Moors

A self-depiction by the Muslims in Iberia. Taken from the Tale of Bayad and Riyad

The Moors were the medieval Muslim inhabitants of Morocco, western Algeria, Western Sahara, Mauritania, the Iberian Peninsula, Septimania, Sicily and Malta. The Moors called their Iberian territory Al-Andalus, an area comprising Gibraltar, much of what is now Spain and Portugal, and part of France. There was also a Moorish presence in present-day southern Italy after they occupied Mazara in 827^[1] until their last settlement of Lucera was destroyed in 1300. The religious difference of the Moorish Muslims led to a centuries-long conflict with the Christian kingdoms of Europe called the Reconquista. The Fall of Granada in 1492 saw the end of the Muslim rule in Iberia.

self-depiction of three moorish knights found on Alhambra's Ladies Tower.

castillian ambassadors attempting to convince almohad king Abu Hafs Umar al-Murtada to join their alliance .contemporary depiction from The Cantigas de Santa Maria .

The term "Moors" has also been used in Europe in a broader sense to refer to Muslims, especially those of Arab or African descent, whether living in Spain or North Africa. Moors are not a distinct or self-defined people. Medieval and early modern Europeans applied the name to the Berbers, North African Arabs, Muslim Iberians^[2] and West Africans from Mali and Niger who had been absorbed into the Almoravid dynasty.^[3] Scholars observed in 1911 that "The term 'Moors' has no real ethnological value."^[4]

The Moors of al-Andalus of the late Medieval after the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the early 8th century were initially Arabs and Berbers but later came to be predominantly Iberian Christian converts to Islam, known by the Arabs as Muwalladun or Muladi.

The maximum extent of Berber-Arab rule stretched as far as modern-day France and much of southern Europe, Mauritania, West African countries, and the Senegal River.

Earlier, the Classical Romans interacted with (and later conquered) parts of Mauretania, a state that covered northern portions of modern Morocco and much of north western and central Algeria during the classical period. The people of the region were noted in Classical literature as the Mauri. Today such groups inhabit Mauritania and parts of Algeria, Western Sahara, Morocco, Niger and Mali.^[5] In the languages of Europe, a number of associated ethnic groups have been historically designated as "Moors". In modern Iberia, the term is applied to people of Moroccan ethnicity. "Moor" is sometimes colloquially applied to any person from North Africa, but some people consider this usage of the term pejorative, especially its Spanish version "moro".

Name [edit]

Etymology [edit]

Sultan Abd al-Rahman of Morocco by the walls of Marrakesh, as painted by Eugène Delacroix, 1845

In Latin, the word Maurus (plural Mauri) is in origin an ethnonym, the name of the Mauri people who were also eponymous of the Mauretania province of the Roman empire on the northwestern fringe of Africa. The Latin form of the name is adapted from Greek ethnography, where the people was known Mauroi (Μαῦροι). The Greek name has been speculatively connected to the adjective ἀμαυρός, meaning "dark; faint, dim".^[6]

Modern meanings [edit]

Moorish man, Trarza region of the Senegal River valley.

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 "dark-skinned", 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.^[7]

In Spain, modern colloquial Spanish use of the term "Moro" is derogatory for Moroccans in particular^{[8][9][10][11][12]} 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 residents call the local Muslim population in the Southern islands Moros. They also self-identify that way (see Muslim Filipino). The term was introduced by the Spanish colonizers. Within the context of Portuguese colonization, in Sri Lanka (Portuguese Ceylon), Muslims of Arab origin are called Moors (see Sri Lankan Moors).

Scene from performance of Moros y cristianos (Moors and Christians) in Mexico.

Moreno can mean dark-skinned in Spain and Portugal, as well as in Brazil. 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 Moros of Mindanao in the Philippines, and the moriscos of Granada. Moro is 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 also 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.^[13] From this root, the name moor is also applied to unbaptized children, meaning not Christian.^[14][15] In Basque, mairu means moor and also refers to a mythical people.^{[16][dead link]}

Moors is also a term used to identify Muslims in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan Moors are 12% of the population.. The Moors in Sri Lanka are descendants of Arab traders who settled in Sri Lanka in the mid-6th century. When the Portuguese arrived in the early 16th century, they labelled the Muslims in the island as Moors as they saw them resembling the Moors in North Africa. The Sri Lankan government to this day identifies the Muslims in Sri Lanka as "Ceylon Moors"^[17]

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]. They Moir is derived from the Portuguese word mour (Moors).

