1Geographical mobility is not synonymous with the formation of a stable and lasting community, as Philip Curtin has demonstrated. Indeed, the formation of such a community in another country fundamentally implies the existence of both genders in the same social group, thus enabling the establishing of a family and, therefore, the reproduction of differences, even if the latter are hidden, as in the case of Mouriscos, or converted Muslims, in Portugal. Even groups such as the Armenians (Curtin 1984, ch. 9; Aslanian 2011), who travelled for years, but left their wives and families in their places of origin because they intended to return to the original locus, only formed true communities abroad after migrations of a family character. In the case of Jews and Mouriscos in Portugal, this dilemma played out differently: while the often induced mobility of Muslim men and women after conversion led them to form officially Christian families, the more voluntary nature of conversion in the case of the Jews, and which led to Jewish women being abandoned in their places of origin, marked a different destination for this group. This brings us to the question raised by Julia Phillips Cohen (2014, xi): “How does a community become a solution?”

2This article reflects on the consequences of the different options available to Muslims and Jews and the mobility pressures on these two groups, during the Middle and Early Modern Ages in Portugal. This reflection is divided in five themes. In the first part, we focus on the different forms of mobility of Jews and Muslims over time, taking into account the idiosyncrasies specific to each ethnic group. In the Middle Ages, there was a greater mobility of Jews in the Iberian Peninsula, while the existence of Islamic kingdoms in North Africa acted as a catalyst for the mobility of the Muslim minority in the north-south direction. A shift arises in the early modern period, after the expulsion of both minorities from the kingdom. From that moment onwards, mobility is mostly traceable to mainly Jewish men who travel individually with the aim of conversion. On the contrary, Muslims are mainly male and female captives, caught up in a context of war, many of whom also end up converting to Christianity. These different patterns of mobility translated into different forms of daily adaptability and experience of displacement. The second part of the article reveals that both catechumen and Jewish and Muslim converts in the early modern period faced a common path in terms of social framing. On the one hand, they were treated by the king, the Jesuits and the Christian elite as successful examples of catechetical efficacy. On the other hand, catechumen and converts faced the ostracization of the majority of Christian society because of their recognizable origins.

3The third part demonstrates that this paradoxical view on catechumen and Jewish and Muslim converts fueled the continued segregation of ex-Jews and ex-Muslims in a society that was not, by definition, inclusive. This continuous and continued segregation led to the development of mechanisms and processes of membership exclusion and, as a reaction, to these groups’ continuous cultural and religious resistance. In this context, ties of ethnic solidarity prevailed in view of the civilizational terms acquiesced by premeditated Christian solidarity. The fourth part explains how segregation and the will to segregate led to the approximation of members of both minorities. This proximity is revealed, on the one hand, in discussions that converge in the denial of civilization of the Christian majority, and on the other hand, in attitudes of sympathy that point to the common goodness of their own civilizations. Finally, we consider how, despite the social pressure that led to socio-religious resilience, and even a closeness of members of the two groups, gender determined different forms of mobility for Jews and Muslims and was thus an essential element for the reconstitution of a diaspora community in the early modern Portugal.

1. Mobility and Community in the Middle Ages and in the Early Modern Period

4Although ample information is available on the internal mobility of Jews from Portugal to Spain (and vice versa), a scarcity of documentation means the same does not apply to the Jews of North Africa (Tavares 1982, 273-349; Tavares 1987, 341-368; Tavim and Mucznik 2018, 81-82). Little information is available, for example, on Jews who traded with Ceuta, Tangier, Ksar es-Seghir and Safi, or on Jewish merchants involved in the West Africa trade, such as José Alfaquim, Benjamim Najarim, José Negro, Abraão de Paredes and, above all, the members of the Navarro and Abravanel families, although we know that Paredes personally moved in the caravels of Henry the Navigator, his lord (Tavares 1982, 287-288). Nevertheless, the famous rescue of the Jews of Asilah in 1471, through the intervention of Isaac Abravanel, an influential statesman during the reign of King John II (1477-1495), allows an understanding of the close relationship that existed between the Jewish communities of Portugal and North Africa (Netanyahu 1982).

