"used as a racial designation for dark-skinned or black peoples, as with its use in English, seen as early as the fourteenth century. In medieval Romance languages, variations of the Latin word for the Moors (for instance, Italian and Spanish: ""moro"", French: ""maure"", Portuguese: ""mouro"", Romanian: ""maur"") developed different applications and connotations. The term initially denoted a specific Berber people in western Libya, but the name acquired more general meaning during the medieval period, associated with ""Muslim"", similar to associations with ""Saracens"". During the context of the Crusades and the Reconquista, the term Moors included the derogatory suggestion of ""infidels""."
"Moors The term ""Moors"" refers primarily to the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and Malta during the Middle Ages. The Moors initially were the indigenous Maghrebine Berbers. The name was later also applied to Arabs. Moors are not a distinct or self-defined people, and the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica observed that ""The term 'Moors' has no real ethnological value."" Europeans of the Middle Ages and the early modern period variously applied the name to Arabs, North African Berbers, and Muslim Europeans. The term has also been used in Europe in a broader, somewhat derogatory sense"
"to refer to Muslims in general, especially those of Arab or Berber descent, whether living in Spain or North Africa. During the colonial era, the Portuguese introduced the names ""Ceylon Moors"" and ""Indian Moors"" in Sri Lanka, and the Bengali Muslims were also called Moors. In the Philippines, the longstanding Muslim community, which predates the arrival of the Spanish, now self-identifies as the ""Moro people"", an exonym introduced by Spanish colonizers due to their Muslim faith. In 711, troops mostly formed by Moors from northern Africa led the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. The Iberian peninsula then came to be known"
"to the Sultan of Sulu's subjects as Moros (Spanish for ""Moors""). The word Moor was derived from the ancient ""Mauri/Maure"" tribe of North Africa, found in the ancient Roman Provinces of Mauretania Tingitana and Mauretania Caesariensis. Today, the descendants of the Mauri/Maure - the Berbers - continue to occupy the northwestern coasts of Africa, and are spread throughout the countries of Morocco, western Algeria, and Mauritania, all of which are North African countries just across the narrow western end of the Mediterranean Sea from Spain, and peopled by Muslims which conquered and ruled Spain for 800 years. This explains the"
"Moors (there has been a long history of Moors/Africans in Europe) in the Iberian Peninsula, who either lived as free men from time immemorial, were brought through the Arab slave trade, or the Castilian or Portuguese colonization of Africa. After some time in Spanish society, those Africans became Christianized and learnt Spanish. There were 50,000 Black Ladinos in Spain in the 15th century. After the initial stages of the Spanish colonization of the Americas showed that Amerindians were not suitable for the labour that the conquerors required (mainly due to the Eurasian illnesses unknown in the Americas), Nicolás de Ovando"
"into Latin, whereas the Greek name for the tribe was ""Maurusii"" (). The Moors were also mentioned by Tacitus as having revolted against the Roman Empire in 24 AD. During the Latin Middle Ages, ""Mauri"" was used to refer to Berbers and Arabs in the coastal regions of Northwest Africa. The 16th century scholar Leo Africanus (c. 1494–1554) identified the Moors (""Mauri"") as the native Berber inhabitants of the former Roman Africa Province (Roman Africans). He described Moors as one of five main population groups on the continent alongside Egyptians, Abyssinians (Abassins), Arabians and Cafri (Cafates). The term was commonly"
"with Maurice Lenoir positing an 8th or 9th century date of appearance. The English term was introduced in the 19th century, replacing the earlier ""Barbary"". The Berbers are the ""Mauri"" cited by the ""Chronicle of 754"" during the Umayyad conquest of Hispania, to become since the 11th century the catch-all term ""Moros"" (in Spanish; ""Moors"" in English) on the charters and chronicles of the expanding Christian Iberian kingdoms to refer to the Andalusi, the north Africans, and the Muslims overall. For the historian Abraham Isaac Laredo the name Amazigh could be derived from the name of the ancestor Mezeg which"
"Maghrebis Maghrebis or Maghrebians are the native inhabitants of Maghreb, the westernmost part of North Africa and the Arab world, an area stretching from Libya to Spain. Maghrebis were known in medieval times as Roman Africans or Moors. The term ""Moor"" is derived from ""Mauri"", the Roman name for the Berbers of ""Mauretania"", land of the Moors, the Roman name for the westen part of the Maghreb. Vast majority of Maghrebis are Arab-Berbers, Arabs, and Berbers, who are native to the region and synonymous with the term in older and historiographical literature. Historic records of religion in the Maghreb region"
