Muladí

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Muladíes ( sg : muladí) were a population group that made up the majority of the population of the Muslim-ruled Al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages .

The Spanish name muladí is derived from the Arabic word muwallad ( pl :مولدون / muwalladūn ). In its basic meaning, muwallad denotes a person with parents of different origins, in particular the descendants of an Arab and a non-Arab parent who grew up among Arabs and was brought up in the Arab-Islamic culture. In Islamic history, Muwalladūn in a broader sense denotes non-Arab new Muslims , i.e. H. the descendants of converts .

On the Iberian Peninsula, parts of the indigenous, until then Christian population, including numerous noble families, converted to Islam in the 8th and 9th centuries . In the 10th century, however, there was a massive increase in this population, so that by the end of this century Muladíes made up the majority of the population in Al-Andalus. It can be assumed that, in contrast to the earlier conversions to Islam, these were largely not conscious conversions. The reason for this can be found in Islamic law . If a child is born and this is not explicitly identified as “Christian” or “Jewish”, such a child automatically receives the status “Muslim”. Since after the massive emigration of Christian clergy in the 9th century, baptisms were hardly officially carried out, especially in rural areas due to a lack of priests, children could not be registered as Christians and thus automatically became Muslim.

The Arabization of the Muladíes and their intermingling with immigrant Arabs and Berbers led to the homogenization of the various Muslim population groups in the 11th and 12th centuries , so that they merged into a largely uniform population called Andalusiyūn ("Andalusians").

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  1. ↑ Mikel de Epalza: Mozarabs: An emblematic christian minority in islamic al-Andalus. In: Manuela Marín (ed.): The formation of al-Andalus. Part I: History and societies. Aldershot 1998, pp. 149-170.

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