6In many ways, however, the rescue of this community and the provision of subsidised asylum in Portugal, under the protection of the Portuguese Jewish communities, was exceptional and often overshadowed other types of mobility among Jews in Portugal and North Africa during the Middle Ages. Sources testify to cases of individual Portuguese Jews being forced into exile by means of judicial sentences, with this often being the punishment applied in Ceuta, Ksar es-Seghir and Tangier. Individual mobility is further illustrated by the cases of José, goldsmith in Ceuta, and master Isaac Álvares, a physician from Tangier. Both individually and collectively, the mobility of Jews between Portugal and North Africa remained precarious for most of the Middle Ages and was always within the context of the Portuguese presence in forts, fortresses and towns in North Africa (Tavim 1997, 179-192).

8So who were the overseas Muslims and why were they so valuable to the sovereign? The Portuguese king was interested in sustaining the demographic recovery of the Islamic population in Portugal. He did so by seeking to attract those Muslims, and their descendants, who had previously emigrated from the kingdom after the Christian conquest fifty years previously. For those Muslims who had taken refuge in North Africa upon the Christian conquest, being allowed to return to Portugal and to the royal domains represented a repossession of their living spaces or that of their ancestors. For the monarch, in turn, these Muslims represented an asset for his domains, both in terms of population and tax revenues. Although the extent to which the goals of King Dinis’s repatriation policies were achieved cannot be assessed, the anthroponym “of Ceuta” (nisba “Cepti”, or Sebtī in Arabic) is found in documentation in the city of Évora between 1371 and 1497, classifying what would seem to constitute specific family structures with origins in Morocco.

10The punishment for failing to produce a permit authorising a move between Portugal and North Africa was the confiscation of property. The legal basis for such decisions relied on terminology of illegal mobility, with Muslims travelling to North Africa without permission being referred to as having “escaped” the kingdom. In the eyes of the authorities, “escaping” was a word that characterised the departure by Muslim subjects of the king of Portugal to the Islamic territories of the sultanate of Granada, to the “Land of Moors”, or Terra de Mouros, that is North Africa, and to the Christian Kingdom of Castile (Barros 2007, 161-166). The relationship between Portugal and Morocco intensified after the Portuguese occupation of Morocco, which began with the conquest of Ceuta in 1415. This conquest brought about an increased and diverse Muslim mobility. On the one hand, involuntary mobility increase because of Moroccan prisoners of war being transported to Iberian markets, where they were traded as slaves. Voluntary mobility, on the other hand, continued in two different forms: among Muslims who supported the Portuguese and moved within the Portuguese sphere of influence in North Africa and between North Africa and Portugal, and among Muslims who became transients in Portugal as part of their political and diplomatic role in negotiations between Morocco and Portugal.

14On 5 December 1496, King Manuel I (1495-1521) promulgated the edict of expulsion of religious minorities, thus mandating the expulsion of all Jews and Muslims from the kingdom. From then onwards, the social fabric of the kingdom irremediably changed, enforced by a totally encompassing concept of Catholic monarchy rooted in religious homogeneity. New social boundaries arose between communities, with the separation opposing Old Christians to New Christians (i.e. converted Jews and Muslims and their descendants). In the case of the Mouriscos, the concept mainly encompassed foreigners born in differing parts of the Portuguese Empire, but primarily Morocco, where conquest and the permanent state of war provided a large and continued contingent of captives. Ultimately, however, the Portuguese Muslims integrated or were assimilated, and thus faded away as a social category.

