnic, political and religious cleansing which affected about 300,000 forced migrants. This book studies for the first time how this group, which was affected by discrimination, religious persecution, and repression, displayed physical and spiritual resilience and prepared themselves for imminent radical measures by forming networks which helped them before, during, and after the expulsion to contact authorities in France, Italy, Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire in order to ask for help and to establish themselves in the news lands and form Diaspora communities which in many places have remained visible until today. Contributors are Luis F. Bernabé Pons, Hossain Bouzineb, Houssem Eddine Chachia, Mercedes García-Arenal, Catherine Infante, Tijana Krstić, Amine Oulad Lmaroudia, Bruno Pomara, Barbara Ruiz-Bejarano, Ana Struillou, and Gerard Wiegers. Editorial Reviews About the Author Mercedes García-Arenal, Ph.D. (1976), Universidad Complutense Madrid, Research Professor at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid, Doctor HC, University of Chicago, 2022, and Spanish National Research Award of the Spanish Ministry of Culture (2019), and Gerard Wiegers, Ph.D. (1991), Leiden University, Full Professor of Religious Studies at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam, have collaborated for more than thirty years, and amongst the books they have co-authored and edited are A Man of Three Worlds. Samuel Pallache. A Moroccan Jew in Catholic and Protestant Europe (2003, and many translations), The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora (2014) (co-edited), and Polemical Encounters: Polemics between Christians, Jews and Muslims in Iberia and beyond (2019) (co-edited). From 2019 to 2025 they collaborated on the ERC-Synergy project, The European Qur’an of which Mercedes García-Arenal is PI, as part of which they co-edited The Iberian Qur’an: From the Middle Ages to the Modern Time (2022).