Moors of Iberia [edit]

The Moroccan army of almohad king Umar al-Murtada and Christian allies, readying for battle in the city of Marrakech

Progress of the Reconquista (790–1300).

In 711 CE, the now Islamic Moors conquered Visigothic Christian Hispania. 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 the 750s. The Moors ruled in North Africa and in most of the Iberian peninsula for several decades. They were resisted in areas in 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 Moor colonists was small, many native Iberian inhabitants converted to Islam. According to Ronald Segal, by 1000, some 5 million of Iberia's 7 million inhabitants, nearly all native inhabitants, were Muslim.^[18]

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

moorish army of almanzor during the Battle of San Esteban de Gormaz ,from cantigas de alfonso x el sabio.

Coat of arms of Alcanadre. La Rioja, Spain. Depicting severed heads of the Moors

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. Navarre, Galicia, León, Portugal, Aragón, Marca Hispanica, and Castile began a process of expansion and internal consolidation during the next several centuries under the flag of Reconquista.

Reconstruction of costumes of Moorish nobility from a German book published in 1880

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 armies of a recently united Christian Spain (after the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, the Catholic Monarchs). They forced the remaining Muslims and 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.

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. The Inquisition also attacked heretics who rejected Roman Catholic orthodoxy, including alumbras, who practiced a personal mysticism or spiritualism. The latter represented a significant portion of the peasants in some territories, such as Aragon, Valencia or Andalusia. In the years from 1609 to 1614, the government expelled such subjects. The historian Henri Lapeyre estimated that this affected 300,000 out of an estimated total of 8 million inhabitants.^[19]

Christian and Moor playing chess, from The Book of Games of Alfonso X, c. 1285

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.".^[20][21]

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^{[citation needed]} and other Spanish explorers had reached that island archipelago, which they named Las Islas de 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,^[22] '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.^{[citation needed]} The Caliphate of Córdoba collapsed in 1031 and the Islamic territory in Iberia fell under the rule of the Almoravid dynasty. This second stage inaugurated an era of Moorish rulers guided by a version of Islam that left behind the tolerant practices of the past.^{[citation needed][dubious – discuss]}

• 

  Reconquista

• 

  moors from the book "Comentarios de la cosas de Aragon".

• 

  The Moors request permission from James I of Aragon

• 

  King and Moors, 14th century.

• 

  Christian and Moor playing lute, 13th century

• 

  Muhammad XII of Granada, last Moorish sultan in Spain

• 

  Leo Africanus, born in Granada

Moors of Sicily [edit]

Muslim musicians at the court of the Norman King Roger II of Sicily.

The first Muslim conquest of Sicily and parts of southern Italy lasted 75 years (827–902). 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."^[23]

Many repressive measures were introduced by Frederick II to please the popes who were intolerant of Islam in the heart of Christendom. This resulted in a rebellion by Sicilian Muslims, which in turn triggered organized resistance and systematic reprisals and marked the final chapter of Islam in Sicily. The Muslim problem characterized Hohenstaufen rule in Sicily under Henry VI and his son Frederick II. The complete eviction of Muslims and the annihilation of Islam in Sicily was completed by the late 1240s when the final deportations to Lucera took place.

Architecture [edit]

Interior of the Mezquita, Córdoba

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 (mainly 1338–1390),^[24] and also the Giralda in 1184.^[25] 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.

Heraldry [edit]

Arms of the great Bristol merchant and shipper William II Canynges(d.1474), as depicted on his canopied tomb in St Mary Redcliffe Church, showing the couped heads of three Moors wreathed at the temples

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.^[26] Maures appear in European heraldry from at least as early as the 13th century,^[27] and some have been attested as early as the 11th century in Italy,^[27] 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.^[27] The arms of Pope Benedict XVI feature a moor's head, crowned and collared red, in reference to the arms of Freising, Germany.^[28] 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.^[29] In Corsica, the blindfolds were lifted to the brow in the 18th century as a way of expressing the island's newfound independence ^[30]

The use of moors (and particularly their heads) as a heraldic symbol has been deprecated in modern North America,^[31] 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.^[32]