15We find traces of mobility from Morocco to Portugal among Jews twelve years after the expulsion of 1496. This was in 1508, when thirteen Jews were authorised to enter the kingdom, mainly for business or personal benefit or on behalf of others (including institutions). These men served as intermediaries between the lords of Morocco and the King of Portugal in commercial exchanges, and were sometimes appointed as rabbis. As well as these traders and rabbis, other Jews from Morocco travelled to Portugal to rescue captives, to act as proxies for other Jews or to participate in the intricacies of the sinuous diplomacy between the kingdoms of Morocco and Portugal. Under the pretext that they were people from North Africa, King Manuel I allowed their precarious stay in his kingdom after 1537, providing they had a distinctive red six-pointed star sewn onto their cape or pelisse (Leão 1987, 122).

16Mobility on the part of Portuguese New Christians, meanwhile, was more prolific, as they were attracted by Jewish visitors to the kingdom to depart for North Africa, or they leaved at their own initiative. New Christian mobility to Moroccan cities thus increased, with their hope being that, there, they would be able to become openly Jewish. This proved to be a long-lasting phenomenon, continuing well beyond the sixteenth century. By moving to North Africa they were able to integrate into existing Jewish communities living under the authority of the kings of Fez or the Saadian sheriffs, rather than forming a separate community of Portuguese Jews (Tavim 1997, ch. 1, 3 and 4; Tavim 2004, 84-117; Yerushalmi 1974, 1026-1049; Tavares 1986, 339-363). Similar mobility can be asserted for Muslims, with Moroccan Muslims travelling to Portugal mostly for political reasons. These included the Berber alcaide, Yahya-u-Ta’fuft, who travelled to Portugal for political negotiations on two occasions and who was appointed as the Portuguese representative for the region of Dukkala on returning to Morocco (Racine 2001, 67-90). Tribal leaders who acted as local alcaides in Morocco also travelled to Portugal for comparable political purposes (Racine 2001, 77).

20The majority of Jews from North Africa, however, were economically less fortunate. Many crossed the Mediterranean in search of adventure and a better life (Tavim 2013a, 620), while in some cases the reason for leaving the Islamic world was a difficult relationship with local institutions as a result of political disturbances (endemic violence and threats of civil war) or conflicts with local authorities. In 1669, for example, Martinho Mascarenhas, a Jew from Marrakesh, chose to be baptised in Mazagan (nowadays El-Jadida). Under his Jewish name of Jacob, he had exploited Azemmour’s new Islamic port for tax-farming purposes and quickly amassed a vast fortune. However, this economic success was followed by constant frictions and conflicts with local Islamic institutions that often criticised or challenged his rights as a tax farmer. At risk of losing both his life and his fortune, he therefore took the daring decision to be baptised in a Portuguese stronghold and thus acquire the protection of the Portuguese sovereign (Tavim 2008a, 355-356; Tavim 2013a, 625). A notable difference between the mobility of Mouriscos and that of North African Jews is that the relevant sources contain few references to converted Jewish women. Furthermore, Jewish women, just like Jewish men, never appear as slaves, contrary to their Muslim counterparts, who were often taken captive in warlike situations on land or at sea. Jewish women were also less mobile, with most of them remaining in their places of origin: indeed, in the same pattern of other women around the entire Mediterranean and Europe, as their social and family role limited more their mobility (Wiesner-Hanks 2019).

21The decision to migrate was thus mostly a male prerogative, with their gender seeming to have been better suited to severing links with their communities and families. Men migrated alone and, in a quest for upward social mobility, sought to marry Christian women. However, only women from marginal social strata – such as Moorish women, mulattos and those of questionable honour – ventured to marry these ethnically different men, whom some saw as offering them a certain way of life. Margarida Lopes, for example, married two ex-catechumens (i.e. converts) in secret, thus questioning the idea of family integration or upward social mobility through marriage. Historical records mention only two converted Jewish couples, namely João de Meneses (from Saleh) and his wife Maria (from Meknes), and António de Melo and his wife Maria (from Azemmour), who first converted to Islam before becoming Christians (Tavim 2013b, 68).

