“A portion of the Moorish population of Africa is very mixed race of Arabs, Berbers, Negroes, &c (Page. 6)”
“The observations of Molina and Humboldt are sometimes quoted in disproof of this pervading uniformity of physical characters. Molina says that the difference between an inhabitant of Chili and Peruvian is not less than between an Italian and German; to which Humboldt adds, that the American race contains nations whose features differ as essentially from one another as those of the Circassians, Moors and Persians. But all these people are of one and the same race, and readily recognized as such, not withstanding their differences of feature and complexion;* and the American nations present precisely parallel case.” (Page. 6)
“No stronger example need be adduced than that which presents itself in the great Arabian family; for the Saracens who established their kingdom in Spain, whose history is replete with romance and refinement, whose colleges were the centres of genius and learning for several centuries, and whose arts and sciences have been blended with those of every subsequent age;—these very Saracens belong not only to the same race but to the same family with the Bedouins of the desert; those intractable barbarians who scorn all restraints which are not imposed by their own chief, and whose immemorial laws forbid them to sow corn, to plant fruit-trees, or to build houses, in order that nothing may conflict with those roving and predatory habits which have continued unaltered through period of three thousand years.” (Page. 15)
“The Egyptian form differs from the Pelasgic in having narrower and more receding forehead, while the face being more prominent, the facial angle is consequently less. The nose is straight or aquiline, the face angular, the features often sharp, and the hair uniformly long, soft, and curling. In this series of crania include many of which the conformation is not appreciably different from that of the Arab and Hindoo; but have not, as rule, attempted to note these distinctions, although they are so marked as to have induced me, in the early stage of the investigation, and for reasons which will appear in the sequel, to group them, together with the proper Egyptian form, under the provisional name of Austral Egyptian crania.” (Page. 46)
“The true Negro conformation requires no comment; but it is necessary to observe that practised eye readily detects few heads with decidedly mixed characters, in which those of the Negro predominate. For these propose the name of Negroid crania for while the osteological development is more or less that of the Negro, the hair is long but sometimes harsh, thus indicating that combination of features which is familiar in the mulatto grades of the present day. It is proper, however, to remark in relation to the whole ‘series of crania, that while the greater part is readily referable to some one of the above subdivisions, there remain few other examples in which the Caucasian traits predominate, but are partially blended with those of the Negro, which last modify both the structure and expression of the head and face.” (Page.46)
Erin Blakemore is a Freedom user, journalist, and author from Boulder, Colorado. Her work on history, health and science, and the unexpected has appeared in outlets like The Washington Post, National Geographic, NPR, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, Popular Science, History.com, and more. Her first book, The Heroine’s Bookshelf was also the winner of the Colorado Book Award for non-fiction.
National Geographics recent article “Who were the Moors?” has destroyed its credibility as authentic source of information. The Roman dramatist Platus (254-184 B.C.) maintained that the Latin word “Maurus” was a synonym for “Niger”. In contrasting the Moors of the sixth century with another racial group in North Africa, Procopius (circa 550 A.D.) wrote that: “they were not black skinned like the Moors.” “Isidore, a Catholic scholar and the Archbishop of Seville (587-636) wrote that the word ‘maurus’ meant ‘black’. “The Mauri possess bodies black as night, while the skins of the Gauls are white”. (citing Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, 6th c. AD.) As early as 1489, William Caxton wrote: ‘He was so angry for it, that he became black as a Moor’. In 1550 William Thomas, in his Principal rules of the Italian grammar, defined ‘Moro’ as ‘ a Moore or blacke man’, as if the two were synonymous.
Shakespeare’s play Othello features a Moorish general in the Venetian army. The 19th-century African-American actor Ira Aldridge, depicted here in the title role, was the first black man to appear in a Shakespeare performance in Britain.
“IF THE TERM “Moor” seems familiar but confusing, there’s a reason: Though the term can be found throughout literature, art, and history books, it does not actually describe a specific ethnicity or race. Instead, the concept of Moors has been used to describe alternatively the reign of Muslims in Spain, Europeans of African descent, and others for centuries.” Source: Who were the Moors?
Portrait of an amazigh (berber) kel tamasheq beauty. (North Mali, 2006) 📷: Emilia Tjerström
The term “Moor” wasn’t confusing to the founders of the United States as they applied the term “Moor” in various treaties made with Morocco. The term “Moor” wasn’t confusing to the United States Immigration Commission (1907-1910) when they defined it in their Dictionary of Races and peoples. but its confusing to individuals like Blakemore and racist groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center. Blakemore’s concept that the term “Moor” has never been clear demonstrates that she simply failed to research the definition and etymology of the term “Moor”. Her article doesn’t provide one citation from a dictionary from the modern era, nor the colonial era.
Portrait of an amazigh (berber) elder woman. (Imilchil, Morocco) 📷: @redasarrar
[Maurus, Latin.] A negro; a black-a-moor. “I shall answer that better than you can the getting up of the negro’s belly; the moor is with child by you. Shakespeare.”
A crowned Moor has featured in the crest of the Archbishopric of Freising since at least 1284, perhaps because of a Kirchberg family connection, a connection to the Crusades. Zürcher Wappenrolle (ca. 1335-1345), Zürich, Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum, AG 2760.
“As late as 1398 we find the following reference to the ‘Moors’: “Also the nacyn (nation) of Maurys (Moors) theyr blacke colour comyth of the inner partes.”
