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Question about the Moors who ruled Iberia.
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    Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 18:53
 
Originally posted by viola76

i remember you as kawaskar or something
 
im not really interested what modern peoples opinions. i want to know evidence on what moors were described as when they were living in the same periods. so
 
"before we go on any further with this discussion what is acceptable FORMS of evidence we can both use to prove our points."
My point was that I'm sure a contemporary poem by a well-known poet is evidence of how Spaniards viewed 'moros'.
 
It's difficult to see how they could have been seen as black if they had 'crystal breasts' and their skin under their robes was described as 'alabaster'.
 
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Posts: 92 		  Quote viola76 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 19:33

silius italicus-describes maures nigra/black

corripus-describes their faces as facies nigroque colourus and their blacness as horrifying
 
procopius-says the moors were a people composed of a number of "black skinned tribes" who gained control of north africa after the period of the vandals
 
there is loads of other  historians and poets who describe them as black skinned.
also gcle look up the meaning of
 
moors
maure
 
 
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 19:44
Originally posted by viola76

silius italicus-describes maures nigra/black

corripus-describes their faces as facies nigroque colourus and their blacness as horrifying
 
procopius-says the moors were a people composed of a number of "black skinned tribes" who gained control of north africa after the period of the vandals
 
there is loads of other  historians and poets who describe them as black skinned.
also gcle look up the meaning of
 
moors
maure
 
 
 
Stop reading Afrocentric fantasies, please.
 
Otherwise I don't know what sense it has to argue with you about anything.
 
Moors are just the people Spaniards call Moors. And they are not Blacks, I tell you, but Moors.
 
 
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Posts: 7035 		  Quote gcle2003 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 20:29
Originally posted by viola76

silius italicus-describes maures nigra/black

corripus-describes their faces as facies nigroque colourus and their blacness as horrifying
 
procopius-says the moors were a people composed of a number of "black skinned tribes" who gained control of north africa after the period of the vandals
 
there is loads of other  historians and poets who describe them as black skinned.
also gcle look up the meaning of
 
moors
maure
  
 
This thread refers to the "Moors who ruled Iberia". How the Romans or Byzantines used the word is irrelevant. There's no reason to suppose they were talking about the same people, and, indeed, lots of reason to suppose they were different, many of which have been put forward in this thread.
 
In addition, people frequently in the past, in England and elsewhere, used 'black' to refer to people of dark - by their standards - skins, hair and eyes. Notably Shakespeare in the sonnets. But no-one ever referred to someone with black skin having 'crystal breasts' or 'alabaster flesh'.
 
The Spanish speakers here have confirmed than 'moro' in modern Spanish doesn't mean black, and the Villasandrino quote (I could probably find more) demonstrates that it did not mean 'black' circa 1400 AD, when the "Moors" still ruled much of Iberia.
 
PS Off topic, but pinguin, calvo, catalan and others might be amused by this one http://www.cleverley.org/translations/spanish/anon_inlondon.html
 


Edited by gcle2003 - 16-Jan-2008 at 20:35
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 20:41
Originally posted by viola76

i remember you as kawaskar or something
 
im not really interested what modern peoples opinions. i want to know evidence on what moors were described as when they were living in the same periods. so
... 
are you going to answer this, if you dont answer this direct question ill assume you are gonna troll so you may as well not reply.
 
 
Spanish opinion counts. The "secret" of the Moors you are looking for is hardwired in the Spanish language.
 
Realize this. Spain is a country with a foot in Europe and another foot with the Semitic world. Jews, Carthagians, Phoenicians, Palestineans, Sirians, Tunicians are very much PART of the history of Spain as the Celts, Gauls and Germans as well. The moors is just a generic term that covers all MEDITERRANEAN peoples of Islamic faith and particularly the people of the Maghreb just across the Gibraltar strait.
 
"Moro" also mean light brown and Morrocian. It never ment to mean Subsharan Africans. The later are called "Negros" in Spanish and not Moors.
 
There is nothing to argue about. That fact is part of the Spanish official DICTIONARY, whose definition you can find in here. Notice that only Cubans (not Spaniards) use a definition of Moro that you would like:
 

moro, ra.

(Del lat. Maurus).