"Maghrebis Maghrebis or Maghrebians are the native inhabitants of Maghreb, the westernmost part of North Africa and the Arab world, an area stretching from Libya to Spain. Maghrebis were known in medieval times as Roman Africans or Moors. The term ""Moor"" is derived from ""Mauri"", the Roman name for the Berbers of ""Mauretania"", land of the Moors, the Roman name for the westen part of the Maghreb. Vast majority of Maghrebis are Arab-Berbers, Arabs, and Berbers, who are native to the region and synonymous with the term in older and historiographical literature. Historic records of religion in the Maghreb region"
"in modern North America. For example, the College of Arms of the Society for Creative Anachronism urges applicants to use them delicately to avoid causing offence. As a large and diffuse ethnic group, the Moors consisted mostly of Berbers from Morocco and Western Algeria, sub-Saharan Africans from Mauritania, Northern Senegal, and Western Mali, Arab Bedouins, and Arab elite mostly from Yemen and Syria. Most writings on Moors applied darkness of skin as a trait for any and every Muslim invader of Europe. Moors The term ""Moors"" refers primarily to the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily, Sardinia,"
"Arabs"", are derived from the Arabic ""musta'rib"" (مستعرب), meaning “arabized”. Compare with the term ""Mozarab"" (mozárabe in Spanish, borrowed from Arabic) to refer to Arabized (but not Islamized) Christian Spaniards in Arab ruled Islamic Spain. ""Musta'arabi"" was also used by medieval Jewish authors to refer to Jews in North Africa, in what would become the modern states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya (which also underwent cultural and linguistic Arabization following the Muslim conquest there). Following the Muslim conquest of Syria, Syria and the surrounding region was brought under Arab rule in the first half of the 7th century, and"
"Arabs, Berbers, Black Africans and Europeans alike. Isidore of Seville, writing in the 7th century, claimed that the Latin word Maurus was derived from the Greek ""mauron"", μαύρον, which is the Greek word for black. Indeed, by the time Isidore of Seville came to write his ""Etymologies"", the word Maurus or ""Moor"" had become an adjective in Latin, ""for the Greeks call black, mauron"". ""In Isidore's day, Moors were black by definition..."" Afro-Spaniards are Spanish nationals of West/Central African descent. They today mainly come from Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Gambia, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal. Additionally, many Afro-Spaniards born in Spain"
"extent Tamazight (Berber). It is important to understand that the term ""Moor"" is not the term for a specific ethnic group, but rather the term used by the European Christians, in reference to the Arab and Berber populations that hailed from North Africa in the medieval era and soon took control of Malta, Sardinia, Spain, southern France, Portugal, southern Italy, and Sicily. Another term that was used in reference to the Arabs and Berbers at this time was ""Saracen."" This was largely used to refer to the peoples of the entire Arab Islamic empire, mostly used by Italians and Europeans"
"of independent Arab-Islamic colonization and occupation, in modern-day France, Switzerland, and Italy, using Fraxinet in the Gulf of St. Tropez as a base for raids and colonisation. The Iberian Peninsula was mapped as ""Al-Andalus"" by the new Muslim invaders. The Arabs, as well as the overall Muslim populations (a mix of Berbers and Arabs) of Al-Andalus and North Africa, were referred to as ""Moors"". Spain enjoyed a golden era of Islamic culture, accompanied by a golden age of Sephardic Jewish culture. This era spawned great Arabic polymaths and intellectuals such as Averroes and Albucasis. The Islamic rule in Spain also"
"word ""Moro"" itself was a exonym which had been used before in the 16th century by Spanish colonisers in reference to a Muslim group of ""Moors"", which originating from ""Mauru"", a Latin word that referred to the inhabitants of the ancient Roman province of Mauritania in northwest Africa, which today comprises the modern Muslim states of Algeria, Mauritania and Morocco. With the rise of Mauritania as part of the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate, Muslim armies conquered and ruled much of the Iberian Peninsula from 711 to 1492, for about a total of 781 years in which the term was revived when"
"Aljama Aljama (, , ) is a term of Arabic origin used in old official documents in Spain and Portugal to designate the self-governing communities of Moors and Jews living under Christian rule in the Iberian Peninsula. In some present-day Spanish cities, the name is still applied to the quarters where such communities lived, though they are many centuries gone. The Jewish communities of Spain, owing to their social isolation and to the religious and political regulations imposed upon them, had always formed groups apart from the rest of the population. The authority exercised by their own rabbis and the"
"with the local Germanic, Roman and Iberian females of Hispania. The offspring of such marriages were known as ""Muladi"" or ""Muwallad"", an Arabic term still used in the modern Arab world to refer to people with Arab fathers and non-Arab mothers. This term was also the origin for the Spanish word ""Mulatto"". In addition, many ""Muladi"" were also descended from ""Saqaliba"" (Slavic) slaves taken from Europe via the Arab slave trade. By the 11th or 12th century, the Muslim population of Al-Andalus had merged into a homogeneous group of people known as the ""Moors"". After the Reconquista, which was completed"
