Afro-Iberia: Blacks in Medieval and Renaissance Iberia

These pictures in no way imply that the majority of "Moors" in medieval Iberia were "Black," but merely serves as a powerful reminder of the racial diversity of Muslim-dominated Iberia, as well as the conspicuous presence of "Blacks" in Christian Iberian art. The above image depicts the judgment of Moorish captives by a Christian Iberian king in the 1200s or 1300s, while the image below, from the early 16th century, depicts a black slave in Portugal serving as a domestic in the home of a wealthy Portuguese man. The latter image depicts the presence of enslaved Africans, often non-Muslims, from West Africa or even further south in Central Africa, who were popular domestic servants, indicators of status for wealthy elites, and, by the end of the 15th century, a common site in Lisbon and other southern Portuguese cities and parts of Andalusia.

I do not know if this is from the 16th century, but it's supposedly a depiction of Juan Latino, an African-descended professor and writer of Spain, educated and capable of writing poetry in Latin and lecturing in the university. He, according to research by Henry Louis Gates and other specialists on Black Spain in the 1500s, responded to anti-black prejudice by linking his African roots with Biblical Ethiopia. 

The above image represents European imagination on carnal knowledge of Arabs and Blacks, suggesting that it's immoral for a white, Christian woman to sleep with a dark-skinned, presumably Muslim, servant or slave. It's from the late 1200s, after the Reconquista was building in momentum and, though the black servant is seen burning, the white woman is saved by the Virgin Mary. Supposedly the image above depicts a dream, but an obvious anti-Muslim, anti-black prejudice can be detected in the seeming moral that interracial, interreligious and interclass love is frowned upon.

From the 1300s, this Jewish cartographer from Spain depicts the legendary Mansa Musa, of the Mali kingdom, whose fame and wealth was renowned throughout the world after his Hajj. His gold seems to be luring a light-skinned Arab or Berber trader and there is nothing to suggest anti-black attitudes or prejudice in the image, only the notion of fabulous wealth and unlimited gold to be found in this region of West Africa, which was linked to the notion of a "River of Gold" Europeans hoped to reach in West Africa. Muslim cartographers from North Africa also had a similarly fantastic idea, believing there was a Palolus, or island of Gold somewhere in West Africa south of the Mali empire, which was really the Wangara goldfields in non-Muslim lands.

 

This image depicts a black slave in the bottom right.

A retrato of Juan de Pareja, a black Spanish painter and acquaintance of Velazquez. He was a ladino, that is, an acculturated Afro-Iberian, fluent in Spanish and had this portrait done in 1650. Black ladinos would also play a significant role in the Spanish conquest of the Americas as well as a cultural presence in some cases, where slave and slave-descended communities assembled in parts of cities, such as Seville. Other well-known ladinos include Eleno/a de Cespedes, an Afro-Iberian transgendered person who was socially accepted as male despite being officially seen as a woman, even marrying a woman until Inquisition authorities intervened in their life.

From the 13th century, it depicts a dark-skinned, "Negroid" Moor playing chess with a light-skinned male. Likely from Alfonso el Sabio's Book of Games, it shows the influence of Muslim and Moorish games such as chess on Christian Iberian kingdoms. This black man does not seem a slvae, based on his dress, though he is barefoot. Images like these could be representative of reality in that some dark-skinned Berbers and West Africans likely entered Iberia as elites and military leaders following Almoravid and Almohad conquests. Furthermore, blackening Moors and equating Saracens with blacks was another way of denigrating them. 

 

From an early 15th century Iberian map, we see a depiction of a dark-skinned Berber or "Moor" in the West African Sahara or Sahel, about to engage in trade with the still-legendary Mansa Musa of Mali.

Likely from the 13th century, it depicts Moorish invaders, most of whom depicted as looking almost European, with one prominent black rower.

Another image of dark Moors playing chess, although other images depict light-skinned Moors playing chess.