After more than five centuries, Muslims of Al-Andalus (now Spain) still mark every year in anguish the mass exodus of their ancestors by Spanish authorities to North Africa. The Moriscos, the name given to Muslims who were living in Spain after the fall of the last Muslim stronghold of Granada in 1492, were subjected to an array of persecution, torture, mass killings, forced conversions to Christianity, the notorious Spanish Inquisition and mass exodus that started in February 1502. Today, up to four million Morsicos's descendants in Morocco, who are concentrated in cities like Tangier, Fes, Marrakesh and Rabat, mark every year the fall of Granada and Al-Andalus, which was regained in 1492 by Spanish troops in the long process known as the Reconquista under the Catholic monarchs Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon. The descendants, many of whom still have Spanish surnames, mark the anniversary with symposiums, Andalusian music and shows portraying the sufferings of their ancestors. The northern city of Shafshoun, which was built by the Moriscos when they were forced to flee to Morocco, still have the Moriscan aura with its Andalusian architecture and traditional Moriscan costumes.
| I was born in a place called McCarr, in Pike County, Kentucky. It's not there anymore. The Tug River flooded in, I think, 1973, and washed it away. Gone. Kaput. I haven't held any seminars on it, and on the rare occasions when I go to visit my long-lost kinfolk, I go where they're living now. And that was only 30 years ago. I guess I'm not sensitive enough to be a Moose limb. |