Population genetics [edit]

Shomarka Keita, a biological anthropologist from Howard University, has claimed that populations in Carthage circa 200 BC and northern Algeria 1500 BC were very diverse. As a group, they plotted closest to the populations of Northern Egypt and intermediate to Northern Europeans and tropical Africans. Keita claimed that "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."^[33] Modern evidence showed a similar diversity among present North Africans. Moreover, this "diversity" of phenotypes and peoples was probably due to in situ differentiation, not foreign influxes. Of course foreign influxes certainly had an impact but they did not replace the indigenous Berber population.^[34]

The Y chromosome p49a,f TaqI Haplotype V, which corresponds to Y haplogroup E1b1b1b (M81) —formerly E3b1b, E3b2 and colloquially referred to as the "Berber marker"— has been found among 68.9% of modern Berbers in North Africa and as high as 80% in one group. It is believed to be about 5,600 years old,^[35] and to have arrived with the Neolithic expansion from the Near East. M81 is not found in Sub-Saharan Africa. This haplotype has also been observed in as high as 40% of one small group of Andalusians tested. Generally it appears at much lower frequencies among Iberian populations, and lower as distance from North Africa increases.^[36]

Y DNA haplogroup E1b1b (formerly E3b) predominates among North African populations; its E1b1b1b subgroup (M81) is identified especially with Berbers.

Notable Moors [edit]

Averroes, a Moorish polymath, was the founder of the Averroism school of philosophy, and influential in the rise of secular thought in Western Europe.

• 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 Spain 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.

See also [edit]

Notes [edit]

• ^{^} ...Hindu Kristao Moir sogle bhau- Hindus,Christians and Muslims are all brothers...^[37]

References [edit]

