Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [89]
Continue to pray, even if you may have to do so silently or by signs.
Fulfil the obligation to pay the alms tax by whatever means of doing good to the poor, remember God is not concerned with externals, but with the inward intention of your hearts.
To fulfil the laws of purification, bathe in the sea or the river; and if that is forbidden, do it at night and that will be as good as doing it by the light of day.
Make the ritual ablutions before prayer if only by rubbing your hands on the wall.
If at the hour of prayer you are compelled to venerate the Christian idols … look at the idols when the Christians do, but think of yourself walking in God’s path, even though you are not facing the qibla [the niche in a mosque indicating the direction of Mecca].
If you are forced to drink wine, drink, but set yourself apart from all intention to commit evil.
If you are forced to eat pork, do so, but with a pure mind and admitting its unlawfulness, as you must do for any other prohibited thing.
If you are forced to take interest [forbidden under the laws of Islam] do so, purifying your intention and asking pardon of God.
If you are being adjudged by infidels, and you can dissimulate, do so denying with your heart what you are saying with your words, which are forced from you.17
Nowhere was the Morisco determination to resist stronger than on the issue of circumcision. Male Christians were not normally circumcised, while Muslims and Jews invariably were. It was a defining and ineradicable point of identity, an act of blood utterly unlike the pure and cleansing Christian ritual of baptism.18 It was prohibited by Charles V in person in Granada in 1526, except with the permission of the bishop or the senior magistrate of the kingdom. The penalty for circumcising was permanent banishment and loss of all property. Strong efforts were made to track down those who carried it out. Morisca midwives were officially forbidden and Old Christian midwives were instructed to report to a priest if they found an infant had been circumcised.19 But according to Bernard Vincent, the vast majority of males in Granada continued to be circumcised in the decades between the first and second wars of the Alpujarras. Inquisition records in Valencia indicate that in three villages in 1574 almost 80 percent of the male population were circumcised. But whenever the authorities tried to discover who was responsible, they met with a wall of silence or misleading information. A Morisca in Valencia said she did not know who had done it: her son had been taken from her and when he was returned, he had been circumcised. Others blamed it on unknown persons or on those who were already safely dead. The Christian authorities sought to catch the circumcisers but usually failed; when they did succeed, the circumcisers often suffered the ultimate penalty: one was condemned to be burned alive in Valencia in 1587.20
However, provided the Christian authorities did not seriously compromise their social and religious identity, the Moriscos remained outwardly pacific. They were content to wait, for they believed that they would be revenged on their enemies, who had been guilty of bad faith in 1499, breaking their sworn word. In Granada and perhaps elsewhere in the Morisco communities of Spain it was believed that the Christian dominion would not last forever. Under Christian rule the Moriscos continued to flout the legal prescriptions that hedged them about. In Christian eyes it was an increasingly insupportable anomaly, as by their dress, language, and demeanor the Moriscos seemed to spurn everything that was offered to them. The rise in hostility at a popular level occasionally entered the historical record. At one trial in Cordoba, an Old Christian was reported to have shouted at Moriscos in the street, “Dogs, who have burned the images and the crosses and the churches and put the Holy Sacrament in a cowpat.” Another cried out, “May these sodomites die who turn from the faith of Jesus Christ.”21
The effective compromise that had