We will provide citations that Blakemore either ignored or has simply never read. If she never read them, then she shouldn’t be doing articles in the name of National Geographic that basically attempt to strip modern American Moors of their Moorish History and Heritage by introducing pseudo and frivolous notions in the name of a premier media corporation. Blakemore’s demonstrates that her knowledge is limited where she stated:
“Moor” seems familiar but confusing” …”it does not actually describe a specific ethnicity or race”..
Our question is where is Blakemore looking to determine the meaning of the term “Moor”? Likely wikipedia and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Blakemore’s assertion is frivolous and not backed by any credible or authentic scholarship on the subject. She has provided her opinion likely adopted from racist groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, who have no true credibility on this subject, just a racist agenda. Clearly Blakemore didn’t look up the terms “Ethnicity” nor “Race” and she definitely didn’t get her pseudo concepts from a dictionary defining “Races“.
The U.S. Immigration Dictionary of Races and Peoples
The United States Dictionary of Races and Peoples clearly defines “Moor” as:
“A historical rather than an ethnographical term applied to very different peoples of northwestern Africa. In Roman history it is applied to inhabitants of Mauretania (Morocco and Algeria), who were in part Phoenician colonist. In Spanish history the “Moors” and “Moriscos” were mainly supposed to be Arabs. Today the word is wrongly applied to the Riffs of Morocco and to the town dwellers of Algeria and Tunis. The latter call themselves generally “Arabs,” although often in part of Berber blood. The Moors, in a stricter ethnological sense, are the mixed Trarza and other tribes on the western coast, from Morocco to Senegal, mainly of nomadic habits. They are of mixed Berber, Arab, and often Negro blood. Many speak Arabic. (See Semetic-Hamitic.)” Source: Dictionary of races or peoples by United States. Immigration Commission (1907-1910); Dillingham, William P. (William Paul), 1843-1923; Folkmar, Daniel, 1861-1932; Folkmar, Elnora (Cuddeback) 1863-1930
Phoenician Male head with Negroid features : (CE12093)
Erin Blakemore’s article further goes on to unintelligibly states:
“Derived from the Latin word “Maurus,” the term was originally used to describe Berbers and other people from the ancient Roman province of Mauretania in what is now North Africa. Over time, it was increasingly applied to Muslims living in Europe. Beginning in the Renaissance, “Moor” and “blackamoor” were also used to describe any person with dark skin.By then, the idea of Moors had spread across Western Europe. “Moor” came to mean anyone who was Muslim or had dark skin; occasionally, Europeans would distinguish between “blackamoors” and “white Moors.” Source: Who were the Moors?
The term does not derive from “Latin”, that is simply false. The term made its way into European languages via Latin, Yes. However the term originates in Afro-Asiatic languages such as Canaanite and Biblical Hebrew. Here we can see that Blakemore made the connection between Moor and Berber, but fails to recognize both terms fall within the scope of Ethnicity, Race and Nationality. This is why we may properly categorize her article under the guise of “racial discrimination“. Apparently, Blakemore did not do thorough research on the terms “Berber” and “Moor”. She presents confusion where she notes that Europeans would refer to blackamoors and “white Moors“. The term “Blackamoor” is well known to be a synonym for “Moor”. See the United Kingdom Blackamoors in Scotland Exhibit.
“Most Marka identified themselves as ‘white’ (the black were the recently converted). The Dyula were a long-distance merchants, called Marka on the Niger bend…” They called themselves the whites due to their faith – Islam. “ “In this country as in the east, a word meaning white is attached to the ruling class and black is synonymous with dependency and servitude.” “The Moroccan system of racial definition was clearly “racialist” and was in fact a curious inversion of the Western racist model. Whereas in the western model “one drop” of black blood identifies one as black, in the Moroccan model, “one drop” of white blood identifies one as Arab (i.e., privileged).” “This process helped create a “nationalist” Moroccan Arab majority and at the same time subjugated black ancestry (i.e., those without the “one drop” of Arab blood), seen as having more bearing on the historical antecedents of slavery.”
Phoenician Male head with Negroid features : ( CE12093 ) Hometown : The seabed in the vicinity of the tip of the Nao (La Caleta ) Size : 22.5 x 16.5 cm (8.9 inches x 6.5 inches) Dating: sixth century B.C. Museum Museum of Cádiz Cultural Context / Iron Old Style . Phoenician- Punic Hometown Playa de La Caleta , Cádiz ( m ) ( Cadiz Northwest Coast (district) , Cádiz ( province): Punta del Nao Underwater Archaeological Survey , Rodicio Mera, Antonio Specific / Site Location Playa La Caleta
“The etymology of the word “Moor” can be traced to the Phoenician term “Mahurin” meaning “Westerners”. The Semitic etymon “Mahourím,” referred to “People of the West,” and the terms “Maghreb” meant “The West” or “the place where the sun sets;” and “Greater Maghreb” referred to “Further West;” while “Moghrab el Aksa,” meant “the extreme west.” According to Laurence Waddell Early Phoenician titles such as: “Muru,” “Mer,” or “Marutu,” can be translated as meaning “Of the Western Sea (or Sea of the Setting Sun).” The “Akkadian Amurru” occur as a geographical term meaning literally “the West.” In Sumerian the “Amorites” were known as the “Martu” or the Tidnum, in Akkadian by the name of “Amurru”, and in Egypt as “Amar”, all of which mean ‘westerners‘ or ‘those of the west‘. It must be noted the “Hebrew” terms “Maarab,” “Mareb,” “Marrabah” and “Mah-ar-awb” also mean “West“. The Hebrew “Mahur” also means “Westerner.” Odyssey 1.21-25: “But now Poseidon had gone to visit the Ethiopians worlds away, Ethiopians off at the farthest limits of mankind, A PEOPLE SPLIT IN TWO , one part where the Sungod sets and part where the Sungod rises.”
