Moriscos were former Muslims and their descendants whom the Catholic Church and Habsburg Spain commanded to forcibly convert to Christianity or face compulsory exile after Spain outlawed Islam. Spain had a sizeable Muslim population, the mudéjars, in the early 16th century.
The Moorish Proselytes of Archbishop Ximenes, Granada, 1500 by Edwin Long (1829–1891)
Muhammad I of Granada leading his troops during the Mudéjar revolt of 1264–66, illustrated in the contemporary Cantigas de Santa Maria
Embarkation of Moriscos in Valencia by Pere Oromig [es]
Expulsion of the Moriscos from Vinaros
The term Moor is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim populations of the Maghreb, al-Andalus, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a single, distinct or self-defined people. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica observed that the term had "no real ethnological value." Europeans of the Middle Ages and the early modern period variously applied the name to Arabs, Berbers, and Muslim Europeans.
Castillian ambassadors attempting to convince Moorish Almohad king Abu Hafs Umar al-Murtada to join their alliance (contemporary depiction from the Cantigas de Santa María)
Christian and Moor playing chess, from The Book of Games of Alfonso X, c. 1285
Moros y Cristianos festival in Oliva.
The Great Mosque of Kairouan was founded by the Arab general Uqba ibn Nafi in 670 during the Islamic conquest, to provide a place of worship for recently converted or immigrating Muslims.
![Embarkation of Moriscos in Valencia by Pere Oromig [es]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/Embarco_moriscos_en_el_Grao_de_valencia.jpg/640px-Embarco_moriscos_en_el_Grao_de_valencia.jpg)
