Between 1609 and 1614, on royal orders, almost all of the formerly Muslim population of Spain, known as the moriscos, was expelled from the country. The deportation involved several hundred thousand people and, in that sense, dwarfed the much better-known edict to expel Spanish Jews, which was drawn up in 1492. The expulsion of the moriscos is referred to in general English-language surveys of early modern Spain and there is an extensive Spanish literature on the subject, but the full story has not been told in English for many years. The journalist Matthew Carr’s well-researched account of the official end of 900 years of Muslim presence in Spain is carefully written and thoroughly documented.

Carr gives a brief account of the initial Muslim conquest of most of Spain after 711, and events between the Christian conquest of the bulk of the Iberian peninsula, which had taken place by the 13th century, and the capture in 1492, by the ‘Catholic Monarchs’, Ferdinand and Isabella, of the last Muslim state in Spain, the emirate of Granada. Carr is rightly sceptical of modern imaginations about supposedly peaceful relations of co-existence (convivencia) between Muslims and their Christian and Jewish neighbours between 711 and the fall of the caliphate of Córdoba in 1031. He points to constant tensions, often leading to violence, between the three religious communities, whether they were under Muslim or Christian rule, though he focuses mainly on what happened to the Muslim population in Christian-ruled Spain after 1492.

Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.

John Edwards is a historian of Spain at Oxford University. His books include Ferdinand and Isabella (Longman, 2005) and Mary I: the Daughter of Time (Allen Lane, 2016).

Read this over a long time because the detail and the subject were hard going at times - but well worth it. Excellently written so a pleasure to read despite the horrors of what was happening. And we have to work against a drift to madness as movements in Europe are using the same false accusations against Muslim populations in our own communities here and now. If you think the book looks a hard read then read the epilogue and I'm sure you will be inspired to read the rest. ( )

Read this over a long time because the detail and the subject were hard going at times - but well worth it. Excellently written so a pleasure to read despite the horrors of what was happening. And we have to work against a drift to madness as movements in Europe are using the same false accusations against Muslim populations in our own communities here and now. If you think the book looks a hard read then read the epilogue and I'm sure you will be inspired to read the rest. ( )

In 1492, with the surrender of the Kingdom of Granada to the Christian armies of Isabella and Fernando the last vestige of Moslem rule on the Iberian Peninsula came to and end. Many Moslems, however, remained behind. Although they were soon forced to convert to Christianity, and many became Christians in faith as well as in name, they were never considered true Christians, or even true Spaniards. The Moriscos, as these people came to be known, were treated with suspicion, contempt and cruelty, in varying degrees over the decades. The idea of a successful and benignly pluralistic society apparently never occurred to Spain's religious and secular rulers. Finally over 100 years after the fall of Granada, in 1609 King Philip IV signed an edict ordering the eviction of the entire Morisco population. The fact that many of these people, hundreds of thousands in number, were being sent to their deaths did not trouble the Spanish authorities, who had seriously considered a massacre of the entire Morisco population, anyway.

Blood and Faith does and excellent job of describing that 100-year period of uneasy co-existence between the two cultures under Christian rule, setting the seen in detail for the final blow of expulsion. The research seems meticulous and is certainly in-depth. Astonishingly, I had never even heard of this gigantic historical ethnic cleansing. The horrific episode was unknown to me.

At any rate, Carr also does a very good job of framing this story within the context of the current mistrust of Moslems as a group both here in the U.S. and in Europe, where stereotyping and worries about Moslem immigrants working (and breeding!) to undermine European culture are now commonplace.

The book is highly detailed, not a quick read, but for anyone interested in European history, or fascinated at the way history does, indeed, seem to repeat itself down through the centuries, this is a fine book. ( )

In April 1609, King Philip III of Spain signed an edict denouncing the Muslim inhabitants of Spain as heretics, traitors, and apostates. Later that year, the entire Muslim population of Spain was given three days to leave Spanish territory, on threat of death. In a brutal and traumatic exodus, entire families and communities were obliged to abandon homes and villages where they had lived for generations, leaving their property in the hands of their Christian neighbors. In Aragon and Catalonia, Muslims were escorted by government commissioners who forced them to pay whenever they drank water from a river or took refuge in the shade. For five years the expulsion continued to grind on, until an estimated 300,000 Muslims had been removed from Spanish territory, nearly 5 percent of the total population. By 1614 Spain had successfully implemented what was then the largest act of ethnic cleansing in European history, and Muslim Spain had effectively ceased to exist. Blood and Faith is celebrated journalist Matthew Carr's riveting chronicle of this virtually unknown episode, set against the vivid historical backdrop of the history of Muslim Spain. Here is a remarkable window onto a little-known period in modern Europe - a rich and complex tale of competing faiths and beliefs, of cultural oppression and resistance against overwhelming odds. ( )