1. adj. Natural del frica septentrional frontera a Espaa. U. t. c. s.

2. adj. Perteneciente o relativo a esta parte de frica.

3. adj. Que profesa la religin islmica. U. t. c. s.

4. adj. Se dice del musulmn que habit en Espaa desde el siglo VIII hasta el XV. U. t. c. s.

5. adj. Perteneciente o relativo a la Espaa musulmana de aquel tiempo.

6. adj. Se dice del musulmn de Mindanao y de otras islas de Malasia. U. m. c. s.

7. adj. Dicho de un caballo o de una yegua: De pelo negro con una estrella o mancha blanca en la frente y calzado de una o dos extremidades.

8. adj. coloq. Dicho del vino: Que no est aguado, en contraposicin al bautizado o aguado.

9. adj. coloq. Dicho de una persona, especialmente un nio: Que no ha sido bautizado.

10. adj. Cuba. Dicho de una persona mulata: De tez oscura, cabello negro lacio y facciones finas.

11. m. trigo moro.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 21:15
Originally posted by gcle2003

One medieval Spaniard at least had nothing against Moors, and, en passant, thought of them as white:
 
Originally posted by de Villasandino (my translation)

Quien de linda se enamora,
atender deve perdn
en casso que sea mora.

El amor e la ventura
me fizieron ir mirar
muy graciosa criatura
de linaje de Aguar;
quien fablare verdat pura,
bien puede dezir que non
tiene talle de pastora.

Linda rosa muy suave
vi plantada en un vergel,
puesta so secreta llave
de la linea de Ysmael:
maguer dea cossa grave,
con todo mi coran
la rescibo por seora.

Mahomad el atrevido
orden que fuese tal,
de asseo noble, complido,
alvos pechos de cristal:
de alabasto muy broido
devi ser con grant razn
lo que cubre su alcandora.

Dile tanto fermasura
que lo non puedo dezir;
cuantos miran su figura
todos la aman servir.
Con lindeza e apostura
vence a todos cuantos son
de alcua, donde mora.

Non s ombre tan guardado
que viese su resplandor,
que non fuesse conquistado
en un punto de su amor.
Por aver tal gasajado
yo pornia en condicin
la mi alma pecadora.
He who loves a pretty girl
must seek his absolution
if she be a Moor.

It was love and happy chance
conjoined took me to see
a most delicious creature
who comes from Hagar's line;
anyone who tells the truth
would say that she is not
shaped like a shepherdess.

A lovely rose I saw
among the apple-trees,
locked away in secret
by the men of Ishmael's race.
I know the matter's grave,
but yet with all my heart
I take her for my lady.

Mohammed the fearless one
ordained that she should be
noble in beauty, perfect,
with white and crystal breasts;
of polished alabaster
most certainly must be
all that her garment hides.

He gave her so much beauty
no words of mine can tell it;
who gazes on her face
must only live to serve her.
In sweetness and in form
she is the very summit
of all the Moorish race.

No man there is so cautious
that he cannot see her splendour
and not be straightway conquered
in that moment by her charm.
To gain so fair a gift,
I confess I'd put in peril
my soul, my sinning soul.
 
 
 
I got the scansion, but couldn't make it rhyme, though I usually try to. But it's so much easier in Spanish.
(I also couldn't get the lines alongside each other.)
 
The poem makes the point quite clear:
 
(1) en casso que sea mora (If she is a moor)
 
(2) de la linea de Ysmael (of Ishmael's race)
 
(3) alvos pechos de cristal:
de alabasto muy broido
 
(with white and crystal breasts;
of polished alabaster)
 
It is clear there the poem is talking about Arabs and Muslims, and also of people with white skin. Those are the Moors of Middle Ages' Spain.
 
The language is Middle Ages' Castillian Spanish which, by the way, sound almost exactly to today's Ladino, the language of the Spanish Jews.
 