Blakemores belief is clearly a result of the fact that most individuals identifying themselves as “White” in modern society are largely not aware that “White” was not used by Europeans as a racial group until 1681 and it followed “Christian”, hence in the Virginia Colony if you were not a European Christian then you were Black i.e. not “White”. This was convenient because any Moors in the Colony would have been recognized as not being of Christian birth. The concept of Black and White was being used in Moorish Society long before the colonist of Virginia adopted such a caste scheme and applied to the skin complexion of the colonial subjects. In Moorish Society “White” emphasized “Pure Arab” and “High Nobility” status. It did not apply to skin complexion and therefore the darkest or Blackest Moor were in most cases “White Moors” in comparison to Moorish offspring who were not of pure Arab lineage in those days. These are fundamentals as to an understanding of Moorish Society. There has never been a description from any ancient European scholar that has described the Moors as anything other than having Black Skin.
Erin Blakemore’s article further goes on to unintelligibly states:
“More recently, the term has been coopted by the sovereign citizen movement in the United States. Members of Moorish sovereign citizen groups claim they are descended from Moors who predated white settlers in North America, and that they are part of a sovereign nation and not subject to U.S. laws. It’s proof of the ongoing allure of “Moor” as a seemingly legitimate ethnic designation—even though its meaning has never been clear.” Source: Who were the Moors?
White Americans have tried to use “sovereign citizen” arguments in U.S. federal tax cases since the 1970s. See “37 T.C.M. (CCH) 189, T.C. Memo 1978-32 (1978)”. It appears Blakmore’s intent was to associate the recognized “Race‘ and “Nationality” “Moor” with the Sovereign Citizen movement. Blakemore like most White Authors omit the underlying fact that the Sovereign Citizen movement is made up of mostly White American members and was founded by White American members. Here we go again with White individuals attempting to associate criminal associations founded by Whites with what they deem to be “Black People”. Like Blakemore, other White writers on the subject commonly omit the material fact that White Americans employed as Judges in several courts throughout the United States are at the root of the concept of “Sovereign Citizen” via their dictum in cases discussing the duties of a Citizen of the United States and or duties of Government employees. Driscoll v. Burlington-Bristol Bridge Co. is an Example:
“The foundation of a republic is the virtue of its citizens. They are at once sovereigns and subjects. As the foundation is undermined, the structure is weakened. When it is destroyed the fabric must fall. Such is the voice of universal history. * * * The theory of our government is, that all public stations are trusts, and that those clothed with them are to be animated in the discharge of their duties solely by considerations of right, justice and the public good. They are never to descend to a lower plane. But there is a correlative duty resting upon the citizen. In his intercourse with those in authority, whether executive or legislative, touching the performance of their functions, he is bound to exhibit truth, frankness and integrity. Any departure from the line of rectitude in such cases is not only bad in morals but involves a public wrong.”
The concept of a sovereign citizen movement originated in 1971 in the White American Posse Comitatus movement as a teaching of White European Christian Identity minister William P. Gale. The concept has influenced the tax protester movement, the Christian Patriot movement, and the redemption movement—the last of which claims that the U.S. government uses its citizens as collateral against foreign debt. Blakemore totally ignored that well documented history in preference of associating this criminal group “Sovereign Citizens” with the Race/Nationality “Moor“. The ideology works like this, associate modern the racial identity “Moors” with members of the “Sovereign Citizen movement” to justify treating them as “Criminals” and not as Citizens of the United States belonging to race or nationality “Moors” which is a protected class in law. The phrase “Sovereign Citizen” is not a race, ethnicity, nor nationality, therefore it is not a protected class, hence the main agenda of White writers like Blakemore is place the credit belonging to the Sovereign Citizen movement created by White Americans upon American Moors, generally.
“Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican, took the lead with a letter to the Internal Revenue Service requesting an investigation into the tax-exempt status of the incongruously wealthy nonprofit group, which he blasted as a “racist and sexist slush fund devoted to defamation.” “I’ve long been troubled by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s activities, which are centered on serial defamation of its opponents, not on civil rights litigation, as its founding charter says,” Mr. Cotton told The Washington Times.“SPLC has lost all credibility,” said the letter, led by Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “We call on all media, corporations, social media companies, and financial institutions to immediately stop relying on their discredited and partisan ‘hate’ and ‘extremist’ lists.”
This organization published several articles with the sole effort to associate the term “Sovereign Citizen” with the “Race”/”Nationality” , “Moor“. The articles of this organization has influenced individuals in state and federal government positions who thought they were a credible source to cite from or adopt notions from. This conduct has simultaneously resulted in those government officials committing racial discrimination against several Moorish litigants in state and federal countries in direct violation of the Klu Klux Klan Act.
