God's Shadow

by Alan Mikhail

  126 “would easily be made Christians”: Columbus, Four Voyages, 56.

  126 six evidently willing Tainos: Rouse, Tainos, 142–43. Columbus also took these six Taino passenger-captives with him on his return voyage to Spain. There, they were baptized, with the king, queen, and their children serving as godparents. One of the six stayed in Spain, where he died two years later. The others returned to the Caribbean with Columbus on his second voyage, with one of them serving as his interpreter (145).

  127 “who wears much gold”: Quoted in Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, s.v. “Voyages of Columbus” (Lemos).

  127 “another very large island”: Quoted in Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, s.v. “Voyages of Columbus” (Lemos).

  128 “Not even a shoe string”: Quoted in Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, s.v. “Voyages of Columbus” (Lemos).

  128 La Navidad: Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, s.v. “Settlements: La Navidad” (Kathleen Deagan).

  130 “[O]nce in the open sea”: Bernal Díaz, The Conquest of New Spain, trans. J. M. Cohen (London: Penguin, 1963), 17.

  131 the vocabulary of war with Islam: Mercedes García-Arenal, “Moriscos e Indios: Para un Estudio Comparado de Métodos de Conquista y Evangelización,” Chronica Nova 20 (1992): 153–75.

  131 “have no iron”: Columbus, Four Voyages, 55.

  131 almaizares, Moorish sashes: Vanita Seth, Europe’s Indians: Producing Racial Difference, 1500–1900 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 48.

  131 “Moorish robes,” “Moorish women”: Seth, Europe’s Indians, 48.

  131 “like the Moors, the women”: Quoted in Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, s.v. “Voyages of Columbus” (Lemos).

  132 “a familiar barbarian empire”: J. H. Elliott, “Cortés, Velázquez and Charles V,” introductory essay in Hernán Cortés: Letters from Mexico, ed. and trans. Anthony Pagden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), lxii.

  132 called Montezuma a sultan: Cortés: Letters from Mexico, 112.

  132 styles of floor and roof tiles: Cortés: Letters from Mexico, 110; Elliott, “Cortés,” lxii.

  132 “Since the only political model”: Elliott, “Cortés,” lxii.

  132 alarabs . . . mamelucos: Serge Gruzinski, What Time Is It There?: America and Islam at the Dawn of Modern Times, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2010), 131–32. On the Chichimecs, see also Amber Brian, “Shifting Identities: Mestizo Historiography and the Representation of Chichimecs,” in To Be Indio in Colonial Spanish America, ed. Mónica Díaz (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2017), 143–66.

  132 genízaros: Russell M. Magnaghi, “Plains Indians in New Mexico: The Genízaro Experience,” Great Plains Quarterly 10 (1990), 92, n. 2; Ramón A. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 151.

  132 “the zambra of the Moors”: Peter Manseau, One Nation, Under Gods: A New American History (New York: Little, Brown, 2015), 43–44. See also David Sanchez Cano, “Dances for the Royal Festivities in Madrid in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Dance Research 23 (2008): 123–52. Generally on the zambra and its perceived New World connections, see Karoline P. Cook, Forbidden Passages: Muslims and Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 10–21.

  133 “ships that were said . . . than Spaniards”: All quotes from Karoline P. Cook, “Muslims and Chichimeca in New Spain: The Debates over Just War and Slavery,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 70 (2013): 16–18.

  133 “García [the Crown’s agent]”: Quoted in Cook, “Muslims and Chichimeca,” 18.

  134 “The conquest of the Indians began”: Quoted in Barbara Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 7.

  134 “began as a kind of proxy war”: Manseau, One Nation, Under Gods, 45.

  134 Santiago Matamoros, St. James the Moor-slayer: Gruzinski, What Time Is It There?, 132–33.

  134–135 Mataindios . . . Mataespañois: “The Transference of ‘Reconquista’ Iconography to the New World: From Santiago Matamoros to Santiago Mataindios,” Ballandalus, https://ballandalus.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/the-transference-of-reconquista-iconography-to-the-new-world-from-santiago-matamoros-to-santiago-mataindios/ (accessed February 9, 2019).