 
 
 
 
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Posts: 612 		  Quote drgonzaga Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 21:43
Thank you Viola for repeating the racist information maintained by a White Supremacist web site interested in protecting the brave from "mongrelization". Here is their manipulation of information:
 
 
Not to imply there does not exist similar frummery from another racist web site with different ends but still intent on pushing an agenda:
 
 
Now, the unwary can fall for this pseudo-historical flummery but someone familiar with the actual primary sources will call the tactic purposeful misreading and alteration of the texts. Now we will not go into the penchant of translators to alter the term Mauri as found in Procopius into "Moors" [but any reading of De Bello Vandalico or the De Belli Lybicis of Flavius Corippus permits one to distinguish between the fancies of artistic license and a rather poor handling of old Roman geographic terminology], and it should be sufficient to assert that the Romans themselves understood the ethnic differences between Carthaginians, Numidians and Mauritanians. Numismatic evidence should suffice:
 
See the coin of Jugurtha--king of Numidia.
 
Not that such prevents certain people from devising false etymologies and verbal cartwheels over the term Maurusii employed by Strabo in delineating the Greek term for the land and peoples beyond Carthage to which he appends "known by the Romans and the natives as Mauritanii" as well as the "largest of the tribes of Africa, the Gaetuli" (Geographia, XVII.3:11). Which brings me to the excise from Procopius who when speaking of Ortaias and those he "ruled" has the passage "but beyond the desert there are men not dark-skinned liked the Mauretanii but very white in body and very faired hair." (Belli, IV.13:29). Care has to be exercised when approaching these texts.


Edited by drgonzaga - 17-Jan-2008 at 22:49
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Posts: 846 		  Quote calvo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Jan-2008 at 08:01
In Spanish the term "Moro" refers more to religion than to physical appearance or ethnic origin.
 
When the Spaniards landed on the Philipines, the local Muslims were coloquially referred to as "Moros", despite that they were natives who had converted to Islamic faith with no blood ties to North Africa.
 
For the common uneducated Spaniard, any Muslim is a "Moro" (with a degrading meaning), just as to the common uneducated Briton, any South Asian is a "Paki".
You could be Iranian, Iraqui, Siria, Egyptian, Bosnian, or Muslim Indian..., but if you are a Muslim you are a "Moro".
In the middle ages, it could be only logical to assume that the bulk majority of Moors in Spain were descended from native converts, because the number of migrants for the Middle East and North Africa were surely a minority compared to the local population; and Muslims had at one point made up more than half the population of Al-Andalus.
Nevertheless, as long as they were Muslims, they were "Moros", regardless of whether they were Arabs, Berbers, or local converts.
 
To the more educated Spaniard, a Moro is Muslim from North Africa (West of Lybia). Muslims from the Middle East are called "Arabs", and Iranians are Persians. The funny thing is that I haven't heard many people refer to Egyptians as "Moros", they are mostly considered as "Arabs", like those from the Peninsula.
 
....
 
Changing the subject slightly..., I've often wondered that if the inquisition never occured and Spanish Muslim survived to the present day, what type of culture would they have developed? Would they eventually become indistinguishable to other Europeans in everyday customs except that they worship Allah and speak Arabic, like for example, the Bosnian and Albanian Muslims?
 
Even in the 14th century, after prolonged contact with Christian peoples, Spanish Muslims have adopted numerous non-Muslim customs such as painting human figures.
The Moriscos expelled to North Africa in the 17th century also maintained a separated cultural identity to those of the natives. They were general more liberal in outlook with a more cosmopolitan mentality.
 
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Posts: 7035 		  Quote gcle2003 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Jan-2008 at 11:23
 
Originally posted by drgonzaga

 
Not that such prevents certain people from devising false etymologies and verbal cartwheels over the term Maurusii employed by Strabo in delineating the Greek term for the land and peoples beyond Carthage to which he appends "known by the Romans and the natives as Mauritanii" as well as the "largest of the tribes of Africa, the Gaetuli" (Geographia, XVII.3:11). Which brings me to the excise from Procopius who when speaking of Ortaias and those he "ruled" has the passage "but beyond the desert there are men not dark-skinned liked the Mauretanii but very white in body and very faired hair." (Belli, III.13:29). Care has to be exercised when approaching these texts.
 
What, incidentally, is the Latin translated here as 'dark-skinned'?
 
But anyway, what the Greeks or Romans or Byzantines called anyone is irrelevant to the thread, though it might I suppose be relevant to a thread about the etymology of the term.
 