“These shameful secrets are no longer hidden in shadows. The New York Times, Politico, NPR and a host of other mainstream publications are reporting on the corruption and widening credibility gap. The SPLC dismissed its co-founder in March, and its president has resigned amidst numerous claims of sexual harassment, gender discrimination and racism within the organization — a parade of disgraces that vividly force the conclusion: The SPLC is hollow, rotten and failing at the very virtues it pretends to celebrate. The SPLC, as an institution, has thoroughly disqualified itself as an arbiter of justice. But this country would be a better place if the center’s donors, lawyers and friends would truly believe and apply Dr. King’s legacy — his peaceful pursuit of justice and his love of neighbor.”
Initial Q: Two Soldiers Leading Two Moors before a King (detail), from Feudal Customs of Aragon, Huesca (Spain), about 1290-1310, artist unknown. The J. Paul Getty Museum
“Pope Urban II, 1088–1099, granted Spanish crusaders the same papal indulgences that were granted for making pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Urban thereafter issued the first call for crusades to the holy lands in 1095, and he continued to link crusades with pilgrimages by granting indulgences for crusaders, just as he had done for participants in the holy war with the Moors. The Knights were an infamous, crusading, priestly order, who believed Christians could attack pagans at will and deprive them of their property and lordship. The sources of this power were the papal bulls that had been directed at the Holy Lands. The Knights argued that their territorial and jurisdictional claims could be traced to papal bulls from the Crusading era, which had authorized the complete confiscation of the property and sovereignty of non-Christians. In 1455, Pope Nicholas V granted Portugal title to lands in Africa that were already “acquired and that shall hereafter come to be acquired” and authorized Portugal “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans” and to place them into perpetual slavery and seize all their property. The Portuguese, for example, erected stone crosses all along the coast of West Africa to symbolize their possession, and Columbus did the same “with appropriate words and ceremony” on the Caribbean islands he found. See, e.g., MILLER, NATIVE AMERICA, supra note 1, at 12–23, 44–48, 120–26, 131–36 (discussing the European powers dividing up the New World and Africa).
Panel of azulejos by Jorge Colaço (1864-1942) at the São Bento railway station, depicting Prince Henry the Navigator during the conquest of Ceuta
“Portugal, ever since the capture of Ceuta in 1415 (the event which had set Prince Henry of Portugal thinking on West African discovery), had been striving to conquer for herself an empire over Morocco.”
“Possession of Ceuta would indirectly lead to further Portuguese expansion. The main area of Portuguese expansion, at this time, was the coast of Morocco, where there was grain, cattle, sugar, and textiles, as well as fish, hides, wax, and honey.“
“When the Portuguese started their colonial expansion by taking Ceuta in retribution for its piracy ( Source: Finlayson (1992), p. 26) “in 1415,” (Source: B. W. Diffie, Prelude to Empire, Portugal Overseas before Henry the Navigator, University of Nebraska Press, Ann Arbor, 1960, pp. 83–90.)
“Tangier was always a major goal. They failed to capture it in 1437, 1458, and 1464, (Lévi-Provençal (1936), p. 651.) but occupied it unopposed on 28 August 1471 after its garrison fled upon learning of the conquest of Asilah.”
Source: Elbl, Martin Malcolm (2013), Portuguese Tangier (1471–1662): Colonial Urban Fabric as Cross-Cultural Skeleton, Peterborough: Baywolf Press
“As in Ceuta, they converted its chief mosque into the town’s cathedral church; it was further embellished by several restorations during the town’s occupation.”
Source: Lévi-Provençal, Évariste (1936), “Tangier”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV (1st ed.), Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 650–652
“In addition to the cathedral, the Portuguese raised European-style houses and Franciscan and Dominican chapels and monasteries.”
Source: Finlayson, Iain (1992), Tangier: City of the Dream, London: Tauris Parke, p. 26
“The Wattasids assaulted Tangier in 1508, 1511, and 1515 but without success. In the 17th century, it passed with the rest of Portugal’s domains into Spanish control as part of the personal union of the crowns but maintained its Portuguese garrison and administration.”
Source: Lévi-Provençal, Évariste (1936), “Tangier”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV (1st ed.), Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 650–652
“In 1458, the Portuguese, led by Duarte de Meneses, captured the city and built a fortress there. Their domination lasted for over a century before the Moroccans reconquered the city.”
Source: Ricard, R., “Evacuation of Portuguese places from Morocco under Jean III: Ksar es Seghir ( 1549-1550 )”, in unpublished sources of the history of Morocco, Portugal, 1951, t. IV.
Source: Vasco de Carvalho, V., Portuguese domination in Morocco: from the 1415-1769th to the 1415-1769th century (1415-1769), Lisbon, 1942, S.P.N.
“In 1486 the Moroccan coastal city Azemmour’s inhabitants became vassals and tributaries of João II of Portugal. Portuguese control of the city lasted only for a short period; it was abandoned by João III of Portugal in 1541 due to his court’s economic difficulties.”
“Iberian rule lasted until 1661, when it was given to England’s King Charles II as part of the dowry of the Portuguese infanta Catherine of Braganza.” Source: Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times, Book I (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1933) p. 35.
“A squadron under the admiral and ambassador Edward Montagu arrived in November. English Tangier, fully occupied in January 1662,” was praised by Charles as “a jewell of immense value in the royal diadem” despite the departing Portuguese taking away everything they could, even—according to the official report—”the very fflowers, the Windowes and the Dores”.