22The continued mobility and the often failed marital strategies of the converts meant they regularly faced challenges in securing income and integration (Tavim 2013a, 623-624), while the process of establishing and developing a stable community of converts was compromised by their mobility and lack of stable family bonds. As a result, celibacy became a discourse of self-praising, with this social positioning being preferred to that of a union with women from a social and religious universe that the men were not truly willing to enter. Some men, by contrast, developed discourses of justification by claiming that the “Law of Moses” defended marriages to gentiles, with this view being prolifically spread by Agostinho de Mendonça, a Jew from Fez (Tavim 2013a, 636-637). Meanwhile, the majority of Christian women distanced themselves from marriage to newly converted men. And even women of New Christian descent avoided these unions, not only because they doubted new converts’ religious sincerity, but also because such a union would cast doubt on their own religious orthodoxy. The ever-present shadow of the Inquisition further justified this refusal, with inquisitors specifically looking for these unions as a means of scrutinising the persistence of ethnos and of Jewish rituals (Tavim 2008a, 375).

24The community’s economic activities were centred in the port of Setúbal (Ribeira de Setúbal), where men and women worked according to their gender. Men took up tasks in the fishing fleets or unloading ships, while women prepared, salted and sold the catch. ‘Earning a living in the Ribeira’ was thus a transversal expression in the discourse of these Mouriscos and a defining topos in their labour and consequent social participation. The neighbourhood ties were also essential for the Mouriscos from Setúbal, who resided in the streets of the Judiaria, where the Jewish population had previously lived. These ties were strengthened and perpetuated by the residents sharing a common language, and were a binding element at work and at home, with Arabic predominating in communications both within the community and between individuals. According to inquisitorial records, and the witness reports of the Mouriscos themselves, “everyone spoke Arabic in Ribeira and in their homes and in the places where they met”. While, as the inquisitorial records attest, this daily use of Arabic did not prevent the community from mastering Portuguese, the communications in Arabic reveal the specific sociology of this group and its conscious differentiation from their Christian neighbours. By continuing to speak their original language, these individuals also created a community.

25The sense of a distinct community based on place of origin, labour specialisation, place of residence and use of a common language was supported by marriages that, in the first generation, were entered into only between members of the group. But although the second generation was able to marry outside the group and some Moorish women married Old Christian men, such a move often translated into their becoming detached, at least partially, from the community. Despite these marriages, therefore, the community was able to perpetuate its identity and sense of self by organising and maintaining collective commemorations to reinforce the sense of belonging. Death was a focal point of some of these commemorations, in which women participated massively by being in charge of crying for and publicly mourning the loss of the deceased ‘in the manner of their land’ and being responsible for collectively cooking couscous meals as offerings for the soul of the departed, accompanied by music and dancing. But while the Mourisco community of Setúbal is well documented, it was not unique. Instead, it stands as an example of many other urban communities of Mouriscos throughout the kingdom. What these communities shared was their common origins in Morocco, various assimilated allogeneic elements, a common language (Arabic for work and family life) and a desire to “create community”, as portrayed by public ceremonies and commemorations such as births, marriages and funerals.

2. Conversion and Social Ostracisation

27In practice, Jewish and Muslim catechumens served as tools of social, religious, and ideological affirmation for the powerful Company of Jesus and the Portuguese Crown to project themselves domestically and internationally and assert their power. However, the Jesuits and the sovereign were both aware that a quick catechisation, in a language that the groups did not master, could lead to deficient integration and ultimately social failure. After the private and public spectacle of baptism, therefore, the converts continued their religious education at the College for a further three months and at the Church of S. Roque for an extra year. After these periods of instruction, parish priests in the different neighbourhoods were responsible for supervising and surveying the individuals’ livelihood and Catholic sociability (Tavim 2009, 469-470).

