The above video is not a well-known history.1 It is common knowledge that the Moors from North Africa conquered and ruled Spain and parts of Europe from 711 to 1492, or 781 years. The Berbers led the conquering, though the Arabs gained most of the control. The Moors built Universities, mosques, and other architectural feats that still stand today.
Legend tells us they were from Kemet. The Egyptian rulers had the Berbers travel worldwide, and their mighty empire spanned 10,000 years. The Berbers are Amazighs, not Arabs. From Morocco, during the battle of the Bagdoura in 740, they finished off the Umayyad in North Africa. All of the buildings in Andalusia were built by the Amazigh empires of Almohads, Almoravids, and Merinids.
According to the anthropologist Rober Sepehr, he writes that ‘The Moors were Berbers (Amazigh), the Native indigenous Caucasians of North Africa, which in actuality should be called the Southern Mediterranean.2
And from professor Kenneth Baxter Wolf, ‘The term comes from the Latin maurus, which in Roman times simply referred to the inhabitants of the province of Mauretania, that is, modern-day Algeria and Northeast Morocco, otherwise known as the Maghrib.’3
The 8th century ‘Latin sources from Spain were careful to distinguish between mauri and arabes,’ Moors and Arabs, but by the Middle Ages, the term Moor had already begun to replace Arab and the Berbers, ‘the indigenous peoples of the Moroccan highlands.’4
To set that answer in context, we can look at when and where the Portuguese first conquered elsewhere after their successful battles against Arabs and Berbers in Portugal. That was in Africa from the onset of the ‘Henrican age of Portuguese discoveries’ that started with Dom Henry in Porto.
Before the erasure was the conflation
To learn more about how the use of the term Moors came about, I will first consider the travelogues two Portuguese explorers wrote. The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires is an account of his travels to the East, from the Red Sea to Japan, written in Malacca and India in 1512-1515. The book of Francisco Rodrigues, of a voyage in the Red Sea, nautical rules, almanac, and maps, was written and drawn in the East before 1515.5
These two texts present a picture of the Moors in Africa and India (A later Part in this Series will cover Bengal and Calcutta, with the Dutch and British replacing the Portuguese). Pires first notes that the ability to navigate the seas was due to the knowledge of the Moors, who were ‘active on the seas capturing and losing cities.’6
‘I have learnt this from Moors, from their charts, which I have seen many times, and if their charts are not to be trusted, let it be clear that this should be for reading and not for navigation.’7
This also applies to ‘Prince Henry the Navigator’ of the Knights Templar successor, the Military Order of Christ.8 Not only were these Europeans initiated into Masonic rituals, but they also learned navigation from them. The map, which included longitude and latitude, was not discovered by Europeans. The Moors taught them this.9
‘They are not heathens’ and Mecca is ‘a place of pilgrimage for the Moors.’ 10
So they are Muslim, Mughals, the narrative and practically all the history books claim. Not so fast. Why this rush of recency bias to conflate the Moors into a catch-all Muslim category? Is the same done with Christians?
No, for example, the Armenians are not reduced and stripped of their culture entirely in their suffering genocide. That would be a sin of omission or erasure, so let's not rush to conflation and instead learn more of what these 1500s authors say about the Moors.
We learned that Moors is an a synonym of Berbers’, ‘formerly used by the Portuguese to designate Moorish tribes in North Africa,’ and Arabs in Europe. And thereafter, the term was extended to Africa and ‘applied in the East to any band of Moors either belonging to one or more families or simply living together.’11 So why are all Moors today and in history of darker shades of skin?
The historian Kenneth Baxter writes that ‘People found themselves ‘Mooricized’ by the Portuguese sea-captains… that is, the West Africans, about whom the Portuguese were entirely ignorant, were made eminently familiar by being conflated with those ‘Moors’ who the Portuguese nobility ‘knew all too well.’12
In their worldview, the Portuguese viewed their battle against Islam as righteous and conflated all enemies as a means of justification to ‘make sense of their actions.’13 ‘The Portuguese had come to Africa to demonstrate their valor; for lack of an obliging human opponent, they would vent their frustrations on the unfortunate animals.’14 Their enslavement activities were regarded as an ‘extension of the crusade against Islam.’15
To further document the events of the 1440s in Africa, I will turn to the Portuguese Cronica dos feitos de Guine compiled by Zurara.16 Slaving was commercial by this point, and Zurara referred to Africans as “Mouros” or Moor.17 ‘After 711 the term ‘Moor’ was saddled with religious connotations’ that stemmed from the fact that Moroccans and Arabs, who came to Spain as conquerors and immigrants, were followers of Mohammad. And then, as shown above, ‘sub-Saharan blacks among the slave population’ of the Berbers were included, as ‘the category of ‘Moor’ was stretched to accommodate ‘black Moors.’18
The religious conflation gave way to commercial interests that took over warfare to justify ‘slavery as a function of biology.’ Their encounter with ‘bestial’ and ‘barbaric’ and ‘poorly clothed’ and ‘non-Arabic-speaking, and pagan’ into a preexisting category that had meaning for them: ‘Moors.’’19
To summarize, the conflation of the term ‘Moor’ went from noting an ethnic difference to a geographical and common religion to all those being conquered and enslaved by the Portuguese. ‘The Elasticity of the category “Moor” is impressive,’ concluded Wolf. It not only deprived ‘these peoples of any cultural distinctiveness’ but also ‘created a context for Portuguese aggression’ in general that would extend past Africa: ‘a blueprint for action.’20
That is, ‘in so far as these peoples were regarded as Moors in some general sense, they found themselves being treated as Moors in a very specific sense: as an enemy to be fought, captured, and sold into slavery.’ Even when the concept of ‘natural slavery’ was adopted, it is ‘as a subcategory of the enslavement of Moorish prisoners of war.21
Goa and the Moors
In India, the Portuguese first encountered the Moors in Goa, which was ‘their capital’ and ‘was taken’ by the Portuguese in 1510. The Viceroy Arch Goa depicts this conquering. On one side of the arch is Vasco de Gama. On the other side, it depicts St. Catherine standing atop a Moor with a sword in one hand and a book in the other hand.