Source: Elbl, Martin Malcolm (2013), Portuguese Tangier (1471–1662): Colonial Urban Fabric as Cross-Cultural Skeleton, Peterborough: Baywolf Press, ISBN 9780921437505
Source: Finlayson, Iain (1992), Tangier: City of the Dream, London: Tauris Parke, ISBN 9781780769264
Source: Elbl, Martin Malcolm (2013), Portuguese Tangier (1471–1662): Colonial Urban Fabric as Cross-Cultural Skeleton, Peterborough: Baywolf Press, ISBN 9780921437505
“Tangier received a garrison and a charter which made it equal to other English towns, but the religious orders were expropriated, the Portuguese residents nearly entirely left, and the town’s Jews were driven out owing to fears concerning their loyalty.”
Source: Finlayson, Iain (1992), Tangier: City of the Dream, London: Tauris Parke, ISBN 9781780769264 p. 26-27
“Meanwhile, the Tangier Regiment were almost constantly under attack by locals who considered themselves mujahideen fighting a holy war. Their principal leader was Khadir Ghaïlan (known to the English as “Gayland” or “Guyland”) of the Banu Gurfat, whom the Earl of Peterborough attempted to buy off. Ultimately, the truce only lasted for part of 1663 and 1664; on May 4 of the latter year, the Earl of Teviot and around 470 members of the garrison were killed in an ambush beside Jew’s Hill. Khadir Ghaïlan hoped to support a pretender against the new Alawid sultan Al-Rashid and things subsequently went so badly for him that he was obliged to abide by its terms until his death in 1673.”
Source: Lévi-Provençal, Évariste (1936), “Tangier”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV (1st ed.), Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 650–652 p. 651.
“Lord Belasyse happened to secure a longer-lasting treaty in 1666”
Source: Articles of Peace Concluded and Agreed between His Excellency the Lord Bellasyse, His Majesties Governour of His City and Garrison of Tangier in Affrica, &c. and Cidi Hamlet Hader Ben Ali Gayland, Prince of VVest-Barbary, &c.”, London, 2 April 1666.
Ceuta, a Spanish possession in North Africa.
“The English, lagging behind for about half a century, cashed in on the slave trade as early as the 1480s. Various records kept in several Spanish archives disprove the received view that the English as a slaving nation was late coming in the 1550s. Moors and Mooresses of Morocco constituted colonial targets only for the Portuguese and the Spaniards, they were also victims of the English who bought the captured slaves at the slave markets of Andalusia. The trade with enslaved Moroccans led to a serious depopulation of the coastal regions of Morocco.”
Vista de Ceuta y la península de Almina desde el mirador de Isabel II
“On the Moroccan side, there was considerable enthusiasm for expelling the Spanish and Portuguese from the several Moroccan coastal cities they had conquered.”
“In the mid-1400s, Portuguese King Dom Manuel colonized the African coastal islands of Sao Tome and Principe in order “to whiten the race,” as he put it.
“One of the principal motives behind Portuguese interest in West Africa and the Canaries was the desire to tap into the trans-Saharan gold traffic. Fernandez-Armesto, Before Columbus, 140-48, 189-92.”
“Gradually the Christian reconquest drove them back until the only Moorish stronghold in Spain, Granada, fell in 1492.“The Iberian Moors, who had considerably intermarried, returned to Africa where they were known as Andalusians, and scattered over the enormous range of the Moors, from the Mediterranean to the Senegal river, and from the Atlantic to Timbuktu.”
Brotherhood of St George. A Leugemeete Fresco, Flanders, 14th century. The Andalusia Company
“English trade with Morocco was a natural extension of the existing trade established by the Andalusia company in Spain and in the Levant. Individual voyages can be traced as far back as the 1520s or 1530s. All the evidence is that the English merchants were rugged individuals and rivals. Trading together in one small town, they must have known one another, but during the days of prosperity, there is no hint of any combination or organization. Only in adversity did they combine together and then not very effective. They did so once in order to petition the duke. To give coherence to their organization and standing in the eyes of the English government they petitioned King Henry VIII and in September 1530 he granted them a constitution.”
“Slavery had long been known in Iberia, but slaves never constituted more than a small percentage of society. By 1492, although more than 35,000 black slaves had been introduced in Portugal, most of them were intended to be reexported to other European markets and to the Americas. By 1550, there were 9,500 African slaves in Lisbon–comprising nearly 10 percent of the total population–and 32,370 slaves and 2,580 freedmen in Portugal as a whole. Black slaves increasingly replaced slaves from other racial origins as the Portuguese became less involved in the wars against the Turks in the Mediterranean and in general against Muslims. The Moors were visible in Portugal in the most southern part of the country, where a relatively large population of Christianized Moors (Moriscos) toiled the fields and worked as artisans in towns and cities.”
“The English under Elizabeth now deemed the time opportune for gaining a foothold in West Africa. Forts were built at the mouth of the River Gambia in 1588, and towards the close of the sixteenth century English trading-settlements were erected at or near Sierra Leone, and during the seventeenth century, Great Britain became one of the leading Powers of the Gold Coast.”
