Moors
The Moors were the Muslims who lived in the Maghreb and on the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and parts of Southern France in the Middle Ages. In Europe, the word was often used for indigenous European people whose ancestors were converted to Islam, although Islam was not actually documented until 700 A.D.
In 750 A.D. the Umayyad Dynasty was defeated in Syria. Many refugees came to what is now Spain and Portugal. They had a very big influence on the culture of these countries.
Umayyad Muslims were the ones who captured and named Al-Andalus, which means land of the Vandals. The majority of Moors in Iberia were native European populations who converted to Islam due to the Arab conquests of the peninsula. These Moors were forcefully converted to Catholicism after the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula in completion of the period popularly known as the Reconquista.
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Moors Media
Depiction of Muslim army in Iberia, from The Cantigas de Santa Maria
Illustration of Muslim musician (left) alongside a Christian musician (right) in a codice of the 13th-century Cantigas de Santa Maria
Christian and Moor playing chess, from The Book of Games of Alfonso X, c. 1285
Moros y Cristianos festival in Oliva.
Coat of arms of Aragon with Moors' heads.
Arms of the wealthy Bristol merchant and shipper William II Canynges (d.1474), as depicted on his canopied tomb in St Mary Redcliffe Church, showing the couped heads of three Moors wreathed at the temples
