Andalusi

The Andalusi are Arabic-speaking Muslims of southern Iberia, heirs of al-Andalus, born of the 711 Muslim conquest. From Arab and Berber settlers and Iberian converts, the Muladíes, an Andalusi identity in Andalusi Arabic emerged by the 1200s, its cities shared with Mozarabic Christians and Jews.

Their world had known the Umayyad caliphate of Córdoba, whose tenth-century scholars led Europe in astronomy, medicine and philosophy; the taifa kingdoms after its 1031 fall; and the Almoravids and Almohads. As Christian kingdoms pressed south, Nasrid emir Ibn al-Ahmar founded the Emirate of Granada in 1238, the peninsula's last Muslim state, which paid Castile tribute and adorned its capital with the Alhambra.

In 1337 the emirate still held Granada, Málaga and Almería, but the city of Granada fell to the Catholic Monarchs in 1492. Castile outlawed Islam in 1502; the Moriscos, forced converts, rose in the Alpujarras in 1568 and were crushed and dispersed, and between 1609 and 1614 the crown expelled tens of thousands, most finding refuge in Morocco and Ottoman lands.