"Jews, Druze, and nonreligious. Most Arabs are Caucasian. Exceptions are Mauritanian, Sudanese, Eritrean, Somali, and Comoran Arabs. Anti-Arab prejudice is suggested by many events in history. In the Iberian Peninsula, when the reconquest by the indigenous Christians from the Moorish colonists was completed with the fall of Granada, all non-Catholics were expelled. In 1492, Arab converts to Christianity, called Moriscos, were expelled from Spain to North Africa after being condemned by the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish word ""moro"", meaning ""moor"", today carries a negative meaning. Although ethnically different from the Arabs in Spain at the time, the term Moro was"
"builders of ancient monuments. Moura is a homonym word with two distinct roots and meanings; one from Celtic *MRVOS, the other from Latin maurus. The word ""moura"", (moira, maura) (medieval: mora) feminine of ""mouro"", is thought to originate from the Celtic *MRVOS and the indo-european ""mr-tuos"" that originated in Latin the word ""mortuus"" and in Portuguese/Galician the word morto (dead). Some authors think that the mouras are the deceased. But the word ""mouro"" is also a synonym of ""Muslim"". Since the Iberian peninsula was occupied by Muslims for many centuries, it might also refer to young Muslims deceased in battle."
"(, ), Portuguese (, ), and Catalan (, ). Spain also has Moorish citadels known as alcazabas ( ""al-qasbah""). However, not all castles in Spain are called ""alcázar"": the majority are called ""castillo"". Nor was every alcázar or alcazaba in Iberia built by the Moors: many castles with these names were built after the Moors had withdrawn from the Iberian Peninsula. Outside Spain, in Palermo, Sicily, the district called ""Cassaro"" corresponds to the Punic settlement of Zis, on high ground that was refortified by Arabs and known as ""al-qaṣr"", and was further expanded as the site of the later Norman"
"Apart from these historic associations and context, ""Moor"" and ""Moorish"" designate a specific ethnic group speaking Hassaniya Arabic. 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. The authoritative dictionary of the Spanish language does not list any derogatory meaning for the word ""moro"", a term generally referring to people of Maghrebian origin in particular or Muslims in general. Some authors have pointed out that in modern colloquial Spanish use of the term ""moro"" is"
"Mozarabs, another group of people in Iberia eventually came to surpass the Mozarabs both in terms of population and Arabization. These were the Muladi or Muwalladun, most of whom were descendants of local Hispano-Basques and Visigoths who converted to Islam and adopted Arabic culture, dress, and language. By the 11th century, most of the population of al-Andalus was Muladi, with large minorities of other Muslims, Mozarabs, and Sephardic Jews. It was the Muladi, together with the Berber, Arab, and other (Saqaliba and Zanj) Muslims who became collectively termed in Christian Europe as ""Moors"". The Andalusian Arabic language was spoken in"
"many ""Muladi"" were also descended from ""Saqaliba"" (Slavic) slaves taken from Eastern Europe via the Arab slave trade. Collectively, Christian Europeans named all the Muslims of Iberia, ""Moors"", regardless of ethnic origin. After the Reconquista, which was completed in 1492, most of the Moors were forced to either flee to Islamic territories or convert to Christianity. The ones who converted to Christianity were known as Moriscoes, and they were often persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition as suspects of heresy on the basis of the ""Limpieza de sangre"" (""Cleanliness of blood"") doctrine, under which anti-miscegenation laws were implemented in the Iberian"
"the Christian-majority Spanish became involved in a war with them and started to call the Muslims as ""Moors"". The term was then used again by the Spanish when they arriving in the Philippine archipelago and found a similar Muslim community who rebelled against them. The name has evolved to become seen as a unitary force especially by the Philippine government, despite opposition from the modern Muslim community in the Philippines who object to the term's origin by Spanish colonizers. Marvic Leonen, who was the Chief Peace Negotiator for Philippine government with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, has said: In 1898"
"form ""el Andalucía"". The name was adopted to refer to those territories still under Moorish rule, and generally south of Castilla Nueva and Valencia, and corresponding with the former Roman province hitherto called Baetica in Latin sources. This was a Castilianization of ""Al-Andalusiya"", the adjectival form of the Arabic language ""al-Andalus"", the name given by the Arabs to all of the Iberian territories under Muslim rule from 711 to 1492. The etymology of ""al-Andalus"" is itself somewhat debated (see al-Andalus), but in fact it entered the Arabic language before this area came under Muslim rule. Like the Arabic term ""al-Andalus"","