“The early Portuguese explorers sent out by Prince Henry at first took every opportunity of Kidnapping the Moors whom they met on the coast of the Sahara, and these people were dispatched as slaves to Portugal. Prince, Henry, however, came in time to realize the iniquity of this proceeding and its bad policy on the part of a nation which at that time was aspiring to colonize and rule Morocco. The Portuguese learned in this way that by pursuing their journeys father south they might come to a land where it was possible to obtain “black Moors” as slaves. In fact, a slang term, “Panyar (from the Portuguese Apanhar, to seize, catch, kidnap), had sprung up in the coast jargon to illustrate the English methods. Even English travelers such as William Smith (who went out as a surveyor to the Gold Coast early in the eighteenth century) admit that the English had become very unpopular on the Gold Coast, owing to these aggression’s on the natives; and William Smith and his companions endeavored to pass as Frenchmen when they visited Eastern Liberia and the Ivory Coast, ‘because of the bad name the English had acquired.”
In 1704 a Willem Bosman of the Dutch West India company describing the “Gold Coast” wrote:
“Here the Portuguese received a small quantity of gold dust, as well as some ostrich eggs; and, as Gonçalves had always desired, his men also seized some black Africans, twelve in number, to take back to Portugal (“What a beautiful thing it would be,” this commander told his men, ‘if we could capture some of the natives to lay before the face of our Prince’). These people were nearly all Azanaghi, as had been most of those sold in Lagos in 1444. They seem not to have been carried off to serve as slaves—though one of them, a woman, was a black slave, presumably from somewhere in the region of Guinea. They were taken as exhibits to show Prince Henry, much as Columbus would bring back some Indians, fifty years later, from his first journey to the Caribbean”
“All the concerns of this essay begin in Andalusia. Slavery was a matter, raised by Shylock at his trial, in the Merchant of Venice narrative. This topic is of cultural relevance to early modern English audiences. The bottom lines become clear in the earliest records of the English slave trade to which [English American] historiographers often omit from the discussion. Records show that the first English slaveholders and traders of “enslaved Moors” were the English merchant’s resident in Andalusia in the last decades of the fifteenth and early decades of the sixteenth centuries, and further, that the English were the pioneers of the English slave trade with Morocco”
“The (De)slaving history: Mostafa al-Azemmouri, the sixteenth-century Moroccan captive in the tale of conquest article attempts to revisit one of the most spectacular odysseys in Moroccan-American history, that of the encounters started from the shores of a Moorish town in the sixteenth century by Mostafa Al-Azemmouri, the Moroccan captive and adventurer. Al-Azemmouri was captured by the Portuguese, sold in Spain and then shipped across the Atlantic to the New World around 1527. His narrative has consistently been displaced and subjected to various forms of exclusion in history; his experience in historiographical writing has been distorted by the culturally and historically essentialised forms of knowledge and power. In order to re-orient the debate on Al-Azemmouri’s emblematic journey, this work offers a rereading of sixteenth-century Morocco in its connections with the Atlantic, focuses on the Spanish historical perspective about the reconquista overseas, and spotlights the Portuguese-Azemmour nexus against the background of the Portuguese presence in Morocco to shift the focus into the Other’s Atlantic as a site of complex history that criss-crosses the boundaries of nationality and extends beyond mere geographical locations. It also interrogates the representation of Al-Azemmouri in some sixteenth-century Spanish accounts, which consigned the Moorish slave to textual shadows and obstructed his visibility in the narrative of colonial conquest.”
Ignatius Sancho Oil painting by Thomas Gainsborough, 1768, National Gallery of Canada
“Indeed Sancho’s life in England was an immediate result of the English involvement with slavery. ‘Dear sir,’ he beseeched Sterne, ‘think in me you behold the uplifted hands of thousands of my brother Moors.’”
“Hamet Tanjawi, for instance, was captured and enslaved during the Restoration period; he became a servant of the duke of York, from whom he learned a wide variety of naval lore, and later escaped back to Tangier where he put his English warfare training into Muslim use as held the attack on the English fort in Tangier in 1676. In his account of captivity in Morocco in the 1680s, Thomas Phelps recalled meeting with an “ancient Moor, who formerly had been a slave in England and spoke good English, and who was set at liberty by our late Gracious King Charles the 2d.” Another captive/slave was the corsair Abdallah bin Aisha, who spent three years in England and was released by King Charles without ransom upon the intercession of James II.”
“Kim F. Hall agreed that “English traders went to the markets of Guinea and Barbary, but African traders rarely went to England.” Only Bernard Harris, Eldred Jones, and Jack D’Amicohave alluded to Muslim ambassadors and “blackmoors” in England..”
“During the period under study, thousands of Turks and Moors visited and traded in English and Welsh ports; hundreds were captured on the high seas and brought to stand trial in English courts; scores of ambassadors and emissaries dazzled the London populace with their charm, cuisine and “Araby” ,,,”from the Elizabethan to the early Caroline periods, Britons undertook another venture as they entered into an extensive commercial, diplomatic, and social engagement with the Turks and Moors of the Muslim empires.”
“In all the surviving records of captured Moors and Turks, there is not a single reference to a Muslim woman. While numerous British women were recaptured and sold in North Africa, no Muslim woman seems to have ever set foot on English soil, either as a refugee or a prisoner. Britons also met Moorish and Turkish captives of Spain in the Caribbean.”
