To Live Like a Moor. Olivia Remie Constable

which fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Christians consciously donned exotic vestidos moriscos as fancy dress (although this had probably happened in earlier periods too). If appearance was not always easily differentiated by clothing, which could in any case be easily changed, this may explain the ongoing attempts to define “Muslim” appearance through more lasting hairstyles, such as the garceta in the Crown of Aragon.

      But there are also other ways to explain the fact that medieval Christians were rarely censured for wearing “Muslim” clothes. Perhaps they simply never wore them, but the evidence is against this conclusion. Alternately, and perhaps more likely, garments of similar names and styles actually had subtle but recognizable differences depending on the religious identity of the wearer, differences that would have been familiar to medieval contemporaries but which have been erased by time. Fashions have long had the ability to project aspects of social and economic identity, but these meanings—though well understood at the time—leave little long-term imprint in a world of changing aesthetic tastes. It is likely, also, that sumptuary laws about “Muslim” dress were often ignored and that periods of enforcement tended to focus on non-Christian violators rather than Christian infractions.

      Overall, it appears that the legal burden of differentiation was generally placed on Muslims rather than Christians. This tendency even extended to new converts from Islam, who were ordered to cease dressing as Muslims and strongly urged not to attend Muslim weddings or other festivities that might tempt them to don Muslim clothing and ornaments.¹¹⁸ Laws requiring that New Christians must dress in the same manner as Old Christians can be found in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but they became strident in the sixteenth century, after the promulgation of edicts demanding conversion or expulsion.

      The conversion of entire populations from Islam to Christianity, from moro to morisco, fundamentally changed the language of legislation about identity in sixteenth-century Spain, but without shifting any of the underlying assumptions about the proper relationship between appearance and religion. New Christians should now look the same as Old Christians, and if they did not, the burden was on them to change their appearance just as their faith had been changed by baptism. The fact that this did not happen, and that many Moriscos (and especially Morisca women) continued to dress as they had before conversion, presented a huge problem. Castilian administrators and inquisitors demanded that there be a rupture with the past, and they interpreted the continuity of appearance as representing active resistance by Moriscos to their new religious condition. In many cases, they were probably perfectly correct in this assumption. But in others, the persistence of earlier clothing traditions was surely also due to the varying pressures of inertia, familiarity, comfort, convenience, aesthetic preference, and economy.

      Inquisition records indicate that a perception of non-Christian appearance was one among many indicators of imperfect faith. An accusation that somebody either routinely or occasionally donned Morisco clothing immediately generated suspicions of heresy, and in concert with other evidence it could land the accused in court, in jail, or on the scaffold. As early as 1498, even before the official edicts of conversion, a letter from King Fernando indicates that the Inquisition in Valencia was already paying close attention to Moorish dress.¹¹⁹ In 1526, when the Moriscos of Granada purchased their forty-year exemption from laws requiring that they abandon their traditional dress, it came along with a promise that they would also not be subject to inquisitorial attention during that grace period. After this expired, however, inquisitorial attention again included appearance among its measures of unbelief, and Moriscos were well aware of the dangers of continuing to wear clothing that did not distinctively mark them as Christian. When inquisitors visited Morisco communities in the region of Málaga in 1568–69, they inspired such fear that “they found all the women dressed in Castilian costume” (por este temor de la Inquisición hallaba vestidas las mujeres a la castellana).¹²⁰ Likewise, in the Aragonese village of Gea de Albarracín, where the Morisco community would come under intense inquisitorial scrutiny and persecution, local officials insisted to the inquisitor general in 1566 that the inhabitants never used Moorish dress or language any more, and that they did whatever else was necessary to be good Christians (“los deste lugar jamas usaron el habito de moros ni la lengua … hizieron lo demas que es necesario para qualquier pefecto christiano”).¹²¹ Both reports reflect an assumption, on the part of the inquisitorial recorders, that moriscos did not normally dress like Old Christians, and they only put on Christian clothing in order to avoid inquisitorial attention. This may have been the case, but it is also possible that by the 1560s some Moriscos had genuinely made the switch to wearing Christian fashions.

      A New Focus on Women: Female Veiling and the Almalafa

      There is no question, however, that in the early sixteenth century, New Christians continued to dress differently from Old Christians, and this was especially the case in Granada, where the population had only recently come under the rule of Fernando and Isabel.¹²² Comments from Christian administrators, inquisitors, visiting travelers and artists, and the Moriscos themselves all testified that Granadan fashions were completely unlike those of Castile, though they might disagree as to whether this was a factor of religion, region, or culture. A famous series of illustrations by the German artist Christoph Weiditz, who traveled in Spain in 1528–29, includes depictions of Moriscos and Moriscas in Granada, with special attention to their costume and its differences from other contemporary Iberian dress (see Figures 4 and 5).¹²³

      These detailed descriptions of women in Granada draw our attention to a striking difference, in terms of gender, between medieval comments on Muslim appearance and sixteenth-century descriptions of Moriscas. Whereas almost all medieval legislation about Mudejar hair and dress was directed toward male appearance, with only passing comments on female dress, early modern attention was very strongly focused on women. Sixteenth-century Christian authors were fascinated by the Moriscas’ voluminous white veils (almalafas), baggy trousers (zaragüelles; from Arabic sarāwīl), marlotas, distinctive shoes, and hennaed fingers. Legislative and inquisitorial attention to clothing was also mainly directed toward women, requiring that they give up these earlier styles in favor of decent Christian skirts and mantles (sayas and mantos), no matter what it cost to replace an entire wardrobe. Yet even after years of such legislation, Morisca dowry documents from 1565 still listed almalafas, marlotas, and other items of characteristically Granadan clothing.¹²⁴

      Figure 4. Christoph Weiditz, Trachtenbuch (1529). Germanisches Nationalmuseum Hs. 22474, fols. 97–98. Visiting German artist’s illustration of a Morisca woman in almalafa.

      Figure 5. Christoph Weiditz, Trachtenbuch (1529). Germanisches Nationalmuseum Hs. 22474, fols. 99–100. Depiction of Morisco casual home wear; note child’s sábana.