  CHAPTER 9: CHRISTIAN JIHAD

  137 “No prince of Castile”: Quoted in Silvio A. Bedini, ed., The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), s.v. “Voyages of Columbus” (William Lemos).

  137 “tax payment,” “like Christians”: Quoted in Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, s.v. “Encomienda” (Paul E. Hoffman).

  138 sign statements that they believed Cuba to be mainland Asia: Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, s.v. “Voyages of Columbus” (Lemos).

  138 continued to bring interpreters: Abbas Hamdani, “Columbus and the Recovery of Jerusalem,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 99 (1979): 44.

  139 “[It] was brought out of malice”: Quoted in Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, s.v. “Voyages of Columbus” (Lemos).

  139 Columbus died: William D. Phillips, Jr., and Carla Rahn Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 238–40; Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, s.v. “Columbus, Christopher: The Final Years, Illness, and Death” (Helen Nader).

  139 one of only two mentions: Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, s.v. “Columbus, Christopher: Columbus in Portugal” (Rebecca Catz).

  139 The Requirement: I use the version of the text quoted in Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492–1640 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 69.

  141 had to accept the superiority of Christianity: Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, 71.

  141 “unique ritual demand for submission”: Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, 72.

  142 The first step of any jihad: Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, 76.

  142 “refusal to acknowledge religious superiority”: Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, 78.

  142 “No other European state”: Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, 70.

  142 “Moors or Turks . . . Muhammad”: Quoted in Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, 92–93.

  143 challenge that authority’s legitimacy: Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, 94.

  143 “the veritable barbarian outcasts”: Quoted in Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other, trans. Richard Howard (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 166.

  144 a mark of vassalage: Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, 82.

  144 “indigenous peoples of the Americas”: Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, 87.

  145 “the Romans of the Muslim world”: Albert Hourani, “How Should We Write the History of the Middle East?,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 23 (1991): 130.

  145 Spain asserted its Roman heritage: On the Spanish uses of the legacy of the Roman Empire in their conquest of the Americas, see David A. Lupher, Romans in a New World: Classical Models in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).

  145 “As for your observation”: Bernal Díaz, The Conquest of New Spain, trans. J. M. Cohen (London: Penguin, 1963), 159. See also J. H. Elliott, “The Mental World of Hernán Cortés,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 17 (1967): 45.

  146 “of good height”: On Montezuma’s appearance, see Díaz, Conquest of New Spain, 224.

  146 “donated” his empire to Charles V: Elliott, “Mental World of Cortés,” 52–53; J. H. Elliott, “Cortés, Velázquez and Charles V,” introductory essay in Hernán Cortés: Letters from Mexico, ed. and trans. Anthony Pagden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), lxvii–lxviii.

  146 leaving—“donating”—Italy and the rest of western Europe to the pope: Elliott, “Cortés,” lxvii–lxviii.

  146 “monarch of the universe”:
Quoted in Elliott, “Mental World of Cortés,” 55.

  CHAPTER 10: THE TAINO–MUSLIMS OF HISPANIOLA

  150 Livorno: Ariel Salzmann, “Migrants in Chains: On the Enslavement of Muslims in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe,” Religions 4 (2013): 396.

  150 forcibly converted the Muslims and other non-Christians: Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas, 2nd ed. (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 33–37.

  151 forays were organized mostly from . . . Santiago: Jane Landers, “The Great Wolof Scare of 1521” (unpublished manuscript), 1. My sincerest thanks to Professor Landers for allowing me to read and cite her work.

  151 Valencians constituted about a third: William D. Phillips, Jr., Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 66–67.

  151 Black slaves who had lived in Christian or Muslim kingdoms: For a very useful study of slavery and race in Morocco, see Chouki El Hamel, Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

  151 the Wolof Empire split: Michael A. Gomez, Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 9–12.

  151 “criminals, witches”: Martin A. Klein, “Slavery and the Early State in Africa,” Social Evolution and History 8 (2009): 177.

  152 “In a new land”: Quoted in Diouf, Servants of Allah, 36.

  153 official sanction to individual direct transshipments: Gomez, Black Crescent, 15.

  153 “bad customs”: Quoted in Landers, “Wolof Scare,” 2, and Erin Woodruff Stone, “America’s First Slave Revolt: Indians and African Slaves in Española, 1500–1534,” Ethnohistory 60 (2013): 203.

