Muslim sequential mobilities. Merdia ben Hazman, an “exceptional” case in the Early Modern Spanish Mediterranean

ABSTRACT

In 1703 Juan de Junterones bought in Murcia a Christian slave, María de la Cruz, a single woman who had previously been enslaved to Francisco Salinas in Madrid, and who had been baptized in Jumilla. Earlier in her life, she had been a free, married, Muslim woman in Oran called Merdia ben Hazman. Hers was a life of multistage geographical mobility accompanied by radical social, legal, and religious transformations. Yet Merdia was just one of many Muslim individuals who migrated to the Iberian Peninsula in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. By analyzing the experiences of mobility individuals described in the sources as “Muslim,” this article re-centers a heterogonous community that has often been obscured in the historiography. It also explores how processes of identification and self-identification played out in different ways, partly depending on the geographical-historical experiences of different towns and cities and the motivations and expectations of migrants.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobility
• migration
• Muslims communities
• Early Modern Iberian Peninsula
• Cross-boundaries

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Archivo Histórico Provincial de Murcia (AHPM), Notarial, 3902.

2. AHPM, Notarial, 3902.

3. AHPM, Notarial, 3902.

4. Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN), Inquisición, 3733, expediente 302.

5. On the concept of the “exceptional normal”, see Grendi (1977).

6. Archivo General de Simancas (AGS), Estado, 1680.

7. AGS, Estado, 1680.

8. AHPM, Fondo Reproducido del Archivo General de Simancas, Rollo-191/9.

9. AGS, Estado, 1768.

10. AGS, Estado, 1767.

11. AGS, Guerra Antigua, 992.

12. AGS, Guerra Antigua, 1005, Letter dated 14 July 1629.

13. AGS, Dirección General del Tesoro, Inventario 16, Gratificaciones 24, 26, Familias de Orán y Moros de Paz.

14. AGS, Dirección General del Tesoro, Inventario 16, Gratificaciones 24, 26, Familias de Orán y Moros de Paz.

15. AGS, Dirección General del Tesoro, Inventario 16, Gratificaciones 24, 26, Familias de Orán y Moros de Paz.

16. Archivo Diocesano de Toledo, Caja 2, Parroquias 1730–1750, doc. w/o a title: “Algunos días hace que una mora hazida en España hija de Mamaide Almamzor moro de paz de los que se retiraron a la andalucia por el motivo de la perdidad de esta plaza, me manisfesto deseaba dejar su falsa secta y abrazar nuestra fe catolicia […].”