"the Spanish cities Ceuta and Melilla during the classical period. The people of the region were noted in Classical literature as ""Mauri"", which was subsequently rendered as Moors in English. Numerous communities of dark-skinned peoples are present in North Africa, some dating from prehistoric communities. Others are descendants of the historical Trans-Saharan trade in peoples and/or, and after the Arab invasions of North Africa in the 7th century, descendants of slaves from the Arab Slave Trade in North Africa. In the 18th century, the Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail ""the Warrior King"" (1672–1727) raised a corps of 150,000 black soldiers, called"
"governed by Muslims (given the generic name of Moors) at various times between 711 and 1492, though the boundaries changed constantly as the Christian Reconquista progressed, eventually shrinking to the south around modern-day Andalusia and then to the Emirate of Granada. Following the Umayyad conquest of Hispania, al-Andalus, then at its greatest extent, was divided into five administrative units, corresponding roughly to modern Andalusia, Portugal and Galicia, Castile and León, Navarre, Aragon, the County of Barcelona, and Septimania. As a political domain, it successively constituted a province of the Umayyad Caliphate, initiated by the Caliph Al-Walid I (711–750); the Emirate"
"Hispano-Roman peasants who—as D.W. Lomax claims—were disillusioned by the prominent legal, linguistic and social divide between them and the 'barbaric' and 'decadent' Visigoth royal family. The Visigothic territories included what is today Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Gibraltar, and the southwestern part of France known in ancient times as Septimania. The invading Moors wanted to conquer and convert all of Europe to Islam, so they crossed the Pyrenees to use Visigothic Septimania as a base of operations. Muslims called their conquests in Iberia 'al-Andalus' and in what was to become Portugal, they mainly consisted of the old Roman province of Lusitania (the"
"they lived in, as in Yemenis. The Christians of Italy and the Crusaders preferred the term Saracens for all the Arabs and Muslims of that time. The Christians of Iberia used the term Moor to describe all the Arabs and Muslims of that time. Muslims of Medina referred to the nomadic tribes of the deserts as the A'raab, and considered themselves sedentary, but were aware of their close racial bonds. The term ""A'raab"" mirrors the term Assyrians used to describe the closely related nomads they defeated in Syria. The Qur'an does not use the word , only the nisba adjective"
"in the 8th century, the Islamic conquest in Portugal and Spain changed this pattern. Trade ties between the Moorish kingdoms and the North African Moorish state led to a greater flow of trade within those geographical areas. In addition, the Moors engaged sections of Spaniards and Portuguese Christians in slave labor. There was not a “racial” component to slavery in Iberia. The Moors utilised ethnic European slaves: 1/12 of Iberian population were slave Europeans, less than 1% of Iberia were Moors and more than 99% were native Iberians. Periodic Arab and Moorish raiding expeditions were sent from Islamic Iberia to"
"Muladi The Muladi ( , pl. ; , pl. ; or , pl. or ; trans. ""muwallad"", pl. ""muwalladūn"" or ""muwalladīn"") were Muslims of local descent or of mixed Arab, Berber, and Iberian origin who lived in Al-Andalus during the Middle Ages. They were also called """"Musalimah"""" (Islamized). In broader usage, the word ""muwallad"" is used to describe Arabs of mixed parentage, especially those not living in their ancestral homelands. The Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan words ""muladí"", ""muladi"" or ""muladita"" are derived from the Arabic ""muwallad"". The basic meaning of ""muwallad"" is a person of mixed ancestry, especially a descendant"
"in the Iberian Peninsula. In fact, Spanish identity especially has been forged on the frontlines of African and European interaction."" The Moors often served as slaves in Christian Spain. These slaves were captured from Muslim Spain and North Africa and imported into the Christian section of the Iberian peninsula. When the Moors were forcibly evicted from Spain, in 1610, Moor slaves were allowed to stay, however, they were forced to convert to Christianity. Spain's Moorish slave population was eventually freed in the early 18th century. The treatment of slaves in Spain was thought to be less harsh compared to other"
"the matters decided or discussed: This ability to impose a capital punishment in indicative of how wide was the Jewish community's autonomy. From ""aljama"" are derived: Sources Aljama Aljama (, , ) is a term of Arabic origin used in old official documents in Spain and Portugal to designate the self-governing communities of Moors and Jews living under Christian rule in the Iberian Peninsula. In some present-day Spanish cities, the name is still applied to the quarters where such communities lived, though they are many centuries gone. The Jewish communities of Spain, owing to their social isolation and to the"