Cimetières islamiques et appartenance locale en Espagne à l’époque moderne By Daniel Hershenzon

https://www.academia.edu/169740190/Cimeti%C3%A8res_islamiques_et_appartenance_locale_en_Espagne_%C3%A0_l_%C3%A9poque_moderne This article examines the role of Islamic cemeteries in shaping local belonging in early modern Spain, focusing on the port city of Cartagena in the eighteenth century. The authors argue that the management of Muslim burials within Iberian Christian societies was not merely a matter of interconfessional coexistence, but rather a question of power and social distinction within Maghrebi-origin populations, revealing the complexity of their modes of integration and differentiation. By approaching Iberian Islam through the prism of mortuary care, the article situates its case study within a longue durée perspective, showing that Islamic practices in Spain retained their vitality throughout the early modern period. Drawing on notarial archives, foundation acts, and inquisitorial records, the study offers an in-depth analysis of two key sites in eighteenth-century Cartagena: the “hospital-mosque” of the royal slaves and the “old” Muslim cemetery on the Cabezo de los Moros hill. The first section reconstructs the trajectory of the hospital-mosque. Supported by the Mercedarian Order, the royal slaves founded this institution in 1734 in the heart of the city, on a former Islamic burial site. The hospital-mosque became a space of collective affirmation where royal slaves asserted their Muslim identity in opposition to other Muslims in Cartagena. The authors then trace the institution’s gradual marginalization, as it was repeatedly relocated under pressure from local authorities and the Inquisition, culminating in its relegation in 1774 to the suburb of Santa Lucía, near the city’s “old” Muslim cemetery. The second section explores the history of this cemetery, located on the Cabezo de los Moros. Oriented toward the sanctuary of San Ginés de la Jara, the site attests to a continuous Islamic memory reaching back to the Middle Ages. The authors analyze the ambivalent cult of San Ginés—both marabout and Christian saint—whose pilgrimages brought together Muslims, converts, and Christians in a sometimes violent ritual coexistence. The cemetery thus appears as a liminal space where the religious and social tensions among Maghrebi populations of various statuses—slaves, freed persons, moros de paz, and libertinos—were played out. The religious dynamics surrounding the Cabezo de los Moros reveal how a local, hybrid, and hispanicized form of Islam took shape in Cartagena, in contrast with the more rigorously defined religious practices of the royal slaves within the hospital-mosque. Finally, the third section examines how the royal slaves gradually asserted control over the old cemetery, thereby extending their authority over the city’s broader Maghrebi communities. The authors analyze the exclusionary policy implemented by the royal slaves, who barred converts and freedmen from both their mosque and the cemetery. By claiming a monopoly over funeral rites, the royal slaves constructed a religious and corporate identity founded on the purity of their royal slave status—distinct from the hybrid identities of more acculturated Muslims. This strategy reflects a dual process: the internal consolidation of a captive community and the reinforcement of confessional boundaries within Christian society. Ultimately, the study demonstrates that royal slaves of Maghrebi origin succeeded in asserting their religious and social authority over Cartagena’s Muslim population through their control of mortuary practices. By excluding converts, freedmen, and locally rooted Maghrebi groups, they imposed a restrictive and hierarchical definition of religious belonging, while contributing to the construction of a Christian urban order in which religion functioned as an instrument of distinction and control. Glesener and Hershenzon thus highlight the deep continuities between the medieval and early modern periods, showing that Iberian Islam, far from being a marginal or residual phenomenon, remained vibrant well into the nineteenth century—animated by ongoing tensions between religious identity and local belonging.