Managing Disaster: Networks of the Moriscos During the Process of the Expulsion From the Iberian Peninsula Around 1609

In 1609 the Spanish authorities promulgated the fi rst of a series of edicts ordering the expulsion of the Moriscos, descendants of the Muslim populations living in the Iberian kingdoms, which had been converted under duress between 1499 (Granada) and 1526 (Aragon). 1 Since the great majority of these nuevos convertidos de moros , as they began to be called after the forced conversions, never truly converted to Catholicism but only outwardly professed to be Christians and hence remained Muslim in secret, their existence increasingly came to be seen as a political and religious problem by both the Spanish Church and the state. This problem was eventually solved by the decision to expel these false converts from Spain. How did the Moriscos try to manage this disaster, and how did they prepare themselves around 1609 to start new lives abroad? In a recent article, Luis Fernando Bernabé Pons argues that Castilian and especially Granadan Moriscos, who made use of Morisco networks that came into being in France during the years of the expulsion, were able to act as guides for their community during their transfer from the Iberian Peninsula until the establishment of the Moriscos in Tunis, one of the primary places, next to Morocco, Algiers, and the Ottoman Empire, in which many eventually settled. 2 However, in order to explain the migration patterns of the Moriscos around 1609, which are still poorly understood as Bernabé Pons rightly argues, we need to consider the evidence concerning Morisco networks from different regions, with regard to the migration not only to Tunis but to many other places as well. 3 In the present article I will discuss a number of archival sources and other documents that shed light on the relations of prominent Moriscos