A Memorandum for the President of the Royal Audiencia and Chancery Court of the City and Kingdom of Granada

The gradual squeeze on the Muslims and Jews of the Iberian Peninsula began in the late medieval period and turned into a dramatic and immensely painful Inquisition and Expulsion in the late fifteenth century when both Spain and Portugal rushed to close an otherwise unique chapter of pluralism in their histories. Propped up by exclusive definition of a Castilian-led identity, with the full force of the Papal authority behind it and similar support from powerful Christian communities within and outside, they heinously wiped out the entire Muslim and Jewish communities. Spurred by the Crusades and their ongoing legacies, mosques and synagogues were either raised to the ground or brazenly converted into cathedrals, parishes and even stables whereas houses, lands and graveyards were quickly appropriated with no traces left of them. Ironically known as Reconquista, the Christian Kings, fully guided by the Popes, gave only two choices to the non-Christian Iberians: convert to Catholicism or simply leave the peninsula empty handed. Even conversions did not temper down hostility as the descendants of these converts were simply ordered to leave the land. The zealot state and ecclesiastic officials left no stone unturned in completely overwriting the long-held socio-cultural realities of their land and were not prepared for even minor concessions that may reverberate the bygone past. Amidst this background, it is rather ironic that there is a persistent scarcity of information on what was happening to beleaguered communities of Muslims and Jews in Europe even after their forced conversions.