28The majority of the converts, transformed into New Christians, continued living near the College, and with or close to the noble families that sponsored them. Former Muslims and Jews often worked in noble houses and, in the latter case, overwhelmingly in the direct immediacy of the king, and received wages paid by the royal treasury. Having become New Christians, converts were allowed to travel the kingdom, begging for alms, as they were seen as good causes to be contemplated by Christian charity. This internal mobility was encouraged because the visibility of the converts personified the intrinsic goodness of the religion and the good, Christian designs of the sovereign. In practice, however, religious and civil authorities used the newly baptised as a form of propaganda emphasising the Christian virtues of nobles and kings and, above all, the role of the Order of Jesus as one of the most important bolts in Catholic Reform (Tavim 2008b, 373-375; Tavim 2013a, 629-631).

29New Jewish converts in Portugal faced a dilemma not shared by the Moors, namely the existence of large numbers of New Christians of Jewish descent, whose forefathers had converted before or immediately after the general expulsions from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and 1496, respectively. Even though New Christians and new Jewish converts tried, at times, to connect, usually because the latter tried to keep secretly their Jewish life (and the Hebrew language), and sometimes the former wont to have access to that knowledge, social distancing and, at times, outright hostility dominated. As mentioned earlier, New Christians, like other Christians, doubted later converts’ sincerity. Furthermore, New Christians were not interested in being recognised as observant Jews, given the frequency of inquisitorial purges under the guise of controlling the “crime of Judaism”. At the same time, Jewish catechumens ignored or despised the New Christians because they did not observe all the Jewish rituals and, as observed by Martinho Mascarenhas, because they were neither Christian nor Jew and lived according to the Laws of Nature (Tavim 2008b, 375; Tavim 2013a, 624-626).

30The mutual withdrawal from the community both by New Christians and new Jewish converts had a significant impact on and long-term consequences for Jewish mobility. The fact that new converts were openly despised by the New Christians, whom they had once thought would support them because of their Jewish ancestry, positioned the group as defiantly against New Christians and, for that reason, the two groups rarely intermarried. This lack of cross-group family formation contributed significantly to the lack of immobility among new converts, who had to seek spouses further afield. The new converted João Baptista d’Este even targeted New Christians for their ambiguity, claiming that all of them remained in the heresy of Jewish practices in their private lives. He also counterposed this ambiguous behaviour by stating that converted Jews should replace the New Christians, thus bring a decades-long social and religious conflict to an end. In this context, d`Este publicly advanced pamphlets and missives addressed to the inquisitors, the pope and the king, petitioning for the expulsion on the grounds that they were unable to assimilate racially and, as such, should be treated as traitors (Tavim 2016 and 2018).

3. Intra-group Solidarity

31The sense of intra-group solidarity among Moroccan Jews was very strong, even though the majority came from a range of different communities, including those of Meknes, Fez, Tétouan and Marrakesh. In some cases, family ties stood at the core of this solidarity, which could take on dramatic proportions, as in the case of Diogo da Cunha and his cousin Fernando da Silva. Fernando was burned at the stake by the Inquisition, while Diogo starved himself to death to mimic the endurance and noble behaviour of his dear cousin when facing the Inquisition (Tavim 2013a, 629-631). As Diogo and Fernando originated from the same city, their family ties united them as much in life as in death. These family ties were further deepened by their use of both Arabic and Hebrew, and of what was likely a judeoespañol predecessor of haquetía, a mix of languages in which they continued to think and converse (Bunis 2015). Blood ties and oral and emotional languages were further reinforced by ethnic affiliations and behavioural ethics, thus forging a sense of religious belonging that had never been forgotten and that was continually exalted by being cemented in the function of creating a progressive distance to the theological principles and practices of Catholicism. This sedimentation of identity and belonging has often been understood as a “rejecting of polytheism”, justified by the rejection of the cult of the saints, of transubstantiation and of the virgin birth, all realities that seemed to critically oppose the strict and refined unitary principle of Jewish monotheism (Tavim 2013b, 74-75).