“In March of 1586 some Moors deserted to join Sir Francis Drake during the English attack on Cartegena, and later during the attack on Santo Domingo. In June of that year Drake captured hundreds of “Turks and Moors, who do menial service” in Havana. Although the Moors, the English encountered in the Caribbean were slaves who projected weakness and despair, they were subjects of rulers whom England’s queen wanted to befriend, and whose assistance she sought against Spain. There must have been so many of these Moors in the American Spanish dominions that in 1617, Purchas mentioned that Islam had spread as far as America. Purchas was probably thinking of these captives, some of whom had been freed by their Spanish masters and were settled in the colonies.”
“In September 1630, the Moroccan ruler, Sidi Alibin Mohammad, sent a letter to King Charles in which he demanded that the king release all Muslim captives and send them back to the lands of Islam (“li-bilad al-Islam”) regardless of whether or not they were Sidi’s subjects. After doing so, Charles could be assured that no captive from the “English tribes”(“qaba’il al-Ingleez”) would remain in North Africa.”
“there are numerous indications that Britons hauled Muslim captives to the Barbary Coast and exchanged them for English captives. In 1635 Robert Blake was authorized to take forty-five Moors to Barbary to exchange them for English captives. But he immediately ran into difficulty. There were more English than Moorish captives.
“In September 16 36, two Moors were captured—one “Mahammet aged twentie seven or thereabout” and “Hammet aged fortie foure yeares or there-about”—from Salee. They had been sailing with “foure Moores, eighteen[sailors] of Sallie, five Renegadoes Dutch one English their Pilott.” When their ship reached the English coast the renegades turned against the Moors after being called “to stand up for their lives & liberties” whereupon “they drove the Moores into the hold, hoisted saile, and brought their Barque into the first [English] port. Writing to the Lords of the Admiralty, the earl of Portland included “copies of the examinations of two of the moores.”
“In 1658, William D’Avenant wrote The Play-House to be Let, in 100 The Renaissance Triangle which which he included a scene about “the Symerons,” a Moorish people brought formerly to Peru by the Spaniards.) Purchas could also have been thinking of an ethnological theory that described the American Indians as descendants of the Moors of North Africa.”
“Muhammad notes that “Moors” from the Barbary Coast—captured by the Portuguese and enslaved—successfully. “Freeland traces how slavery became racialized as slaves became Christians. citing Allan Austin’s estimation that there may have been at least eighteen thousand Muslim slaves imported from 1771 to 1775). Ghanea Bassiri notes that a Moorish identity may have captured the public imagination, the public having heard tales of white slavery coming out of the exotic and well-known Barbary Wars. Eight Moors [enslaved-Muslims] successfully petitioned the South Carolina House of Representatives for their freedom in 1790, describing the perfidy of the English captain who promised to redeem them back to Morocco as captives of war but sold them as slaves in the New World instead. Capet, supra note 8, at 556. One of those eight Muslim slaves was named Fatima.”
“The Mohammedan Africans remaining of the old stock of importations, although accustomed to hear the Gospel preached, have been known to accommodate Christianity to Mohammedanism. “God,” say they, “is Allah, and Jesus Christ is Mohammed–the religion is the same, but different countries have different names.”
“Clearly it seems that the “Barbares” or Soninke of the Sahel and Sudan were the “Mauri Bavares” or Babars of Mauritania in what is now Morocco and Algeria possibly pushed down by the Tuareg “the second race of Berbers” and/or Arab Sulaym/Hilal peoples like the Trarza or Hassaniya. They were direct ancestors of the black merchants known as Soninke, Sughai (Isuwaghen or Zawagha) or Wangara who are called “whites” in early African manuscripts.” “The Bafour, in fact, is considered by some to be the same as the Zenagha or Znaga Berbers who came to be subject to the Almoravid (Tuareg) nobles. In Mauritania by the 15th century, they were referred to as “tawny and squat” by a slave trader from Venice named Alvice Ca’da Mosto (Thomas, Hugh, 1997, p. 22). They then fell into low caste status under the Hassaniyya or Hassan “Moors” (a group formed from the mixture of Arab/Berber peoples) which might explain how they came to be the first Africans sold out of Lagos to the Portuguese that were brought to Europe.”
“Most Americans are unaware of the special relationship between Morocco and the U.S.A. that developed subconsciously through the trans‐Atlantic conquests of Moorish‐impregnated Spain and consciously through contacts between our early Republic and this old, dilapidated kingdom. Even fewer Americans seem aware of the complex contacts between Morocco, at Africa’s northwest corner, and the ancestors of our Negro community. Slave traders from the Moorish feudal society raided southward into Senegal and delivered slaves to European traders who, in turn, sold them across the Atlantic. The descendants of these slaves are U.S. citizens today. But more rarely discussed is the vaguely discernible link between Morocco and the American Negro minority. This U.S. knowledge gap is perhaps partially if inaccurately being filled by American Negro teachers, notably Black Muslims.”
“Morocco also has an extensive history of slavery. Like the United States, Morocco traded in enslaved black West Africans, who came to Morocco across the Sahara. Slavery in Morocco took other forms, too. Morocco was one of the so-called Barbary States, where for centuries European and American sailors captured by pirates were enslaved and ransomed. In his 1853 book “White Slavery in the Barbary States,” the radical abolitionist senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts depicted North Africa as a disturbing analog to the American South, which he called the “Barbary States of America.”