  153 the history of sugar cultivation: William D. Phillips, Jr., “Old World Precedents: Sugar and Slavery in the Mediterranean,” in The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples, ed. Stephan Palmié and Francisco A. Scarano (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 70–71, 77–79.

  154 first Muslim slaves and sugar cane to the New World: Genaro Rodríguez Morel, “The Sugar Economy of Española in the Sixteenth Century,” in Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450–1680, ed. Stuart B. Schwartz (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 86–87.

  154 boosting the development of the Caribbean economy: William D. Phillips, Jr., “Sugar in Iberia,” in Tropical Babylons, 34–35.

  154 “There are so many [blacks]”: Quoted in Landers, “Wolof Scare,” 12.

  155 perhaps just a twentieth of the African population: Ida Altman, “The Revolt of Enriquillo and the Historiography of Early Spanish America,” The Americas 63 (2007): 611.

  155 “bellicose and perverse”: Quoted in Landers, “Wolof Scare,” 1, 6. See also Stone, “America’s First Slave Revolt,” 195–217; Gomez, Black Crescent, 3–5.

  155 “wild and bloody expedition”: Quoted in Gomez, Black Crescent, 3.

  157 “planted with gallows”: Quoted in Landers, “Wolof Scare,” 8–9.

  157 “The blacks were punished”: Quoted in Landers, “Wolof Scare,” 9.

  158 “Among the few and poor goods”: Quoted in Altman, “The Revolt of Enriquillo,” 595.

  158 “probably mostly men”: Altman, “The Revolt of Enriquillo,” 598.

  159 natives from nearby islands: On the interisland movement of Caribbean Indians, see Karen F. Anderson-Córdova, Surviving Spanish Conquest: Indian Fight, Flight, and Cultural Transformation in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2017).

  159 rebels were able to sustain themselves: Altman, “The Revolt of Enriquillo,” 599.

  160 “know the land . . . needed”: Quoted in Altman, “The Revolt of Enriquillo,” 599.

  160 “The island is large”: Quoted in Stone, “America’s First Slave Revolt,” 204–10.

  160 the Taino and the Muslims joined forces: Stone, “America’s First Slave Revolt.”

  160 “rebel Indians and Negros”: Stone, “America’s First Slave Revolt,” 217, n. 70. The date October 1523 is given on 209.

  160 El Limona: Stone, “America’s First Slave Revolt,” 204–10.

  162 “prideful . . . Africans from other lands”: Quoted in Landers, “Wolof Scare,” 11.

  162 “It would be preferable”: Quoted in Altman, “The Revolt of Enriquillo,” 611.

  162 the majority of the slaves taken to gold-rich Cartagena: Diouf, Servants of Allah, 38.

  162 allowed Muslims to become a major force in the Americas: Today’s Muslim population in the Caribbean and throughout Latin America is mostly the result of recent immigration from the Middle East and South Asia. See María del Mar Logroño Narbona, Paulo G. Pinto, and John Tofik Karam, eds., Crescent over Another Horizon: Islam in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latino USA (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015).

  162 “if counted as a whole”: Diouf, Servants of Allah, 70.

  162 “the cursed sect of Mahomet”: Quoted in Diouf, Servants of Allah, 38.

  162-163 accuse their Muslim slaves of proselytizing: Diouf, Servants of Allah, 212–13; Gomez, Black Crescent, 18.

  163 greater reliance on galleys for transport in the Caribbean: David Wheat, “Mediterranean Slavery, New World Transformations: Galley Slaves in the Spanish Caribbean, 1578–1635,” Slavery and Abolition 31 (2010): 327–44.

  163 “Moors and Turks . . . prove to be the best”: Quoted in Wheat, “Mediterranean Slavery,” 330.

  163 Records from 1595: Gomez, Black Crescent, 31–33.

  163 “The conquest of the earth”: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (New York: Penguin, 2017), 7.

  164 Melchor de Castro . . . coat of arms: Landers, “Wolof Scare,” 8.

  CHAPTER 11: FINDING OTTOMAN JERUSALEM

  166 “Your Highnesses ordained”: Christopher Columbus, The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus: Being his own Log-Book, Letters, and Dispatches with Connecting Narrative drawn from the Life of the Admiral by his Son Hernando Colon and Other Contemporary Historians, ed. and trans. J. M. Cohen (London: Penguin, 1969), 37–38.