32This solidarity among Moroccan Jews was also fuelled by their refusing to accept the surrounding society in matters of ethnicity and by the fact that Portuguese elites, including the king himself, considered Moroccan Jews to be singular beings. However, such ties of solidarity cannot be seen as a synonym of community formation. The absence of women as binding elements of ethnicity in this group, in contrast to the case of the Mouriscos, was decisive in defining the impossibilities of community formation. Some Moroccan Jews consequently tried their luck elsewhere by extending their mobility beyond the Mediterranean and moving further afield in Europe. In the 1620s, for example, João dos Reis and Fernando da Silva, Jews from Marrakesh, became instructors in religion and language (Hebrew) for the Portuguese converts, at that moment openly Jewish, in Saint-Jean-de-Luz (France).

4. Sense of Inter-Group Solidarity

34Jews, converted Jews, Muslims (Mouros) and Mouriscos in Portugal were able to live more or less harmoniously. Particularly the converts, both Jews and Muslims, shared a common disgust for Christian society and Christianity in general, and a notion that they belonged to the same civilisational context (Morocco). This implied a vehement rejection of what they consider the Christian polytheism, and the intensive use of Arabic. Besides, converted Jews were culturally still associated with their former Muslim masters in Morocco, and they saw themselves as future leaders of their communities of origin. The sense of closeness between Mouriscos and converted Jews is clearly illustrated by the statements of Miguel de Noronha, a Mourisco. Miguel is said to have told some fellow Moroccans (Jews) that he firmly believed that the Jews had killed Jesus and, as such, should be praised for their deed. In this way, he transformed the Christian abomination and root of all antisemitism into praise for Jewish action (Tavim 2015a, 12; Tavim 2013b, 75).

5. Conclusion: Community Formation and Mobility

36Mobility and community building did not occur symmetrically among minorities of converts crossing the Mediterranean into early modern Portugal. While evidence for the Middle Ages shows Muslim mobility both to and from North Africa, the little information we have on the Jews does not reveal the same pattern. This medieval experience changed in the early modern period, when Portugal witnessed the emptying of medieval minority communities, a loss soon more or less compensated by the authorised and precarious mobility of Jews and Muslims moving to Portugal. This group was further broadened by the continual arrival of converts originating from Muslim and Jewish communities in Morocco, albeit in different circumstances. Muslim mobility to Portugal at this time was largely involuntary and forced, and mainly comprised slaves and captives of war, who, without any opportunity of rescue, ended up converting to Christianity and living in the homes of their masters, bound to servile professions. Meanwhile a smaller group, consisting of Moroccan princes and their courts, took up voluntary exile in Portugal to escape warfare and civil war in North Africa. Faced with increasingly diminished prospects of returning to their country of origin, many members of these courts saw conversion as a means for integration and recognition in the host society. Indeed, it was this group that inspired the Society of Jesus to design, develop and build the Colégio dos Catecúmenos in Lisbon.

37Contrary to that of their Muslim countrymen, Jewish mobility from North Africa to Portugal was always voluntary, although often determined by internal pressures in Morocco, such as involvement in the rescue of Christian captives. This placed these individuals relatively safely in the host society. However, the need to recover money lent to fund these rescues, which sometimes took a long time, demanded an easier and less disputed entry into Iberia, with conversion thus becoming an easy way to follow ransomed Christian captives and enforce payment of debts. Alongside their involvement as intermediaries in the ransoming of captives, a significant number of Jews were at odds with the Moroccan authorities. These problems often drove them away from the cities and their communities of origin and into seeking protection, through conversion under the auspices of the Portuguese kings. This voluntary mobility was strongly individualistic and resulted in nuclear and extended families, comprising mostly women and children, being abandoned in North Africa, and in a wish among such men to start afresh in Portugal.