1. ^ "Assessment of the status, development and diversification of fisheries-dependent communities: Mazara del Vallo Case study report". European Commission. 2010. p. 2. Retrieved 28 September 2012. "In the year 827, Mazara was occupied by the Arabs, who made the city an important commercial harbour. That period was probably the most prosperous in the history of Mazara." 
2. ^ Ross Brann, "The Moors?",^{[dead link]} Andalusia, New York University. Quote: "Andalusi Arabic sources, as opposed to later Mudéjar and Morisco sources in Aljamiado and medieval Spanish texts, neither refer to individuals as Moors nor recognize any such group, community or culture."
3. ^ Ivan Van Sertima, Golden Age of the Moor, Volume 11^{[page needed]}
4. ^ "Moors", Britannica Encyclopedia (1911), p. 811.
5. ^ Online Etymology Dictionary.
6. ^ in either direction, i.e. the adjective (which appears only late) might be derived from the ethnonym, much like the later Romance terms for "dark-skinned"; etymonline.com: "perhaps a native name, or else cognate with mauros 'black' (but this adjective only appears in late Greek and may as well be from the people's name as the reverse)."
7. ^ For an introduction to the culture of the Azawagh Arabs, see: Rebecca Popenoe, Feeding Desire — Fatness, Beauty and Sexuality among a Saharan People. Routledge, London (2003) ISBN 0-415-28096-6
8. ^ Simms, Karl (1997). Translating sensitive texts: linguistic aspects. Rodopi. p. 144. ISBN 978-90-420-0260-9. 
9. ^ Warwick Armstrong, James Anderson (2007). Geopolitics of European Union enlargement: the fortress empire. Routledge. p. 83. ISBN 978-0-415-33939-1. 
10. ^ Wessendorf, Susanne (2010). The multiculturalism backlash: European discourses, policies and practices. Taylor & Francis. p. 171. ISBN 978-0-415-55649-1. 
11. ^ Tariq Modood, Anna Triandafyllidou, Ricard Zapata-Barrero (2006). Multiculturalism, Muslims and citizenship: a European approach. Routledge. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-415-35515-5. 
12. ^ Bekers, Elisabeth (2009). Transcultural modernities: narrating Africa in Europe. Rodopi. p. 14. ISBN 978-90-420-2538-7. 
13. ^ Xosé Manuel González Reboredo, Leyendas Gallegas de Tradición Oral (Galician Legends of the Oral Tradition), Galicia: Editorial Galaxia, 2004, p. 18, Googlebooks, accessed 12 Jul 2010 (Spanish)
14. ^ Rodney Gallop, Portugal: A Book of Folkways, Cambridge University Press (CUP), 1936; reprint CUP Archives, 1961, Googlebooks, accessed 12 Jul 2010.
15. ^ Francisco Martins Sarmento, "A Mourama", in Revista de Guimaraes, No. 100, 1990, Centro de Estudos de Património, Universidade do Minho, accessed 12 Jul 2010 (Portuguese)
16. ^ Euskadi.net (Spanish)
17. ^ A. Hussein 'From where did the moors come from?', http://www.lankalibrary.com/cul/muslims/moors.htm^{[unreliable source?]}
18. ^ Ronald Segal, Islam's Black Slaves (2003), Atlantic Books, ISBN 1-903809-81-9
19. ^ See History of Al-Andalus.
20. ^ Adams et al., "The Genetic Legacy of Religious Diversity and Intolerance: Paternal Lineages of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula", Cell, 2008. Quote: "Admixture analysis based on binary and Y-STR haplotypes indicates a high mean proportion of ancestry from North African (10.6%) ranging from zero in Gascony to 21.7% in Northwest Castile."
21. ^ Elena Bosch, "The religious conversions of Jews and Muslims have had a profound impact on the population of the Iberian Peninsula", University of , 2008, Quote: "The study shows that religious conversions and the subsequent marriages between people of different lineage had a relevant impact on modern populations both in Spain, especially in the Balearic Islands, and in Portugal."
22. ^ Richard Fletcher. Moorish Spain p. 10. University of California Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-520-08496-4
23. ^ Aubé, Pierre (2006). Les empires normands d’Orient. Editions Perrin. p. 168. ISBN 2-262-02297-6. 
24. ^ Curl p. 502.
25. ^ Pevsner, The Penguin Dictionary of Architecture.
26. ^ Parker, James. "Man". A Glossary of Terms Used in Heraldry. Retrieved 2012-01-23. 
27. ^ ^{a b c} "Africans in medieval & Renaissance art: the Moor's head". Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 2012-01-23. 
28. ^ Mons. Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo. "Coat of Arms of His Holiness Benedict XVI". The Holy See. Retrieved 2013-01-25. 
29. ^ Sache, Ivan (2009-06-14). "Corsica (France, Traditional province)". Flags of the World. Retrieved 2013-01-25. 
30. ^ Curry, Ian (2012-03-18). "Blindfolded Moors - The Flags of Corsica and Sardinia". Vaguely Interesting. Retrieved 2013-01-25. 
31. ^ In his July 15, 2005 blog article "Is that a Moor's head?", Mathew N. Schmalz refers to a discussion on the American Heraldry Society's website where at least one participant described the moor's head as a "potentially explosive image".
32. ^ "Part IX: Offensive Armory". Rules for Submissions of the College of Arms of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc. 2008-04-02. Retrieved 2012-01-23. 
33. ^ G. Mokhtar. General History of Africa: Ancient Civilizations of Africa, p. 427.
34. ^ "Studies of ancient crania from northern Africa", American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 83:35-48 (1990).
35. ^ Arredi et al. (2004), A Predominantly Neolithic Origin for Y-Chromosomal DNA Variation in North Africa, Am J Hum Genet. 2004 August; 75(2): 338–345.
36. ^ Nathalie Gérard et al., "North African Berber and Arab Influences in the Western Mediterranean Revealed by Y-Chromosome DNA Haplotypes", Human Biology, Volume 78, Number 3, June 2006, pp. 307–16.
37. ^ Furtado, A. D. (1981). Goa, yesterday, to-day, tomorrow: an approach to various socio-economic and political issues in Goan life & re-interpretation of historical facts. Furtado's Enterprises. pp. 254 pages(page xviii). 

Bibliography [edit]

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

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• 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.
• "The Moors" by Ross Brann, published on New York University website.

External links [edit]

Look up Moor or Moorish in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Moors

• SIGILLUM SECRETUM (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.

v t e Tribal hegemony in the former Western Roman Empire from the decline of Rome to 843 Huns 376–454 Vandals 406–475 Visigoths 410–711 Franks 509–843 Ostrogoths 493–553 Byzantines 553–568 Lombards 568–774 Moors 711–1492