Muladi
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 Muslim-ruled part of the Iberian Peninsula parts of the indigenous, until-then Christian population – of Ibero-Roman or Visigothic ancestry, particularly many noble families seeking to escape dhimmi status, – converted to Islam in the eighth and ninth centuries. 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 cultural Arabisation of muladies and their increasing intermarraige with Berbers and Arabs, 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.
"Muladi" has been offered as one of the possible etimological origins of the still-current Spanish term "Mulatto", denoting a person of mixed European and non-European ancestry.
Compare with
- Mozarabs, local population who remained Christians as dhimmis.
- Banu Qasi, a Muladi family descending from a Visigothic lord Cassius who became the independent rulers of their own taifa.
- Mudejars, Muslims living under Christian rulers.
References
- Thomas F. Glick: Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Agesbpy:মুলাদি
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