We're concerned here with the "Moors who ruled Iberia" and they weren't who the Romans knew as Mauritanii.
 
And ncidentally I don't think anyone is being racist here, so why bring it up?
 
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Posts: 612 		  Quote drgonzaga Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Jan-2008 at 14:38

The matter was introduced gratuitously in terms of the peculiarisms attributed to late Latin authors. Besides, if one wishes to keep to a time line peculiar to Spain itself in the period AD 711-1260, then a solid rebuttal has long been on-line.
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Posts: 246 		  Quote Tyranos Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Jan-2008 at 20:18
Nero means black, Schwarzenegger means black, hey I guess Halfdan the Black was a negroid too?! Using the ancient historical color(mainly hair color description) terms too literately is something a lot've ignorant people do, often repeating old stuff from racial-Nationalist sites, usually the generic Nordicist or Afrocentrist sites, which so often often feed eachother.

No Anthropologist considered East Africans, White. Many  just knew they were mixed to varying degrees with Caucasoids. Which has been backed up with genetics along with solid history.


Pure Berbers rarely mix with the low caste Negroes(often they're used as slaves still today), the Riffians are the fairest of the Berbers.

"Wherever or however they live, the Berbers refuse to mate with Negroid lower classes, but human nature being what it is, there evidently has been a certain amount of mixture. In Morocco, the most Caucasoid tribes are those of the Rif and Middle Atlas, in Algeria they are the Kabyles and the Shwia; and in Libya, the sedentary tribesmen of Jebel Nefusa. In certain regions the trickle of mixture with Africans has been balanced by the absorption of Arabs, not so much tribe by tribe but through the establishment of saintly families derived from the earlier of two main Arab invasions." Prof. Coon, THE LIVING RACES OF MAN.



Edited by Tyranos - 17-Jan-2008 at 20:20
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Posts: 1900 		  Quote Chilbudios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Jan-2008 at 21:02
What, incidentally, is the Latin translated here as 'dark-skinned'?
I assume you mean Greek, because Procopius wrote in Greek (though the reference is IV.13:29, in case you have searched for that passage you couldn't find it). The term he uses is "melanochrooi" (to my understanding literally it means dark-skinned)
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Posts: 178 		  Quote Cataln Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Jan-2008 at 21:30
I'm guessing that the meaning of the 'modern' term of Moro has largely been influence by Spanish operations in Morocco between 1907 and 1927, and the North African immigration into Spain since 1975.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Jan-2008 at 22:34
Hardly. That's the same concept that exists in South America from centuries.
A Moor is a moreno, muslim or Moroccan, with a very defined aspect.
In the British world a Moor is a Black, in Spain and Latin America it is a Maghrebian. That's the difference.
 
 
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Posts: 612 		  Quote drgonzaga Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Jan-2008 at 22:46
Hey, Chili, thanks for catching the the blooper in passage citation of the 8 books on the Wars. I had prepared an elaborate explanation on the Greek and how out of character melanochroi appears given the habit of Procopius to replicate the stilted style of classic Attica. But, the little essay got keyed into the ether as I hit the wrong command. The term is in Book 4 rather than 3, and the gist of the explanation touched upon how the translations on the Internet all derive from Dewing's 1916 work and how he translated the form of melanos into black rather than its proper dark. The original edition is on-line in facsimile (Greek-English) here:
 
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Jan-2008 at 23:05
A Mora (Moorish girl), Morena (light brown with dark eyes and hair), Moroccian, according to the parameters of the Hispanic speaking world.
 
(Isn't she pretty?)


Edited by pinguin - 17-Jan-2008 at 23:24
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Jan-2008 at 23:14
Another "Moras" (Morish women)
 
By the way, Hispanics of the Americas feel close to Moors because most have ancestors from Spain and between them there were both European and Moor looking. As the matter of fact, most of the women in the pictures of this post and above could easily pass as Chileans or Argentineans LOL
 
 


Edited by pinguin - 17-Jan-2008 at 23:25
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Posts: 92 		  Quote viola76 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18-Jan-2008 at 05:41
1.im not going to even bother answering il just provide information people who are after truth will hopefully look at.
 
heres a peer reviwed study people might find interesting. you can download it.
 
