Muladi

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Muladíes (sg.: muladí) were an ethnic group that lived in the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages.

The Spanish word muladí is derived from Arabic muwallad (pl: muwalladun or muwalladeen). The basic meaning of muwallad is a person of mixed ancestry, especially a descendant of an Arab and a non-Arab parent, who grew up among Arabs and was educated within the Arab-Islamic culture.

In Islamic history muwalladun designates in a broader sense non-Arab neo-Muslims or the descendants of converts. In the Iberian Peninsula parts of the indigenous, until-then Christian population - including some of the noble families - converted to Islam in the eighth and ninth century. In the tenth century a massive conversion took place, so that muladies comprised the majority of the population of Al-Andalus by the century's end. Through the Arabisation of muladies and their mixing with Arabs and Berbers, the distinctions between the different Muslim groups became increasingly blurred in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, so they merged into a more homogeneous group of Andalusi Arabs or Moors.

[edit] References

• Thomas F. Glick: Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages http://libro.uca.edu/ics/ics5.htm