Those who remained in support of the Moor regime were slaughtered, but the genocide continued for another fifteen years. Even the wealthy Moors, who were more concerned with commerce than valor and profited from the ports, were eventually killed.
The Portuguese travelers tell of ‘Mamale, an important Moorish merchant in Malabar’ who remained hostile to the Portuguese. ‘Eventually, his hands were cut off and he was hanged on the wall of the Portuguese fortress of Cannonore in January 1525.’22
The Portuguese were ruthless in their conquest of Goa and the Moors. From Goa, the Moors had ‘a large number of ships used to sail to many different places.’ Their ‘Goanese ships were esteemed and favoured everywhere.’ Goa was ‘the capital’ of the Moor Kingdom in these parts. From India, the merchandise of the Moors ‘comes from Venice in Italy’ and to and from ‘Alexandria’ and ‘from Cairo it comes in caravans with many armed people.’23 It was militarily strategic because the Moors could gather armadas there in the space of a year, which ‘they could not get in Suez in twenty.’24
The Portuguese took the ships and brought cargo to other ports with them. It was a complete ‘rout.’ But there were still many Moors elsewhere, ‘there are Moors of all nations,’ and elsewhere in India. ‘Just as the Moors used to go conquering kingdoms, they are now losing them, and a kingdom without ports is a house without portals.’ They concluded, ‘Let no one in India count on the Moors now.’25
To distinguish themselves from the Old World Masons, they became Free Masons. As the name implies, they were no longer indentured servants to the Moors; they were free. They also began the concept of Free Trade as a takings mechanism. Capitalism’s inception was right alongside the change of nomenclature. No longer slaves learning from their Arab and Berber masters, colonialists were now Free Masons capturing Free Trade from the former Moor Masters.
Further he writes: “While it is true that they sold sub-Saharan African slaves, and still do today for between $200-$500, they were not black.” One of the things I plan on doing in Africa is visiting the last Moors. Here’s another perspective that the Berbers (which is akin to Barbaria or Barbarians) means wild one’s or those from the hills, were white due to having black slaveholders that brought white-skinned women from Europe.
https://twitter.com/robertsepehr/status/1783544772743057445
Kenneth Baxter Wolf, The “Moors’ of West Africa and the beginnings of the African slave trade, Journal of Mideaval & Reinnasanice Studies 24, no. 3, (Fall, 1994), 458.
Ibid, 469.
The Suma Oriental of Tome Fires and the Book of Francisco Rodrigues. Second Series. No. LXXXIX, 1944.
Ibid, 16.
Ibid, 1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Henry_the_Navigator
These are articles on the web about the Moors and their erased history. Much of it is unsourced but worthy of being aware of:
Dr Phil Valentine Hidden Colors 1: The Untold History Of People Of Aboriginal, Moor and African Descent
https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1383077691878244
Of Moors and Masons:
Moors and Masonry:
The Masons and the Moors By Mehmet Sabeheddin in New Dawn Magazine: https://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/secret-history/the-masons-and-the-moors
Michelle Gibson: Tartaria, The Moors, The Old World Order, & The Mudflood Reset:
The Moors and Early Europe Dr BOOKER T COLEMAN:
https://salda.ws/video.php?id=8FQ4sd24Sqw
A Survey of Moorish History Part One | Booker T Coleman:
https://salda.ws/video.php?id=neUTQbHiUm4
The Moors in Europe, Slavery and Economics and the Caribbean Dr Edward Scobie:
https://salda.ws/video.php?id=1GiDhFnVmo4
Other links:
https://clockofdestiny.com/moorish-history/
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x35xe4i
https://salda.ws/video.php?id=-HMx0K2E8i8
The Suma Oriental of Tome Fires and the Book of Francisco Rodrigues. Second Series. No. LXXXIX, 1944, 8, 31.
Ibid, 14.
Kenneth Baxter Wolf, The “Moors’ of West Africa and the beginnings of the African slave trade, Journal of Mideaval & Reinnasanice Studies 24, no. 3, (Fall, 1994), 455.
Ibid, 449.
Ibid, 457.
Ibid, 469.
Ibid, footnote 10, 452.
Ibid, 458.
Ibid, 469.
Ibid, 465.
Ibid, 468.
Ibid, 468.
The Suma Oriental of Tome Fires and the Book of Francisco Rodrigues. Second Series. No. LXXXIX, 1944, 77-78.
Ibid, 12.
Ibid, 56, 60.
The Genocide and Erasure of the Moors began with Conflation