RABAT,
February 27, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – After more than five
centuries, Muslims of Al-Andalus (now Spain) still mark every year in
anguish the mass exodus of their ancestors by Spanish authorities to
North Africa.
The
Moriscos, the name given to Muslims who were living in Spain after the
fall of the last Muslim stronghold of Granada in 1492, were subjected
to an array of persecution, torture, mass killings, forced conversions
to Christianity, the notorious Spanish Inquisition and mass exodus
that started in February 1502.
Today,
up to four million grandsons of the Moriscos are living in North
African countries like Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.
“They
used to commemorate every year these painful memories to keep the
agonies of their forebears vivid,” Moroccan historian Bin Azouz
Hakim, a specialist in the history of the Moriscos, told
IslamOnline.net Sunday, February 27.
Morsicos’s
descendants in Morocco, who are concentrated in cities like Tangier,
Fes, Marrakesh and Rabat, mark every year the fall of Granada and
Al-Andalus, which was regained in 1492 by Spanish troops in the long
process known as the Reconquista under the Catholic monarchs Isabella
I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon.
The
descendants, many of whom still have Spanish surnames, mark the
anniversary with symposiums, Andalusian music and shows portraying the
sufferings of their ancestors.
The
northern city of Shafshoun, which was built by the Moriscos when they
were forced to Morocco, still have the Moriscan aura with its
Andalusian architecture and traditional Moriscan costumes.
“Apology”
In
2002, Hakim sent a message, inked by an elite of Moriscos, to Spanish
King Juan Carlos asking for a public apology to the descendants.
The
message, however, fell on deaf ears.
Hakim;
nevertheless, sent another message to the king, asking him to explain
why he rejected his call while he apologized to the Jews in a visit to
Israel in 1992 for the mass exodus from Al-Andalus.
“I
think because we don’t have a powerful lobby like the Jews, who make
the best use of the past to get financial gains,” Hakim said.
“But
the Muslims only want a moral compensation and that’s why,
ironically, Spain is adamant,” he added.
The
expert also opposed a Moroccan mediation effort to get the much-hoped
apology.
“It
is an inalienable right to the Moriscos. It makes no sense that the
Spanish king had apologized to the Jews of what is now Israel, who
have nothing to do with the Sephardim (the Jews of Al-Andalus), while
is reluctant to say sorry to the Moriscos’s descendants.”
After
an absence of almost 500 years, the Adhan (call to prayer) and the
muezzin’s cry of 'Allahu akbar' (God is greatest) rang on July 10,
2003, from the minaret of the Great Mosque of Granada.
The
site of the mosque was bought 22 years ago, when it was still a small
plot of farmland squeezed between a convent and a church on the crest
of the Albaicin, the last Muslim quarter of Granada.
