The Moors: The History Of The Muslims Who Lived In North Africa And Europe During The Middle Ages

The term Moor is a historical rather than an ethnic name. It is an invention of European Christians for the Islamic inhabitants of Maghreb (North Africa), Andalusia (Spain), Sicily and Malta, and was sometimes use to designate all Muslims. It is derived from Mauri , the Latin name for the Berbers who lived in the Roman province of Mauretania, which ranged across modern Algeria and Morocco. Saracen was another European term used to designate Muslims, though it usually referred to the Arabic peoples of the Middle East and derives from an ancient name for the Arabs, Sarakenoi . The Muslims of those regions no more refer to themselves by that term than those of North Africa call themselves Moors. Maghreb, or al-Maghreb, is a historical term used by Arabic Muslims for the territory of coastal North Africa from Alexandria to the Atlantic Coast. It means “The West” and is used in opposition to Mashrek , “The East,” used to refer to the lands of Islam in the Middle East and north-eastern Africa. The Berbers refer to the region in their own language as Tamazgha . In a limited, precise sense it can also refer to the Kingdom of Morocco, the proper name of which is al-Mamlakah al-Maghribiyyah, “Kingdom of the West.” Ethnically the people of North Africa are mostly of mixed Arab-Berber descent, and the Berbers are a proud and noble group of peoples dating from ancient times. The term Berber is again a foreign designation, coming from the Greek barbaroi , meaning stranger. By implication, as far as the Greeks and Romans were concerned, the word indicated the people were uncivilized. From this comes the archaic English name Barbary, used to designate the north coast of Africa and still used in “Barbary ape” and the breed of horse known as the Barb. The Berbers call themselves Imazighen, though in truth they are a grouping of different tribes rather than a strictly homogenous group. There are at least 12 linguistic families spoken in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, parts of Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania. The last, a large republic on the north-western African coast, shares the same name as the ancient Roman province, though they are its former French rulers gave it the name. The history of the Spanish Peninsula is closely bound to that of the Moors. The term “Spain” was not in wide use until the region was united by the monarchs of Aragon and Castile, and the Moors called the lands they ruled in the Iberian Peninsula Al-Andalus, traditionally thought to be an Arabic transliteration of Vandal, the Germanic tribe which briefly ruled the region in the early fifth century. The English name Andalusia derives from the Spanish Andalucia, which is still used by Spain to name its southern region. Not surprisingly, three religions attempting to coexist during medieval times resulted in nearly incessant conflicts, marked by high taxation, disparate societies, rigid cultural controls, and systemic violence. Despite the odds, these three religions managed to live in a state of quasi-acceptance and peace in most of the major cities in the Iberian Peninsula like Cordoba and Toledo, with sporadic warfare occurring on the borders between Al-Andalus and the Christian kingdoms near the Pyrenees Mountains. Muslims, Christians, and Jews would attempt to reorganize their societies several times over the centuries through warfare, always with Jews on the lower rungs and Christians and Muslims fighting it out above them. Though it’s often forgotten today, the fighting that took place during the Reconquista was not originally driven by religion. Instead, the majority of the battles were fought by ambitious rulers who sought territorial expansion, like many other civilizations during the Middle Ages.