Rabat and Tetouan: Two morisco cities in the seventeenth century

Abstract

: Between 1609 and 1614, Phillip III of Spain expelled the moriscos, descendants of Muslims who had been forcibly converted to Catholicism in 1501. These populations went largely to the Maghreb; two Moroccan urban centers that were greatly impacted by their arrival were Rabat and Tetouan. Both of these cities were beyond the reach of the Ottoman Empire, and isolated from the ruling cities of Fez and Marrakech; as such, they were relatively independent. At the time of the morisco arrival, both had small populations. Tetouan was a small city of Andalusi refugees who had arrived beginning in the late-fifteenth century; Rabat, while it had been of major importance under the Almohads in the twelfth century, had declined in the intervening years to the size of a village. The arrival of the moriscos, who numbered in the thousands, profoundly changed both of these cities in a short amount of time. This paper will take into account the rapid changes in the physical forms of the cities of Rabat and Tetouan both before and after the arrival of the expelled morisco populations. I will analyze both urban form, such as the street patterns, and the architectural components, such as the mosques and houses, of these two cities. By considering both the form and elements of the two cities both before and after the morisco migration, in this paper I will locate the shifts in society that occurred with the arrival of this significant population of refugees.