Human Mitochondrial DNA Diversity in an Archaeological Site in al-Andalus: Genetic Impact of Migrations from North Africa in Medieval Spain
by Casas, Hagelberg, Fregel, and Gonzalez
American Journal of Physical Anthropology (2006)
 
2.dragonzaga heres more on numidia.
 

Juba II King of Numidia
Son of Juba I, his mother is unknown.

52-23 B.C.



Juba II of Numidia, Africa was brought to Rome by Julius Caesar and took part in Caesars triumphal procession. In Rome, he learned Latin and Greek, became romanized and was granted Roman citizenship. Through dedication to his studies, he is said to have become one of Rome's best educated citizens, and by the age of 20 he wrote one his first works entitled Roman Archaeology. He was raised by Julius Caesar and later by his great-nephew Octavius (future Emperor Caesar Augustus). Juba II while growing up, accompanied Octavius on military campaigns, gaining valuable experience as a leader. He fought alongside Octavius in the battle of Actium in 31 BC. Throughout the years, Juba II and Octavius would become life long friends.

Augustus restored Juba II as the king of Numidia between 29 BC-27 BC. Juba II established Numidia as an ally of Rome. Juba II would become one of the most loyal client kings that served Rome. Between 26 BC-20 BC, Augustus arranged for him to marry Cleopatra Selene II (daughter to Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and Roman Mark Antony), giving her a large dowry and appointing her queen of Numidia.

Numidia was an ancient Berber kingdom in North Africa that later alternated between a Roman province and a Roman client state, and is no longer in existence today.
3.catalan you are right the spanish meaning now is a modern one.
 
4.look up. ibn husayn description.
 
Even long before the Crusades, on April 30 in 711, at the invitation of the sons of the late Visigoth King Wittiza, the Umayyad General Tarikh ibn Ziyad (el Moro) led 7000 troops into what was to became Spain and Portugal. His troops consisted of 300 Arabs and 6,700 native Africans. Ibn Husayn (ca. 950) recorded that these troops were "Sudanese", the Arabic word for Black people. The banner of the Maure, the negro head blindfolded on a white background became associated with Tarik's African armies.
5.also moors since the romans to medival europe t0 the 1900s were always described and painted as black people. look  up st maurice and moors on wikipedia.
 
6.look up the moorish almoravid dynastys in spain
 
7.pinguin these spanish looking moors you keep on talking about and showing pics were generally called SARACENS.
 
8.here is an interesting debate with pinguin a.k.a KAWASHKAR please read all of it.
 
 
 
 
VIOLA76 regards

 
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Posts: 7035 		  Quote gcle2003 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18-Jan-2008 at 11:30
 
Originally posted by Chilbudios

What, incidentally, is the Latin translated here as 'dark-skinned'?
I assume you mean Greek,
Yes, wrong of me Embarrassed. I'd been careful to include 'Byzantine' before.
 
because Procopius wrote in Greek (though the reference is IV.13:29, in case you have searched for that passage you couldn't find it). The term he uses is "melanochrooi" (to my understanding literally it means dark-skinned)
Searching for references (both "melanochrooi" and "melanochroi" appear) seems to confirm my first take that the word literally means "black (or dark) coloured" (as in melanoma and chromatic). It doesn't refer to skin explicitly.
 
The online dictionaries covering ancient Greek I know of give both "black" and "dark" for "melas".
and
 
In modern usage it seems to be used as referring to a subdivision of Indo-Europeans, e.g. http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?melanochroi
or google on the word.


Edited by gcle2003 - 18-Jan-2008 at 11:45
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Posts: 7035 		  Quote gcle2003 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18-Jan-2008 at 11:48
Originally posted by drgonzaga

The matter was introduced gratuitously in terms of the peculiarisms attributed to late Latin authors.

Seems reasonable. Wrong, but reasonable. I don't see any sign of racism in misreading a Latin or Greek text.
Besides, if one wishes to keep to a time line peculiar to Spain itself in the period AD 711-1260, then a solid rebuttal has long been on-line.
 
Well, that's been my position (and Calvo's and Catalan's and Pinguin's) all along. I don't think it's racist to deny the Moors were black Africans either.
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