“It difficult to know from available information if this is a massive understatement or fails to give due respect to the comparative few who did make the journey. Though it is well-known that the Iberian powers took slaves from Morocco for service in Spain and Portugal, it is unknown how many of these may ultimately have also been sent across the Atlantic. Spain and Portugal overwhelmingly dominated the transatlantic slave trade in the first century of the Atlantic World, with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database documenting approximately 275,000 slaves sent during that period to the Americas (a paltry sum compared to later centuries). But the database shows no voyages to or from Morocco – understandable for a location that was not a major source of slaves for work in the Americas – and nothing to suggest that a substantial numbers of slaves first taken to Portugal or Spain ended up across the ocean. Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, http://www.slavevoyages.org (for estimates and maps; accessed September 4, 2017). By the second half of the sixteenth century the slave population in Portugal appears to have been made up predominantly of people from sub-Saharan Africa. Bovill asserts that the decline of the peasant population in Portugal had resulted in their replacement by so many blacks from Africa that the southern part of Portugal had become predominantly black. Subjective evaluations of color and the multiethnic makeup of Morocco might make the assumption that these “blacks” are sub-Saharan suspect. But Bovill’s remark is consistent with Portugal having begun the importation of sub-Saharan slaves in 1444. There was also an apparent preference for sub-Saharan African slaves over North African Muslims slaves, as the former were deemed more open to conversion to Christianity, had no nearby places to which to escape, and were considered more compliant. This made them far less threatening than Muslims, the last of who were forcibly expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in the early seventeenth century. Bovill, The Battle of Alcazar, 5; Joachim Romero Magalhães, “Africans, Indians and Slavery in Portugal,” Portuguese Studies 13 (1997): 143-151, 143.”
“In this connection on account of the Jews of Waregla, given by Mr. Tristram in his recently published travels in the Sahara, is deserving mention. Waregla is an oasis in the desert, about north lat. 32 degrees, inhabited by a race believed by Mr. Tristam to be deeply stained with negro blood. The Jews have been settled there for ages.”
“They afford,” says he, “an interesting example of the effect of climate, which, in the course of generations, seems to have produced the dark colouring pigment. They were almost as black as negroes, much darker than their brethren of the M’zab and Wed R’hir; yet there was not the slightest trace of the negro features: all the lineaments were as distinctively Jewish as in any clothes-dealer in Houndsditch.”
“They were as dark as the black Jews of Abyssinia, whom I have seen in Jerusalem, but the hair, without being woolly, was grizzled and matteed. The Jews of Ghardaia, in the Wed M’zab, are also stated to be very dark, dark as Hindoos, but “with features intensely Jewish. On the other hand, Mr. Tristram found in and near Tuggurt a sept of Mussulmans, who never intermarry with the others, and who are very fair, with strongly marked Jewish features.”
“They are called Mahadjeriah and are said to be of the earliest date of settlement, who submitted to the Koran several centuries ago. Mr. Ginsberg (Jewish Intelligence, No. 308), who also met with these Hebrew Moslems, says that the characteristic signs of the Jewish face are very recognizable; and that in spite of the influence of climate, the Jew retains his white complexion, and forms a striking contrast to the native Arabs, and even Moors. “
“Those that remained in North Africa retained their black complexion although they had mixed with the incoming foreign peoples losing their Negroid features in some cases. Of course, it’s been interpreted as the other way around when in fact early Arab observers said they had become mixed with other non-African groups and were great proselytizers.”
“Ethnic’ identities were determined by occupation and religion as well as by language. The Dyula were a long-distance merchants, called Marka on the Niger bend; the Fulbe, ideally, pastoralist, the Bozo and Somono fisherman. The Dyula were Muslim, and the Bambara ‘pagans’. The social reality was fluid and changing, there was a Muslim presence in the Bambara states, and some Dyula were not Muslims. ‘It was not uncommon for FulBe to become Bozo, Bozo to become Somono, and…animist farmers to become Maraka Muslim traditionalist. Most Marka identified themselves as ‘white’ (the black were the recently converted).”
“In other words after converting to Islam many of the Beriberi and people like the nomad Fulani and Tuareg came to refer to themselves as “whites”. The Marka Soninke (Wa’nGara/Wakar and Wa’Kore) were also called Dyula. “The Dyula were a long distance merchants, called Marka on the Niger bend…” They called themselves the whites due to their faith – Islam. I told you Wa Kore and WaKara were Korah and Kore from Teras (Jeter/Jethro) but i know – many of us are in denial – too brainwashed. Believe it!
The newly remade film involving Kunta Kinte a man of Soninke/Mande stock.
“Paradoxically the Wakoré are designated in the Tarikhs as blacks from the south, but in other sources e.g. al-Bakrî, al-Idrı¯sı – as whites from the North.” See what I mean? Awkar, Wakara, or Wa’ngara and Wakore Malinke peoples were Beriberi from the North. The word “white” refers to their Muslim heritage.
” Those who have read the peer-reviewed ‘Fear of Blackness” in West Africa would know this already. This is what was in the peer reviewed Fear of Blackness…..”
Furthermore another division of the Wakar or Wa’nGara merchants were the Songhai in some places called Zarma, Germa, Songhai i.e. Garama who founded the empire of the Garamantes.
“Like modern linguists, even colonialists knew the early Arabs used the term white for a type of blackness. Example hamam = “Being black. Becoming white. Being charred (a burning coal or billet)…”