  167 Jews had materially aided Granada’s Muslims: Silvio A. Bedini, ed., The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), s.v. “Jews: Expulsion from Spain” (Angel Alcalá).

  167 release funds that had been tied up by the war: Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia s.v. “Jews: Expulsion from Spain” (Alcalá).

  167–168 “[I]t is evident . . . declaration”: Quoted in Jane S. Gerber, The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience (New York: Free Press, 1992), 286–88.

  169 some 100,000 opted for conversion: Gerber, Jews of Spain, 140.

  170 “If [our enemies] let us live”: Quoted in Gerber, Jews of Spain, 138.

  170 “In the first week of July”: Quoted in Gerber, Jews of Spain, 140.

  170 Portugal received . . . about 120,000: Gerber, Jews of Spain, 139.

  171 “inhabited by lizards . . . abandonment”: Quoted in Gerber, Jews of Spain, 141.

  171 “kindness of the King”: Quoted in Gerber, Jews of Spain, 149. See also 139.

  172 Sicily . . . expelled its Jewish community: Wikipedia, s.v. “History of the Jews in Sicily,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Sicily (accessed February 10, 2019).

  172 a boatload of Jews escaping persecution in Pesaro: Gerber, Jews of Spain, 150.

  172 “their weary feet could find rest”: Quoted in Gerber, Jews of Spain, 150.

  173 “a paradise for the Jews”: Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time, trans. Ralph Manheim, ed. William C. Hickman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 106.

  173 Isaac Sarfati: Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror, 107.

  174 “our righteous Messiah”: Quoted in Gerber, Jews of Spain, 151.

  174 replace Italian Christian merchants with Ottoman Jewish traders: The Ottomans made similar arguments in the sixteenth century in support of many of the empir
e’s Armenian merchant families.

  174 Spanish Jews . . . in Trabzon: Daniel Goffman, “Jews in Early Modern Ottoman Commerce,” in Jews, Turks, Ottomans: A Shared History, Fifteenth through the Twentieth Century, ed. Avigdor Levy (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 18–19.

  174 “You call Ferdinand”: Quoted in Gerber, Jews of Spain, 151.

  175 “Not long since banished”: Quoted in Gerber, Jews of Spain, 164–65.

  175 Joseph Hamon: Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World (Leiden: Brill Online, 2010), s.v. “Hamon Family” (Cengiz Sisman).

  175 Hebrew printing press: Gerber, Jews of Spain, 158–60.

  175 The first Hebrew-language printed books: Yaron Ben Na’eh, “Hebrew Printing Houses in the Ottoman Empire,” in Jewish Journalism and Printing Houses in the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, ed. Gad Nassi (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2001), 75.

  176 Numbers attest to the success of Jewish life: Gerber, Jews of Spain, 153–58.

  177 “each congregation appears”: Quoted in Gerber, Jews of Spain, 154.

  177 two conversos married by Christian rite: Gerber, Jews of Spain, 157.

  178 more lax kosher meat laws: Gerber, Jews of Spain, 157.

  179 In Istanbul, the number of Jewish households: Gerber, Jews of Spain, 153.

  179 twenty-one synagogues and eighteen Talmudic colleges: Gerber, Jews of Spain, 172.

  181 Trabzon’s population: Ronald C. Jennings, “Urban Population in Anatolia in the Sixteenth Century: A Study of Kayseri, Karaman, Amasya, Trabzon, and Erzurum,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 7 (1976): 42–47.

  181 Islam did not become the city’s majority religion: Jennings, “Urban Population in Anatolia,” 42–47; Heath W. Lowry, The Islamization and Turkification of the City of Trabzon (Trebizond), 1461–1583 (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2009).

  181 Jews remained a tiny minority in Trabzon: For Trabzon’s total population, see Jennings, “Urban Population in Anatolia,” 43. For mentions of Trabzon’s small Jewish population, see Rhoads Murphey, “Jewish Contributions to Ottoman Medicine, 1450–1800” in Jews, Turks, Ottomans, 61; Goffman, “Jews in Early Modern Ottoman Commerce,” 19.